The New 52

So, my eldest sister once again proved that she is the more thoughtful sibling. Today, for no specific reason, just out of the blue, I received a package from her in the mail, as I do from time to time, with a little token of her esteem and affection.

This particular item was as wonderful as the others - a deck of playing cards with a wide assortment of images from comics. Some of these are likely in the public domain, but I am certain some others aren't. I'm not sure who the publisher, Nicky Bird Design, is and how he or she thought to do this, but it's pretty cool.



Pretty nice back design.

Two interesting things about the side panel. (1) Who says the Great Age of the Comic instead of the Golden Age of Comics? and (2) In my world, Lichtenstein is pretty much discredited as nothing more than a swipe artist.

Enough kvetching. Here are some of the more noteworthy images.

Lots of love for the Marvel Family in this deck.

I'd wager the off-panel exclamation comes from the Big Red Cheese, too.

Some excellent Kirby art - always the Great Age, no matter when. 

 Just the kind of thing Lichtenstein would swipe.

 

Racy stuff!

 

Okay, now that's just creepy.

 

Sounds like some cats I know... not mine, of course.

 Wait... why... how would you even do this? 

 

"Snifffff..."

Y

 "Yellow-bellied Commie" I have heard a lot, but "Moscow Maniac" sounds like cocktail.

 

C'mon, who names a robot Martha? 

I think this might be the most recent stuff: these guys were married, but as you can see, they had some issues.

 

This looks like a pretty generic boy hero, but check out the back-up strip:

 

 Sandusky and the Senator? It's like the Dundee and the Culhane of comics!

 

The DC sub-genre of WW2 Combat with Added Dinosaurs was actually pretty awesome sometimes.

 

This looks a lot like Maudlin's Willie and Joe, but I don't think it is.

 

This looks a lot like Commissioner Gordon, but I don't think it is.

 

This looks a lot like Gorgo, and if it's not, I'll be annoyed.

 How'd you like to defend these before a House Sub-Committee while crashing from Benzedrine?

 

I call shenanigans - this isn't a comic book cover, it's a pulp magazine.

 Not sure what bar this guy works in...

 

The best for last: classic Gil Kane haymaker-knocking-someone-ass-over-teakettle shot!

(I had this comic!)

So, thank you dear sister. My cribbage games will be even more lively with this deck!

 Me and my big sister from looong ago.

5 X 5 Waiting for the Trade: The Autumnlands: Tooth and Claw

1. So, I came about reading this trade paperback collection of Image comics in a different way: I didn't wait for it, I was introduced to it by a text from my pal John that went Reading Autumnlands: tooth and claw. 7 dollar collection on Amazon. Thought you'd like it. Maybe a lot. A few clicks on the computer later and it was on its way, even before I had finished my texting with John - hey, his recommendation is worth risking $7.42 (free shipping with Prime) - and I deliberately didn't research it any further or try to figure out ewhat it was about - totally sight unseen.

2. John thought I'd like it, and I did, but maybe not not as much as he had, or he thought I would, but enough to out this one in the win column. It has beautiful art by Benjamin Dewey - including what John had referred to as very well rendered dirigibles - and Kurt Busiek certainly knows how to build a plot and tell a story. In this case, the story is about a future-world, post-apocalyptic society of humanoid bipedal animals (of a wide variety of species) who use magic to hold their civilization together, and the conflicts that ensue after wizards reach back into time for a legendary Champion to help stave off the end of that magic and things (of course) go badly.

3. Overall, the conceit and the story both hold up quite well. My fantasy OCD quivered a bit at some of the choice made for for the different characters and extras - like having owls and dogs the same size, and the birds having arms and hands. Most often things seemed pretty random, which could be a deliberate effect,  but then we get a fox as the wily schemer, and it seems both obvious and out of place. The Champion himself seemed a little too competent, but I guess that's why he was The Champion. These sort of small quibbles aside, the story kept me turning pages until the end - of the trade, but obviously not the tale. I'll read the next installment, for sure.

