At age seven, my daughter Bella (“future girl Iron-Man”) is already a strategic genius. I know most parents generally overrate their children, but I came to this conclusion today after being lectured as to why she whooped me in chess (as a seven-year-old she pronounced her opening “The Italy-an Game” and criticized my early game bishop v. pawn sequencing. I was the president of my high school chess club.
As you can see she already has a fair bluff, and if she ever decides to play competitive Magic, would be the kind of awful person who always chooses Affinity / CawBlade / Delver / etc. You know the type.
Following is a transcript of one-and-a-half superhero drafts I did with her recently.
“Legend” sections borrow liberally from each characters’ Wikipedia entries, with some obvious cropping and commentary by YT.
Daddy: Okay let’s draft great fighters. Do you want to go first or second?
Bella: You can go first.
Daddy: You sure?
Bella: Sure.
Daddy: I take Bruce Wayne.
Bella: Lady Shiva and Captain America.
Daddy: Wow, great picks! I guess I’ll take Iron Fist and… Karate Kid.
Bella: Okay. Super Boy Prime and Anti-Monitor!
Daddy: We’re done.
Bella: What do you mean?
Daddy: I mean we’re done. There is no indication either or those characters is even good at fighting!
Bella: You don’t really have to be that good at “fighting” if you can burn a planet down just by looking at it.
Legend:
Superboy-Prime
Superboy-Prime has all the basic abilities of a Kryptonian except at a much higher level, exposed to yellow sunlight: superhuman strength, speed, senses, agility, healing, endurance, superbreath, flight, x-ray vision, heat vision, and invulnerability. His power is close to that of the Silver Age “Earth-One” Superman’s, which makes him one of the most powerful characters in the universe. Superboy-Prime’s future self has complete control over time itself.
At the end of Infinite Crisis, it took the Supermans of two universes flying Superboy-Prime through a red sun to stop him. This defeat cost the life of the elder Superman as well as 32 Green Lanterns, where one copy of the Green Lantern ring is “the most powerful weapon in the universe”.
Anti-Monitor
Anti-Monitor was one of the most formidable foes ever faced by the heroes of the DC Universe (or “Multiverse”, as it was then and now). He is directly responsible for more deaths than any other known DC supervillain, having destroyed nearly all of an infinite number of universes.
… May not be as tough as Superboy-Prime.
(different draft)
Daddy: Okay we’re going to draft super scientists (which is something I think you will be more respectful of).
Bella: Okay.
Daddy: Ground rules — and even if someone can say grow or stretch (no hints here) no giants. No celestial beings.
Bella: So they at least started off at regular size?
Daddy: Sure. Okay do you want first pick or second pick?
Bella: Not sure.
Daddy: You’re trying to game me. I know you want Azmuth first but last time you took first pick Azmuth I took Valeria.
Bella: I want Valeria.
Daddy: I am not taking Valeria first pick.
Bella: I’ll take first pick.
Daddy: Do you want Valeria?
Bella: Yes.
Daddy: Okay, you can have Valeria. Go ahead.
Bella: Promise?
Daddy: I said so, didn’t I?
Bella: Okay… Azmuth.
Daddy: What!?! Well played.
Bella: For a seven-year-old. I assume because I am seven and you don’t want to set me up for a lifetime of not trusting men, you won’t go back on your word and take Valeria just because I tricked you and took Azmuth anyway *.
Daddy: Well, Valeria is only three, so you’re not that smart. I guess I’ll take Reed Richards and Brainiac Five.
Bella: Valeria Richards — or should I say VALERIA VON DOOM — and Victor Von Doom.
Daddy: I will wheel Lex Luthor and the SCIENTIST SUPREME Hank Pym.
Bella: Five man teams?
Daddy: Yeah. This is your last pick.
Bella: Iron Man and Nathaniel Richards.
Daddy: Remember the time you had all the Richards?
Bella: Make your last pick.
Daddy: I take Amadeus Cho.
Who do you think won the draft of the super scientists? Answer in the comments below!
Team MichaelJ:
Reed Richards
Brainiac Five
Lex Luthor
Henry Pym
Amadeus Cho
Team Bella:
Azmuth of Galvan
Valeria Richards
Victor Von Doom
Anthony Stark
Nathaniel Richards
Legend:
Azmuth
(Ben 10 Universe) Creator of the three greatest scientific achievements of the Ben 10 universe, including both the greatest weapon and the greatest instrument of peace. Called the smartest being in [his] universe, Azmuth disagrees, saying he is merely the smartest being in three, arguably five, galaxies.
Reed Richards
(Marvel Universe) Generally depicted as the most intelligent being in the Marvel universe.
Brainiac 5
(DC Universe, 31st Century) Brainiac 5 possesses a Twelfth Level Intellect, which grants him superhuman calculation skills, amazing memory and exceptional technical knowledge. By comparison, 20th century Earth as a whole constitutes a Sixth Level Intellect, and most of his fellow Coluans have an Eighth Level Intellect. 31st century Earth as a whole is a Ninth Level Intellect. His incredible memory allows him to retain knowledge of events that all other characters forget[.]
Valeria Richards
(Marvel Universe) Daughter to Reed and Sue Richards. At age three, Valeria claims to be her father’s intellectual superior. [whether or not this is true you can probably see why a seven-year-old girl would want to draft her high]
Victor Von Doom
(Marvel Universe) Doctor Doom is a polymath scientific genius. Throughout most of his publication history, he has been depicted as one of the most intelligent humans in the Marvel Universe — comparable to arch rival Reed Richards.
Lex Luthor
(DC Universe) The most intelligent human in the DC Universe, and as one of the most intelligent beings of any planet or species. He has mastered seemingly every known form of science, and considers Brainiac his only intellectual rival.
Henry Pym
(Marvel Universe) Scientist Supreme of the Marvel Universe (basically the opposite number to deus ex machina Dr. Strange).
Anthony Stark
(Marvel Universe) Inventive genius whose expertise in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science almost rivals that of Reed Richards, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner, and his expertise in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering surpasses even theirs. He is regarded as one of the most intelligent characters in the Marvel Universe. Also Bella’s hero and the reason she (too) wants to attend MIT.
Nathaniel Richards
(Marvel Universe) Time traveler, scientific genius; father to Reed Richards and grandfather to Valeria Richards (also in this list).
Amadeus Cho
(Marvel Universe) Rated 7th smartest person in the world by Reed Richards, eighth by Hank Pym, and 10th by Bruce Banner. Likely smarter than Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. Regardless, a brilliant teenager.
So…
Who won?
LOVE
MIKE
* Okay, the (emphasized) second part of that only took place in my head. But you can see where either of us was going on this
In the introduction to Justice League: Cry for Justice, writer James Robinson claims that it is maybe the darkest Justice League story ever.
Can’t disagree.
