Madame Xanadu

I'm really enjoying this series from DC/Vertigo. I heartily recommend you check it out if you get the chance.

It's really bothered me that there's this wall separating the mainstream DC Universe from the Vertigo characters who originated there. Madame Xanadu has gotten around that by telling a story suited for Vertigo using some mainstream DC characters and concepts, and that's made it great fun. In the first four issues, Morgaine le Fey and the Demon Etrigan have appeared, and the Green Lantern that would eventually make its way to Alan Scott has popped up as well. All that and Death of the Endless is slated to appear in an issue or two as well.

But it's not the shout-outs and in-jokes that make a story; it's the strength of the writer, and Matt Wagner (the author of Grendel and Mage) is doing a wonderful job showing us the evolution of the woman who will one day become Madame Xanadu. He's also turned the Phantom Stranger, in what is likely his first starring role since the '70s, into a compelling character as well.

All in all, it feels very much like The Sandman did ten years ago thanks to the narrative's slightly dreamlike quality. It's not quite as profound or clever, but it's compelling, and the art, by Amy Reeder Hadley, is simply beautiful. It feels like a return to old-school Vertigo and the early days of Swamp Thing and Hellblazer, and that's a very nice feeling indeed.

So again, I really recommend this comic. It's a quality read - don't miss out on it!

Justice League: The New Frontier Special

I am working on that Lucky Star review. I've just been very busy lately and the show isn't as fresh in my mind as it was when I started writing, so it's gonna be a mite tough for me to finish it.

Anyway.

DC and Darwyn Cooke put out a one-shot special anthology comic to tie into the Justice League: The New Frontier animated movie, and I just finished reading it. I was a huge fan of the original graphic novel, so this comic was a real treat. A quick run-down for those who are interested:

The comic opens with one page of Rip "Time Master" Hunter basically telling us not to worry what Earth the story takes place on and just sit back and enjoy the story. Fair enough.

The first story, illustrated by Cooke himself, tells a "secret chapter" from the original New Frontier graphic novel in which President Eisenhower enlists Superman to arrest Batman in the early '50s and the fight that ensues between them. While both played significant roles in the comic, they were never really in the spotlight, and this story gives them just that. Definitely the highlight of the issue.

The second story isn't drawn by Cooke, but the penciler does such a convincing job emulating his style that you couldn't tell. Set after the novel's end, Robin the Boy Wonder and Kid Flash team up to take down a gang of hot-rod hoodlums and stop a terrorist plot. Nothing special, and the '50s-era slang is laid on a bit thick, but still fun.

The third story, illustrated by J. Bone in a very cartoonish style, is a humorous short that sees Wonder Woman taking on the gender barrier with Black Canary reluctantly tagging along. Diana is portrayed as an overbearing radical feminist, almost a caricature of herself. Still, the last panel had me laughing out loud.

Finally, the last few pages of the issue are given over to concept sketches and storyboards from the movie, with commentary by Cooke. Pretty interesting if you're into the process of animation and whatnot but it doesn't really add anything.

If you're really into New Frontier and looking for a brief diversion, it's totally worth a buy.

Anime Reviews: Fushigi Yūgi (SPOILERS)

Okay. Enough with the videos and memes and whatnot. It's time again for a POS -- a Piece Of Sh--

Wait, no.

A Post Of Substance.

...

I think I need a new acronym.

ANYway, I've gotten back into anime lately, so I thought I'd try to put down my thoughts about several series I've been watching lately, if only as a writing exercize. I'll be doing this as a series of reviews (assuming I can keep focused enough to do so), starting with the first new show I viewed this year.



I finished Fushigi Yūgi last month, and I was underwhelmed. It's not easy to write about it since it's no longer fresh in my mind, but I'll try to summarize what I felt was wrong with it.

The thing that really stuck in my craw was the show's constant use of sexual violence as a plot point. The villain turns the heroine's friend against her by convincing the young woman that the heroine abandoned her and allowed her to be raped and he came to her rescue, making him the only person she could trust (in fact he killed her attackers before they could rape her). Later, the same villain has the heroine cornered, threatens her with rape, knocks her out, and tells her that he raped her while she was unconscious (in fact her ill-defined magical powers protected her and zapped him when he tried). After that, not one but two of the villain's henchmen attempt to rape her again! 'Cause only a virgin can use her powers of the ancient bird-god and yadda yadda save the world or something. Why the hell do the gods care about the state of a woman's hymen?

In the end, the only person who actually was raped was the villain himself, when he was a boy, which is apparently why he turned into such an evil bastard. Or something.

