German cartoonist Mawil was not very good at talking to girls when he was young. So far, so typical. (I suppose there are people out there who were immediately good at conversation with their preferred sex, but they’re probably also all tall and thin and rich, so we hate them anyway.)
Mawil (real name: Markus Witzel), though, turned that youthful gawkiness into art, which most of us don’t manage to do, in his wistful early graphic story We Can Still Be Friends
.
Mawil, when he made these pages, was still young and mostly unable to talk coherently to the girls that he liked — this book was his “diploma,” as the acknowledgements puts it, which I think means it was the rough equivalent of a thesis for a MFA. (It’s dated 2002, which would make him 25-26 when he completed it.) I also think the “relationship” documented in the last section was actually going on at the time he was making these pages, or that it ended just before that: this is a comic made in a moment, looking backward to contextualize where its maker was right then.
I say “relationship” in quotes because Mawil didn’t actually date any of the women he tells us about here. He knew them from school, or other activities, and they hung around together…but, after he built them each up hugely in his head and finally got around to the “do you want to go out” stage, he was let down easily. This book shows the slow process by which he got through a number of “we can still be friends” conversations as he gradually learned how to have that conversation at all, and maybe even to move it up earlier in time.
So these are autobiographical comics, of the “I’m no good at this thing” subcategory, with an emphasis on personal relationships. Mawil is funny, and his style works well for both young gawky people and young attractive people. And his point is that he did get better, if slowly, and that this kind of thing is part of growing up. We all meet people we’re crazy about; the trick is finding the ones where it’s mutual.
This was very early in Mawil’s career, but it looks a lot like the later books of his I’ve seen — Home and Away
and Sparky O’Hare
and Beach Safari
. His style seems to have crystallized early, which is really interesting: it’s an idiosyncratic, very cartoony style, but I guess he came to it quickly and naturally. (Or worked at it for years on things that will never see the light of day — which seems the same on the outside.)
We Can Still Be Friends, despite the rejection inherent in the title, is a fundamentally positive book — Mawil’s frame story has him telling these stories to a group of friends, who encourage him and push him forward. This is not a book about how women hate him; it’s a book about how it took him a while to figure out how to talk to women, and how he’s still getting better at it. Getting better at talking to people is a good thing: I love books that encourage that.
P.S. This book’s title always reminds me of this bit from the 1996 song “Eddie Vedder
,” by Chicago’s greatest two-man band, Local H:
Okay I understand But I don’t want to be your friend I don’t need another friend I’ve got too many friends If I was Eddie Vedder Would you like me any better?
That has absolutely nothing to do with the book. But, hey, what good is a blog if you can’t make random pop-cultural connections there?
Contradictions are inherent in any work of fiction, like they are in the real world. Nothing is pure and clear and exactly what it is — everything contains the seeds of its opposite.
But it’s still really weird that what’s supposed to be the great late 20th century poetic ecological comic, a story about impending doom and inevitable biosphere destruction, is all about a guy hanging out in what is shown as a lush wilderness, full of lovingly-rendered large animals at the top of the food chain, who all look really healthy and active. It’s almost like the idea of impending doom is more interesting than telling a story of that doom — just assume the doom and use it in phantasmagorical ways.
This may be another case of a book that I either neglected to read at the right time, or that I’m utterly the wrong reader for. It happens.
I never read The Puma Blues
when it was running as a periodical comic, in the late ’80s. My kid brother was a fan, I think, but I don’t remember more than glancing at his comics. I knew it was there, and I respected it — it came out of the Renegade/Aardvark-Vanaheim/Aardvark One International “stable” of Dave Sim’s Cerebus — but I had some sense that it wasn’t really my thing.
Thirty years later, creators Stephen Murphy and Michael Zulli finished up the unfinished story for this big fat hardcover from Dover — over five hundred and fifty pages of comics. And I think I was right not to jump into it, back in the day — it isn’t really my thing, as interesting and compelling and distinctive as it is.
Gavia Immer is a young murderer — literally the first thing we see him do in the comic is mope around and straight-up kill a bum, in a scene that is never referenced again — who gets a vague game warden-esque job at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts, where he’s free to wander around and muse about stuff apparently all day long. The world around him is seriously crapsack, we’re told (though we mostly don’t see it until near the end of this book): white supremacist terrorists murdered President Kemp and detonated a small nuke in the Bronx in 1995, and the biosphere may be on the verge of a complete collapse. The main story takes place in 2000, in a world Murphy says has been going straight downhill in the intervening fifteen years.