I actually bought and read this comic after buying Robinson’s first regular old Justice League story (which read like a mish-mash of semi-related stories with an inconsistent lineup of superheroes, but referencing Cry for Justice somewhat)… and the two could not be more different (despite featuring some of the same characters).
This story is a combo of a “gathering of eagles”-type that brings together some seldom-seen heroes (the 1970s blue Starman, Congorilla) and an overall tone of “man, bad spit be happenin’”.
And boy, is it bad.
Grant Morrison JLA villain Prometheus gathers any number of villains to do some science-disaster stuff, and it is really bad. I don’t really want to say specifically what, as the unfolding of the threat and how heroes in geographically different areas uncover the elements to its mystery is the essential process and experience of Cry for Justice, but it is quite bad.
The cast of characters includes big names like Green Lantern; “super pinups” like Starfire, Zatanna, and primarily Supergirl; and oddball heroes you have never heard of that James Robinson has a soft spot for, like a gigantic talking golden monkey. Per usual, he does a good job putting a story together.
From the other side, the Big Bad is the aforementioned Prometheus, and a cast of villains (many of whom I had never heard of before) used as chess pieces to get the good guys, often with no regard for their own safety. It is cool seeing super-torture from the side of ultimately lilly white souls, and bad guys misleading heroes mid-combat only to ultimately throw their own lives away in explosion after fiery holocaust (I told you it was the darkest Justice League story ever, already).
What’s Great About Justice League: Cry for Justice:
IMO, Three [big] Things:
Its Gorgeous.
The Story
The Significance
It’s gorgeous.
I don’t know what the exact process is, but Mauro Cascioli’s art comes across like fully-rendered oil paintings. For the most part, only Alex Ross does that kind of stuff well, and the also-rans come off looking stiff or traced (or both), or badly sacrifice rendering and storytelling for the perceived painterliness of an end result. None of that here; Cascioli’s art has the fluidity and grace of storytelling indicative of a well-rendered conventional comics page, but just happens to be finished by a richer and more varied box of colored pencils, china markers, and oils (or maybe just really, really exacting Photoshop… who knows?).
I know I just got done publishing a comics review where I said the book [Batwoman: Elegy] didn’t look like anything else on the stands, and I certainly don’t want to make visual uniqueness unintentionally trite, but this book doesn’t look like anything else on the stands, either. Cascioli doesn’t have the variety of different finishes that JH Williams III does in Batwoman, but the cross-section of “good art” and “looks like a painting” is just a few microns sub-Ross (I mean that in the best possible way).
The story:
As for the story, I don’t buy many books on the strength of the artist, and I wouldn’t have known that Justice League: Cry for Justice was beautiful anyway, because I had never previously heard of Mauro Cascioli. However James Robinson is one of my all-time favorite comics writers (mostly on the basis of his [primarily] 1990s run on Starman). Robinson has some Starman favorites like the Shade and the blue Starman Mikaal Tomas (characters he didn’t create but most people either have never heard of or don’t care much about but he made layered and absolutely great in his own stories) feature prominently in the story; you can really see his love for comics and old / forgotten / still cool or rich characters unfold on the page.
The significance:
I had heard about some of the crappy stuff that happened in this story from reading upcoming comics listings on various websites, and again, from the first Robinson Justice League trade (with Mark Bagley, that comes after Justice League: Cry for Justice), but rest assured, the bad things that happen are the kind that have a lasting effect on a character, like a bullet to the spine or a brutal beating at the hands of the Joker.
You would literally have to re-boot an entire universe to…
Oh wait… Never mind.
What Gave Me Pause About Justice League: Cry for Justice
While the core cast of characters — Green Lantern and Green Arrow primarily, along with Starman and Congorilla separately — is pretty constant, there often seemed to be minor stuff going on that was disconnected to what was actually going on. Like why bother putting Mon-El into one panel in the whole book? Let’s just randomly put Starfire in a bikini scene and joke about her being naked poolside sometimes! I mean sure, that is good for a LOL, but I get the feeling there were tie-ins with other titles or something that I wasn’t 100% apprised of as a trade paperback reader. I don’t know if the story would have suffered much with no Mon-El, no Starfire, whatever. As long as we follow around GL, GA, Supergirl, Starman, and the big golden monkey (and I guess the Jay Garrick Flash and his onetime archenemy Shade), we get more-or-less everything we need to out of the main story.
I didn’t / don’t hate-hate the side stuff like that, but it is semi-annoying.
Also, Scott Clark takes over the illustration chores for an issue or so. His pictures are reasonably pretty, but not as pretty — and certainly not as unique — as Cascioli’s in the majority of the rest of the book; that makes for a semi-jarring twenty-odd pages, especially given the expectation set up for the preceding 100 or so.
None of this really bothered me that much; quality book overall.
Why would someone buy Justice League: Cry for Justice?
I think the majority of buyers are either JLA zombies or like James Robinson. He is certainly not guilty of plastering an excess of commercially overblown characters all over every page, though he does an artful job of casting the absent Batman’s long shadow across the story entire; Prometheus has a very distinct agenda: He sees how Batman, “just a guy,” can terrify into submission not just cowardly criminals but also his crimefighting teammates. Prometheus wants to be — bereft of any Kryptonian DNA, magic words, or power rings — the villainous equivalent of Batman, the master strategist who bosses other villains about.
To that end Prometheus can convincingly hold his own against the entire cadre of assembled heroes. In a scene borrowing from Deathstroke the Terminator against the whole JLA in Identity Crisis (how great was it when Deathstroke swung his sword at Green Arrow, with GA ducking and Deathstroke “missing”… only to reveal the ends of all of GA’s arrows had been de-feathered by the “missed” sword-stroke?), Prometheus has a silver bullet for every good guy, moves around, dodges expertly, predicts who is going to attack from what angle, and manages to tear off heroic arms, burn off faces, break legs, split bodies in half, and generally kick buttocks aplenty.
You also get a chance to see the good guy equivalent of water boarding (along with the requisite objections from the team’s resident bleeding heart). Still, something some readers will cheer for.
Buy / Don’t Buy:
This is a strong superhero story. It touches on a sort of Authority-esque notion of proactive super heroics (the opposite of the traditional X-Men stance of waiting around for someone to attack them), but beyond a couple of questions of superhero morality (do superheroes kill? under what circumstances? should superheroes use torture to extract information? even from known killers? does giving someone a sinus headache count as torture?), it is “just” a darker look at a superhero team book.
If you love superheroes, again, this is a strong superhero story.
The art is very beautiful (for the most part).
The story is very engaging.
I personally adore James Robinson’s work.
Buy!