All this in a series created by a woman and aimed at teenage girls. Phew.

Another thing that really bothered me was the lack of character development for several of the lead characters. Right up at the end of the series, two of the heroine's companions give their lives to help her, but we in the audience have no reason to care because they'd only been there as background characters and had what felt like less than ten lines between their introductions and their deaths. In fact, all the villain's henchmen end up more developed characters than the heroes! It's shameful.

And the ending... well, without spoiling anything, while reasonably action-packed, it relied too heavily on hastily contrived deus ex machinas.

Finally, the heroine, Miaka, ended up grating on my nerves a great deal. Anime fans will recognize a certain kind of female protagonist: Ditzy, clumsy, gluttonous, and boy-crazy, yet imbued with a bizarre martyr complex and an inexplicable charisma that makes every young man she meets fall head over heels in love with her. She's simultaneously a Mary Sue and a reflection of all the negative character traits young girls hate about themselves (at least as the writers perceive it). It's wholly appropriate that Miaka is voiced by the same actress as Sailor Moon, if you know what I mean.

I don't mean to say that the whole series is garbage because it's not. The first half is well-done, and I liked and cared about most of the main characters a great deal. When two of them died (not the two mentioned above), I was genuinely moved by their sacrifice.

Also, despite being a vile wannabe-rapist, the fact that the villain was basically the Goblin King from Labyrinth scored some points in my book. (This plus the fact that the show's plot is lifted wholesale from The Neverending Story makes me think the creator watched a few too many fantasy flicks in the '80s.)

But none of that saves Fushigi Yūgi from winding up as a wholly mediocre viewing experience. I've read some of the other works by creator Yū Watase, and I can say that in my opinion her best work is done when she ditches the pretentions at writing a great epic and just sticks to what she knows: Wish-fulfillment fantasies about dorky girls surrounded by hot guys who inexplicably love them, nothing more, nothing less.

Next up: Lucky☆Star.

Thoughts on El Goonish Shive

Be aware that THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS. You have been warned.

The week before last I spent about four days plowing through the archives of El Goonish Shive, a webcomic by one Dan Shive. I'd heard it mentioned in passing across the geeknet and seen it linked to from numerous other webcomics I enjoy but never felt inclined to look into it. It wasn't until I read John Solomon's negative review (which I admit is a redundant description and again, that review also contains spoilers), which basically boils down to "This comic is shit but not utter shit," that I decided to give it a try out of morbid curiosity to see just how bad it was.

And I ended up liking it.

You read that right: John Solomon made someone a fan of a webcomic. The end times are here.

"One big awkward moment." Shive himself describes EGS as such, and it fits. I'll be perfectly honest here: Some weird shit goes down in this comic. Men turn into women, women turn into squirrel-women, people shrink... there's clones and goo monsters in there... it's just blatantly obvious that the comic came into existence mainly as a means for Dan Shive to express his weird sexual kinks, albeit in a highly self-censored PG-13 manner. On the one hand, I've got to respect the guy for being true to himself and not caring what others think of him.

On the other hand, ewwwwwww.

A word on the title, "El Goonish Shive:" It means nothing. As Shive notes in his FAQ, he just couldn't think of a better title and took his high school nickname ("the Goon"), stuck it in front of his surname, threw in a little Spanish, and called it a day. Probably not the most auspicious start for a webcomic, but at least it's distinctive.

I should elucidate on the plot. From its beginning the comic revolved around two ordinary high school juniors, Elliot and Tedd, getting into bizarre sci-fi/fantasy situations. We quickly find out that they're not very ordinary at all, though, as Elliot is a practitioner of mystical anime martial arts and Tedd is a mad scientist who enjoys turning himself into a girl for jollies. And I never thought I'd ever type that sentence. They're joined in short order by Grace, a mysterious girl with bizarre powers and no past; Nanase and Justin, Elliot's fellow martial artists; Ellen, Elliot's opposite-sex clone (!); Susan (real name: Tiffany), a dour man-hating feminist (blah); and Sarah, a genuinely ordinary high school junior who just happens to hang out with them. If all of that sounds downright bizarre and/or offensive... well, it is. Bizarre, anyway. The offensiveness depends on your tolerance for weird shit.

