A Comics Roundup

Back to the comics.  I got off track with reading and with updating because my work life decided to make me feel so compressed with other responsibility.  Well, what can you do when real life gets in the way of your fantasy life? You use it as fodder for your own future fantasy stories, I suppose.

Anyway, I finally had time to start catching up on some reading. I’ve been wanting to read Before Watchmen for months.  One issue in. The Minutemen.  My first reaction to hearing that there was going to be a Watchmen made my inner nerd seize. After finishing one issue I’m actually quite okay with it.  The artwork certainly captures the style of Dave Gibbons for Watchmen. And the characters are strong and interesting. Unfortunately I don’t know how well I can judge the overall story without delving further into my stack.

I also read the inaugural issue of Saga. Brian K. Vaughn is all hearts in my head when I hear his name. (Y the Last Man, Ex Machina, and Runaways are all enough to set my nerd brain fluttering about.) So I got excited that Comixology had the first issue for free. It’s a perfectly weird story but extremely well laid out, connected, and is beautifully done. I loved what I read and I’m hoping to download more soon.

This is also my plug (on a personal level, since it’s not like I’m getting anything for talking about it) for how much I like Comixology. I have a rule about no more physical media (if I can avoid it) and it’s nice to see comics available without having to swoop into a store and pick up paper copies. That said, I wish I had a newer, bigger monitor and a tablet so I could read things digitally in a nicer way. (These are complaints that really have nothing to do with Comixology, though.)

Dork Knight

The Dark Knight Rose. So did the Dorks.  I’m disappointed that the midnight premiere was tainted by the horrible events in Colorado but I still thoroughly enjoyed my own midnight excursion. (It’s sad, really, to have to feel bad for wanting to talk about something I enjoyed because there are tragedies associated with the same thing.) I have only minor complaints about the movie, really, and since I was expecting it to be an action film I suppose there was no real disappointment in watching what was essentially a slamming action movie.
I don’t have much else to say about the movie right now but I suspect I’ll gather up the energy to say more as time goes on.

batman and games roundup

Countdown to The Dark Knight Rises: -3 days. I’m actually starting to get stupidly excited over heading to a midnight show. I think I’ve been excited by every one of the Nolan Batman movies but I guess it’s the fact that I need something dorkish to look forward to doing.

Cards Against Humanity truly is a game for “horrible people.” And I love it. As someone who has spent years playing Apples to Apples in a horrifying fashion,  I have to admit to not finding CAH “shocking” but rather more in keeping with our group’s style of behaving like horrible people during board games. I really love that CAH is distributed under a Creative Commons license and therefore provides the ability to create your own deck.  Hooray for being a horrible person! And for party games!

Why does Steam continue to offer awesome sales on things I want while I am currently undergoing computer revisions? It’s like the universe is out to get me. I always seem to have a soft spot for the indie bundles. Honestly, my video game world has taken a serious decline as I continue to play round after round of Ticket to Ride Online. Behold the unfortunate power of the nerd who is over-invested in finding some surprise at turn 1,000.

i aim to misbehave

Why is it that Malcolm Reynolds is still such a fantastic geek icon despite his extraordinarily limited screen time?

I’m not objecting. I’m actually rather happy that the fourteen episodes (and one movie) that are nearly ten years old are still so popular and such a part of the geek lexicon. I’m just surprised that it’s still the case. I recently got my mother interested in watching Firefly, which was kind of an exciting moment for me because usually our television interests are extraordinarily different.  (Not that she’s exactly on time to this particular party.)

Speaking of getting things “Whedoned” up I know I really should have shared this quite some time ago but here’s a link to the Avengers done in the Firefly style.