All that is vague — we know the world is horrible and getting worse, but the comic is about one guy wandering around what looks like unspoiled nature obsessing about his dead father and that father’s various loony-tune conspiracy theories. (I am afraid aliens are deeply involved, because Puma Blues is from the ’80s, before ubiquitous good photography definitively nailed shut the UFO coffin.)
In fact, Puma Blues is almost two different comics: Zulli’s evocative drawings of nature and quiet visual storytelling is one thing. And Murphy’s script — more allusive than literal, prone to fly off on wings of attempts at prose poetry, besotted with its own words and wordiness — is a base for that Zulli art, but not always a script for it, the way two jazz musicians interweave their separate lines without ever actually harmonizing.
There are events in Puma Blues, but it’s a comic of tone and atmosphere and mood more than a story — Gavia mopes around a reservoir, watches his father’s paranoid apocalyptic rants, and occasionally interacts with his superiors. It’s not a story meant to go anywhere; the charitable explanation is that the world is falling apart, so where is there to go?
Puma Blues ended, unfinished, in 1989, its apocalypse still imminent. This hardcover collects all of the ’80s material plus a jarring new forty-page final chapter — which is even wordier, particularly in the early pages, than the original series — in which Murphy merges the Puma Blues alternate history with our real history to give him every possible real and imagined horrible thing in the world. Puma Blues was already ornate and overwrought; this ending pushes that up to eleven, than cracks off the knob in trying to amp it even higher. The good news there is that the new Zulli pages are just as impressive as, and thematically consistent with, his earlier work. But, as an ending, it’s loud and shrill and haranguing, and this reader was mostly happy to finally get to the end of it.
The hardcover collection of Puma Blues also features a long introduction by Dave Sim, who shows that even when he’s trying to be polite and positive in public, he’s still a crazy autodidact with deeply confused ingrained notions about the universe which will never be swayed by mere facts or logic. Similarly, Stephen Bissette uses a long afterword to tell the story of Murphy’s and Zulli’s subsequenct careers and to re-litigate Puma Blues‘s and Dave Sim’s fight with Diamond that was the proximate cause of the title’s collapse in the ’80s.
What all of that has in common — Murphy’s prose, Zulli’s images, Sim’s insistence that the Earth was formed when one cosmic sphere fucked another, and Bissette’s loving description of Murphy’s years writing Ninja Turtles stories — is that it’s all deeply inside baseball. Which particular baseball game it’s calling balls and strikes for varies by person, and Zulli’s work is the most accessible, but it’s all hermetic in its own way. Puma Blues does not open out to the world; it closes in to form its own world. It’s a unique world, and deeply interesting in some ways, but you have to make the journey to go there — it will not meet you halfway, or even one step towards where you are now.
If you’re interested in that world, though, there is nothing else like Puma Blues.
5 Worlds: The Cobalt Prince By Mark Siegel, Alexis Siegel, Xanthe Bouma, Matt Rockefeller, Boya Sun Random House Books for Young Readers, 256 pages, $20.99/12.99
The interesting test for a book in a series is just how accessible it is for a new reader to jump in. In the case of the second installment in 5 Worlds, The Cobalt Prince, the answer is a total failure. There is nothing provided the curious reader as to what has transpired before so we meet a new world and new characters almost immediately plunge into a dizzying flashback.
Across the 256 colorful pages, things slowly begin to make sense as some evil entity called the Mimic manipulates people to obtain the missing arm of a Queen’s statue that will imbue it with unimaginable power. It falls to two sisters, apparently mutants in their world, to prevent unspeakable horrors from happening.
There’s something about Sand Dancing and colorful sands on moons that need to be moved so planets can become suns (apparently, the laws of physics do not apply to this solar system).
There’s a lot of running, dancing, and shouting about saving the Five Worlds from extinction and after lighting one in the first volume, Oona Lee feels the pressure to light the remaining four in time beginning on the moon of Toki. Separated from her older sister Jessa, who is also blue-skinned, Oona feels alone and isolated and way too young to be asked to save the universe.
Someone named An Tzu is dying, but since he’s tertiary to the story, we don’t care until maybe the ending. Exactly who this Jax Amboy is remains vague.
Considering there are five creators and, presumably, an editor involved, one would hope for some clarity to the worldbuilding, the characters, and the stakes. Instead, there’s precious little provided considering the number of pages available. We get some sense that there are themes about racism and the dangers of blindly accepting other people’s truths as your own, but you’d have to look hard to follow them.
The art team needed some direction as it is hard to differentiate races as well as what’s going on panel to panel, page to page. The dancing, in particular, should have been redrawn from top to bottom to emphasize its magical properties. The vaguely Asian art style and bright colors make this feel imitative of other works rather than something original that can stand on its own.