I will never understand "furries" (ie, those fixated, sexually or otherwise, on anthropomorphized animals). If it ain't human I just don't find it attractive. I make an exception for elves (just humans with funny ears, really) and I don't have a problem with characters like Tigra for instance because she's still human but with a few extra parts glued on (it's not like she has a goddamn muzzle), but straight-up furries, animals walking like humans, that's just a huge turn-off. And it just so happens that Grace is a human-squirrel hybrid. A weresquirrel, I guess. She spends most of her time as a human, but the fact that her boyfriend (and apparently Shive's vicarious stand-in, at least in the earlier strips) Tedd is incredibly turned on by her... rodentness... weirds me out.


Tedd vs. Susan. These two panels sum up just about all that is wrong about El Goonish Shive.

The whole gender-bending aspect of the comic (of which there is considerably more) doesn't bother me as much, mainly because at least everyone stays human. Oh, and I sat through seven or eight seasons and thirty trade paperbacks of Ranma ½, so I'm pretty thoroughly desensitized to sex-changing hijinks. And honestly, I think it's a very effective tool for either exploring gender issues (see: Woolf's Orlando) or as comedy (see: Tootsie), so I don't complain. The only thing that bothers me is that it's very much a sexual thing for Tedd (and by extension Shive), which again, I don't get. No matter how attractive "she" may be on the outside, I can't get myself worked up over a girl who's mentally a straight male.

From the way I've spoken of the strip so far, you may come to the conclusion that there's nothing good about this comic. And honestly, the first year or so of strips are really not that impressive. The art was pretty bad and first couple story arcs seemed to exist mainly as a vehicle for Dan Shive's various turn-ons, as noted above.

I think the turning point was the "Sister" story arc. Elliot is turned into a girl against his will by Tedd's plot-convenient MacGuffin transformation-inducing ray-gun, which conveniently promptly breaks, making it impossible for him to turn back until it gets repaired. Prompted to seek out another plot-convenient MacGuffin a magical curse-removing diamond, upon touching it he's split into two separate people -- his old male self, and the living manifestation of his "curse," his female self. Tedd explains that the female Elliot, dubbed Ellen, may fade into nonexistence in a month; Ellen, hearing this, is filled with rage at "her" situation and endeavors to spend the remainder of her short existence making life hell for Elliot for thrusting her into this situation. Before long, however, Tedd learns that he was wrong: Ellen will not fade from reality, and is in fact putting herself in danger by acting so self-destructively. He, Elliot, and the rest of their friends finally manage to talk some sense into her just as she's about to charge suicidally into battle against a monster attacking their school; she has a change of heart, manages to defeat the creature without ending her own life, and finally accepts that she's not Elliot (despite having memories of living as him up to that point) and learns to cope with her new life -- as Elliot's newly adopted twin sister.

There's a certain glimmer of maturity that starts to creep into the comic with this storyline. For the first time the issue of changing one's gender is played straight, as Ellen comes to grips with her existence separate from Elliot and starts to build herself a new identity. It's Ellen's journey of self-discovery, culminating in the later "Grace's Party" storyline, that most gripped me, and by the time I read up to the end of the archives Ellen had become my favorite character.

The next storyline, "Painted Black," reveals to us Grace's origins and continues to build on the comic's newfound depth. Where before Grace had been this pretty-looking cipher whose only role was to indulge Tedd's transformation fetishes, "Painted Black" sheds light on the ramifications (and indeed, the horror) of being a half-human/half-animal creature who was never meant to exist, and forces Grace to take her life into her own hands for the first time as she personally faces the arc's ultimate villain in single combat. Grace's three "brothers" -- Guineas, Hedge, and Vlad; three guesses what animals they're based on -- had up to this point been built up as these shadowy monsters with no motives but evil, but over the course of the arc they're revealed as scared, tortured, and above all human individuals who've been thrust into this life against their will. By the end of the storyline, the three are given a chance at redemption, and contrary to standard conventions, they all take it.

It's the following long storyline, "Grace's Party," that cemented me as a fan of El Goonish Shive. Still reeling from her ordeal in the previous story, Grace sets about to celebrate her eighteenth birthday, and decides to throw a sex-change party. And that's yet another sentence I never thought I'd write. It's to please Tedd, of course. So the whole cast gets together and (minus Ellen, who'd already been through enough sex-swapping by this point) switches genders. Yes, it's a pretty ridiculous excuse to engage in some transformation-fetish fanservice, but Shive also uses the opportunity to get into the psychology of gender, with very interesting results.

One thing I liked was that this was the first time that the female characters switched over to males; up to this point it was strictly male-to-female. That's how it always seems to play out in transgender fetishism: The male body is the norm, and the female body is something "other" to be changed into. Male body: Subject. Female body: Object. Shive finally throws that out the window in this storyline and, as noted, actually goes into how switching sex would affect people of either gender.