(but not like “highest possible recommendation” buy, or anything)
I probably would have read Batwoman: Elegy anyway, as I am a gigantic fan of Greg Rucka comics from his Oni Comics Queen and Country [think girl James Bond, but like with real-life spy stuff / issues instead of teleporter wristwatches and Astin Martin black hole projectors] series, and of course wonderful runs on both Gotham Central [Bruce Wayne's gritty war on crime, but from the other side of the Bat-Signal] and Checkmate [international espionage meets flowing capes and power rings]… But this comic came especially highly recommended.
In the foreword to one of his glorious Batman & Robin hardcovers, Grant Morrison said that he was going crazy over Rucka’s work with Batwoman… and… well, good enough for me.
Batwoman: Elegy has two big things going for it.
1. It is absolutely gorgeous. I mean beyond anything JH Williams III has done in the past. JH Williams III has worked on some pretty fantastic comic books in the past but he uses every part of the buffalo on this one. It is pretty clear, panel to panel and page to page that the same hand laid out the illustrations, but Williams communicates in half a dozen different visual languages with his finishes… Matte finish, richly layered colors, big bold flats, gray tones. It is like several different specialists all running different riffs on a single master’s core idea… Except that he is the engineer of all of it (JH Williams III is running the post-New 52 Batwoman comic as well… But I only read trades).
2. Rucka does what Rucka does well. He takes real-life military issues and blends them into a four-color superhero world, and makes them work well together. Kate Kane (the “modern” take on the Batwoman) is a capable military operative from a family of superb soldiers… Who happens to be a lesbian. She isn’t a lesbian in the ooh, ah, hetero-porn sense, but a very three-dimensional woman facing a very human problem at the crossroads of career choice and sexual orientation. She deals with it in what she thinks is the most honorable way… and through a series of struggles, ends her military career, and ends up a kind of super-soldier superhero.
Now a comic book that is grounded in real-world military concerns isn’t the kind of comic book where the protagonist is struggling against alien invasions or 1,000,000 malicious former corpses, all armed with otherworldly power rings. Kate Kane’s struggles are about social status, somewhat relatable stresses, romantic relationships, family problems none of us would wish on our worst enemies, and the rising influence of the so-called Religion of Crime in Gotham City. She works with a much more realistic palette of crimefighting tech than Batman and his Science Fiction Closet, and if she takes a knife to the chest, her recuperation has to be dealt with in a very different way than the default superhero three-world Ultra Combo Finish of “I got better.”
This is a book of emotional highs and lows, tragedy, perversion, betrayal, and personal loss; yet also of punching a room full of criminals into red-gloved KOs; of crashing through skylights in a flutter of wing-reminiscent crimson bat-cape. It is gritty and visceral as it is gorgeously rendered. Unlike even some pretty well realized telekinetic possessions and galaxy wide gamma irradiated rampages, Batwoman: Elegy makes you feel something (made me feel something anyway).
Pretty obvious that: I loved it and.
What is Great About Batwoman: Elegy? The writing. Also the art. One thing that I really liked about this book, especially as I don’t read monthly floppy comic books, is that even though Batwoman’s adventures take place in the greater DC superhero universe, you don’t really have to know that much about whatever the hell else is going on to appreciate and enjoy this story. I was vaguely aware of the Religion of Crime, and I remembered even some of the more obscure Batman-borrowed villains from my days working on the Vs. System card game; but whatever. You don’t really need to know anything about superhero comics to drop your jaw at JH Williams III’s illustrations or wipe away a tear summoned up by Rucka’s prose.
What Gave Me Pause About Batwoman: Elegy? I had a theology class back around 1993 where the instructor’s main criticism of comics — the medium that I was then growing to really love — and loved to relate to many different philosophical discussions and situations — was that they were taking themselves too seriously. I do think there is something to be said for “comics allow us to tell stories about superheroes without making superheroes look silly” (which is the point of differentiation that a fairly famous reviewer who used to work for me said was the main thing that made comics special… though this was years before amazing works like Batman Begins, X2, or Iron Man); if you are in that camp, and you mostly want to see Superman punch a planet so hard it shatters into 1,000,000 irradiated pieces, then weld together a bent-backed concrete bridge using his laser vision lickety-quick (forget about the underlying structural damage that crashing through it at the speed of sound might deal in the first place)… then this comic might not be for you. If your criteria for female-fronted superhero comics comes out of the 1990s bikini-blur of bad girls and butt shots (the last comics review I did on this blog spent several paragraphs talking about the specific rendering of Emma Frost and contrasting January Jones in X-Men: First Class relative to Andrews illustrations)… This might not be the comic for you. Kate Kane is “hot” (would be considered “hot” by a fair number of people), but despite the flowing red tresses of a Batwoman, her civilian persona has stereotypically clipped short hair. She is covered by tattoos and looks like she would be able to beat you up, even when there is no Bat-Shield emblazoned across her bust.
To me, that treatment of female Bat-hair is kind of a hat-tip to the original Batgirl from the campy Adam West Batman television show, even though Barbara Gordon is a completely different character. I liked it regardless.
Sometimes you can have a great, or well-written, technologically useful, or otherwise +EV piece of writing, art, artistry, craft, self-expression or article that has some element that some people just “can’t get over.” In Magic articles some guys don’t like name drops or humor, or are incredibly myopic. They will fixate on something (whether or not that is the central thrust of a piece) and judge it on some detail without being able to appreciate it for its whole (I am sure you know what I am talking about). Ultimately, I know that my vast blog readership crosses many backgrounds and demographics and maybe you just don’t want your comics to be progressively preachy. Batwoman: Elegy isn’t MOSTLY progressively preachy but an inability to empathize with how a talented lesbian might be dealt with by the US military might translate into an inability to appreciate Batwoman: Elegy despite how gripping and well-illustrated it might be. Me? None of these things bothers me (in some cases quite the opposite); but they gave me pause insofar that they might have given some of you pause.
Why Would Someone Want to Buy Batwoman: Elegy?
It is already great in every way that I care about. My ability to appreciate comics translates across fairy tales (Stardust and Fables) to Superman deconstruction (Miracleman and Supreme) to trippy Brazilian author autobiography (Daytripper) to regular old four-color superhero adventures (Invincible). I love any kind of comics that are well-written (Sandman) or well-rendered (WildCATs); sometimes we get both (She-Hulk… or Batwoman).
Buy / Don’t Buy: I can’t give this book a “highest possible recommendation” without a perception of watering down future highest possible recommendations, but it is pretty great (if you are into liking things that are pretty great).
Make me a millionaire (a couple of pennies at a time, it turns out):
I don’t remember how I got on this train but I was reminiscing about what was supposed to be my smashing career in comics and / or movies. Most of you probably aren’t longtime-enough readers to know that I was a high finisher in a comics competition a few years ago called Comic Book Idol (I finished third)… Second-place finisher was Jonathan Hickman, who is now a superstar at Marvel Comics, killed the Human Torch, etc.