Apparently, this is well-regarded and has sold well enough that a third volume has been promised although rather than continuing the story, it will tell a supporting character’s story, putting the crisis on hold.
It’s a shame that so many of these critical YA graphic novels get showered with love while failing to live up to the critical components of competent storytelling.
I’m not generally positive about superhero comics here, for the obvious reasons. They’re disconnected from reality, providing artificial solutions to artificial problems. They’re obsessed with their own continuity and history, and with ringing ever more complicated changes on that history, at the expense of clarity and storytelling. They privilege a dumbed-down moral universe in which punching solves everything and violence can be controlled precisely to keep unwanted damage from occurring. They tell endless and-then [1] saga, divorced from real stories with beginnings and ends. And they’re run by and for the benefit of rapacious multinational corporations, which just want more IP to exploit.
The Vision doesn’t manage to avoid every single one of those traps. But it’s a startlingly good comic in a superhero milieu, one that takes on large moral questions and doesn’t try to give them simple answers…or any answers. It’s a single story told in twelve issues, with the ending inherent in the beginning, like the best stories. And it uses comics continuity in ways to strengthen itself, to tell this story about these people in this world.
So now I think I need to dig up what else writer Tom King has done.
I read this story in two trade paperbacks — Little Worse Than a Man
and Little Better Than a Beast
— but it was also published, subsequently, as a single hardcover
, which may provide a slightly better reading experience. (And the hardcover probably has some extra gewgaws, because that’s how the comics market works.)
But it’s one story, and my guess is that King wanted it to be about this length when he started. From what little I know about life inside the superhero factory, I doubt he got a contract guaranteeing that length at the beginning, and he might have had pressure towards the end to keep a popular/critically-successful thing going. (I wonder if he originally had an even darker ending in mind: there are hints of that in the early narration. The Vision does have a mild case of the required “putting all of the toys away neatly” superhero miniseries ending.)
Whatever the behind-the-scenes machinations, The Vision does tell one story, and tells it well. That’s vanishingly rare in Big Two comics these days: this doesn’t cross over with anything, or tie-in to anything. It neither launched out of nor led into an event. It does require a certain level of knowledge of the Marvel Universe — you have to have some sense who this Vision guy is, who claims to have saved the world thirty-seven times — but it will tell you most of what you need to know along the way.
The Vision is the story of a robot trying to live in human society — the many-generations-removed descendant of a thousand Eando Binder and Asimov stories, along with dozens of similar later works. The robot, in a story like this, must be as smart as humans but not think like humans — he must have a problem with emotion, with metaphor, with uncertainty, with purpose and teleology. He must do things that make total sense to him — usually for intricate logical reasons — but which cause problems with the human society around him.
The Vision (the character) is a synthezoid — another, fancier, word for “robot” that Marvel can own, because one of its sharecroppers made it up many years ago. He was built as part of a cunning destroy-the-world plan by Ultron, a much less conflicted and more obviously emotional robot himself created by one of the early Avengers. (Which Avenger? Well, do you mean comics-Ultron or movie-Ultron? I’m also being vague because I’m not 100% sure the origin of comics-Ultron is still what it was the last time I cared, back in the ’80s.) The Vision talks without contractions to show that he’s a robot, and is notably more logical and less emotional than a normal person.
He’s also bright red with green highlights and glowing yellow eyes, of course. And he has superpowers, because Marvel. (How can you save the world thirty-seven times if you can’t lift a bus and shoot power beams from your forehead? Don’t you know that no non-superhero has ever saved the world even once?)
The Vision, for reasons that are sufficient but not covered in depth, created a “wife” — another synthezoid like himself, in female form, using a copy of his ex-wife’s brain as her model. (Not to get too deep into the rabbit hole, but his ex-wife is the Scarlet Witch, and they had two children, or maybe they eventually didn’t, and then she went crazy and destroyed the world before both she and the world got better.) There doesn’t seem to have been any possibility that the creature Vision created to be his wife from the imprint of his former wife could have had any choice in the matter. Well, she’s not a superhero — she’s to be part of his normal life, so she can’t rebel against her creator like he could.
(Well, the premises of any superhero story get creepy and shaky the more you look at them. Let’s move on, shall we?)
The Vision — the book repeatedly calls him “The Vision of The Avengers,” as if that were his Homeric epithet — and his new wife Virginia want to settle down and be normal. So they combine their minds and built two smaller “teenage” synthezoids, Viv and Vin, who will need to go through something like robot adolescence to integrate into being new and unique people. And all four settled in a leafy Virginia suburb, close enough for Vision to fly to the White House for his unpaid job as Avengers liaison to the President. (The narrative hints that lack of income for the Vision family may eventually become an issue, but it doesn’t. It’s not that kind of story. In the end, it’s a superhero story.)