Either that or he's just an equal-opportunity perv. I can respect that.

This is the first occasion on which side-characters Justin and Susan take center stage. I particularly liked Justin's reaction to the idea of being a girl. Justin is a gay male, you see, and there's this widespread assumption in our culture that gay men want to be women (conflating homosexuality with transexuality, which are not the same), but Justin plainly asserts his masculinity. He's eventually coaxed into it out of curiosity (and other reasons I won't spoil), but I really appreciated that character beat.

Susan, on the other hand, eventually embraces the opportunity to see how the other (male) half lives for a few hours, mainly so she can confirm her preconceived belief that men are crude, violent, and lecherous by dint of their genes (as opposed to upbringing or whathaveyou). I'd strongly disliked the character up to this point, but these four pages here (pay no attention to the duck) represent a pretty impressive piece of character growth that made me like her a great deal: It's at this point that Susan makes the transition from a man-hating strawfeminist to a real feminist.

I've gone on long enough now, and should bring this to a close. I'm definitely going to follow the comic from here on out, but I still have a pretty major problem with EGS: The updating schedule, or lack thereof. I spent half a week reading straight through five years' worth of archives only to come to the most recent page, which hasn't updated since. In fact, it hasn't updated since October 24th. It's like running for four days only to slam into a brick wall at the end. Shive keeps posting amusing little filler strips every three days or so, but it's not quite as satisfying as the real thing. Oh, and his scanner's broken. *sigh* On top of that, the story moves incredibly slowly: I read "Grace's Party" in two days, but it took a year and a half real-time to publish those six-to-eight hours' worth of story. AND YOU THOUGHT BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS WAS BAD WITH DECOMPRESSED STORYTELLING.

I'll wrap it up here. Suffice it to say that I'm going to enjoy reading EGS in the future. And after reading this -- if don't mind a healthy heaping helping of weird shit -- maybe you will too.

Comics Thoughts

I've been to both comics stores in my town and I can't find The All-New Atom #13.

I... I just need a moment.

*sniff*

I... okay. I'm... I'm centered. Moving on.

I did get a copy of Justice League of America #10 against my better judgement. It... wasn't horrible, but dammned if it couldn't have stood a crapload of improvement. It's intensely annoying how the characters seem to stammer whenever they speak. Putting ten ellipses on every page does not make dialog sound natural. The way he has characters say the exact thing at the exact time hundreds of miles apart is really vexing, and with all the color-coded internal monologue boxes flying around I have trouble remembering who's saying what.

The problem is that Brad Meltzer is altogether too lax about continuity and characterization. Since when is Wildfire the Red Tornado's future self, or was he just saying that to disorient Reddy? And what really made me mad was how Mister Terrific said they should just let the Legionaires kill themselves, like it's not a big problem. News flash: Being an atheist or scientist does not mean you have no respect for the sanctity of life! *waps Meltzer with a newspaper* Bad Meltzer! Baaaaad theist! No cookie!

I'm ashamed to have that hideous Michael Turner cover in my collection, too, for all the reasons everyone else across the comics blogosphere have already covered in depth. I don't have as much problem with Ed Benes's art -- I mean, I like my super-heroes, male and female, to have larger-than-life proportions and lots of sex appeal (which is why Power Girl/Citizen Steel as drawn by Dale Eaglesham is now my OTP) -- but they all have the same builds and same faces, and the cheesecakey poses he puts them in annoyed me a great deal after a while. I shouldn't have bought it, but dammit, I hate having a hole in a storyline in my collection like... like...

...like the Atom...

*emo tear*

Why must bad things happen to good geeks? Why, Gail? WHY?!

When the Cicadas Cry

June, 1983. At night in a small town in rural Japan, a teenage boy murders two girls, bludgeoning them repeatedly with a steel baseball bat until they stop living. Realizing what he's done, the boy drops the bat and stares in wild-eyed disbelief at the two corpses before him. Cue title card.

So begins Higurashi no Naku Koro ni: When the Cicadas Cry*. A Japanese animated series that aired in the summer of '06, Higurashi is a 26-episode thrill ride of pulse-pounding suspense, gripping mystery, and gruesome horror. A mild-to-moderate anime buff, I'd heard a fair amount of buzz about this show last year. My interest in anime had waned a bit over the last several months, so to get myself back into the medium, I thought, why not give it a shot?

*Released in English as When They Cry -- Higurashi, "higurashi" being a particular species of cicadas with a distinctive mournful call. And the red "na" is, oddly enough, an official component of the title.

