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Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas by Paco Roca
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Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas by Paco Roca

So the book today is all kinds of things – source of an animated romantic comedy , compared to Seinfeld, a new 2023 collection of the work of the cartoonist behind Wrinkles  and The House . What it isn’t, though, is a single thing.

Memoirs of a Man in Pajamas  doesn’t explain itself. But it collects Paco Roca comics in three sections and has three copyright dates – 2011, 2014, 2017 – which three sections are somewhat different in style and format and concerns. And it says, here and there, that these comics originally appeared in Spanish publications, I think always weekly, at those times.

I’ll note, here, that all of the reviews I’ve seen of it focus most tightly on that first section, making me wonder if Publishers Weekly and all the rest only flipped through the back half of the book.

The strips here feature a cartoonist, happy with his life as he hits forty and most enthusiastic about the fact that he works from his home in his pajamas. He is mostly Paco Roca himself, but there are a few strips here that make it clear that Roca intends the pajama-clad cartoonist as a fictional character: this is not a diary comic, it’s not trying to be true, and he implies that he’s taken stories from friends (other cartoonists, perhaps?) and adapted them for Pajama Man.

That’s most important in the first section, too, which is entirely single-pager slice-of-life stories about the cartoonist and his life. The second and third sections see Roca shift to two-pagers (with a few longer pieces here and there, particularly to open each section) – the second is mostly slightly deeper concerns about the cartoonist’s life, shading into larger issues, and the third section shifting in the other direction, mostly Pajama Man thinking about larger societal issues with a few this-amusing-thing-in-life pieces mixed in.

What’s notable is that none of this is personal. We see Pajama Man’s girlfriend consistently, but never learn her name or job or backstory. A small child appears midway through, also without a name. We see Pajama Man traveling to give talks about comics, but – except for a couple of sly references to Wrinkles – no one talks to him about specific books, nor do we see him working on comics. He’s just at a screen that we can’t see, working long hours like any other knowledge worker – again, this isn’t a diary comic, Roca doesn’t talk about tools or art supplies or styles or anything about the creative work.

The Seinfeld comparison is apt in an unexpected way: this is a packaged, fictionalized version of a life – turned into comedy for a particular purpose. It looks real, because that’s the way to make it work best. And that – Roca has Pajama Man complain a few times here – of course makes his readers think it is real, which is good (for the work) and bad (for Pajama Man, and presumably Roca speaking through him).

Man in Pajamas is denser and longer than you might think – the strips are wordy and discursive, and the book is over two hundred pages long. It’s all amusing, and much of the back half is deeper and more thoughtful than that, as Pajama Man grapples with capitalism and Spanish history and the modern world in general. Roca’s line is detailed and illustrative, but still fairly close to ligne clair – there are a lot of small panels here, and the type can get a bit small (I read it digitally), but Roca is a fine storyteller, even when the story he’s telling is “one guy sitting around, trying not to do anything.”

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee by Régis Loisel
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Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee by Régis Loisel

Formats come with expectations and assumptions – not always warranted, but they’re along for the ride already.

For example: Mickey Mouse: Zombie Coffee , a bande desinée by Régis Loisel, originally published by Éditions Glénat in France in 2016 in (waves hands) some format, possibly within Le Journal du Mickey , is laid out like a newspaper comic. Four panels across, most of the time, about four times wider than tall, two strips to a page, 137 strips total.

As an American comics reader, on first glance I assumed this was a little less than half a year of dailies in some newspaper, and my thought was “who knew there was a regular Mickey Mouse strip in French newspapers?”

But I think that’s wrong. I think these appeared in that magazine, weekly – maybe one at a time, maybe two or three on a page each issue – and that the strip format is either an artistic choice or a very specific slot in that magazine that might look like an American daily, but is a different thing.