Can a “family” of superpowered synthezoids live among normal humans? Can they have normal lives? Will they find fulfilling pastimes and contribute to their community in the small ways everyone else in the world does?
What do you think? I said this was a single story. It’s set in a superhero universe. I think you can connect the dots from there.
King turns in a strong version of the Tragic Attempt at Normalcy story here, one of the major required events in the Superhero Olympiad. We know it will end badly, as we know Oedipus was in trouble as soon as he married Jocasta, but we watch to see how badly, and in what ways. And to see what the tragic flaws are this time, and who will have them, and who will be broken by them. We are rewarded here by a fall that begins practically on the first page — very classical, very well done.
King also has suitably ominous narration, which turns out to be not just narration, in a strong twist. And the logical/philosophical issues the Vision and his family grapple with are real and interesting…if slightly diluted by the fact that the MU has at least a dozen other kinds of robots that don’t have these problems at all.
The visual storytelling, from Gabriel Hernandez Walta, is equally strong, though my vocabulary is not as good at describing that piece of comics.
This is as good as superhero comics get this decade: that’s both a blessing and a curse. It is pretty good. It is worth reading. But the millstone around its neck holds it back in a dozen different ways as well. And The Vision of The Avengers will be back, in some radically different form, in some other comic, as if this story didn’t happen. He will be back, every month for as long as he can make some money for Marvel…which is the real point.
[1] “And then Thor was a woman for a while, but she died. And then Superman didn’t have underwear on the outside of his costume for a while, and it was a huge controversy until he went back to the red shorts. And then Galactus threatened to eat the Earth again.”
Ahead of Tuesday’s digital release of Black Panther, Marvel has released one of the behind the
scenes features, focusing on the powerful, independent women featured in the movie.
THE WOMEN OF WAKANDA
The in-home release of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther is packed with bonus material including deleted scenes, outtakes and never-before-seen featurettes. The highly-celebrated story of a young African prince named T’Challa (played by Chadwick Boseman) has thrilled and inspired generations of moviegoers around the world, and dominated box office charts. Thankfully, the exhilarating adventure will be available Digitally in HD, 4K Ultra HD™ and Movies Anywhere on May 8 and on 4K Ultra HD™, Blu-ray™, DVD and On-Demand on May 15.
To celebrate the in-home launch of the mighty Marvel movie, we chat to the cast and crew about the women of Wakanda, which is the subject of one of the exclusive bonus features: The Warriors Within. Look no further if you want to get to know Wakanda’s women and the amazing actors whoportray them…
LUPITA NYONG’O [NAKIA]
“I love the way Black Panther represents women. Each and every one of us [in the movie] is an individual. We all have our own sense of power and we hold our own space without being pitted against each other. I think that’s a very, very powerful message to send to children – both male and female.
“In Black Panther, we see women going about their business and supporting each other. They argue with each other and have different points of view, but they are not pitted against each other and I think that’s extremely important. In doing this, audiences can get a sense of the fabric of Wakanda as a nation, where we see women alongside men and we see how much more effective a society can be if they allow women to explore their full potential.
“Cinema has the potential to show us who we’ve been, who we are, and who we could be – and Wakanda is an example of who we could be. This is a nation that has been allowed to self-determine because it has avoided the interruption that colonialism was; that assault on a culture and the imposition of a new culture on another. It has figured out how to develop on its own terms. And with that development, it seems they have figured out how to allow their citizens to realize their fullest potential, which means that women can hold their power and not compromise or jeopardize the man’s power. In Wakanda, a woman can assume her own power – but she can also stand with and in support of the man at her side.
“We can see that with the character of Black Panther, who is this all-powerful, vibranium-wearing guy who has Okoye [played by Danai Gurira] by his side. He also has a confidant in my character, Nakia. She’s someone that he can listen to and consider on a level plain. I think that’s really cool to see. I love the way that you get to see it unapologetic and unexplained; it’s just the way it is in a country you’ve never visited before. I feel like this gives you a glimpse as to what is possible in the real world.”
DANAI GURIRA [OKOYE]
“When [Black Panther director and co-writer] Ryan Coogler sat me down and talked to me about his vision for the movie, the story, the characters – and the women – I was floored because you don’t get to hear stories like this very often. It’s not often that you sit down and hear that type of a vision. It was amazing.