The premise of Higurashi is unusual. The series consists of multiple "chapters" telling the same story over and over again, each time from different perspectives or with significant divergences from previous chapters. Many storylines are mutually exclusive: A character who dies one way in the first chapter may die differently in the next, and not at all in the chapter after that. Practically every character gets to play the hero, villain, or victim over the course of the series.

There are, however, certain elements that run throughout each chapter without changing. At its core, Higurashi is about an average teenager named Keiichi Maebara who moves to the tiny village of Hinamizawa, where he falls in with four girls: Easygoing Rena, tomboyish Mion, would-be tough girl Satoko, and Cute (with a capital "C") Rika. The five spend lazy summer days hanging out and playing games; if it weren't for the gory opening scene described above, I'd have immediately assumed that this was just another fluffy, superficial harem comedy and passed the show over completely.

By the end of the first episode, however, we begin to see that there's much more going on here. Keichii learns that his friends are keeping something from him, a tragedy that struck Hinamizawa five years ago: In retaliation for a proposed dam that would have flooded their homes, a government employee was lynched and dismembered by the villagers; each year for the next four years, one more person has been mysteriously murdered and another disappeared completely, all on the night of the annual Watanagashi festival to the local deity (or demon?), Oyashiro-sama. The prefectural police refuse to look into the murders, chalking it up to "Oyashiro-sama's Curse." What's worse is that some or all of Keichii's friends are connected to the incident, either as blood relatives of the victims or as possible conspirators. And the eve of Watanagashi is fast approaching...

I reacted negatively to some of the show's elements. What really took me out of it first was the sheer level of moe, that hard-to-define anime aesthetic that aims to attract male fans to female characters through the use of stock quirky character traits, over-idealized physical appearance, a glut of cuteness, and worst of all, vulnerability. I managed to get past it once the show got rolling, and it actually worked to the series's advantage juxtaposing the deliberately "cute" imagery with the increasingly dark subject matter, but it was a pretty big turn off for the first fifteen minutes or so.

And then there was the violence. Really, for the most part, Higurashi sticks to the old horror adage that it's better to keep the most horrible parts off-screen and in the viewer's imagination, but when it does show violence, it shows a lot. In fact, there was one point late in the series in which one character repeatedly stabs another that was so gory that for a split second I had to stop myself from chuckling at just how over-the-top it all was. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief any further. So, yeah, this is not a series for the faint of heart (or the faint of stomach).

Yet there is much to recommend the series. Higurashi very skillfully weaves a shroud of suspicion, paranoia, and doubt over all its characters. The most fascinating aspect of the series is that we are never quite sure just who or what is behind the grisly events of the series. Is there really a supernatural entity visiting its vengeance upon transgressors, or is it the mundane but very real evil of human spite that is driving the characters to their dooms? We are provided with leads that suggest one or the other, and by the penultimate episode we think we see the whole picture. Or do we?

The soundtrack, too, was enjoyable. The ending theme wasn't to my taste -- a sappy ballad sung completely in ungrammatical, heavily-accented English -- but the opening theme really stood out to me. A rather intense elegy with slightly disturbing lyrics (for frame of reference, it reminded me a bit of Evanescence), the song was a welcome change from the typical bouncy, saccharine J-pop anime theme songs to which I'd grown accustomed. I didn't pay a great deal of attention to the in-show music, but the sound crew did a commendable job at crafting sound effects that enhance the constant feeling of wrongness that pervades Hinamizawa, particularly the haunting, ubiquitous chirping of cicadas that punctuates every episode.

In closing, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni is an intense experience of gripping psychological drama and bone-chilling horror. If you're a fan of anime and/or horror, you could do worse than to give it a try.

Pirates of the Carribean at World's End

Disjointed thoughts on the pirate movie. I went to see th' film wit' me sisters and one o' their boyfriends (a scurvy lout if e'er there be one), and below be me impressions. Read on, if ye be pirate enough!

I thought it was pretty good. The big naval battle was amazing (tho' lacking in logic -- where does the Black Pearl's crew keep coming from when they're getting killed by the scores, and where was the rest of the pirate fleet?), the cinematography blew my mind, and at no point did the special effects look "fake" and take me out of the movie. Elizabeth's speech was AMAZING. I got all misty.