So I’m left wondering about the rhythm of this story: was it just one strip a week? That’s pretty slow for an adventure strip – though a lot of webcomics are on a similar pace, these days. It might explain why a lot of these are pretty wordy – you need to remind the reader of what’s going on. Or, to be positive, perhaps this ran in a really large space, and these strips are shrunken a bit for this book publication.

In any case: it’s a Mickey Mouse story, of the old school. The time is during the Great Depression, the place is Mouseton (presumably USA, but unspecified), and our hero and his friends are the downtrodden, pushed-around little guys of the early days rather than the fancy suburbanite or corporate icon of more recent years.

Mickey and Horace Horsecollar are looking for work, with no luck. Mr. Ruff, “the foreman” (seemingly the only way to get hired in Mouseton) keeps finding excuses not to hire them. So the two decide to run off with their girlfriends (Minnie and Clarabelle Cow) to go camping and fishing for a while, bunking with Donald Duck on a lake somewhere, because “camping is free.”

That takes up about the first quarter of the story – they return to Mouseton to find things have changed. A rich developer, Rock Fueler, is turning their neighborhood into a golf course. The potential good news is that means jobs, plus money for the houses he’s buying. But of course the capitalist is the villain, so his plans are much more nefarious than simply building something.

Fueler has employed two chemists to create massively addictive “Zomba” coffee, which he then distributed free to all of the citizens of Mouseton. The men, zombified by coffee, work almost for free, and the women and children get packed off to a new housing project on the outskirts of town. And the chemists are working on further foodstuffs, to squeeze the last few cents out of the Mousetonians.

Even Goofy, left behind, is now a coffee zombie, though Horace and Mickey do save and reform him.

And then our heroes fight back, against the nearly overwhelming forces arrayed against them. Pegleg Pete is one of Fueler’s top henchmen, as of course he must be, so he does a lot of the immediate attacking, sneaking, and other evil deeds. There are chases and fights and confrontations, and various bits of comedy along the way – for example, the chemist’s food is so seductive that noseplugs are required to resist its tantalizing aroma, so the big end scene is played out almost entirely with people speaking with those stuffed-nose voices.

I read this digitally, and I think that means I saw it somewhat smaller than the printed book – I hope so, since it’s full of detail and life and energy, and a larger format would make it a lot better. I haven’t seen Loisel’s work before, but he’s clearly great at this style, and has had a long and respected career making things that mostly haven’t been translated into English.

It’s a classic Mickey story told well for a modern audience – my understanding is that the French audience is mostly middle-graders, but there’s no reason it needs to be limited to that age.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: The Interconnectedness of All Kings by Ryall, Akins, Kyriazis, & Livesay
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Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: The Interconnectedness of All Kings by Ryall, Akins, Kyriazis, & Livesay

I suppose the Hitchhikers‘ ground has been thoroughly salted at this point – I’ve seen the movie; you don’t need to tell me – which is why we’ve gotten two Dirk Gently TV series and these comics over the past decade. But even leaving aside how much Douglas Adams was a writer of voice to begin with, the Dirk books were fun because of the way they were told rather than the vague shaggy-dog stories they told. So doing the same sort of thing in a different medium feels like the wrong next step: the Adams estate would have been better off commissioning someone to write more Dirk novels, I think: assuming anyone could convincingly do that, which is the rub.

Anyway, there is a comics series continuing the Dirk Gently books. This first miniseries, from 2016 – probably not coincidentally the same year as the second, more successful TV show – promises there will be more, but a quick Google here in 2023 did not actually discover more. So I think this slots in just like the original novels: fun, faintly disappointing, not quite going anywhere despite apparent velocity and direction.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: The Interconnectedness of All Kings  was written by Chris Ryall, long-time comics scripter and (probably much more importantly) then the head of IDW, publisher of this series. Art is by Tony Akins (pencils on the first two of five issues), Ilias Kyriazis (rest of the pencils), and John Livesay (inks). Colors are by Leonard O’Grady. There is also an introduction by Arvind Ethan David, who produced the second TV series and says here he will be writing the second – so far nonexistent – comics series.