“There are so many great things I could say about how Ryan developed the women characters in the movie. I feel really blessed and excited by the fact he allowed us to collaborate, too. I love the fact that these women from the continent are very developed and very complex. I remember thinking, ‘Wow, this is something else. I just want to watch it, but now I also get to be in it.’
“I was immediately drawn to the idea of the Dora Milaje [an all-female, special forces security team]. I loved the concept of them, but it was incredible to see them come to life [during pre-production]. I started to train with all these astounding women and then we all started to get our heads shaved for the movie. I was the first to have it done, but then all the girls started coming in with no hair. One-by-one, we’d all been balded – but we were united together. That’s when our pride started to grow. We all started to embrace this symbol of power in these women.
“I love the moment in the movie where Okoye doesn’t want a wig. She doesn’t want to cover up her head. This is her joy and her pride, so she wants to walk in there with her bald head and that tattoo. I thought that moment was so subversive. It’s so subversive in the right way to say that you don’t have to have hair to be beautiful.”
“I think it’s great to see so many strong women in Black Panther because there’s a lack of them in cinema right now; especially black female characters. All these female characters in the movie are really well rounded, too. They are not just written one way. The women have a lot of complexity. It was really refreshing to see and it’s inspiring to be part of it, because it means a lot to me.
“I also love the way that the men are always behind the women in Wakanda. Nobody is undermined by the other sex. The men don’t stand around and say, ‘Shuri, you shouldn’t be into technology and math.’ They’re like, ‘No, go ahead.’ T’Challa says, ‘Go ahead, Sis. This is your department. This is your domain. Do your thing. Stay in your lane.’ I love that that’s the mentality of the king. It’s brilliant. Everybody’s got their own lane.
“I love what Marvel has done with this movie. They are saying that women are just as great as the men. It’s not one or the other. There’s a dope balance.”
FOREST WHITAKER [ZURI]
“I love the fact that there are many different types of strong women in the movie. Not only are there these amazing women warriors who show the world that women are powerful – but they have a warrior spirit to conquer, as well as the ability to find the tools and strength to navigate and win.
“The power of motherhood is displayed by Angela Bassett’s character [Ramonda] and the way she nurtures her children. She moves her son and daughter forward, and she’s willing to do anything to make sure they are well and right.
“Then there’s Shuri, who shows everyone the technology of this world. She illustrates the fact that women can be adept with technology and math; the movie recognizes that attribute inside of women. These are very powerful statements to the world.”
MICHAEL B. JORDAN [ERIK KILLMONGER]
“In Wakanda, the matriarchs are the backbone and the foundation on which the country is built on, and the men lean on their women for guidance and strength. I think it’s extremely important for little girls and women out there to see themselves represented in a positive, strong way in film and television – and I think Wakanda does it really well. I think Black Panther is amazing in that respect.
“There are a lot of strong female characters in this movie. The fiercest warriors are all women. The king’s private guard – the Dora Milaje – are all women. That was something that [director and co-writer] Ryan Coogler and [co-writer] Joe Robert Cole wanted to depict in the story.
“In African culture, the women are the backbone of society and they have such a positive influence on everyone. To not put a strong representation of that into the film would be a crime because we wanted to stay true to reality.
“We have some very talented black women in this film, with Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira and Angela Bassett. It was incredible to work alongside them – although I think the character of Shuri [played by Letitia Wright] is my absolute favorite in the movie. I think Shuri is amazing. She’s incredibly smart and witty, and her one-liners are awesome.”
“When you look at African culture, you’ll often see gender roles that are different from the norm. You’ll find issues with gender dynamics in African culture in the same way you do in other cultures, but you’ll also find things that are different. Strong women and women’s influence on culture and society is something that cannot be overlooked. That was something that we really wanted to include in the movie, although it’s something that was present in the Black Panther comics as well.
“T’Challa’s mother, Ramonda, is a constant influence on his world. And T’Challa’s relationship with his sister is one of the more unique relationships in comic book films and action films. It was something that we looked at because there’s no super hero with a little sister – but Shuri is possibly the most important relationship in his life. That was something that we really wanted to explore. And then you have the Dora Milaje, who are these elite warriors in the country and it’s all women.
“This film had involvement from brilliant women from start to finish. They weren’t hired because they were women; they were hired because they were the best people for the job. That includes our cinematographer, Rachel Morrison; our costume designer, Ruth Carter; our production designer, Hannah Beachler; and our assistant director, Lisa Satriano. In post-production, the film was edited by Michael Shawver and Debbie Berman, who is from South Africa. I was blessed to work alongside these incredible women and to have their perspective and their fingerprints all over the project.”