I really didn't like Sao Feng... he was just this side of Fu Manchu on the "stereotypically scary Asian guy" scale, the scene where he tried to force himself on Elizabeth was pointless, and he was in the movie for no reason other than to make Elizabeth captain upon his passing. He did come off as a human being, tho', which is more than I can say for Manchu. The character wasn't as overtly racist as the Caribs in the last movie. And the rest of the Asian pirates, including Mistress Ching, didn't come off as any different from the rest of the pirates. All in all, tho', a waste of a good actor.

I've heard some people complain about all the people switching sides all the time. All the betrayals didn't bother me. Just about everyone was one degree of Chaotic Neutral or another, so it's to be expected. The only problem was in remembering who was betraying who at any given time.

Norrington's subplot could have used a bit more... more. That would have made the movie all the longer, tho', and with my knee bent uncomfortably to fit in the annoyingly narrow aisles and a large cup of Dr. Pepper in me bladder, I don't think I could have taken it.

I was pleased with the Davy Jones/Calypso subplot. Jones remained appropriately badass throughout the film.

Barbossa was nerfed, tho'.

I was happy with how things turned out with Elizabeth, Will, and Jack. The lovers' ending was suitably sweet and sad for me, and it's good to know Cap'n Jack's still out there chasing his dreams.

The final scene was kinda flat, tho', especially after the rip-roarin' cliffhanger (I jumped outta me sofa when Barbossa reappeared, I tells ye) at the end of the last.

Flawed to be sure, but the Pirates trilogy is now firmly ensconced in my list of favorite fantasy films. All in all, not a waste of six bucks.

Seduction of the Innocent

I mentioned a while ago that, as part of a research project for school, I'd gotten my hands on Fredric R. Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, the book that prompted the creation of the Comics Code Authority and contributed to the fall of the Golden Age. I haven't read the book from cover to cover, but what I did read of it has made me think quite a bit.

It may surprise some to learn that Wertham was a liberal, a progressive. He spoke at length in his book against racist portrayals of blacks and Asians in comics, and decried the overdeveloped physiques of comic book women as harmful to young girls' self-image. He was in the battle lines of the crusade against racial segregation in the 1950s. He truly cared about other people and wanted to make their lives better.

I feel for Wertham. He was doing what he thought was best. He really, truly, genuinely believed that reading comics made children turn delinquent and felt it vitally important to get that information out to parents -- even if he had to stretch the truth, make up connections, and employ sensationalism to do so.

Seduction of the Innocent is a terrible book with shoddy research and outrageous claims. The only reason it had any impact was because it came during the era of Joe McCarthy and his witch hunts, the single most paranoid and unenlightened point in American history, when people were so obsessed with "decency" that they'd stifle civil rights to ensure it. Yet its author, Doctor Wertham, had the best of intentions.

And you know what they say about good intentions.

52 #52

I was moved to tears.

This is the most satisfying damn comic I have read in ages.

I keep hearing people complaining about all the crossovers at DC Comics, how it's just one after the other with no real ending, just one segueing into the next.

Well, this is the end. This resolves three years' worth of DC crossovers. 52, Infinite Crisis, DC Countdown -- all the way back to Identity Crisis. There are still a few plot points that might be picked up later on down the road, but this story, this three-year narrative, is over.

The end.

It was worth it.

From Icewind Dale to Seoul

Just a couple of brief pop culture updates.

The other day, I had the pleasure of reading The Crystal Shard, the fourth in a series of comic book adaptations of R. A. Salvatore's "Drizzt do'Urden" fantasy novels. I read one of the prose books a few years ago and it pretty much left me cold -- lots of action and adventure, but not much substance, more or less the literary equivalent of Independence Day. Ironically, it's this same quality that lends the story so well the comics medium. Why spend five days reading through a fairly shallow novel when you can read the same story in a matter of hours -- and in color! It's a rip-roaring ride through the Forgotten Realms with a colorful cast of characters (Regis is my favorite) and more excitement than you can shake a knucklehead trout at. Highly recommended.

On a much lower key, I've also had the opportunity to watch Friends -- not the American sitcom, but a four-part 2002 miniseries created as a joint venture between Japan and South Korea. It's awfully touching; I'm usually more into action and adventure, but I'm a sucker for a good romance. The plot, in a nutshell: Ji Hoon is a film school student from Seoul; Tomoko's a department store worker from Tokyo. They meet by chance in Hong Kong, hit it off, exchange e-mail addresses, and discover the hazards of long-distance relationships. It's the first time Japan and Korea have collaborated on a TV series, and I must say it works out pretty well. One thing I like is that it doesn't skirt too far around the issue of ethnicity. One of Tomoko's friends is the daughter of two Korean immigrants, and she speaks candidly about the prejudice that's often leveled against Zainichi Koreans, and how she's studying Korean to get in touch with her heritage. Given Japan's history of denying its non-Japanese residents a voice, I think that's a step in the right direction. On the other hand, when Tomoko goes to Seoul to look Ji Hoon up, she doesn't show any difficulty at getting along in South Korea; maybe it's just too alien a concept for Japanese to think of themselves as foreigners in other countries. I dunno. Anyway, it's the sweetest darned thing I've seen in quite a while, and again, highly recommended.