As the book opens, Dirk is moving – carrying basically nothing – from his native UK to San Diego, for no obvious reason. (This isn’t a problem: “for no obvious reason” is the way Dirk does everything.) Your Cynical Reviewer assumed San Diego was chosen because Ryall and IDW are headquartered there, but I’m willing to entertain alternate explanations. None are provided, let me be clear. But I’d entertain them if they were.

He soon gets caught up in multiple quirky plots: he grabs a random suitcase, which belongs to a yuppie couple who are engaging in serial-killer touristry: I mean, both being serial killers and doing it in ways that are inspired by classics of the field. There’s also a couple of ancient Egyptian men, King Ahktenhamen-adjacent, who are now in the modern world after half-explained magical shenanigans and have the traditional life-stealing curse. Someone is also giving nifty gold cellphones to the homeless of San Diego, but this is much less important to begin with. And Dirk is also casting about for a new base of operations, which of course he does by walking into a random business and claiming it.

There’s a lot of complication and goofiness, and the tone strikes me as authentic to the Dirk novels – but I have to admit it’s been decades since I read them, so my memory could be off. It’s less jokey than Hitchhiker, as I recall – light adventure rather than near-parody.

The whole thing was pleasant but didn’t feel Adams-esque, if you know what I mean. Douglas Adams had a tone and a way of constructing sentences, so I’m not sure (as I said up top) that any other medium  or writer could replicate that to begin with. And Dirk is a quirkier, more fragile thing than Hitchhiker to begin with. So this is a nice light adventure comic about a guy called “Dirk Gently” that was pleasant to read but left me a bit flat. Given no sequel has appeared in nearly a decade, I have to assume that reaction was common.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Macanudo: Optimism Is for the Brave by Liniers

Macanudo: Optimism Is for the Brave by Liniers

Some comic strips have ongoing stories – adventure strips are rarer these days, but long continuities still exist, here and there. Some have recurring gags, done slightly differently each time – Lucy and the football, the possibly imaginary Ernesto Lacuna, a sergeant viciously beating a private.

Those are things to grab onto, when you are, as I am now, trying to write about a new book collecting that comic strip.

Liniers’ Macanudo is a wispier, quirkier, more variable thing – it does have recurring characters (five or six sets of them, in fact), but their interactions are oddly both more and less templated. The elves always talk about the same kinds of things, ditto the penguins. Olga and Martin have imaginative adventures, usually outside. Henrietta reads books, and does other little-girl things. But what they each do is more intellectual, more about the life of the mind, and less “little Billy draws a dotted line through the neighborhood again” – it’s more patter, and less business, to put it in comedy terms.

It’s not really patter, either – I think Liniers means it. His characters are serious about their thoughts in a way that’s mostly alien to the least-common-denominator dullards of North American zombie strips, who enact the same few actions over and over again because those actions once won their original creators hundreds of syndicated papers and minor fortune.

That’s what’s interesting about Macanudo, and distinct and exciting. But it does make it difficult to find things to say about a collection of two hundred or so strips. Especially when you (well, me, in this case) said it all once already.

Macanudo: Optimism Is for the Brave  is the second collection of the strip in English [1]; the first was Welcome to Elsewhere , last year. I had a long post then, talking about the style and feeling of the strip, and cataloging all of the recurring situations I saw in that first book. There are more, I understand – the Wikipedia entry lists two dozen, so some of them may appear much less often, or were only in the earlier Spanish-language days, or have been left out of these books for other reasons.

So what I said then is still true: it’s still the same kind of strip, as you’d expect for something that has been running (counting the Spanish-language-only years, which of course you have to) since 2002.

The title of this one is appropriate: it is a strip with an optimistic tone, most of the time, a strip about the casual bravery of everyday life – the bravery of being positive and open and welcoming to the world instead of closed and hateful and destructive. All of those situations – even the witches, who tend to be more put-upon by people unhappy with their lifestyle – are in a positive, optimistic mode, about being happy and learning new things and exploring both physically and intellectually.

