September 26th, 2011 — Decks, Magic, Writing
Somewhat Fake-tacular (though, for those who haven’t consumed DI, DI-content-filled) update today.
At the end of last week I did essentially a FULL REVIEW OF INNISTRAD (more or less every card, more or less)… Over at Top 8 Magic with the Pro Tour Historian Brian David-Marshall.
So if you haven’t downloaded the five parts (one for each color, with goofball stuff bundled into Red), hop on over to the first-ish [and still best!] Magic podcast’s home for all of that jazz. Warning: I don’t know if BDM and I actually understand / understood how Tree of Redemption works… But it’s all a riot anyway / five hours or so of good-natured awesome sauce over there:
Local Awesome Sauce
You may have noticed that we went from “not updating for months” to “updating more or less every day” (more or less) over the last week or two [yes, I took the weekend off]. So for those of you who missed what went on last week, here are some helpful helpings:
You Make the Play is (historically, analytics-wise) the most popular kind of update I do on Five With Flores, and this one was pretty hip, too. Expect an article-length, relatively in-depth follow up on that one tomorrow-ish. You can still weigh in on the Facebook Social Plugin (or comments) here.
Speaking of the Facebook Social Plugin, no idea what is going on there so far. It seems like it splits into Parallel Lives and creates two different comments sequences for each post. No idea why the heck it does that, but it is making me turn green, rip my purple pants, jump 40 miles at a time towards New Mexico, etc.
(please bear with us)
Technology 🙁
Last thing… NEW DECK LIST
2 Batterskull
2 Spellskite
4 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Dismember
2 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Invisible Stalker
4 Mana Leak
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Twisted Image
23 Island
Pretty surprised we didn’t get any Firestarter on the Snapcaster Mage deck I PS’d into the end of last Friday’s update. Here it is again:
Thanks for visiting!
LOVE
MIKE
September 22nd, 2011 — Games, Magic
I don’t even remember what I was originally going to write about today, but I just got home from an epic podcasting run with BDM. And by “epic” I mean epic. Like the great game that is life put Enduring Podcast on the stack, turn after turn, hour after hour, for like five hours.
We actually did five separate podcasts, one for each color of Innistrad, reviewing almost every card! We spend an hour each on White, Blue (news flash, Blue is gas), Black, Red + the goofball stuff… and about twenty minutes on Green. Poor Green. By then it was kind of late, but Green is the worst of the bunch and there are only so many ways one can say “Another Werewolf? Next.”
BDM is going to put up the podcasts later today, and I will update this blog post to link to them when those go up.
Anyway, what was interesting to me, more than anything else, was BDM’s attitude towards Bitterheart Witch.
Bitterheart Witch
“I think the card is good,” he claimed. “Well… pretend it doesn’t cost five. There are some pretty good Curses.”
I thought about it for a second and agreed that the card might be good.
“Well, what does it matter if it costs five if we aren’t going to pay for it? Wouldn’t this be great in a Birthing Pod deck?”
I then went on to envision the soul-crushing sequence of Solemn Simulacrum into Bitterheart Witch (drawing a card), into [whatever] (probably Inferno Titan). “In fact,” I concluded: “It’s almost a compliment that it costs five, so you can go and get a six!”
I don’t know that you would play Bitterheart Witch straight up very often; but it is kind of like an Academy Rector. The plan proposed here is to try it as a two-pack out of your Birthing Pod sideboard to deal with particular kinds of cases.
Curse of Death’s Hold… Courtesy of Bitterheart Witch by way of Birthing Pod
Curse of Death’s Hold is a very special spell. While it costs one more mana than the highly influential Night of Soul’s Betrayal, it is 1) not Legendary, and 2) only affects one player. Bringing one in from the Birthing Pod sideboard allows you to search and ramp into the Bitterheart Witch, sacrifice that, and potentially lock down the opponent… all for the price of just two sideboard slots. You can do this even if you aren’t actually Black, utilizing Birthing Pod to get where you need to go, or leaning on Birds of Paradise in a pinch.
When might Curse of Death’s Hold be most effective?
