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Music Video Stream of Conciousness: Doctor Who Edition
Rouge Traders, "Voodoo Child"; I loved the use of this song in The Sound of Drums. A lot of Doctor Who fans seem to think it was somehow blasphemous to use an electro-rock tune with a good beat to score an alien invasion. Never mind that the song is actually used diegetically; it's actually being played in the scene by one of the characters. It's a deliberate sick joke on the part of the villain. He's planned his end of the world scenario down to the last detail, including choosing theme music for it. Now, that's dedication to evil.
Britney Spears, "Toxic"; Now, if you want to complain about the use of pop music in the show, take this piece of garbage. Lousy, lousy song. Granted, in the episode The End of the World the song is explicitly used as a joke. And at the time, the world thought little Brit-Brit was just a marginally talented teen starlet, using her sexuality as a cover for her lack of singing ability. We didn't know at the time that she was batshit fucking nuts. Still...horrible, horrible song.
Gary Williams, "Song for Ten"; One of the features that has developed in the Christmas specials for Doctor Who is the use of an original song. Of the two we've heard so far, I prefer the song from The Christmas Invasion. Lyrically it resonates with me more. This live version was from a charity concert where Murray Gold's music for the show was performed live.
KLF, "Doctorin' the Tardis"; I was the only person in my school who had any clue what this song was about.
And, just for fun, here's a rather nice mix of the various title segments and variations on what a lot of people consider one of the all time best television themes.
Flash: The Fastest Man Alive #13, by Marc Guggenheim and Tony Daniel, published by DC Comics I'm hard-pressed to think of what the point of this comic was. If we are expected to take DC creative types at their word, that the entire point of this Flash series was simply to kill off Bart Allen so that we'd be grateful that they brought back the "one, true Flash," it strikes me as nothing more than proof that there is a death fetishism running rampant through modern super-hero comics. That interpretation certainly seems borne out by the comic, in which it is emphasized over and over again that Bart Allen isn't "worthy" of being the Flash. A more likely explanation would be that, rather than ignoring the fans, as super-hero publishers are often accused of doing, DC looked at the steadily declining sales of the title, replaced the creative team (a better creative team, that was actually starting to do something interesting with the title, in my opinion), and went out of their way to give the vocal message boarding and blogging fans what they seemed to have wanted: Bart dead, Wally back. Which leads to a final issue that's frankly a creative train-wreck.
The Highwaymen #1, by Marc Bernardin, Adam Freeman and Lee Garbet, published by DC/Wildstorm A near future crime-caper with snappy dialogue, slick art and action-movie ludicrousness that doesn't devolve into self-parody. In other words, a good, surprising little treat that appears to have snuck in under the radar. Two ex-, well, secret agents supposedly, but it's not quite clear, are activated when a (supposedly) rogue element in national security attempts to track down a decades old secret. There's just enough of a teasing and ambiguity in this introduction to make it plausible that we don't quite know who the good guys are supposed to be, but the tale is told so strongly and entertainingly that finding out more promises to be fun. Garbet's art is new to me, and he has a very good sense of storytelling, with good action scenes, and unique and expressive characters. Visually, it reminds me slightly of a cross between Steve Dillon and Frank Quitely, without aping either of those styles, but occuping a kind of middle-ground between them.
Gintama volume 1, by Hideaki Sorachi, published by Viz I was looking for something high concept, but not too serious, and I got it. Mostly. In an alternative Japan, aliens have invaded and corrupted the government. To secure their position, they've outlawed the samurai and confiscated all their swords. But, really, that's all just a pretense for allowing Sorachi to draw anachronistic technologies and funky aliens in his farcical samurai comedy. And farce it is, with broad characters and slapstick comedy, and an oddly literal approach to comedy and jokes that seems at odds with the surreality of the situation. Many of the characters are stock types to the point of stereotypes: ooh, the hard-bitten tough guy, the wacky nerd sidekick, the tough-girl side-kick, the crusty landlord with a heart of gold, the mysterious ally/enemy from the past, etc. It's hard to tell whether the characters are meant as parodies of the type, or simply the result of lack of experience as a writer. But there's the root of something there, and Gintama wouldn't be the first manga with a rough opening to improve in later volumes. The art, scrunchy and distorted, but with a careful detail, has some attraction, and between that and the potential in the work, I think I can give it the benefit of the doubt for a couple of books.