I don’t have a good new nerd bite this week. I blame this on being behind on comics, television, movies, and even the internet. Hopefully the next time I’m back in here there will be something more to say.

even scum spend the holidays with their families

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#10: The Dark Knight (2008)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  So now that we’ve reached the final date of this comic book adventure, there are probably some sore losers who wonder why I didn’t include movie A or move B or what not but there was never any promise to bring you the best of the best, only a sampling of those that I have enjoyed in the last ten years.  Still, there is a lot of noise that The Dark Knight is the best comic book movie of all time. (Or at least there was before people started saying that Avengers was a candidate for that title.) I’m a Batmanaholic, honestly, and the excitement and thrill of The Dark Knight was such that I saw it twice on opening day: once at 12:01 AM and once again at 7:00 PM. Those experiences, while both full of nerds, were very different. The super nerdy energy of seeing a dorky comic book movie at midnight is always more fantastic than seeing it with the (and I hate to use this term) mainstream movie crowd on a Friday night.  Fewer costumed heroes and in-jokes in the opening day standard showing crowds. Midnight movies are for true believers.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. You already know what point #1 is going to be. It’s Heath Ledger and his portrayal of the Joker, of course. OF COURSE. DUH. A thousand times DUH. Best film adaptation/on-screen version of that character ever. He breathed such an interesting and fascinating light to the Joker wrapped him up with all of the usual giddiness and prankishness but made him sinister, evil, the true mirror to Batman, in the way that The Killing Joke suggested he should be.  Heath Ledger was very much one of my favorite actors. (He and Christian Bale were both also on the fangirl crush list, also, which made my nerd excitement over this movie even more evident when it was first trailering in theaters.) I’m glad that the last thing we really remember him for is something that was so universally acknowledged to be incredible.
2. “Wanna see a magic trick?” <- Done. No explanations needed.
3. Two-Face. I think I mentioned in the listing for Batman Begins that my favorite Batman villains include Ra’s Al Ghul and the Joker but Two-Face rounds out the triad. (Mr. Freeze and the Riddler would follow close behind, though Bane is an interesting choice for The Dark Knight Rises, I guess. I kept joking that it should be the Clock King. Totally believable villain in the Nolan realism world, right?) Anyway, Harvey Dent is fabulous and I’m happy that he got to be in a movie at the same time as the Joker. I wasn’t 100% behind Aaron Eckhart’s performance or casting but he really turned it into something I could support, nonetheless.  (Fun fact, I once read a list of “Lawyers in Comics” and nobody mentioned either Harvey Dent or Daredevil. WTF?”)
4. Scarecrow makes another brief appearance, really demonstrating that the rogues are out in droves.
5. Maggie Gyllenhaal is so much better than Katie Holmes.  So much better. I actually felt something when her pivotal scenes were taking place.
6. All of the staple Batman characters progress in their Gotham fabulousness. I was so happy to see them all there, making a rounded and complete Batman tale. I’d ultimately always have to take the Animated Series over any of the movies, only because it had a longer-running place in my heart, but The Dark Knight, it does a fabulous job of knitting together those connections and making them splendidly believable, interesting, and dramatic.
7. Cliffhanger conclusion. This is my term for the modern ending where there definitely is an end to a story but it has the power to go on because you don’t really know what happened. I actually do like this sort of ending (many readers of modern literature and short stories hate this kind of thing) and it’s very appropriate for a Batman story regardless. There’s always a new crime, a new villain, a new story.

What I think may not be so good:

1. There’s actually very little of Batman himself in this movie. And when he is there, Christian Bale seems to have learned to overdo the Batman voice by about fifty times over his Batman Begins performance, which is just silly.

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

I can’t grant a perfect rating but I can give it a 9.6, just enough to show that I think it edges out Scott Pilgrim in terms of its place in the universe but really, I only do that because my attachment to the world of Batman is so much greater than my attachment to the world of Scott Pilgrim is. I haven’t decided yet if Avengers is better than The Dark Knight but I can tell you that Dark Knight is ridiculously, insanely amazing and you should own it just to pull out the DVD and watch the bank robbery opening over and over again.