There are certain decks that just can’t beat this card. One unanswered copy fells every Glistener Elf, Blighted Agent, most of the Infectious artifact creatures, and even “turns off” Inkmoth Nexus. No, this isn’t a combo that you will typically want to play in the main… but that’s why we are proposing it from the side.
In another context, Curse of Death’s Hold might just be a card you want to play in multiples. One takes out his Birds of Paradise, but by stacking multiple copies of this non-Legendary creature-hating enchantment, you can grow up to eliminate bigger or more dangerous threats.
A Note About Bullets:
Some players look at one-ofs — including bullets out of a Birthing Pod deck — at least somewhat reactively. That is, they wait for the opponent to play an artifact, almost so they can have permission to go and get an Acidic Slime to can kill it. These players wait for the opponent to put down something and get the specific thing to deal with that thing, and use their selection engine contextually opportunistically.
There is nothing expressly “wrong” with that operating system, but you might be cutting a large portion of your potential advantage out by tutoring that way. Think back to Michael Jacobs’s quote about Urabrask, Inferno Titan, and 20 damage as a combination from Facebook / yesterday. Theoretically a card like Urabrask can function as a bullet (go and get it in play and the opponent has to deal with it before trying to go off with Deceiver Exarch); Inferno Titan is the top of the curve, and can either be the summit of Birthing Pod tutoring in the abstract, or a tool for cutting down lots of small guys… And you do win lots of games with Value RUG-Pod just on value. The admiring way I talked about Patrick’s Hero of Oxid Ridge play in last week’s Flores Friday comes from another place: These guys are not playing their bullets reactively… They are trying to find the fastest, least predictable, way to stick them and win.
Same deal here.
If Bitterheart Witch is in your deck, chances are, if you can try to search her up, you should. She isn’t “just good” but rather, has a job to do. Grok?
LOVE
MIKE
Bonus:
I originally had an idea to combine Invisible Stalker with Strata Scythe. I don’t know if it is still productive to be Mono-Blue [with this sketch] if I have moved away from Strata Scythe (rather than to the low CMCs and high synergies of Black or Red with Snapcaster Mage), but this is where I am right now.
Thoughts?
2 Batterskull
2 Spellskite
4 Sword of Feast and Famine
3 Dismember
2 Consecrated Sphinx
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Gitaxian Probe
4 Invisible Stalker
4 Mana Leak
4 Snapcaster Mage
4 Twisted Image
23 Island
Nobody but nobody just has 23-24 Islands as his mana base. It is possible I am too in love with that. Invisible Stalker + Sword of Feast and Famine just seems so unbeatable though!
September 22nd, 2011 — Decks, Games, Magic
Michael Jacob.
What can you say about him?
How about: “The real MJ.”
-Lan D. Ho
Master deck designer. Thought-provoking narrator of MTGO videos. Pro Tour Top 8 competitor. Star City Games Premium Columnist. National Champion.
And killjoy.
Before we integrated the Facebook comments on the blog itself, old MJ smothered our collective enthusiasm RE: Falkenrath Marauders with his stoic, Value RUG-Pod driven pragmatism on FB proper…
One might say that the man has a point.
Now on the subject of MJ — and even the echo of Demigod of Revenge dredged up during the Falkenrath Marauders discussion — I got to thinking about a bit of an older(er) school situation. Consider this deck, which Jacob used to make Top 8 of Grand Prix Seattle/Tacoma a couple of years back:
Now everyone knows that Michael won the 2008 US National Championships with a Demigod of Revenge deck, but today’s backwards-winking You Make the Play posits playing his Five-color Blood deck against the hellacious Spirit Avatars.
The Situation:
Your opponent is playing a B/R Blightning Beatdown deck. The action has been brutal, but you stabilized by blowing up all his guys with Jund Charm, up until he got in there with a Demigod of Revenge.
Lucky ducky, you had your Cruel Ultimatum to take care of it, and are now sitting pretty pretty.
Life Totals:
Hands:
Battlefield:
- You – Eight assorted lands (you can cast whatever you want), and a lone Bloodbraid Elf
- Him – Ghitu Encampment and four assorted Black- and Red-producing lands.
Graveyards:
- You – Cruel Ultimatum, Jund Charm, Jund Charm; some guys you used to trade earlier.