Once again, I need to lead with the obvious disclaimer: I am not the person to tell you about stories of female friendship, not being female and not overly thrilled with friendship, either. But Lumberjanes is not a comic just for young lady-persons, so I can read and enjoy it as well. You can, too, and perhaps you will.
(See my posts on the first
and second
volumes for similar disclaimers and thoughts.)
The third collection is Lumberjanes: A Terrible Plan
, written still by Noelle Stevenson and Shannon Watters. This time out, the bulk of the art is by Carolyn Nowak, though the first issue here has a lot of short pieces — campfire ghost stories told by various girls — from a number of other artists, including Antick Musings favorite Faith Erin Hicks. As before, this book reprints four issues, and it forms (more or less) one larger story.
Well, the first issue here (number 9 [1]) is a standalone, with those individual ghost stories, told around a campfire, as is traditional. But the rest of the book reprints three issues that tell a connected narrative.
Thought I should admit it’s not really one story: this is the “split the party” story, which any series about a close-knit group of people must have eventually. Mal and Molly are off in the woods together, in a totally not-a-date kind of way, to be together because they’re really good friends and…OK, it’s really a date, a cute one, when they’re not being pursued by bears and trapped in an alternate universe ruled by dinosaurs.
The rest of the girls are left in camp, and don’t want to get into anything too fun while Mal and Molly are away. So they decide to use this free day to get at least one “easy” badge. This is not as simple as they think, obviously.
As usual, the real draw of Lumberjanes is the relationships: all of the characters are real and interesting. Their conversation is zippy and truer, and their exploits are unrealistic in the way a good TV cartoon show is — there’s a close enough relation to real life that you can see it, but this world is better and more exciting.
And, of course, they’re all women (or girls, I suppose, if you want to put it that way). That’s still unusual for comics for stupid historical reasons.
I’ll end the way I started: this is a great comic for young lady-persons, and if you are in charge of any of them, you should give them the chance to read it. If not, you still might like it yourself, if you like people and ladies and youth and friendship and camping and hi-jinks and endless possibilities.
[1] Number 9. Number 9. Number 9. turn me on, dead man
Because you haven’t had enough Marvel movies in the last five days, here’s the new trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp — now featuring 100% more Black Goliath!
Universal City, California, April 19, 2018 – Ten years after the events of the first film, the Kaiju return in Pacific Rim Uprising with a new deadly threat that reignites the conflict between these otherworldly monsters of mass destruction and Jaegers, the human-piloted super-machines that were built to vanquish them. Pacific Rim Uprising arrives on Digital and the all-new digital movie app MOVIES ANYWHERE on June 5, 2018, as well as on 4K Ultra HD, 3D Blu-rayTM, Blu-rayTM, DVD and On Demand on June 19, 2018 from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. Building on the striking visual world created in the first film, Pacific Rim Uprising features a next-generation battleground complete with upgraded Jaegers and new Kaiju that offers a captivating a state-of-the-art spectacle perfect for your next night in. Experience one-of-a-kind special effects and more than forty minutes of bonus content when you own the next installment on 4K Ultra HD, 3D Blu-rayTM, Blu-rayTM and DVD.
In Pacific Rim Uprising directed by Steven S. DeKnight, John Boyega (Star Wars: The Force Awakens) stars as the rebellious Jake Pentecost, a once-promising Jaeger pilot whose legendary father gave his life to secure humanity’s victory against the monstrous Kaiju. Jake has since abandoned his training only to become caught up in a criminal underworld. But when an even more unstoppable threat is unleashed to tear through our cities and bring the world to its knees, he is given one last chance to live up to his father’s legacy. Jake is joined by gifted rival pilot Lambert (The Fate of the Furious’ Scott Eastwood), 15-year-old Jaeger hacker Amara (newcomer Cailee Spaeny), returning veterans Charlie Day (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”), Rinko Kikuchi (Pacific Rim), Burn Gorman (The Dark Knight Rises) and a talented crew of fiercely young cadets. The international cast also includes Tian Jing (Kong: Skull Island) and Adria Arjona (“Emerald City”). Rising up to become the most powerful defense force to ever walk the earth, they set course for a spectacular all-new adventure on a towering scale.
BONUS FEATURES ON 4K ULTRA HD, 3D BLU-RAYTM, BLU-RAYTM, DVD & DIGITAL:
Deleted Scenes with Commentary by Director Steven S. DeKnight
Hall of Heroes – John Boyega takes us through the awesome weaponry and cutting-edge enhancements of the latest generation of Jaegers featured in the film.