It’s not exactly a gag-a-day strip – each strip is a thought or a moment, and they do tend to be separate moments. But they’re not “gags,” most of the time. They are amusing, or thoughtful, rather than the “hey laugh at this!” post-vaudeville rhythms more common in the standard comic strip. That makes Macanudo a quieter, different  thing, and I wonder how well it fits on the page with the usual comics rabble.

(I only read it in book form, myself – it’s not in my local paper. I have no idea how many English-language papers it is in. Given the contractions of the industry, I’d bet fewer than it even was in a year ago.)

You probably know already if Macanudo sounds appealing to you. If it does, you will enjoy it. If it sounds fussy or overly precious to your ear…you might still like it; it’s simpler and more grounded than I might be making it sound. But it is different, it is a strip about thinking rather than bonking people on the head. I like that; I hope you will, too.

[1] There’s an asterisk if you both read Spanish and have access to the book markets of Argentina, where a dozen previous collections were published.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast

I Must Be Dreaming by Roz Chast

Don’t tell anyone, but I think this is a stealth reprint collection. If it were in prose, I might even go so far as to call it a fix-up.

Roz Chast is one of the giants of contemporary cartooning, a New Yorker mainstay since the late ’70s and the author of the major memoir Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant?  about a decade ago, plus a number of other books, both reprints and original. All of her work is fun and quirky and specific, coming out of a relatable New York sensibility – so I’m purely talking categorization here, not making a value judgement.

I Must Be Dreaming  was her new book for 2023, billed as a “new graphic narrative, exploring the surreal nighttime world insider her mind.” Which is true, as far as it goes: the narrative is clearly new. But I think a lot of the pages here, probably a majority of them, already existed. I think this is a themed reprint collection lightly cosplaying as an original graphic novel.

The alternative, though, is that all of the things that look like individual cartoons here – mostly retelling specific dreams – were all new work, that Chast dug through her dream notebook and did all of this work in one rush as a book. That’s possible, but it feels like a compendium of several decades of dreams – that she pulled published cartoons and sketches and ideas from the body of her work, maybe with a tropism for things that hadn’t been in a book yet, to cover this material.

Because creators don’t just suddenly have a completely different idea that they’ve been working on for years, and Chast has been thinking and cartooning about her dreams for a long time now.

Either way, Dreaming starts out with what is clearly new material, in Chast’s GN-esque style – hand-drawn type in paragraphs around individual illustrations – as she explains what she finds interesting about dreams, and how she’s captured hers – then dives into compendia of different types of dreams, mostly drawn as single-page cartoons – and then has a somewhat historical/overview section, again in that more discursive GN style, to close.

Everyone’s dreams are weird and random, I think – some in an interesting way, and some in a tedious way. Chast is clear that she’s curating dreams here: illustrating the most distinctive or visual or bizarre ones, and avoiding the dull ones. (Anyone else had the “trying to walk somewhere in the rain, and your legs don’t work right?” Unpleasant to experience, boring to explain.)

It’s a Roz Chast book, so it’s full of her sensibility and viewpoint – though maybe more so, because of dream logic. I liked it a lot, again because it’s Roz Chast. In sum, unless you are one of those weirdoes who can’t stand Chast, this book will make you laugh and enjoy life just a bit more during the time you read it.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television by Koren Shadmi

When I was a lad, the standard bio-for-young-people format was a small hardcover, heavily illustrated but written in prose, in short, punchy chapters and topping out at maybe a hundred and fifty pages. There were a lot of them: I recall shelves in classrooms and school libraries full of the things, some of them in specific series from particular publishers.

At some point since that dim misty past, the format seems to have shifted – or maybe a new format has been added, but I think the old style is at least declining if not dead – into a graphic novel that covers roughly the same territory but in a more visually exciting (and reluctant-reader-appealing) way.