- Him – Demigod of Revenge and some assorted other lands and spells
Your opponent draws his card for the turn, smiles, and plays it:
Demigod of Revenge!
So… How do you approach this turn?
You Make the Play!
LOVE
MIKE
P.S. Got some kind of weird results with the Facebook Social Plugin yesterday. Please excuse our clutter while we continue to upgrade Five (and by “we” I mean YT).
September 21st, 2011 — Games, Magic, Marketing
Following is an unedited screen capture from a well-known (in online marketing and measurement circles, anyway) service called COMPETE. Patrick Chapin* pointed it out to me and (last week) I passed it along to some of our overlords such as Steve Sadin and Mister Orange [guy] with the same question I am, asking you:
Now some of you might not quite grok what is going on in this screen capture, so I will put it another way; that is, “edited”:
(I greyed out last month on account of the data is not mature yet, so it would be worthless to talk about.)
This is a measurement of unique visitors to the beloved Star City Games site; NOT how often existing users use it, nor how much they “like it”, nor how long they sit there watching SCGLive videos of the charming Joey Pasco… It attempts to measure the actual, individual, humans… (and hopefully, ultimately paying customers of either Magic: The Gathering singles, Premium memberships, or like Squirrel-backed sleeves).
mise squirrel amiright?
Something happened.
Or, probably (and more likely), the clever marketing machine that is Star City Games proactively did something to dramatically reverse the declining course of their number of visitors.
“J-Curve” or “hockey stick” changes in performance don’t happen all by themselves. In theory we can attribute some amount of performance seasonally (there are many online retailers that do 50% of their sales, or more, in November and December). But we don’t see that here, and if we equate visitors and buyers (which we honestly can’t), the numbers are going the wrong way, anyway. These kinds of sharp and sustained directional improvements typically result from internal, that is organizationally-driven, process changes. For example, here is a directional Analytics screen shot of the day-by-day traffic of this here website, up to these past few days:
What internal process change did FiveWithFlores make in the last few days?
That something Star City did occurred / was done in January of 2011 that added (or perhaps encouraged the return of) literally tens of thousands of unique visitors to their our user base, and catapulted them Millionaire Playboy Pete Hoefling into an amazingly positive direction.
So… What do you think that was?
I SPENT AN HOUR YESTERDAY FIGURING OUT HOW TO ADD THE DAMN FACEBOOK SOCIAL PLUGIN LIKE MY STAR CITY MASTERS HAVE SO PLEASE USE IT, thanks 🙂
A couple of possibly useful observations:
My first [let’s be honest] second gut reaction was to credit SCGLive. However this different COMPETE shot seems to indicate that 1) the timing is off, and 2) the magnitude of SCGLive unique users cannot wholly account for the improvements (check the y-axis).
Certainly SCGLive is a super sticky service that keeps people on Star City there, and engaged (not to mention happy)… But at least according to COMPETE’s numbers, not enough new, different people to account for the hockey stick, and subsequent re-up. Anyway, I would guess that SCGLive aficionados cross over quite a bit with Star City’s “regular” user base… It’s not like if you took 10,000 from mommy and 5,000 from kiddo you would have 15,0000 uniques.
So…
Like the title asks: What awesome shenanigans did Stat City pull off?
LOVE
MIKE
* Yes, yes, we have our suspicions already 🙂
** Please leave a comment via the old or brand spanking new methods, please.
September 20th, 2011 — Comics, Reviews
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 🙂
LOVE
MIKE
September 19th, 2011 — Magic, Reviews
I don’t actually obsess over new set spoilers beyond what I actually have to know in order to write things that make half an ounce of sense, you know, professional-like. However I was visiting DailyMTG on September 15th in order to check the forum responses to ye olde Top Decks The Best Card Ever… Plus or Minus One, and I saw “Card of the Day” Falkenrath Marauders.
If you didn’t saunter over to the mother ship that day, here be it / them:
Falkenrath Marauders
I thought this was an interesting card, so I immediately checked the rarity… Yep, rare. This might do.
Flying, haste guy in Red, for five mana? It gets how big how quickly? What does this card make you think of?