Anyway, believe it or not I made it into Variety (premier showbiz mag) at the tender age of 27.
I got plucked out of Comic Book Idol and was immediately signed onto a movie / comics adaptation for a book called Seen. Long story short, I was distracted with other projects (i.e. my Magic writing career was just taking off, and I played in the Magic Invitational), and Seen never got done [by me, anyway]. Earlier this year the same studio / comics company that hired me put out a little film called Cowboys and Aliens.
Anyway, partly inspired by something Justin Treadway linked to on Twitter I decided to download some drawing software for my iPad.
I haven’t drawn — seriously or otherwise — in literally 5-6 years, but I think I am going to screw around and put up sketches and stuff.
So… These aren’t up to pro quality or anything, but maybe we’ll get to an interesting place again. It’s like Nikolai Dante says about fightin’ … The only way to get good at anything is to do a lot of it.
Last Friday (9/16/2011) was what I consider the first big television night of the fall season.
No, it wasn’t my girl Zooey Deschanel on her new Fox sitcom, or the long-awaited return of an old favorite… But an action-packed evening on Cartoon Network!
(tonight!)
I have been on mono-cartoons on Friday nights for at least the bulk of 2011. I have no clue what is on any regular teevee network on Fridays (though I do DVR Smackdown in preparations for some future rasslin’ site I have been spitballing with some other community members). Anyway, following are my reactions to this week’s first “the biggest night of action”…
While I generally like my “four perspectives” paradigm for reviewing stuff, since there is basically no buy-component to watching a single episode of basic cable cartoons, I will vary a bit for the purposes of this review (hope you don’t mind).
Batman: The Brave and the Bold “Scorn of the Star Sapphire”
Batman and Green Lantern team up to face Star Sapphire.
What was great about “Scorn of the Star Sapphire”?
Batman: The Brave and the Bold is just so deliciously over-the-top. Every situation on the show is basically the furthest extreme of what you might see in a comic book in terms of scale. At the same time, the universe of Batman: The Brave and the Bold seems to draw on everything anyone who likes comics or comics-related media has ever liked. Case in point, the opening James Bond-esque vignette at the beginning of “Scorn of the Star Sapphire” was a Wonder Woman team-up that included — I spit you not — the Lynda Carter version of Wonder Woman from the old live-action television show, complete with the old theme trumpeting as the background music during the rescue / beatdown segment. I pretty much adored that.
Plus, there is Batman’s scathing crime fighting quip, “If it weren’t for your tattoos, Tattooed Man, you could be working in that bank instead of robbing it!”
What gave me pause about “Scorn of the Star Sapphire”?
The introductory scene with Caron Ferris and Hal Jordan (testing a prototype Batmobile) is extremely reminiscent of the scene in the summer’s Green Lantern movie (I disliked the scene, and didn’t particularly like the movie) [Hal crashes stuff for seemingly no reason].
I thought Loren Lester as Hal Jordan sounded like kind of a wimp. Hal Jordan is supposed to be a fighter pilot / beat cop (as Green Lantern… his “beat” being all of the Sector). Lester made me feel like I could put down a Green Lantern with “one punch” … Not convincing in my opinion.
The overall conflict — and conflict resolution — seemed pretty goofball. I guess you can count on this show for goofball stories, but nevertheless I thought this one was a mite eyebrow-raising.
Why would someone want to watch Batman: The Brave and the Bold?
Batman: The Brave and the Bold is maybe the funnest cartoon incarnation of Batman, ever. It doesn’t have the depth and complexity of the 1990s Bruce Timm / Paul Dini animated series / Gotham Knights incarnations, but like I said before… If there is something about DC comics or related media (up to and including the Adam West-type stuff) you love, it is in there. Batman: The Brave and the Bold is kind of like the Joyce’s Ulysses of Friday night comic book cartoons
Watch / Don’t Watch?
Watch.
Generator Rex
(no clue; I don’t watch Generator Rex)
Young Justice “Targets”
Red Arrow is pitted against dangerous assassins.
What was great about “Targets”?
Red Arrow is probably my second-favorite character in the current incarnation of Young Justice, and he takes center stage. I love his attitude, I love how he fights, and I even really like his voice actor.
“Targets” really dangles a lot of interesting future possibilities in front of us, including Ra’s al Ghul as one of the principal antagonists, and — by the end of the ep — quite a bit of fill-in on the overall Young Justice backstory.
“Targets” does a superb job with its villains, and it is fun for longtime comics fans to see the interplay between Red Arrow and Cheshire (in the comics, Cheshire is the mother of Red Arrow’s child). Even Sportsmaster (an old time villain based on sporting goods… seeing how a wooden baseball bat can get through Alan Scott’s particular brand of Green Lantern) seems pretty cool / formidable.
What gave me pause about “Targets”?
I am used to Clancy Brown — the em effin’ Kurgan from Highlander — as my Lex Luthor. Mark Rolston, by comparison, seems downright effeminate. I like nine things about Young Justice for every quibble like this, but to me, Lex didn’t have the appropriate follow through.
Why would someone want to watch Young Justice?
BECAUSE IT’S AWESOME.
Watch / Don’t Watch?
DID I MENTION IT’S AWESOME?
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien “The Purge”
Old George reignites a war against all aliens on Earth.
What was great about “The Purge”?
Nothing really great. Fair amount of enriching world-building… I can see something coming on the horizon… but not “great”-great if you grok.
What gave me pause about “The Purge”?
Logistics, mostly. I mean why do the bad guys even give the aliens they catch a choice? Why not just off them if they have no fear of the Plumbers? Early in the ep it looked like they were taking on Plumbers head-on, even.
When Ben beats the bad guy end boss, why does he power down back into sixteen-year-old human mode so that he can pontificate? Why is it not “honorable” to use his Way Big alien mode to win the fight, but it is okay to use Ultimate Spider Monkey (the sentiment behind this sentence made as much sense to me as it makes to you, and I watched the show)? Does Ben really need to soapbox in that spot?
The Ben 10 universe has some of the highest highs (when it is “on”), but the average ep at this stage is pretty hit or miss, and this one was medium at best.
Why would someone want to watch Ben 10: Ultimate Alien?
I actually adore the Ben 10 cosmology… the different incarnations of the most powerful weapon in the universe… the fact that it / they is / are in the hands of a ten-year-old (now sixteen-year-old) adolescent who isn’t actually the nicest kid in the world. There is a deep idea of redemption, and sometimes good guys get hurt or even killed. Heck, good guys kill (and on occassion, needlessly). The combination of interesting universe-building and an actually surprising level of emotional engagement (for a half-hour cartoon) make it worth tuning in every week. Considering the fact that Ben 10 was at one point one of the most desirable licenses in the US means that I am no the only one.
Watch / Don’t Watch?