Now, let’s be clear: the new style is not just for middle-schoolers who need to do a report on Random Famous Dead Person a couple of times a semester. But that is a large and powerful audience, with vast collective library and school budgets seeking books to buy all the time, so it’s not surprising that things tend to be published that will fit that model, even if they were conceived for different purposes and audiences.

The Twilight Man: Rod Serling and the Birth of Television , a 2019 book by Israeli-American cartoonist Koren Shadmi, fits pretty comfortably into that category: it covers Sterling’s whole life, with a Twilight Zone-ish frame story where most readers will guess the payoff very early (which is very Twilight Zone, and so deeply appropriate), tending to play up the drama and struggle to give a clear arc of a life.

It’s crisp and clear and sweeping, covering Serling’s fifty years with a central focus on what every reader really wants to know: how he got to create Twilight Zone, what those years were like, and how it affected him afterward. To be reductive: he was an award-winning writing superstar for the then-popular TV anthology-show format; super-busy and stressful, with increasing network trouble over the five-year run; he didn’t live long enough to get a real third act, and his second act was all reaction and scrambling for any, usually tawdry, work as the anthology-show format entirely disappeared.

Shadmi has been doing this sort of historical non-fiction book fairly regularly the past few years – I’d previously read his Lugosi: The Rise and Fall of Hollywood’s Dracula , which came out two years after Twilight Man. He’s good at it: it takes a lot of research and synthesizing to present wads of historical context and full conversations (or large chunks of TV-show dialogue) in an engaging way, and Shadmi does that consistently here.

He tells this story in Serling’s voice, which is appropriate for the man who so intensely narrated his most famous production but presents certain potential pitfalls. As far as I could see, Shadmi avoids them all: Serling comes across as understandable but clearly a man of his time, with the right cadence and style in his speech. Shadmi also keeps his trademark cigarette in hand consistently – I wonder if that was less of an issue in this book because it came out from Humanoids, a dedicated GN publisher, rather than the young-readers division of a major house? I would not be surprised if some school districts avoided buying it because it has a cigarette on the cover.

Twilight Man aims to tell the story of this one guy, and somewhat show what writing for TV was like in his heyday of the ’50s and ’60s – it does the former well, and gives at least a Serling flavor of the latter. The second half of the subtitle is more expansive than the book itself; it really is just about Serling. I see Shadmi has a couple of other similar books I haven’t found yet; I’ll be looking out for them.

Reposted from The Antick Musings of G.B.H. Hornswoggler, Gent.

Spider-Gwen Relocates to Earth-616 Permanently

Spider-Gwen Relocates to Earth-616 Permanently

New York, NY— With various acclaimed solo series and appearances on both the big and small screen, Gwen Stacy of Earth-65, aka Ghost-Spider, has proven to be one of Marvel’s biggest breakout heroes of the decade! Hailing from an alternate Earth where the fateful radioactive Spider bit Gwen instead of Peter Parker, GHOST-SPIDER weaved her way into the main Marvel Universe, calling both dimensions home… until now! Launching in April, a new run of SPIDER-GWEN: THE GHOST-SPIDER will make Gwen a permanent resident of the iconic 616!

Ghost-Spider’s new era will be delivered by two rising Marvel Comics stars—writer Stephanie Phillips (Capwolf & the Howling Commandos) and artist Chris Campana (Red Goblin). Kicking off with Gwen trapped in the 616 by mysterious otherworldly forces, the young hero’s fresh status quo will open the door to exciting new storytelling opportunities as she struggles to adjust in a world that’s not her own, and is forced to confront the tragic legacy of 616’s own Gwen. Hitting the ground running as New York’s next great super hero, she’ll gain both new enemies and new friends, but the secret behind her current circumstance looms large, threatening to shatter her trust with her fellow Spider-Heroes…

Welcome to New York! Gwen truly becomes a Ghost-Spider when she moves full time to the universe where Gwen Stacy died years ago. But why did she leave Earth-65? Why aren’t the other spiders supposed to know she’s here? Why isn’t she supposed to suit up? And who will get hurt when she does?