what happens in black and white stays in black and white

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#9: Sin City (2005)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  Raise your hand if you like creepy and weird things! Stylistically, Sin City was utterly and almost unbelievably true to the comics. The visuals were impressive. Characters were very close to their original comic selves. Essentially, this movie was extremely, extremely pretty. (This was my biggest compliment for the second Matrix movie, ha.)  But it still has a truly great story, drawn on from Frank Miller’s crazy, crazy brain.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. Noir style can be so difficult to translate to print. I never thought I’d be arguing that it was difficult to translate it from print to film. In this case, though, I think it’s a valid point because the quasi-noir style of Sin City the comic is something I would have expected to look silly on the screen. But it doesn’t. It looks great. It’s not without its cheese but the film knows it’s being cheesy in those moments and plays it off as such.
2. No particular character overshadows the others. This really is a united story. You could make all sorts of arguments about frame characters and main characters, particularly if you’ve read the comics but I see the movie as being a story of the individuals as they pass by and interact.
3. I know it is going to sound lame but I heartily approve of Jessica Alba’s refusal to completely remove her clothing. You know why? Because I like comic book women who actually don’t find every excuse in the world to strip down. I prefer such things, if they occur, to have meaning, otherwise I’d rather just be watching naked women, you know? Don’t dress it up (ha!) as a story when it isn’t. Besides, Carla Gugino did plenty.
4. Though there is actually some pretty horrific violence in this movie it doesn’t feel out of place. This is similar to my point for #3. I believe I mentioned yesterday in talking about the progression of Iron Man that I like my comic book stories to actually be character-driven. I don’t like plot for plot’s sake unless you’re going to construct something that is supposed to be pure visual spectacle. Sin City is not that story. It’s supposed to actually BE a story. Therefore, the extreme violence was nonetheless appropriate.

What I think may not be so good:

1. There are so many characters that it can be hard to follow along. In print, it’s easy to refer back to something you’ve already looked and see it again. In a movie, this is a bit difficult. This is especially true if you have an audience that doesn’t know the stories.
2. Brittany Murphy may have been a little miscast. She did a good job at playing the “trashier” part of things but she still felt a little off in this role. This is too bad, of course, especially as she is dead, and it feels a little like I’m just harping on a dead girl.

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

7.5. It’s not even that I think this movie is “worse” than any of the others. It’s just that my top-ranked ones in the 8-9.5 range are so amazing that it’s hard to put this on the same shelf.

FE-Man has a tower instead of a sword

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#8: Iron Man (2008)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  This movie is beautiful. Every little homage and setup, every twisting, cutting, snarky, sarcastic remark from Tony Stark. At the time they were released I actually preferred Iron Man to The Dark Knight in several ways (sacrilege points, amirite?) Jon Favreau did an amazing job, though. Visiting Afghanistan and crashing, mandating the need for the arc reactor may not be a work of genius but it did allow for a slow but believable climb for an audience who likely didn’t have a lot of actual Iron Man knowledge. (My own is limited but not nonexistent. I was always more of a DC girl than a Marvel girl, [other than X-Men] though in recent years, I’d say my love for Marvel has grown exponentially.)  All of the cutting jokes going into the movie were about the fact that Robert Downey, Jr. was seriously the choice for Tony Stark? (The jokes wrote themselves, come on.) But he was absolutely perfectly cast for that part.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. Our friend Mr. Stark is perfectly cast.
2. Nobody is a useless sidekick. Pepper Potts is a true counterpart to Tony Stark, an equal (perhaps even a superior in so many ways), and she is just as biting and snapping as he is. Their dynamic is wonderful.
3. Jeff Bridges makes a good “villain.” (I always hesitate to use terminology like that when it’s a story of a good guy gone wrong, or however it wants to be played.) He’s great.
4. I actually felt like the plot was less driven by the action and more driven by the characters, which is a rarity in almost any story that involves weapons and big explosions and CGI. Nonetheless it was here and I’m even more impressed because it was a comic book movie. It may not be super evident but I’m kind of a character-driven story person. I like stories that show me the person rather than the person’s actions. Iron Man actually did a good job of that (much better than its sequel did).
5. Tony Stark’s reveal of “I am Iron Man” is deadpan awesome.
6. Nick Fury! (Does that even count?)

What I think may not be so good:

1. Maybe a little too much time spent in the desert getting turned into Iron Man. As I have noted several times in this series I really love origin stories but the process of his turning into Iron Man took a long time and it was the slowest part of the entire movie.
2. At the end of the day aren’t you still in love with a weapons manufacturer?