For me, the answer was Demigod of Revenge, a creature so good it bent Standard mana bases all around itself, and grew into a key player in Extended’s All-in Red. Some of you are going to have the gut reaction that Falkenrath Marauders just isn’t as good as Demigod of Revenge and call it a day; I mean all things held equal, Falkenrath Marauders probably isn’t as good. It doesn’t re-buy on a cast, and it is 2/2 instead of 5/4. Check. Roses are red, water is wet, and Falkenrath Marauders ain’t no Demigod.
I agree!
And they — gasp — cost the same amount of mana. How dare Falkenrath Marauders even exist?
Irrelevant.
Huh?
Who cares if Falkenrath Marauders isn’t the equal to one of the best creatures of its kind ever printed? Is that a useful conclusion in the abstract? Does it mean we should never consider a Falkenrath Marauders? I mean a 2/2 for five… Who would ever consider playing one of those?
Falkenrath Marauders’s double-Dervish ability actually closes the Demigod of Revenge gap to a surprising degree… I mean, did you bother to do the math?
- First hit in, Falkenrath Marauders is in for two, but becomes a 4/4 afterward.
- Now a 4/4, Falkenrath Marauders is nigh-Demigod size, and ends combat a 6/6.
- Third attack is for six, putting Falkenrath Marauders on 8/8.
- Finally… Actually, look at this pretty simple spreadsheet comparison I set up:
Surprised?
No, F does not equal D. However, that doesn’t mean that F might not find a viable place in the universe.
Aesthetics:
While Falkenrath Marauders doesn’t have Demigod of Revenge’s resilience, and instead of being awesome against Counterspell it is actually poor against Mana Leak. It is also weak to removal… Even a humble Shock will knock it out of the sky on the first attack.
That just means you have to work a little harder to stick it.
I remember when Stupor appeared the first time, and the powers that be restricted Hymn to Tourach. I thought of Stupor as a more expensive, less powerful, Hymn. So for my first Pro Tour, I played the one Hymn to Tourach they let me play in a pretty non-strategic role… whereas eventual champion Paul McCabe embraced the opportunity to play both Hymn to Tourach and Stupor (and two Mind Warps) in his heavier Necropotene deck.
Eric Taylor later won a PTQ with a Mono-Black Stupor Necropotence deck, and I asked him about playing the substandard version. He explained that Stupor was more strategic. You could play for it because you had more discard. And while it wasn’t Hymn to Tourach, it certainly wasn’t a “bad” card. In fact, you could wait until the opponent had two or four cards, and then set him up with Demonic Consultation to empty his hand. Years later, Brian Hacker played one of my all-time favorite matches of Magic to watch, again with a Stupor Necropotence deck (this time in Extended).
Falkenrath Marauders might be Demigod of Revenge’s Stupor. It isn’t as good, you might have to work a little harder to stick it the first time, but that doesn’t mean that it isn’t going to pay you back.
One thing to keep in mind: Demigod of Revenge is next-to-impossible to cast from a colors standpoint. Even Mono-Red decks of the Demigod era couldn’t play Mutavault!
On the other hand: It’s a vampire! Who knows what kind of bonuses that is going to get us?
Where can I see this fitting in?
I would guess this card would be the top end of a Mono-Red or G/R beatdown deck, presumably with some way to get small flyers out of the way. It is also possible that we could see some kind of Blightning Beatdown redux (minus the Blightnings, as far as I know)… If you empty the opponent’s hand before turn five, he isn’t going to have any way to stop your 2/2 the first time, and will have less of a chance to deal with your subsequent 4/4 or 6/6 versions.
Snap Judgment Rating: Role Player
No, I don’t think this is the best card in Innistrad or anything, but I did think it was interesting enough to spend ~800 words on; especially around the reality of how quickly Falkenrath Marauders can kill relative to good old Demigod.
LOVE
MIKE
September 18th, 2011 — Comics, Reviews
“Back of the book” summary:
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
LOVE
MIKE
September 17th, 2011 — Comics, Reviews
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:
Unapologetic Ad. Mise.
Buy / Don’t Buy? [rent / don’t rent]
Obviously buy / rent / etc.
LOVE
MIKE
Bonus!
All the movies I have shown so far at Movie Klub:
July 5th, 2011 — Food, Magic
This is a little out of order given I wrote about Day Two the other day, but I thought I would share this picture for those of you who didn’t see it in real-time on Twitter:
Force of Will
I have been home at least once a year, every year, since moving to New York, but for some reason I never thought to dig through my old Magic cards.