Bridge to Uprising – The cast and crew discuss how the world of Pacific Rim has changed in the ten years since the events of the original film.
The Underworld of Uprising – Humanity won the Kaiju War, but every war has casualties. John Boyega and Steven S. DeKnight give a tour of the coastal “Relief Zones.”
Becoming Cadets – Step into the Shatterdome, and learn the grueling physical and mental preparation required of the young actors who portrayed the PPDC cadets.
Unexpected Villain – Learn the secret reason that turned one of the most beloved heroes of the original film into a villain obsessed with humanity’s destruction.
Next Level Jaegers – The cast and crew discuss the amazing technological advances of the Jaeger program in the years since the events of the original film.
I Am Scrapper – Actress Cailee Spaeny shares the backstory of Scrapper, Amara’s incredible self-built Jaeger and its many unique abilities.
Going Mega – Filmmakers take us through the technical and creative challenges of creating the most deadly threat the Pan Pacific Defense Corp has ever faced: the Mega Kaiju!
Secrets of Shao – Meet the woman behind Shao Industries. Actress Tian Jing shares her insights on the enigmatic tech tycoon Liwen Shao.
Mako Returns – Actress Rinko Kikuchi and director Steven S. DeKnight explain the significance of Mako Mori’s return and her importance to the events of Pacific Rim Uprising.
Feature Commentary with Director Steven S. DeKnight
The film will be available on 4K Ultra HD in a combo pack which includes 4K Ultra HD Blu-rayTM, Blu-rayTM and Digital. The 4K Ultra HD disc will include the same bonus features as the Blu-rayTM version, all in stunning 4K resolution.
4K Ultra HD is the ultimate movie watching experience. 4K Ultra HD features the combination of 4K resolution for four times sharper picture than HD, the color brilliance of High Dynamic Range (HDR) with immersive audio delivering a multidimensional sound experience.
Blu-rayTM unleashes the power of your HDTV and is the best way to watch movies at home, featuring 6X the picture resolution of DVD, exclusive extras and theater-quality surround sound.
Digital lets fans watch movies anywhere on their favorite devices. Users can instantly stream or download.
There once was a novel called Flughunde: written by Marcel Beyer in German, published in Germany in 1995. John Brownjohn — I feel so sorry for someone saddled with that name all his life — translated it into English, and The Karnau Tapes was published in the UK in 1997.
Almost twenty years later, German cartoonist Ulli Lust adapted Flughunde into comics form — it was published in 2013 as by Beyer and Lust. And, finally, in 2017, the comics version of Flughunde was reunited with the Brownjohn English translation — somewhat adapted by Nika Knight to work as comics — and published under a third title, Voices in the Dark
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(By the way, Flughunde means “Flying Foxes,” for an important thematic element of the story — it’s a literary-novel title, and this is a literary “graphic novel.” I have no idea why none of the English translations were willing to translate the title.)
That’s what this is, but what’s it about?
Hermann Karnau is a German sound engineer in WWII. Helga is the eldest of the six children of Joseph Goebbels. He is fictional; she is not — and, if you might possibly read this book, do not google her first. Trust me.
If you go into Voices in the Dark thinking it’s Hermann’s story — and it does appear to be his story; he gets most of the page-time, and the narrative goes deeply into his thinking for long periods — you’ll expect something like The Conversation mixed with Hannah Arendt’s famous comment about the banality of evil. Hermann is neurotic and obsessive, and it’s not clear for a while quite how twisted those obsessions have made him, until that Nazi machine gives him unexpected opportunities. He records speeches in public, Goebbels in private, sounds of battle on the Eastern front, and then is part of less definable, less sane experiments before being called back to record the last days of the man the narrative only calls “him.”
But this is not Hermann’s story. It is Helga’s, even though she is young and her life constrained. Even though she gets less time on the page, and we don’t know as much of her thoughts. Even though we don’t meet here until we’ve seen a lot of Hermann. She’s more important — Hermann is essentially an observer.
I won’t talk about the events of Voices in the Dark. It takes place in Germany, during WWII, mostly towards the end, with short scenes set before and after. You can guess at what that could include: you may be right.
Lust tells this story in mostly small, cramped panels — the white gutters between panels disappear entirely for some scenes, making them that much more intrusive and claustrophobic. Her colors are earth-tones, mostly monochromatic on a single spread — there are reddish scenes and brown scenes and grey scenes, some oranges and dull greens. And the panels themselves are close-ups more often than expected — again, tightly focused on this story, as obsessive a viewer as Hermann is a listener, close and constrained and inescapable. It’s very appropriate, and I only noticed it in retrospect.