At some point, I still plan to talk about the Doctor Who episodes that have aired since I last reviewed any, but I wanted to gush over the latest episode a bit. If you're reading this in a newsreader, you shouldn't get spoilers. If you're not, and you don't want to be spoiled, don't scroll past the picture of Katy Manning and the Dalek.
I figure the picture alone should scare off a good 75% of my readership as it is...
Via Mr. Dan Kelly, the infamous "punk rock" episode of Quincy:
Yes, contemporary television shows and their "goths/emos are scary" storylines will look just as dated and ridiculous in twenty years...sorry C.S.I. fans.
Attempts to contemporize Archie comics ruining the jokes:
Does anyone use commercial collect calling anymore? Does anyone use payphones anymore?
Batman being a hypocrite:
Man, was that series awful. I think the "armor" the heroes wore is easily in the top five of "Stupidest Things I've Ever Seen In A Comic." I'm glad Alex Ross really liked the Super Friends when he was a kid, but that was no excuse for DC to put this out.
Oh, and in regards to the big spoiler news from comics today, I only have four words to say: status quo successfully maintained!
Two Countdown spin-off minis, as well as a spin-off one-shot dedicated to how the Wildstorm universe fits into the 52 universes paradigm, not to mention three 52 spin-offs and another Sinestro Corps special tells me that, nope, we're still not out of the "massive cross-over" woods yet. Cue the complaints from people who will buy them all anyway!
The Black Canary/Green Arrow wedding gets started in earnest, and, oh my, how the fan entitlement rants are flying with confused arguments for how the marriage of two fictional characters is definitive proof that DC HATES WOMEN, with a delicious extra dash of "let's kill the people who work for DC" popping up every now and again...because, as everyone knows, marriage is a male fantasy of domination over women, and no woman in her right mind would ever want to get married because, you know, she loves the guy...You know, I can see objecting to the marriage because it's clearly a stunt. I can see objecting to it for reasons of characterization. But marriage=misogyny? Christ... On the other hand, that it even occurs to people to think of marriage that way is a sign that maybe we shouldn't let you damn breeders even get married, if you're going to debase the institution with tawdry displays instead of seeing it as a sign of bonding and love.
I mean, let's take the first book, the Black Canary Wedding Planner, written by J. Torres, a notorious misogynist, second only to Dave Sim I'm sure (that's a joke, by the way):
Now, I look at that image, and I see a jokey take on the mishaps that can occur on a wedding day. Other people look at that image and see "OMG, LINGERIE, OBJECTIFICATION! AND SHE'S KNOCKING OVER THE CAKE! SEXISM! SHE'S BEING PORTRAYED AS INCOMPETENT!"
Or this cover to the JLA Wedding Special:
Setting aside the curious emphasis on Wonder Woman's ass, and the overall business of the image, I see a harmless image of a very tame bachelorette party. Others see...well, I'm not actually sure what they see, because other than that it's not a very well composed picture, I'm really straining to see a serious problem with this picture. Okay, yeah, Superman popping out of a cake to strip...maybe not in character. Though with Lois right there, maybe it will. I can totally see Lois enjoying watching her husband strip. And though it's already been pointed out, it bears repeating; regarding this comment: But the Big Blue Boy Scout isn’t exactly who you’d recruit to be your stripper. I gave this some thought, and this is who I came up with for the beefcake: A scantily clad Arsenal/Red Arrow should be bursting out, wearing just a red-and-white toga and doing something cutesy with a “love arrow.”
Yes, just what every woman dreams of on her wedding day...her foster son stripping for her... The internet makes me really not want to know about how comic fans were raised...