I’d say watch, but mostly because if Old George is going to be a central character to this season, if you don’t watch, I fear you will have no idea what is going on.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars “Water War; Gungan Attack”
Inhabitants of Mon Calamari are on the brink of civil war; the Jedi realize they need help from a powerful and amphibious ally to drive out Separatist invaders.
What was great about “Water War” and “Gungan Attack”?
This was a full hour season premiere, with the first half being “Water World” and the second half being “Gungan Attack” … The best thing about these eps (in particular the first one) was the underwater fighting! We have seen swordfights, space dogfights, but never before a large scale underwater fight like this one.
We have a shirtless Kit Fisto, Ahsoka Tano fighting with two lightsabers, and some kind of shark bad guy who apparently doesn’t need weapons. Lots of battle, lots of fun.
What gave me pause about “Water War” and “Gungan Attack”?
You can probably tell from the DVR summary (and the name of the second episode) what the proposed resolution is… and the cavalry that comes a-comin’ is a planet full of Jar Jar Binks. I’d almost not be rescued at all.
Why would someone want to watch Star Wars: The Clone Wars?
Star Wars: The Clone Wars is absolutely gorgeous. This one was a sight to behold, actually… So different, so inventive. There is nothing else on television like it. Also lightsaber fights.
Watch / Don’t Watch?
Watch
Watch / Watch / more-or-less Watch / Watch – That was pretty easy
A small African town has been hit with a series of bizarre occurrences, as children are born possessing strange and powerful abilities. With the mutant race dwindling, the X-Men are the first on the scene to investigate the phenomenon. When they arrive, their hopes are raised by what looks to be a concentration of mutant births. But soon they find themselves confronted by the country’s ruthless leader, who has his own ideas of what the children truly are and how to deal with them. Have the X-Men stumbled across a series of new mutant births, or are they dealing with something far more dangerous?
I have not been super into X-Men comics in some years, and I haven’t been a regular consumer of any kind of X-Men comics since Joss Whedon’s launch of the Astonishing X-Men title (illustrated in its entirely by the great John Cassaday) as kind of a follow-up to Grant Morrison’s New X-Men. Warren Ellis — the man responsible for many of the late 1990s and early 2000s greatest superhero comics, as well as comics-to-film adaptations like Red
— carried on the Astonishing X-Men after Joss launched Kitty Pryde into a super spacefaring bullet, with a succession of strong artists, arc-by-arc, most recently Kaare Andrews in this volume.
I was in particular excited to pick up this book because Andrews was such a celebrated cover artist on Incredible Hulk a few years back. You may know him from some of those iconic covers…
(my favorite was this Rockwell-inspired one, but there were lots of goodies)
Andrews has used a lot of different styles — painterly, cartoonish, exaggerated — but his ability, workmanship, and distinctiveness are pretty undeniable.
Ellis is a writer who has produced some of the greatest comics any of us will ever read — The Authority as a concept, a great deal of Planetary — but the joke is that this writer, who is one of the best at innovative superhero stories, doesn’t particularly like writing superheroes.
… So of course he finds himself piloting a quintessential “superhero” concept team in the X-Men. And not just any X-Men here… He has some of the most popular members in the history of the franchise in Storm, Cyclops, and of course Wolverine on the lineup.
Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis is, I think, a rare opportunity for a writer to really bend a popular franchise to a truly terrible context… No, not a faraway space station or the undersea kingdom of Atlantis (those are actually pedestrian for a squad like the X-Men). Instead, Ellis uses the opportunity to put them into an actual awful place, a small village in Africa.
He uses the opportunity to highlight some real-world problems to an American audience… Stuff I wouldn’t have thought about independently, and because Ellis is so good, he can interweave the socially uncomfortable bits in with dialogue and situational conflicts we might actually want to read. Case in point:
Cyclops (to Storm [who is a Black woman, currently a Wakandan Head of State, and was worshipped as a goddess in the Serengeti in younger years]:
“… I’m walking two White Americans, a White Canadian, a Japanese girl and a White woman of indeterminate ancestry who speaks with a fake English accent into an African country. So if you don’t mind a little more consultation than usual…”
So even if there is a political agenda driving the setting of the book, Ellis’s skill level mitigates how much it might detract from the usual, you know, ultra-violent superhero romp.
Anyway, onto the review…
What was great about Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis?
Honestly, I loved Loved LOVED the thing about Emma Frost’s alleged fake English accent. I just got done watching X-Men: First Class for the third time, so my working image of Emma Frost is the “sullen and bosomy” portrayal by January Jones, which I didn’t hate, but was admittedly not great. Emma is written so over-the-top by some writers (Grant Morrison in particular)… I could just see the Madonna-esque fake English accent fitting for a woman who jokes about her plastic surgery, or getting herself appraised while in diamond form. Such a real-feeling nugget characterization, situated in potentially a throwaway piece of dialogue.
Additionally, the bad guys / reveal to this one harkens back to some Alan Moore / Alan Davis comics from twenty years ago, and longtime comics fans like YT get a kick out of that stuff.
From my perspective, this wasn’t really a “great” graphic novel, though I certainly appreciated quite a bit of it, and would consider it well above average in general.
That said, maybe it wasn’t meant to be great … The “ruthless leader” of the African country sums up the scope of what is going on in Xenogenesis via a thought-provoking bit of monologue over the story’s the final two panels:
“And no one will care. It’s not Chernobyl. It’s not an oil spill, or a hurricane.
“It’s just a village in Africa. Everyone wants to save the world, you see.
“But nobody really cares about M’Bangwi. No one but me.”
What about Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis gave me pause?
The African thing didn’t really bother me at all. I know some readers, once they realized what was going on, would cry emotional manipulation and close themselves off to what was good about the book. “I want the X-Men to be fighting aliens, not for the safety of one African village!” Well, they actually end up fighting some aliens so that isn’t even a problem.
The biggest thing that bothered me is actually some of Kaare Andrews’s rendering. Here is a highlight of the cover:
I mean WTF is up with Emma Frost’s butt?
Like I said before, Andrews has any number of styles available to him. And in this case he chose “gelatinously drooping”.
Emma invented the concept of using your superhot superhero body / underwear-looking costume as a weapon as the White Queen of the Hellfire Club. Flaunting cosmetic surgery is one of many batarangs in her utility belt. There was even a backup story in Classic X-Men when she explained her “uniform” to a lib-minded young waitress [things from when you are 13 that you don't easily forget]! I mean… that is the cover!
We are way more used to seeing Emma look like, well this:
Emma Frost by Adam Hughes
Or the aforementioned:
January Jones as Emma Frost in X-Men: First Class
Anyway — that’s what gave me pause. And now that I’ve pointed it out, I bet you feel the same damn way.
Why would someone want to buy Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis?