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

9.1. Sure. It’s like the Olympics up in here. I think the decimal point is okay.  55.845 is also okay.

frankly, mr. moses, the position you’re in

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#7: RED (2010)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  Okay, I’m cheating with this one. It is, however, the only one where I’m cheating. By cheating, I mean I’ve never read RED.  Eee. (I swear I’ve read books for the other nine movies. Really!) This movie was seen on a whim one lazy Sunday afternoon after some delicious Greek food and a nice walk to the theater. I had few expectations so essentially I had no negative counterpoints to my high-minded comic book ideals. I think Mary-Louise Parker is adorable and her inclusion in this movie was adorable, too. (Note that I’m not calling her “hot” <- comic book fans aren’t all teenage boys, drrr, but I am saying she does adorable things with her face.)  In all, the actors provided a well-rounded cast and I like that the film isn’t just a bunch of twenty or thirty somethings dressed in spandex costumes while they’re being badass.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. The setup. Having no introduction to the story via comics, I can honestly say that I didn’t feel lost by the film story. It worked, clearly, even for those of us who had none of the written story. I believed Bruce Willis as a retired spy/assassin/special agent/secret agent/whatever you want to term it. He had just the right amount of displayed listless loneliness and continued brute strength and itch for adventure.
2. Helen Mirren is so great at playing this type of character. She’s stoic, patrician, hoity-toity and reserved but she is a bloody hands-on killer. I suppose I ultimately just enjoy her duality. She’s funny and likeable because she actually seems less like a believable version of this person. She’s also exceedingly funny. She and Karl Urban both made this movie so great.
3. I laughed so much. I really did. I don’t laugh loudly a lot when I watch things. Usually my laughter is pretty reserved but I was unable to hold back while I was watching this movie.

What I think may not be so good:

1. My comparison list is hard to pull out, as mentioned, with the lack of comic book knowledge, but if anything I’d say it’s that we occasionally get jostled from activity to activity a little too quickly. Then again, that seems to be necessary to the pace of the movie.

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

(R)eally (E)ntertaining (D)rama = 8 points. Yay, 8 points! (I’m scared of Bruce Willis.)

my, my, this here batman guy…

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#6: Batman Begins (2005)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  God, 2005 was really a good year for comic book movies, huh?  (So was 2011, for my money. Which of course, I spent willingly on a lot of Vertigo/DC movies in 2005 and a lot of Marvel movies in 2011.) I honestly believe The Dark Knight is a better movie than Batman Begins but in lots of ways I enjoy Batman Begins more. (If I could put Heath Ledger’s Joker into Batman Begins somehow, it would have almost everything I’d want in a Batman movie.) I’m a sucker for origin stories and the Jeph Loeb/Time Sale books The Long Halloween, Haunted Knight, and Dark Victory) are among my favorite Batman comics (not Hush. Oh god, not Hush), all of which factored into this movie in some ways. (Of course so did Frank Miller’s Year One Batman story) The inception of Batman (aghhhh, if you’ll pardon that awful joke) is something Christopher Nolan and his team clearly cared a lot about developing in a realistic fashion and it’s actually nice to see a realistic version of Batman out there.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. Christian Bale. I love how frequently Christian Bale plays some form of sociopath, social outcast, crazy whackjob, whatever. When this movie came out, I was expecting a dose of film version Patrick Bateman as Bruce Wayne. (How many Bateman/Batman jokes can one really make before it grows wearisome?) The voice (which was far more pronounced in The Dark Knight than in Batman Begins) alleviated some of the psycho serial killer vibe I was expecting, and just made the movie comical. Michael Keaton may have been a better Batman in many ways but Bale wasn’t a bad choice.
2. Ra’s Al Ghul! He’s one of my top favorite Batman “villains.” One of the nice things about him is that he’s not entirely a villain and he’s not entirely an ally. I’ve always liked his nebulous status and enjoy the fact that by canon, he knows who Bruce Wayne is. He knows he is Batman. And it’s not his interest to “out” him. Liam Neeson was a good choice for this role (though nobody is ever going to outdo David Warner in my book) but the diversion of Ken Wantanabe was the best. We all really thought he was going to be the actual Ra’s Al Ghul and I’m glad that Chris Nolan, et al. played this ‘joke’ on the audience.  We also don’t know what becomes of Ra’s Al Ghul by the end of the movie and we’re never really sure if he can come back as he claims. (Canon says yes but does Christopher Nolan? Liam Neeson is listed in the credits for The Dark Knight Rises but this could just be archive footage.)
3. This brings me to the point about how this is a Batman movie featuring largely non-American actors. I really just like this piece of trivia.
4. Setting up a Batman movie where the big villains weren’t the Joker and the Riddler and the Penguin… that was a brilliant move, really. Audiences were sick and tired of seeing those same villains being played off again and again. I love the Joker and Batman dynamic and could go into a lengthy discussion of why they need each other and how they feed each other but it’s probably best saved for the Dark Knight review you know I’m so totally planning, but that’s not what this film was about. The Joker is created as a mirror to Batman after Batman is established. Batman needed the other villains (including the homage to mob crime that was part of the original Detective era stories!) to get his start. Ra’s Al Ghul, though one of my favorites (I’m a geek) wasn’t well-known to audiences. Scarecrow may have had some play but certainly less than the other villains. Using them in conjunction to develop an origin story was a sweet move.