Lastly, we get to the actual wedding comic:
I'm not even going to bother to scrounge up the objections to this picture. Mostly they involve the horrible, horrible misogyny of an arrow being attached to her rear end. This despite the fact that she's lifting him, putting her in a dominant position. Never mind the playful sexuality expressed so wonderfully by Amanda Connor on both character's faces. And see, now I'm all depressed and frustrated with comic fans, and I've barely started looking at the books...
Dwane McDuffie takes over as the writer of Justice League of America. This is good news, and that's coming from one of the few people who seems to be enjoying Meltzer's run on the title (pending the ending of this JLA/JSA/Legion cross-over, of course. Something about that story has set my "something really stupid and fan wankish is going to happen" senses tingling). DC manages to spoil this good response, though by taking a quite good cover: And splitting it into two pieces. No, guys, seriously, wrap-around is better.
Wonder Woman Annual ships, but we'll place that in the "believe it when I see it" category, and a Wonder Girl mini launches, written by J. Torres and with a nice "girls kick butt" style cover by Sanford Greene:
Green Lantern #23: My favorite version is still:
Tales of the Sinestro Corps Presents Parallax is leading to angst in fan circles, with it's suggestion that Kyle becomes Parallax somehow. Me, given how central Kyle seems to be to the Countdown storyline, and given that they already did that story with a Green Lantern, I tend to think it's sloppy and unclear writing.
A second run of the criminally underrated Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters begins, as do new series for Infinity Inc and Suicide Squad. II looks to continue the Steel and Everyman storylines from 52, while SS looks to fill in continuity holes. I can't say either of those prospects gets me too excited.
New Showcase Presents volumes for this month are The Great Disaster and Metal Men. Both are utterly insane, for the record, though I prefer the insanity of the Atomic Knights over the insanity of Silver Age Metal Men.
Superman/Batman #40 brings back Bekka. I'm surprised anyone even remembers Bekka. Checkmate #18 finally gets around to that "oh yeah, Amanda Waller is totally a villain...we should do something about that" storyline that's been waiting in the wings since the series launched (or, since the character was introduced way back when, if you want to get technical).
Flash #232 brings us that vagina dentata cover everyone's been having a good laugh at: I have to admit, I went from groaning at the tackiness of the cover, to being annoyed that no one at DC stopped for a minute to consider how this cover would be received, to being kind of annoyed with the escalating outrage over the cover. Yes, it's tacky and stupid, but it's hardly the smoking gun proof that "OMG! DAN DIDIO HATES WOMEN!" I've seen some commentators try to turn it into.
The also underrated Mystery in Space mini gets collected as well, though split into two volumes. This does actually annoy me a bit, because I wasn't planning on buying the trades, but volume two will collect the Jim Starlin/Berni Wrightson The Weird series, and I wouldn't have minded a stand-alone version of that book.
Jodi Picoulet's run on Wonder Woman is collected in hard-cover, and while I want to say that this is the first time the follow-up to a recent storyline has been collected prior to the initial storyline, I'm pretty sure Marvel has done that more than once by now.
I kind of want to know what Kilowog is doing in the cartoon version of the Legion:
CMX looks to have a very good month, with the launches of two mature reader titles: the horror series Presents by Kanako Inuki and Variante, a Frankenstein-ish tale of a girl with a murderous arm graft, as well as another volume of the superlative Gon.
GEN 13 #12 features the Authori-teens. Cute.
DC Beefcake for September Nothing! It's quite upsetting, really.
Am I alone in thinking that the Marvel Classics line is going down like a lead balloon?
Ultimate Power still isn't over yet?
What an ugly, overly complicated cover...