Thoughts on Marvel, Iron Man, and the Avengers

I'm a total Johnny DC. I wouldn't spend money on a Marvel comic (except maybe Nextwave), and I only own two: Captain America #1 (a free promotional gift from my friendly local comics shop) and Marvel: 1602 (a birthday present from a dear friend of mine who knows I like Neil Gaiman as much as he does). I've been following this whole Civil War hullabaloo over Teh Intarwebs, but only so I can say, "Y'know, this would never happen at DC."

I read The Mighty Avengers #1 at Barnes & Noble yesterday, mainly since I knew I wouldn't get busted for reading it in the shop, but also since I was curious. For reasons I'm not sure I can articulate, the conceit of the pro-establishment super-team appeals to me (even though I'm borderline anarchist myself) -- Justice Society of America, for instance, is one of my favorite comics. Since Marvel made it abundantly clear that the pro-Registration side was the "wrong" side (even though they won in the end), I wanted to see how writer Bendis would work with a morally bankrupt team of sellouts.

So here are my thoughts. Time to bust out my all-time favorite HTML tag... Unordered List Powers: ACTIVATE!

• First of all, I am a huge fan of the concept of Iron Man, even if I think Tony Stark is an insufferable asshole. I think the basic idea of a super-powered suit of armor is totally cool. Amazing powers, of course, are part and parcel of the whole adolescent power fantasy angle of super-heroics (which as I've said before isn't a completely bad thing). However, characters like the Thing, the Hulk, and even Superman are hampered by their powers: in the former two cases, they're obviously marked as different and kept at arm's length by the people they're out to help, and Superman too feels a sort of tragic distance from normal humans. Even characters who can change back and forth between normal and super identities -- Captain Marvel, She-Hulk, etc. -- have that abnormal element from which they can't divorce themselves. But Iron Man can just take his powers off. That's quite a concept. He's a completely normal human guy who's simply made himself a set of removable super-powers; if he ever feels too disconnected from humanity, he can just take the suit off.
  
• Mind you, I still think Tony Stark is a self-centered asshole with questionable morals, screwed-up priorities, a painfully racist nemesis, and an ugly mustache. He's just got one bitchin' suit is all.
  
• I know who Iron Man, the Wasp, and Ms. Marvel are, but I have only the vaguest idea of who Ares and Black Widow are, and no clue about the Sentry or Wonder Man. Who are these people? I can't really get a feel for Sentry, but Wonder Man comes off as kind of a prick.
  
• What's up with Ms. Marvel? She strikes me as Marvel's answer to Power Girl. Both blond power-houses who lead the resident pro-establishment team and are there mainly for the T&A. Of course, where Power Girl has an awesome personality that defines her beyond her looks, Ms. Marvel comes off as more or less a good-looking cipher. And Carol, for the love of all that is good, tone down that costume. We don't need to see your thighs all the way up to your ribcage. If Cho would draw that costume as more of a reasonable one-piece swimsuit and less of a full-body thong, I'd like it a lot more.
  
• Will Wasp ever shut up about shopping and fashion? Lots of women are into that, and it's cool, but it's all Janet ever talks about.
  
• As the ever-lovin' Loren Javier pointed out, the team is rather lacking in diversity. Now, this usually doesn't jump out at me (I'm white; I try my damnedest to be racially sensitive, but it'd be a joke if I claimed I always succeed) and I probably wouldn't be commenting on it if Loren hadn't pointed it out first, but when I think about it strikes me as odd that Marvel's foremost super-team is all white. Then again, as Loren also notes, the anti-Reg team, the New Avengers, is really very diverse. I do wonder if this wasn't intentional on the editors' parts to make a statement about the two teams' priorities.
  
• Now to actually comment on the comic itself, I like Brian Michael Bendis's writing... in very small doses. His attempts to write "natural dialog" are amusing for a few issues, but get old really fast; I couldn't bear to read this for an extended period. He makes good use of thought balloons, though.
  