One additional treat: each chapter begins with an "excerpt" from a pulp novel telling the story from a different perspective, with period art to match. Pretty cool.

4. John also mentioned that he thought the setting would make for a great RPG campaign, and I have to agree with him there: there's some excellent world-building going on, and the technology (flying cities as well as airships) and magic seem consistent and workable. The difference between the character species are enough to allow for customization of abilities - a dog-person announces that since he's a terrier, he can run all day - but overall the power levels seemed pretty compatible.

5. One last note: I can't review this without saying that if you squint, it seems like nothing more than a grim 'n' gritty Kamandi pastiche. I don't know if Busiek had that in mind,m but even if he did, it;s worth the read.

Gender confusion

So, Wonder Wife ran across some greeting cards and said that once she saw them, she had to buy them for me. Here's the first one, called Heroes & Villains:

Let's see, we have:

• Darth Vader,  Iron Man, a Tusken Raider, and Robin (Burt Ward version)
• Some bug guy I don't recognize, Bobba Fett, another guy I don't know (although he puts me in mind of J. Jonah Jameson's son in his Man-Wolf identity), and Batgirl (Yvonne Craig version)
• Robocop,  Red Power Ranger, Batman (Adam West version), and C3PO
• Another guy I don't know, a Storm Trooper, Spider-Man, and Skeletor.

A fairly wide-ranging group. Odd to see C3PO without R2D2, or Skeletor without He-Man.

The next card, Heroines & Villainesses:

This one has:

• Batgirl, Poison Ivy, Wednesday Addams (I think), and Storm
• Sorceress of Castle Greyskull, Wonder Woman, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland version), and Catwoman.
• Pink Power ranger, Uhura, the Wicked Witch of the West, and Supergirl 
• Evil-lyn, She-Ra, Princess Leia, and someone I think I should know but don't - is it Hit-Girl?

An even more wide-ranging group, I think.

The non-traditional style of illustration just seems to add a more fine-arty cachet to the pieces, and the Warhol-style array design drops these works squarely into the Pop Art bucket for me. They're pretty cool - it doesn't show here, but the colors really pop on the printed cards - but one thing I can't figure out.

The first piece is Heroes & Villains and the other is called Heroines & Villainesses. The use of the almost-totally-out-of-style feminine forms of these words clearly signal a presentation divided by gender.

Then why is Batgirl on the Heroes & Villains card?  She is the only female depicted in the group. She is also on the Heroines & Villainesses card, though, and there are no males depicted in that group at all. I can't get his to make any sense - is it an error, a message, a change in focus, what?


I like these cards but it;s hard not to let this bug me.

Little things mean a lot

So, I saw this:

and it reminded me of one of my favorite bits of Douglas Adams's writing, from Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.  The eponymous hero is helping his client and friend remember an encounter with a woman. Dirk tells him:

'She was wearing a dark blue cotton velvet dress gathered to a dropped waist. It had raglan sleeves gathered to the cuffs, a white Peter Pan collar and six small pearl buttons down the front - the third one down had a small thread hanging off it. She had long dark hair pulled back with a red butterfly hairgrip.'

'If you're going to tell me you know all that from looking at a scuff mark on my shoes, like Sherlock Holmes, then I'm afraid I don't believe you.'

'No, no,' said Dirk, 'it's much simpler than that. You told me yourself under hypnosis.'

Richard shook his head. 'Not true,' he said, 'I don't even know what a Peter Pan collar is.'

'But I do and you described it to me perfectly accurately.

Sublime.

Not to scale

So, I just watched a mini-documentary on movie trailers, and it put me in mind of a frequent complaint I have voiced: that the stakes or conflict or set-pieces in most movies have too often gotten too big and too much. It seems that we can't have a movie motivate its characters - or interest us - by anything less that the the end of the world, or something close, anyway. Any conflict is waged with doomsday devices and/or clashing hordes. Deathstars, worldwide plagues, global annihilation, armies of darkness: nobody reaches for small goals anymore, certainly not in science-fiction type movies. Everything is Armageddon.