“Right after I started working on this new Spider-Gwen ongoing, I saw a little girl on Halloween dressed as Gwen and hitting some cool spidey poses,” Phillips shared. “It was kind of a surreal moment to realize that I get to be a part of Gwen’s next big chapter, bringing her into the 616 and giving readers stories that make us rethink who Gwen is and what her role is within this new universe. I’m also working on this story with the incredible Chris Campana, a great collaborator and friend, and I truly believe this is one of the most special books I’ve been a part of.”

“Stephanie’s writing allows for a ton of artistic freedom, while providing a great framework to work inside of,” Campana added. “I was onboard the moment I heard she was attached.”

“Drawing Gwen is surreal,” he continued. “She is such a pivotal part of Spider history. This suit and her character allow for a fun and powerful artistic approach. Gwen feels strong and in control on the page. I’m having a lot of fun.”

Andrea Romano inducted into Children’s & Family Emmys’ inaugural Silver Circle

Andrea Romano inducted into Children’s & Family Emmys’ inaugural Silver Circle

LOS ANGELES, CA – Eight-time Emmy Award winner Andrea Romano further cemented her reputation as the greatest voiceover director in animation history on Sunday night when she was inducted into the prestigious Children’s & Family Emmys’ inaugural Silver Circle during a ceremony at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel.

The Silver Circle recognizes those professionals who have performed distinguished service within the television industry for 25 years or more. But the recognition goes well beyond their longevity – they are honored for making an enduring contribution to the vitality of the television industry and for setting standards of achievement the rest of the industry hopes to emulate. These honorees also give back to the community as mentors, educators and volunteers.

“This industry has given me so much, from wonderful relationships with actors and marvelously creative individuals throughout the animation world to a lifetime of incredible memories and fulfilling work,” Romano said. “I’m so flattered that, five years after I’ve retired, people are still acknowledging my contributions, and I’m truly honored to be inducted beside such an illustrious group – including the people who produced Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood – into the inaugural class of the Silver Circle.”

Romano’s prolific career canon includes the voice direction (and often casting) for more than 40 television series, over 50 films and TV movies, 20+ videogames, and a handful of shorts. Romano’s series work alone has accounted for the dialogue direction of more than 1,600 episodes of television. Romano, who has personally directed more than 10,000 voice sessions, was afflicted with optic neuropathy in one of her eyes, causing blindness in that eye. She subsequently retired in 2017. 

Romano made her mark in every genre of animation – from orchestrating the casting and voicing of 23 different DC Universe Original Movies and the bulk of Warner Bros. Animation’s legendary animated TV series like Animaniacs and Batman: The Animated Series to more recent hits like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Voltron: Legendary Defender to guiding the voices of longtime sensations SpongeBob SquarePants and Avatar: The Last Airbender, to working across the globe directing the international casts of animated feature films and TV series. 

She has been nominated for Emmy Awards a total of 35 times. In 2016, the International Family Film Festival honored Romano with the prestigious Friz Award for Excellence (named for animation legend Friz Freleng). In 2018, ASIFA Hollywood presented Romano with the Winsor McCay Award, one of the highest honors given to an individual in the animation industry in recognition for career contributions to the art of animation.

Peter David is Back for Symbiote Spider-Man 2099

Peter David is Back for Symbiote Spider-Man 2099

New York, NY— December 21, 2023 — Fresh off his breakout role in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Miguel O’Hara will star in all-new comic book adventures next year, including a series by his legendary co-creator, writer Peter David. Launching in March, SYMBIOTE SPIDER-MAN 2099 is the long-awaited next epic chapter in David’s hit Symbiote Spider-Man saga, which helped usher in Marvel Comics’ wave of retro series revisiting milestone runs and series. Joining him on his triumphant return will be artist Rogê Antônio, known for his recent gut-wrenching work on Carnage. The five-issue series will take fans back to the iconic world of Marvel 2099 where Miguel O’Hara becomes the host of a terrifying new symbiote.