This is not a happy book, or an uplifting one; stories about Nazi Germany rarely are. It is based on a literary novel, and it’s pretty literary itself — concerned with people’s deep emotions, and with investigating the extreme things they do, without standing up and making explanations or excuses for them. It’s a strong book: I expect it was a strong novel, and Lust has adapted it into a powerful comic.
Tatiana Maslany, Diego Luna and Emile Hirsch have joined the third and final season of Netflix’s critically acclaimed, Emmy-winning original series DreamWorks Trollhunters, from Oscar-winner Guillermo del Toro. They join an already star-studded cast from seasons one and two that includes Kelsey Grammer in his Emmy-winning role as Blinky, Mark Hamill (Dictatious), Lena Headey (Morgana), David Bradley (Merlin), Ron Perlman (Bular), Steven Yeun (Steve), Anjelica Huston (Queen Ursurna), Jonathan Hyde (Strickler), Amy Landecker (Barbara), Charlie Saxton (Toby), Lexi Medrano (Claire) and Fred Tatasciore (AAARRRGGHH!!!).
Aja and Krel, voiced by Maslany and Luna, are two mysterious new students who unknowingly come to the aid of the Trollhuntersteam in the fight against Morgana. The duo will also reprise their roles and serve as the leads of the next installment in the Tales of Arcadia trilogy, DreamWorks 3 Below, set to debut on Netflix later this year.
Hirsch steps into the role of Jim Lake, Jr., originally voiced by the late Anton Yelchin. Yelchin completed his work on seasons one and two and a considerable portion of season three before his untimely passing. Del Toro and his creative team found a unique way to incorporate a voice transition organic to the story and create a path for a dear friend of Yelchin’s to carry on his legacy and role. Yelchin’s performance has been left intact where possible and some portions have been merged with Hirsch’s performance to complete season three.
DreamWorks Trollhunters features a tale of two fantastical worlds that collide in an epic saga. Set in the fictional suburb of Arcadia, our unlikely hero, Jim, and his two best friends make a startling discovery that beneath their hometown lies a hidden battle between good trolls and bad, the outcome of which impacts their lives forever.
In DreamWorks Trollhunters Part 3 the fate of troll and human civilizations hang in the balance. The Trollhunters are racing to stop Gunmar and the now resurrected Morgana from bringing about the Eternal Night and shrouding the world in darkness forever. To defeat them, the team must seek the help of the legendary wizard Merlin to unlock his ancient magic and unleash a powerful weapon that will alter the course of their lives forever.
Premiering in 2016 to critical acclaim, Trollhunters introduced audiences to the seemingly quiet town of Arcadia and an ordinary kid who embarks on an extraordinary adventure in a hidden world right beneath his feet. The first season lead the 2017 Creative Arts Daytime Emmys with six wins, more than any other program, including writing for an animated program (Marc Guggenheim), directing (Rodrigo Blaas, del Toro), casting (Ania O’Hare, Mary Hildalgo) and a voice acting win for Grammer.The second season received four nominations for the 2018 Creative Arts Daytime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Children’s Animated Series.
DreamWorks Trollhunters is created and executive produced by del Toro with Marc Guggenheim (Arrow, Legends of Tomorrow), Rodrigo Blaas (Alma), Chad Hammes (Dragons: Race to the Edge) and Christina Steinberg (Rise of the Guardians) serving as executive producers. Dan Hageman (The Lego Movie, Ninjago) and Kevin Hageman (The Lego Movie, Ninjago) serve as co-executive producers.
About The Tales of Arcadia trilogy:
On the surface, Arcadia appears to be a slice of timeless Americana, but it is no ordinary town. It lies at the center of magical and mystical lines that will make it a nexus for many battles among otherworldly creatures including trolls, aliens and wizards. DreamWorks Trollhunters, the first installment in the Tales of Arcadia trilogy, will be followed by two additional series 3 Below in 2018 and a final chapter Wizards set to debut in 2019.
Following Trollhunters,DreamWorks 3 Below will focus on two royal teenage aliens and their bodyguard who flee a surprise takeover of their home planet by an evil dictator and crash land in Arcadia. Now on the run from intergalactic bounty hunters, they struggle to blend in and adapt to the bizarre world of high school all the while attempting to repair their ship so they can return and defend their home planet.
DreamWorks Wizards brings together the three disparate worlds of trolls, aliens and wizards who have found themselves drawn to Arcadia. The final chapter of the Tales of Arcadia culminates in an apocalyptic battle for the control of magic that will ultimately determine the fate of these supernatural worlds that have now converged.