This trend is even evident in theoretically smaller movies like action thrillers. I can recall watching stuff like The Guns of Navarone, in which the WW2 commando team must destroy one strategic gun emplacement - just one! Not save the world, or even win the war - just accomplish the mission. There was still enough drama to keep me on the edge of my seat. But now, it seems that the macguffin that the spy is after is more likely than not software that will destroy the entire internet, or the strike team has to recover a virus that could wipe out all of humanity. Do we really need a threat that big before we care about the outcome?

The bigness is present not only in the overarching plot, but in the execution of the action as well. I have talked often about how overused some CGI effects are - just because you can create huge armies doesn't mean you must create huge armies. Skirmishes can be just as exciting as battles and a fistfight as tense as clash of ninjas - more so, if we connect with the human element better.

I once saw a bit of one of those Jason Statham movies in which he drives cars real fast (I don't know which one). Some bad guy had put a bomb on his car and somehow forced him to drive away with it attached even though he knew it was there. He drives real fast, finds a construction site with conveniently stacked material, drives the car up a makeshift ramp and into a barrel roll, positioning it precisely so that a nearby crane scrapes the bomb off the undercarriage of the car, then lands the car and drives away while the bomb explodes in the air as it dangles from the crane. I felt like I was watching a Road Runner cartoon - just too much.

Just recently, I saw a bit of Meet Boston Blackie, the first in a string of 40s action films about a reformed criminal who gets caught up solving crimes (usually because people think he did whatever it was). Blackie and a woman were in a car chase, being pursued by cops or crooks, I couldn't tell which. In order to elude them, Blackie unscrews the knob from his gearshift lever, throws it back at the other car, causing a spiderweb of cracks in their windshield that impedes the driver's vision and causes him to crash into a fire hydrant. Brilliant.

That's a flick I'll have to catch the rest of. It seems more my size.

"My name is J'onn J'onzz"

After all the years of reading comics and all the mentions of Martian Manhunter on my blog(s) since way back when and all the action figures, I have to tell you it was pretty gratifying to see this scene in Supergirl. Although the design is a little like the J'onn's Angry Asparagus Man period, it's still a great realization of the character - and David Harewood's characterization of J'onn (and his alter ego) in the show is likewise terrific.

Is it too early to start thinking about a spin-off?

5 x 5 Movie Review: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

So, I guess this blog wouldn't be earning its keep if I didn't say something about Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

1. I saw the original movie on the second day was released - I guess that would have been May 26, 1977 - and I can still remember the frisson of excitement I felt as a movie-loving college student and SF fan at the opening scene: man, those effects blew 2001 right out the water. I liked the movie a lot, but I never became a fan in the popular sense of the word. I saw the sequels as they came out, I saw the execrable Phantom Menace later, and skipped the rest, and have never more than dipped a toe in the Extended Universe.  I understand that there are apparently people who are wee bit more invested in the franchise than I am.

2. If the intent behind of this film was for Disney to let all the aging die-hard fans see that the original look and feel of the movies is back, that they can ignore those nasty prequels, wrap themselves in the familiar, and know that everything is going to be okay, then I imagine that they have succeeded. Almost the entire movie is a callback and/or a shout out: plot elements, comic relief, set pieces, all of it.

3. I might be too harsh a critic on that front, as I had similar issues with the second Star Trek reboot movie. But I think it a fair assessment to say that even accepting that context and approach, the film does not fully exploit what should have been the emotional climax of the film involving two main characters.

4. I also wonder how this nostalgia-based strategy plays with the fans of the extended universe, who are familiar from comics, books, cartoons, and web content with a vast array of characters and settings and circumstances far removed from the original trilogy. I guess it's working out, since the movie has already made a jillion space-dollars, but it seems counter-intuitive to me.

5. All that said, I will watch any movie that has Rey daringly doing some derring-do. Finn was cool and I liked him, but Rey is awesome.