Like I said earlier in the review, I don’t follow the X-Men slavishly. I bought this one because of the strength of its creative team… So if you were to do the same, I would guess it would be for similar reasons. Or, if you just buy every kind of X-Men everything, you don’t really need any kind of purchasing criteria other than the giant “X” in the corner (so mise).
Buy / Don’t Buy?
Buy, but a fairly soft buy. Your life won’t change if you miss this one, except maybe around a monologue on Nelson Mandela by Wolverine (but I don’t know that I would take my history lesson queues from a superhero comic book).
Teeny tiny ads: You know, so I can be F-U rich enough to join the Hellfire Club
For those of you who don’t know what Movie Klub is, it is a klub… err… club that Lan D. Ho and Jon Finkel started a few years ago. Lan, a onetime (and one-time) Grand Prix Top 8 competitor [although a participant in the greatest Grand Prix Top 8 of all time] moved to New York City a couple of years back. Lan originally moved to NYC to make his Magic: The Gathering documentary I Came to Game, and live the real life Big Apple adventure with his friends (Magic and otherwise) along the way. He showed up without a job or anywhere to live (so a somewhat less prepared, though equally handsome Felicity), but brought with him longtime friendships and contacts, and a love of new experiences and slightly-above-average mind that landed him, eventually, a position at Susquehanna International Group.
Anyway, when Lan first moved to New York, he took up “resident gamer” status at Jon Finkel’s apartment (basically you get to live in Jon’s lavish New York luxury apartment in return for being the sixth- or eighth-man to fill out drafts when we are short)… Rough life, I know.
Lan started the once-per-week New York Movie Klub, whose original members included himself, Jon of course, Webb Allen, Dan O’Mahoney-Schwartz, Tuna Hwa, YT, and Tom Martell (plus other awesome people, obv).
Some years later, Lan has located a little south to the City of Brotherly Love, but Movie Klub continues strong, having become the social center of the week for some thirty-plus mostly awesome New Yorkers (and the occasional New Jersey-er) from various walks of life, hanging out at Jon’s every Wednesday.
This week it was my turn to show and I showed the kick-ass movie Kick-Ass.
I knew I wanted to show Kick-Ass ever since I was invited to the New York premiere by then-UGO television blogger Hillary Rothing (@tricia_tanaka), whom I had met over Twitter. The premiere feature Kick-Ass [comic book] co-creators Mark Millar and John Romita, Jr. in a Q&A afterwards, where we learned all kinds of reasons why the making of Kick-Ass may have in fact been even more interesting than the movie itself (and the movie is effin’ great).
Kick-Ass is a somehow non-satirical, often hilarious, ultra-violent movie about a kid who decides to become a real-life superhero. He has no StarkTech, no great physical or financial super resources, and no “great responsibility” borne by possession of great power. He is just a kid who likes superhero comics and buys himself a goofy green wetsuit and some surplus police batons… I know that as a teenager who grew up on a mix of Dungeons & Dragons and Marvel zombie-dom, the same kind of fantasy occurred to me more than once, but the protagonist of Kick-Ass, christening himself (ahem) “Kick-Ass” just took that vital step that separates the boys from their, you know, eventual padded rooms.
But his heart is in the right place.
Kick-Ass follows essentially three story threads, the heartwarming, uncomfortably funny, and somewhat Dexter-like birth and colossally unsuccessful early adventures of the aforementioned Kick-Ass; the backstory and development of Big Daddy and Hit-Girl, a father-daughter team of actually competent, well-funded, and well armed super vigilantes who befriend him; and the latter family’s arch-rivals, a wealthy drug cartel who eventually produce their own superhero.
Hit-Girl is among the most unique, interesting, and irreverent characters in the history of fiction, an eleven-year-old girl with the fighting prowess of a less scrupulous Drizzt Do’Urden; it is the presence of Hit-Girl that at once makes Kick-Ass such a singular piece of fiction… and simultaneously what made the movie hard to sell to studios in the development process. Not to say too much that might spoil the experience for those of you who haven’t watched it, but she is not only and eleven-year-old murderous sociopath (with a heart of gold), but the only eleven-year-old character in the history of mainstream fiction whose typical dialogue involves “giant cock” and (in the parlance of Arrested Development) the ever-popular “Seaword” [you know, if you grok].
Millar and company, in making Kick-Ass were attempting to create the Pulp Fiction of superhero movies, and I think their particular combination of emotional poignance, inappropriate hilarity, casual bloodletting, and genuinely surprising moments mean they were successful in that. It is in fact one of my favorite films.
Kick-Ass was directed by Matthew Vaughn, who also directed Movie Klub classic (also selected by YT), Stardust. The amazing thing about Stardust, adapted from the Vertigo fairy story by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess is that it is actually better — that is, in my opinion, ends better — than the original… And Stardust has been one of my favorite stories since its late-1990s publication. Vaughn’s most recent film is X-Men: First Class… so I can only assume he likes the comics as much as I do.
General consensus among Movie Klubbers was overwhelmingly positive for Kick-Ass. During my introductory speech, hosting Jonathan Magic asked what the Rotten Tomatoes score was; I didn’t know offhand, but looked it up on ye olde iPhone 4 during the movie, and later responded with 76%.
The best possible recommendation, then, coming from Jon was:
“Then 24% of movie critics are morons.”
Kick-Ass was (among this group) least well-received by former Beckett Magic: The Gathering and Star City Games Premium author Mark Young, who keeps the general Movie Klub blog. You can read Mark’s significantly less enthusiastic review (and learn more about different movies shown) here.
My Four Perspectives Kick-Ass Review:
What was great about Kick-Ass?
So much!
The movie is beautifully filmed. The colors are alive in shot after shot. You can really tell that the people who made this movie, from Big Daddy Nic Cage to original story writer Mark Millar absolutely love the material. There are little winks, like Brian Vaughan’s Runaways being read in a local comics shop to the kinds of banter about whether or not Bruce Wayne is a bona fide superhero or just crazy rich dude that really ring true to IRL comics fans.
Cage’s performance as Big Daddy was visually evocative of Tim Burton’s Batman, but played like Adam West’s Batman. The con-fusion is something that anyone watching the movie might notice, but that longtime fans of comics-to-film and such can appreciate as a kind of micro-Easter Egg.
More than anything else, the character of Hit-Girl, so solitary in all of fiction, is something to behold. She is hilarious and tragic, and simply fun to watch. We debated after the film what Kick-Ass might have been like with a twenty-five-year-old actress in a Hit-Girl-like role… and while some Movie Klubbers might have appreciate Angelina Jolie in such a role, the general consensus is that every action movie since The Matrix has had some kind of Trinity, and it just wouldn’t have been that special.
I might be a little bit biased though… like I said, Kick-Ass is one of my favorite movies.
What about Kick-Ass gave me pause?