Set your time circuits ahead to the techno-dystopian future of 2099! Miguel O’Hara, A.K.A. Spider-Man 2099, is facing a hostile takeover – of his own body! Kron Stone, the Venom of 2099, wages an all-out assault on Alchemax, and the only hope of stopping him lies with the power awakened by a top-secret project gone terribly wrong. What must Miguel sacrifice to seal the bond with his new symbiote – his body? His mind? His very soul?! Check out Leinil Francis Yu’s debut issue cover along with variant covers by Ken Lashley and Greg Land, and join Miguel O’Hara on his next bold adventure in 2099 when SYMBIOTE SPIDER-MAN 2099 #1 hits stands in March.

SYMBIOTE SPIDER-MAN 2099 #1 (OF 5)

Written by PETER DAVID

Art by ROGÊ ANTÔNIO

Cover by LEINIL FRANCIS YU

Variant Cover by KEN LASHLEY

Variant Cover by GREG LAND

Virgin Variant Cover by GREG LAND

On Sale 3/13

REVIEW: Dumb Money

REVIEW: Dumb Money

“I like the stock.”

If only the world of high finance could accept things as simply as that.

As we learned in 2021, the so-called masters of the universe had written off GameStop, the venerable supply of used video games and assorted tech gear. The only one, it seemed, who still believed in them was Keith Gill, who live-blogged as Roaring Kitty. With incredible transparency, he shared his spreadsheets and showed his faith by buying up shares, which encouraged others to follow suit.

The run-up of the stock, fueled by the disruptor app Robinhood, spooked Wall Street and led to at least one capitol group crumbling with hubris.

Finance can make you want to shut down and read a book, such as The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich, which inspired the film, but like the superb The Big Short, the 2023 film Dumb Money walks you through this Byzantine world. Director Craig Gillespie shows you how Gill (Paul Dano)’s faith and followers managed to propel a nearly 3000% increase in GameStop’s stock values from $17 to $500 per share.

Out now on disc from Sony Home Entertainment, we see Gill’s story, but also his influence on other “regular” folk who would never dream of buying stock, but thanks to the easy no-fee Robinhood app, they can take a gamble on Gill. Here we follow the everyday lives of financially struggling nurse Jenny (America Ferrera), GameStop retail employee Marcos (Anthony Ramos), and lesbian college couple Riri (Myha’la Herrold ) and Harmony (Talia Ryder), among others.

Not everyone is a fan with Gill’s own brother Kevin (Peter Davison), thinking him a loser. Still, Gill soldiers on, largely because of the unswerving love of his wife Caroline (Shailene Woodley), an underappreciated factor.

The film is compared with the superior Big Short, but it works very well on its own merits. Gill is not a financial genius, but watch his testimony to Congress, and you can see that the arcane ways of Wall Street have prevented the average American from understanding what happens to their companies. It’s a strong message that undercuts the smarm and greed of the high-rollers who just don’t get it. It’s quite satisfying to learn that Melvin Capital Management and its founder Gabe Plotkin (Seth Rogen) lost billions as a result.

The film looks just fine in 1080p high definition, although it had been shot with the most contemporary 4K equipment, so having only a Blu-ray available is a disappointment and shows a lack of faith from Sony. The DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround track is up to the task given how much tech is employed, considering this all occurred during the pandemic lockdown.

The Blu-ray disc comes with a Digital HD code and has a handful of special features. These include the Audio Commentary by screenwriters Rebecca Angelo and Lauren Schuker Blum; Fat Cats Vs. The Roaring Kitty (8:00); Diamond Hand Ensemble (6:00), which is about the casting; and Deleted Scenes (3:00).

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