• Likewise, Frank Cho is a great artist, but the rampant T&A is just tiresome. Please, Frankie, tone it down.
  
• The story was OK, I guess. I was really paying more attention to the characters than the plot. Poor Mole Man, tho'.
  
• Is it just me, or is Girl-Ultron a dead-ringer for Wasp? Considering the robot was originally created by Janet's ex-husband, that's kinda creepy.
  
• Does this mean Iron Man is dead? Please, Lordy, tell me this means Iron Man is dead.
  
• All in all, it compares pretty well to Justice Society of America #4, which I read the day before. I've already pointed out the similarities between the books, but I think the differences really highlight why I'm a Johnny DC and not a Marvel Zombie. As someone in the blogosphere (I can't recall who) pointed out, Marvel seems more interested in publishing comics that read like wide-screen movies, and their creators seem slightly embarrassed to be working in the comics medium. DC, on the other hand, sells comics that read like comics and their creators are damn proud of it.
  

Brief Words on The Spirit #4

This is easily the best comic I'm reading at the moment, and I'm reading a lot of good ones. This is my first exposure to the Spirit, and I must say that Darwyn Cooke has completely and totally won me over and made me absolutely love the character and his world. I look forward with bated breath to every issue.

Also, Silk Satin is the coolest, toughest, most badass woman I have ever seen in a comic book. I think I'm in love.

Tetsuo!!!

I just now saw Akira for the first time. And, yeah, I'm pretty much blown away.

There's really not much to say about the film that hasn't already been said, and I'm sure I'm not articulate enough to do it justice. I will say that I was absolutely stunned by the quality of the animation (pretty much the first thing I look at, the geek that I am), which blows a lot of the anime you see today right out of the water. It's hard to believe that film this was made twenty years ago in 1987.

I also really like Katsuhiro Otomo's art style and character designs. They're only barely recognizable as anime, and definitely stand out. In fact, the pacing, dialog, and other factors are so radically different from mainstream Japanimation that one critic I've read categorized Akira (along with the works of Miyazaki, Oshii, and Evangelion) as non-anime. While to me, an American aficionado, Japanese animation is more or less a single continuum, I have to wonder what distinctions are seen by animators and viewers in Japan.

On Moving Castles

I caught Howl's Moving Castle on TV just now, and it was a delight. I never fail to be amazed at just about everything Studio Ghibli comes out with. The animation was wonderfully smooth and fluid, so fluid that often I forgot I was watching a cartoon -- and that verisimilitude, in my honest opinion, is the hallmark of great animation.

The story, though, could have used a bit of work, as it felt awfully rushed toward the end, and got more than a bit confusing. I felt that the subplot with the war and the missing prince was tied up way too easily (although it was nice to hear Crispin Freeman in a voice-cameo).

Normally I make a point to watch any foreign production in the original language first, but since it was on TV I had no choice but to watch the English version. I'm not sorry I did; as much as I dislike Disney's business, the quality of their work is always top-notch, and this was no exception. Billy Crystal in particular was delightful as Calcifer the fire-demon.

Hayao Miyazaki is getting on in years, and he's "retired" at least once already that I know. It's a shame that he's not going to be making many more movies. Even his failures are worlds beyond the standard. Even if Howl's Moving Castle doesn't stand up to any of his past masterpieces, it's still better than 90% of any other animated features out there.

On Downer Endings

I watched the ending of the animated series Berserk yesterday. I was on the verge of being physically ill.

I'm conflicted about downer endings like that. On one hand, I wonder if the sheer level of pain, sadism, inhumanity, hopelessness, and, well, evil had to be shown on screen. I just wasn't ready for it. I've seen some really shocking movies and shows, but Berserk is perhaps the one that disturbed me the most (and it's a cartoon, even). It haunted me for the rest of the day; every time I closed my eyes I flashed back.

On the other hand, perhaps the creators ought to be commended for stirring these feelings in me, as was undoubtedly their intent. Does my discomfort rob the ending of whatever artistic value it may have had? Does "artistic value" hinge on whether you come out of something feeling good? The purpose of the ending was to define "evil" using moving pictures, projected onto characters the viewers had been made to care about over the course of 25 episodes: The point of the excersize was to make the viewer feel sick, and at that, the animators succeeded.

So I suppose the question is, on what does art hinge? The artist's ability to make the viewer feel what the viewer wants to feel? Or the artist's ability to make the viewer feel what the artist wants him/her to feel? That is the crux of my conflict.

(All I know for sure is that I will never complain about Evangelion having a depressing ending ever again.)