The above was the booty I obtained upon going through my first rediscovered drawer of Magic cards… That’s right ladies and germs! Thirteen lucky copies of Force of Will on the first pass!
That’s the good news…
The bad news is the same as what I told the Star City dealers when I tried to cash in some Wastelands last month: The only people with dozens of Wastelands (or apparently lots of copies of Force of Will) didn’t know — back when we were mising them for a dollar — that they were going to be worth $60 or whatever, which is why they are all beat up (-ish).
So most of this crop of Force of Will is in the played / heavily played category.
(that’s the bad news)
Also in the initial booty pile was a quartet of Icequakes that were officially beat to all hell (but I am pretty sure they were in the first deck I ever played to a PTQ win, so sentimental value there), and some additional sauce. You can see a couple of original Mishra’s Factories there, as well as a Beta Lightning Bolt and some other respectable Lightning Bolts. Do you know I actually shelled out $1 a piece for M11 Lightning Bolts at a tournament last year? For shame!
I also scooped up some random potential staples like Nomads en-Kor and Gaea’s Blessing.
I hit a bunch of Undiscovered Paradises and white-bordered Mishra’s Factories in the first drawer but I didn’t know to pull those, so I didn’t and never really went back.
Anyway, more good news around Day Three… But Day One wasn’t too bad.
I was obviously happy at finding Force of Will, but hopeful as I didn’t find any Wastelands.
More later.
LOVE
MIKE
July 3rd, 2011 — Uncategorized
I am going to go back and write about the buried treasure (aka thirteen copies of Force of Will) I found on my summer vacation (Day 1), but I decided it would be more fun to do this one, first.
So my sister was reading this (presumably) worthwhile book by Bill Bryson called At Home. I have no opinion on this book (having not read it yet) other than to give a big thumbs up around a list of causes of death in London in 1758.
“Most deaths, as might be expected, were from smallpox, fever, consumption or old age, but among the more miscellaneous causes listed (with original spellings) were:
- choaked with fat – 1
- itch – 2
- froze to death – 2
- St Anthony’s fire – 4
- lethargy – 4
- sore throat – 5
- worms – 6
- killed themselves – 30
- French pox – 46
- lunatick – 72
- drowned – 109
- mortification – 154
- teeth – 644″
I was planning on sharing this list regardless because I thought it was hilarious. However the hundreds of death by “teeth” really struck home yesterday, when I went to the dentist.
I have had some inflammation / sensitivity around my bottom wisdom teeth… forever. Since my wisdom teeth came in a dozen years ago or whatever they never felt particularly comfy; but a few weeks ago I sliced open my bottom gums flossing, and they kind of never got better. At least three weeks went by and my gums just weren’t healing.
That’s weird, I thought. Well, at least I have a dentist appointment coming up when I am home for summer vacation.
At first my dentist said that “I definitely had a canker sore back there,” but I was like, “If it is a canker sore, it is the most invincible canker sore of all time because it hasn’t gotten better in weeks; also there are two of them.”
Wasn’t a canker sore.
Turns out I had little bits of sharp bone / bony structures / bone spurs jutting out from under each of my bottom wisdom teeth!
The only thing he could imagine is that they were vestiges of my baby teeth that had never come up (I have never had any kind of dental issues as an adult… No cavities, no teeth-pulling, nothing beyond a little nighttime grinding and bonding once).
Then I imagined all those X-Men, X-Files, and / or House episodes where they find teeth in a kid’s brain or something.
“Actually we found incisors in your brain.”
“How did teeth get in my brain?”
“They were your twin brother’s.”
“I don’t have a twin brother.”
“No, now you don’t… It’s because you ate him in utero.”
Ew.
Professor X, you cad.
Anyway the left-hand side he just broke off with that scraper-looking thing, but the right hand side wouldn’t break, so he had to slice open the gum and sand off the point.
I didn’t feel a thing!
Not until the Novocaine wore off anyway 🙂
Today, we are off to the roller coaster capitol of the world!
Check Twitter.
LOVE
MIKE
(5/29/2009)