What I think may not be so good:

1. Everyone’s pronunciation of “Ra’s Al Ghul.” Ugh.
2. Katie Holmes. Do I actually have to elaborate?
3. There are some moments in the plot where we really could have sped things up. Some slow moments and so forth. Namely some of the hearkening back to little Bruce and the bats.

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

I’m pretty sure Batman would be after me in a heartbeat if I didn’t rank this movie well. (It’d be a crime.) That said, I vote 8.5 of 10.

azazel the outcast

As part of the series Ten Days of Comic Book Movies.

#5: X-Men: First Class (2011)

Trade Paperback Tickets:  My friends are usually the ones to insist that we see comic book movies in the theaters (or movies in general). They’re almost exclusively male so I guess there’s some stereotype at work here. Regardless, when we first started previewing First Class before other movies, they balked. I had to jump up and down and squeal (well, maybe a little) in order to get them to go with me to see the movie in the theater. I kept insisting it would be great and that everything I saw from the trailer encouraged me. James McAvoy is a good actor (just because I happen to think he’s adorable is not reason enough for me to see a movie he’s in… for example, I will never, ever, ever watch Wanted again, which is a comic book movie that probably belongs on my “worst” list despite its fabulous cast of actors) and that alone pushed me to the mindset of believing the movie would be good. Imagine my friends’ shock when they really enjoyed First Class.

What I truly like about this movie version:

1. The X-Men have been done well before (and I could write an entirely separate post about the varying reasons why the previous X-Men trilogy had its ups and downs) but this was, to me, a phenomenally more enjoyable film than the others. It had a good pace throughout, with enough character development in the brief vignettes that we saw before the team starts coming together.  The little nods to the older X-Men movies, such as Jennifer Lawrence Mystique turning into Rebecca Romijin Mystique to appeal to our buddy Magneto… that’s just a good visual gag, all around. See #5 below as well.
2. Kevin Bacon was particularly well-cast. I have to mention this because of all the NERD RAGE surrounding his inclusion as Sebastian Shaw. So many dorks out there insisted that he was wrong for the part, that he couldn’t pull it off, that there were better actors, and that Kevin Bacon was just a shlub anyway.  I honestly won’t hold with any of that. He was great.
3. Moira gets her own story development. This is nice, actually, since I presume the films going forward (and they will go forward, right? Right?) will eventually show how Charles Xavier came to father a son.
4. This is a period piece, which provides a good companion to the other Marvel period piece of 2011 (Captain America) and also I have a bit of a nerd-on for the 1960s in general. I know the movie actually starts out in the 40s but the bulk of its action and plot development takes place when the characters are all definitively grown-up and living adult lives.
5. Also, “GO FUCK YOURSELVES.” Of course. Seriously, did you think I’d miss that one?

What I think may not be so good:

1. We almost never actually see Professor X and Magneto as friends. They’re mostly shown with the presumption that we already knew they were friends who drifted apart.
2. January Jones.  I still have a bit of hatred of her from Betty Draper (I think I mentioned above being a nerd for the 1960s… hence Mad Men love as well, I suppose) but as Emma Frost she was, if you’ll pardon the pun, frozen. Her face was frozen, she was dead, totally unemotional, and not just playing an ice queen, but rather playing some sort of weak version of Emma Frost. Her best moment in this entire film is probably when she is telepathically projecting herself so she doesn’t have to give up her physical body for some old gross man’s sex games.

Endorsements & Prohibitions:

8 out of 10 X-Men characters prefer First Class. Fortunately that also happens to be my rating for this movie.