The biggest barrier to my potentially showing Kick-Ass was that I had already shown a Matthew Vaughn movie at a previous Movie Klub, and I didn’t want to typecast my own choices; so I suppose that “self-consciousness” would be the biggest thing that gave me pause.
This is a little bit of quibbling, but Kick-Ass takes place in New York (and there are some unmistakably “New York” shots), but it is pretty clearly not actually filmed in New York for the most part (someone at Movie Klub suggested Toronto). I mean NYC just don’t look like that.
That said, if you are one who is sensitive to harsh language — especially coming out of the pie ice cream hole of a murderous eleven-year-old girl — you probably won’t be able to distance yourself from the raw in-your-face-ness of this film to actually enjoy what is good about it.
Why would someone want to buy (or in this case, rent) Kick-Ass?
Besides the fact that it is really, really good, I am pretty sure it streams gratis on Netflix. So if you have a Netflix membership, it’s a free roll!
On Amazon streaming you can catch two of the best hours of filmdom of your life for… let’s see… $7.99:
Concerning:Smoke and Guns by Kirsten Baldock and Fabio Moon
Smoke and Guns is like no other graphic novel.
It is almost like a Wes Anderson film. Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson say that when they make their movies, they try to describe a world that follows the rules they like, rather than the rules of the real world.
Smoke and Guns — without ever really coming out and saying so — kind of imagines a prohibition-esque world where beautiful girls sell cigarettes on the street… and lethally guard their street corners and local bar real estate with… you know… guns.
Kirsten Baldock was herself a real-life cigarette girl before writing this graphic novel… Though I assume the more conventional type rather than one of the heat-packing adventurettes depicted in this story; you get this sense of sisterhood and hidden knowledge and almost pride from reading the book that you might not expect given the plot.
Smoke and Guns follows the story of ambitious cigarette girl Scarlett who gets into trouble picking a fight with another merry (and murderous) band of cigarette girls, ends up hostess-ing the wrong party after she is disciplined by her madame-esque cigarette-hawking boss-lady, and ultimately excites a gang war. She is not so much the hero as the protagonist for no other reason than the story mostly follows her. I mean she has a really big chip on her shoulder and I think you want to cheer for her in the same way that you want to cheer for Tony Soprano versus any of the other dirtbags and murderers who happen to share screen-time with him. Beautiful? Yes. Nice? Not so much. You get the feeling that Scarlett has everything coming to her, but she has enough Indiana Jones to her that you don’t care.
If it sounds like a thoroughly superficial story… It is.
Yet it’s freaking great!
Smoke and Guns moves with a rare velocity in modern comics. Fabio Moon’s visual storytelling can flow from frame-by-frame, panel-by-panel description of a single cigarette being lit, to ice cold ultra-violence, gun-play, and grenades lobbed between nubile cancer-peddlers. The story tries very hard to be crass — cigarette girls dressing up as everything from sexy nurses to Chun-Li from Street Fighter — but it manages to be demeaning… never. Really never. The book is so overloaded with girl power, the fact that the violent participants are also sexy kind of never comes up.
In that sense, it is a storytelling triumph.
Of course I found this indie book because of Fabio Moon, previously mentioned in my Ursula review. Smoke and Guns was Moon’s first work without his brother Gabriel Ba; and it is well worth the look.
While no one is going to mistake this quick read for Watchmen, Smoke and Guns really does have something unique going for it. It is one of my favorite graphic novels, I read it several times a year, and love almost every page (the Chun-Li stuff is sadly more cheddar than cheesecake).
I don’t know if you understand what “so much” is, exactly. Almost all of it is hardcore Magic stuff (which is why I have been updating this blog a bit less, and a bit less about Magic, of recent). But “so much” is as much as 12,000 words in a day. Do you know how much 12,000 words is? It’s between six and eight Premium Magic articles. In a day.
Big brags, I know.
The weird thing is that so much of it is blending together. Today when I was polishing off Flores Friday, and then transitioning back into my larger project, I was getting confused where “Ten Rules of Reaction” ended and “One Rule: What Makes a Deck?” began, versus my longer project, versus my next project, which I am planning with BDM.
The amazing thing? I can’t believe how some of it is pretty good!
Okay, enough big brags.
Today I was watching DC Showcase: Superman/Shazam!: The Return of Black Adam on Netflix streaming. I don’t know if I’ve said a lot about Netflix streaming, but it is about the best five bucks you can spend per month. Anyway, I found this stream-able video, which actually includes four shorter animated films, all directed by the excellent Joaquim Dos Santos.
The Superman/Shazam! section is the longest of the four at 22 minutes.
I was a bit puzzled by this one. Its visual style is very reminiscent of Joshua Middleton. Middleton was the artist on a Superman/Shazam! limited series a few years back. If memory serves, production on “NYX” was so slow, Middleton’s Marvel exclusive ran out and he signed an exclusive with DC.
In case you don’t know who Joshua Middleton is, he is maybe the best artist in comics. I mean there are a lot of great artists in comics, but there is only one that my wife (who is not a comics fan, but who has to put up with my thousands of comics and graphic novels, and also has a fine eye for aesthetics) says is the best, and that is Middleton. Also, traditionally writers get top billing in comics credits, but when Middleton collaborated on “NYX” with Joe Quesada (the writer of the project, one of the biggest names in the game as the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel, and himself an accomplished illustrator), it was Middleton who got top billing. This is a pretty famous spread from “NYX”, colored and not:
Anyway, I found the visual style reminiscent of Middleton, which seemed appropriate based on the existence of the aforementioned limited series… which was a completely different story. This “makes sense” in that earlier DC direct-to-DVD releases aped the styles of the original comics artists (Ed McGuinness on Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, Darwyn Cooke on New Frontier, and so on).
I have very little so say about this longest of the four other than that. It was only pretty good.
The next up was DC Showcase: The Spectre, which was stone awesome.
I was pretty surprised because the Spectre is not exactly one of my favorite characters, but the visual style was unbelievably cool. Despite being an animated short film, this chapter used a dramatic 1970s-esque noir visual style… It could have been Grindhouse or shot on a super 8.
The Spectre is a bit different than in the comic books, often animating stuff — from special effects dummies to flying cars — to take out villains. In the (spoilers!) final scene, Spectre kills Alyssa Milano’s (!) character in a tornado of paper cuts, animating hundreds of hundred dollar bills in a gruesome finale.
Awesome segment, up to and including the blacksploitation-esque music running during the closing credits.
DC Showcase: Green Arrow was also pretty fun. Another 12 minute, action-oriented short film, this time starring — you guessed it — Green Arrow.
This ep is just Green Arrow at an airport, stumbling onto an assassination attempt of a ten-year-old princess. It is dominated by tongue-in-cheek puns, so like LSV would like it.
(Stuck in traffic) “Come on! The arrow’s green!”