Michael Turner Ass Shot #1: Michael Turner Ass Shot #2:
Hoo-ho! A "cat" fight? Get it? Get it? Even if you don't get it, the solicitation text for Ms Marvel #19 is sure to spell it out. It's Ms. Marvel vs. Tigra…cat fight! Why is the leader of the Mighty Avengers battling a host of female heroes? What craziness are new Initiative teammates Machine Man and Sleepwalker up to? And who is pulling all of their strings? Find out as writer Brian Reed (NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMINATI) and artist Aaron Lopresti (PLANET HULK) continue their acclaimed and back-to-back-to-back sell-out run! Yes, because we never would have guessed what they were going for with the horribly literal cover otherwise...
Make fun of Shanna the She-Devil? Naw, too easy.
So, that year long "X-Men in space" storyline still isn't wrapped up, but continues in X-Men: Emperor Vulcan? I know it's traditional for the X-Men books to pad, but a year wasn't long enough to finish the story?
You know, and despite all that above, I think this month will mark the most money I've spent on Marvel comics in years. I count eleven titles I plan to buy from Marvel.
Marvel Beefcake for September Sub-Mariner #4 Ah, Venom wants to French...
Saw the second Fantastic Four film. Is there anyone connected to Marvel in any way that's capable of telling the truth?
Apparently the reason DC has been so vague about the solicitations for Flash is that they've cancelled the book. In order to restart with the previous volumes numbering, with Mark Waid as the writer. While broadly hinting that they're bringing Barry Allen back. Hey, which means that I get to drop Flash! Because while the Bart series had its flaws, there's no way in hell I'm going to waste my money on Waid's Silver Age fetishism.
Black Diamond #1, by Larry Young and John Proctor, published by AiT/Planet Lar
The Black Diamond is the kind of high-concept, patently ludicrous idea you might have expected to see in a movie from one the less reputable production companies in the late 70s or early 80s. And I say that with love. I was a kid who grew up on Hawk the Slayer and Cannonball Run and Radioactive Dreams, and it probably warped me into the kind of person who, frequently, will value entertainment value over "logic." And so, this book, which suggests that American conservative movement would build a transcontinental highway and abandon it to gear-heads, criminals and filthy hippies in order to keep normal surface roads safe for family values voters. It's the next logical step to every car chase movie ever made. And while Young puts together a plot, something about a wife being kidnapped by terrorists, thus neccessitating the mild mannered dentist hero to embark on a cross-country drive, it's really just a pretext to set up the potential for mayhem. If there's a significant flaw in that, it is that this issue serves only as prologue: we don't get to see the mayhem. Though a short back-up strip by Dennis Culver provides a humorous insight into daily life on the Black Diamond. Jon Proctor's art on the main story is highly stylized and expressionistic. I suspect it's probably going to be too stylized for many readers, those accustomed to a slicker, more commercial style, but for me it works on this book.
Elephantmen #9, by Starkings and Moritat, published by Image
The outstanding sci-fi comic does a quiet, "day in the life" story about Hip Flask trying to get home with some groceries. It's a short seeming story, but it still is typical of the deft characterization and humanity that informs the Elephantmen series as a whole. In just a few pages we get a telling character sketch about Hip, a truck driver, some peril and an action sequence. It could almost act as a model for comics shorts.
MPD Psycho vol. 1, by Sho-U Tajima and Eiji Otsuka, published by Dark Horse
I'll admit I have something of a preference for the dark in my manga. I've been waiting eagerly for this series, particularly after the spectaculr Kurosagi Corpse Deliverey Service, also by Otsuka. This is a bit of a different beast from that series, though. While Kurosagi is ultimately optimistic, this is a much more pessimistic book, viewing humanity through a far more jaundiced view. It mixes the horror, sci-fi and thriller genres, with heavy elements of paranoia through a conspiracy sub-plot. Oh, and the protagonist is a detective with multiple personalites. One of which is a killer. The brutality of the book probably deserves some special mention. It's shocking and graphic, but it never comes off as lurid or titilating or pandering. Thanks to Tajima's clear, smooth-line art style and carefully detailed work, the horrible nature of the crimes are presented almost dispasionately and analytically. It's that coldness that communicates the horror.
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