(Later) “Green light!”
In the final scene, an embattled Green Arrow is about to be defeated by a final enemy after taking down the ostensible End Boss, but is saved by longtime love, Black Canary. He proposes to her on the spot, and his new friend, the princess encourages Black Canary to say yes, because “Every queen needs a consort.”
“Yes,” concludes Green Arrow. “Every Queen does.”
I told you it was pun-ny! Green Arrow’s civilian name is Oliver Queen.
Finally is DC Showcase: Jonah Hex. I was pretty surprised they ended with this one. Obviously Superman is the most popular and starting with him makes sense. I would think that Green Arrow and Black Canary would be the second most popular; whereas I don’t give a hang about Spectre (which ended up stone awesome!) or Jonah Hex, who is a disfigured gunfighter. Why end with Jonah Hex?
Well, they pulled out all the stops on this 12-minute segment. The Jonah Hex ep included Thomas Jane (“Hung”) as Jonah Hex; Linda Hamilton (Terminator series) as a sexy, villainous, madam; and Michelle Trachtenberg (“Buffy: The Vampire Slayer” and “Gossip Girl”) as a barmaid / snitch. Basically, an unreal cast for such a seemingly small — 12-minute — project.
I loved the Jonah Hex segment as well, which is a combination of Old West prostitution and vicious fighting. In one particularly gruesome exchange, Hex hurls a thug face-first into scalding metal, scarring his face (a mirror of Jonah’s own disfigured visage). I physically winced at how horrible that would be for the character… But then realized there was no way he was getting out of this fight.
As a whole, the four were outstanding, and I am going to re-watch them again this week, probably.
Before we continue, I updated the recent post RE: Consecrated Sphinx. Nico Boshoff from ye olde Unstoppable Twitter Army threw me a great idea combining the [+2} ability on Jace Beleren with the mise-tacular misings of Consecrated Sphinx, which I think upgrades the 4/6 quite a bit.
But enough about Magic: The Gathering.
Sunday “Big Love” is back. However I did not realize that until this AM, taking Bella to her first grownup karate class. Ergo I have to catch up on that one before tomorrow night’s ep.
“Episodes” has been entertaining so far. There are multiple layers of “fish out of water” (sophisticated British writing couple in cutthroat LA, dopey Joey from “Friends” in sophisticated British boarding school comedy) going on that play together well. Not my favorite show or anything, but fun to watch and I don’t plan on missing any.
Last season was the best so far for “Californication” … This season hasn’t really maintained the quality so far. It is still event tv for me, but — I almost can’t believe I am saying this — it’s semi-tiresome that Hank just mono-nails whatever hot woman happens to walk by, regardless of age or circumstance.
Monday I don’t remember what happened on “How I Met Your Mother” and the only thing I can remember from the return of “House” is that the guy who played Shaggy was the guest star.
Tuesday “V” is sitting on DVR. I don’t remember what I was doing on Tuesday but probably there was a tv conflict with Nintendo Wii usage. Basically we figured out how to set up our Wii to run Netflix streaming, which is not actually an upgrade relative to the iMac (or for that matter the Air I am typing this blog post on), but there is just something symmetrical about watching television on your actual television. In terms of Netflix streaming, Katherine has been burning through seasons of “Bones” and I have been spending my late nights writing to the battle cries of blood-soaked “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”.
“Spartacus: Blood and Sand” is quite simply like nothing else on television. It is like “Rome” to the nth power. All the stuff that was over the top about “Rome” … the idea that someone might be crucified — motherloving crucified — for slighting his commanding officer is amplified to someone actually getting crucified (after other nasty stuff has already happened to him). It is bloody like nothing I have ever seen on the small screen (basically nonstop dismemberments), and the show boasts more nudity — male and female both — than “Californication” does. I can’t stop watching it.
For those of you who don’t know, the “Spartacus” franchise is in trouble. The star was diagnosed with cancer in between the first season (the one I am watching now) and the second; so the second was replaced by “Spartacus: Gods of the Arena”, a six-episode prequel series focusing on other characters (including my favorite, onetime Xena and Cylon, Lucy Lawless)… that doesn’t actually feature the character Spartacus himself. It is unclear if there will ever be a third season (second season?) at all.
Oh, I have a fair number of girlfriends (no, not that kind of girlfriend) who think — or at least used to think — that the dudes in The 300 were really built like that. The gladiators on “Spartacus: Blood and Sand” are all musclebound and running around half-naked, slashing each other for 42 minutes at a time; I mean, if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Wednesday Wednesday is “Top Chef: All Stars” day, and you know what that means… Update to Top Chef Draft!
Skip ahead if you fear a spoiler.
This space intentionally left blank.
Ditto.
Okay! Warnings over!
This week was nearly optimal for the home team. A Quickfire win by Filipino Dale was yet another one point boon for Phil Napoli. Good lord Phil’s draft is looking good right now. He has Angelo (probably the 2d most favored chef in the competition), Mike Isabella (meaning just another competitor to help out points-wise), and motherloving Filipino Dale. Filipino Dale went fifteenth pick out of sixteen, and has already solo-crushed multiple Elimination Challenges.
I came off best on the week, with three points over Phil’s two points, because all three of my remaining horses — Tre, Carla, and Fabio — were in the winners’ circle, though overall winner was Richard (probably the most highly favored chef, and a member of Luis’s stable). Megan took a dagger with the loss of Marcel, her first pick (+9 points), but I felt awfully justified in not taking him at that point… despite the fact that my own first pick left the show two weeks ago.
Current standings:
YT – 1
Phil 1
Luis 17
Megan 31
Thursday Lots of stuff on Thursday to talk about, in particular “30 Rock” moving to head-to-head time slot battle against “The Mentalist” (Katherine says she watched “The Mentalist” this week “while eating fiber” if you grok), but the tops has to be the return of “Parks and Recreation” mid-season.
I already liked “Parks and Recreation” but I loved the reference to UCLA coach John Wooden during the basketball rivalry section, specifically the great basketball coach’s Pyramid of Success. Many of you have no idea what I am talking about. I don’t care.
Update!
Osyp Lebedowicz posted The New York Times posting the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness. Not what the great coach Wooden used to command his mastery of basketball, of course, but well worth the LOL.
Click the Swanson Pyramid of Greatness image for full size.
Friday “Young Justice” fell like a stone this week.
Somehow, after the awesome two-part opener, the third episode managed to lapse severely in terms of animation and color quality… The story was only okay… But at least the question I had RE: Speedy / Red Arrow was answered… dude has no interest in joining up.
So… Get it while you still can:
Every time I embed, say, the best ever episode of “Doctor Who” or the entirety of The Hobbit, The Man comes down with the ban-hammer. But until that happens, you can check these out.
(5/29/2009)
on Amazon
(eBook on Amazon)