Michael Rawdon

This Week’s Haul

And what an enormous haul it was:

Blackest Night #2 of 8, by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis & Oclair Albert (DC)
Booster Gold #23, by Dan Jurgens & Norm Rapmund (DC)
Fables #87, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham & Andrew Pepoy (DC/Vertigo)
Fables: The Dark Ages vol 12 TPB, by Bill Willingham, Mark Buckingham, Peter Gross, Andrew Pepoy, Michael Allred & David Hahn (DC/Vertigo)
Green Lantern Corps #39, by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Rebecca Buchman & Tom Nguyen (DC)
JSA vs. Kobra #3 of 6, by Eric S. Trautmann, Don Kramer & Michael Babinski (DC)
The Unwritten #4, by Mike Carey & Peter Gross (DC/Vertigo)
Wednesday Comics #6 of 12, by many hands (DC)
The Incredible Hercules #132, by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Reilly Brown & Nelson DeCastro (Marvel)
The Marvels Project #1 of 8, by Ed Brubaker & Steve Epting (Marvel)
War of Kings #6 of 6, by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, Paul Pelletier & Rick Magyar (Marvel)
Echo #14, by Terry Moore (Abstract)
Girl Genius: Agatha Heterodyne and the Chapel of Bones vol 8 HC, by Phil Foglio & Kaja Foglio (Airship)
Absolution #1, by Christos Gage & Roberto Viacava (Avatar)
B.P.R.D.: 1947 #2 of 5, by Mike Mignola, Joshua Dysart & Gabriel BÃ¡ (Dark Horse)
Hellboy: The Wild Hunt #5 of 8, by Mike Mignola & Duncan Fegredo (Dark Horse)
The Boys #33, by Garth Ennis, John McCrea & Keith Burns (Dynamite)

	The first arc of The Unwritten wraps up this week. It’s a pretty interesting comic, a mix of outright horror and sophisticated mystery. Tom Taylor’s life has been turned upside down as he learns his writer father – who based his most famous creation upon Tom – had a lot of secrets, and now Tom’s been trying to track down the truth while avoiding both the law and some of the books’ nastier fans. The pacing is a bit slow, but I think Mike Carey’s building up to a much larger story so I’m willing to wait a while to see how it develops. Although this arc doesn’t really wrap anything up at the end, it actually ends on a cliffhanger which definitely piques my interest about what happens next.
	Wednesday Comics has some welcome developments this week. The most interesting is in Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures, in which Adam Strange returns to Earth, but rather than the young hero he is on Rann, he’s a much older man, an archaeologist, on Earth. This is an interesting twist on the character’s premise (though of course Adam Strange is somewhat based on John Carter of Mars), and I’m curious to see what Pope does with it. Supergirl has an appearance by Aquaman, a much younger Aquaman who spends the whole page talking on his clam shell phone. Cute. Jimmy Palmiotti’s doing a much better job making a lighthearted strip with this one than Neil Gaiman is with Metamorpho, whose story is downright routine, and the little retro “extras” are rapidly getting tiresome.
	Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting’s Captain America run has gotten a lot of acclaim, but I haven’t read any of it. However, I’ve enjoyed Brubaker’s pulpish work, and I’ve liked what I’ve seen by Epting in the past, so I’m going to give their new series, The Marvels Project, a whirl. It’s clearly rooted – at least in this first issue – in Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross’ terrific series Marvels from 15 or so years ago, covering the emergence of the original Human Torch in the 1940s, as well as the early escapades of the Sub-Mariner. Brubaker fills in some of the blanks of both characters ably, which gives me hope that it won’t just be a retread of that same ground. Though Epting certainly seems to be doing his level best to imitate Alex Ross’ style in that series. The most interesting bit for me is the opening sequence, in which Dr. Thomas Holloway administers to a dying old man, Matt Hawk, who it turns out was the Two-Gun Kid in the late 19th century. But as long-time Marvel fans know, the Two-Gun Kid got a glimpse of the late 20th century when he spent several months hanging out with Hawkeye and the Avengers in some comics published in the late 70s, so he delivers some prophecy to Dr. Holloway, as well as his own pistols, and it looks like Holloway will use the guns to become a superhero on his own. (It seems that Thomas Holloway is the identity of the future golden age Angel, a character I’m not familiar with at all. But here he’s treated as a human observer, the point-of-view character for the story, and he works very well in that context.) The first issue is promising, if rather derivative as I said. I don’t know whether The Marvels Project will take place during World War II, or will cover several different eras. Either one could work out. I also wonder what the “project” will be, or if the book’s title will be a misnomer. But Brubaker and Epting are both skilled enough that I’m sure it’ll be readable even if it doesn’t rise above my fears.
	How not to conclude a big mini-series event: War of Kings #6. After half a year of Emperor Vulcan and sending his Shi’ar troops to fight with Black Bolt, the Inhumans, and their new Kree Empire, the series wraps up with Vulcan and Black Bolt going mano-a-mano on a giant bomb powered by BB’s energies. The two beat each other to a relative pulp before the thing goes off, after we learn that Vulcan can regenerate himself even from being mutilated by Bolt’s voice. The Shi’ar armada is devastated, and they sue for peace, meaning the Inhumans have won. And then the series ends. Gah! So, Vulcan will presumably be back since he can apparently live through anything, even though as a character he’s far, far past his sell-by date at this point. Black Bolt will presumably be back since, well, he’s a classic Marvel character (if something of a fringe one). The Kree and Shi’ar empires have been battered around yet again, and all things considered nothing has been resolved, really, at all. But a rift in space has been opened up which will play directly into the Guardians of the Galaxy series in coming months, or so it seems. So, really, this big event is just kicking off some new plot threads without resolving any of the previous ones. What a waste of time. Y’know, I really liked Annihilation, which was primarily a Keith Giffen story, and I enjoyed Annihilation Conquest well enough. It was an Abnett/Lanning event, as was War of Kings, but there’s definitely diminishing returns here. War of Kings was not good, and I don’t think I’ll be signing up for any further DnA-driven event series featuring Marvel’s spaceketeers. I’m happy for them to keep writing Nova, but I think this milieu needs some new blood. Or, honestly, no more events for a few years.
	Avatar Press specializes in some especially nasty comics, and for the most part I don’t really like ’em. As I described a while back they publish a lot of stuff by Warren Ellis that doesn’t appeal to me at all, even though he’s written some excellent stuff for other companies. My general reservations about Avatar aside, I decided to give Christos Gage’s Absolution a try, as the premise was interesting, although I expected it would contain an awful lot of violence and gore. And I wasn’t disappointed on the latter point. John Dusk is a superhero in a US where most heroes are cops, which means they have the full support of the law, but also that they have to behave like cops, with all the regulations that implies. But Dusk starts going over the edge, unable to deal with the fact that criminals get off, and live to commit more crimes. So he starts to kill people who he thinks need to be killed because they either won’t be convicted, or haven’t been before. But since he’s going around the bend, it doesn’t quite stop there, either. At least one critic has compared the character to Dexter. Gage does a good job of making Dusk seem sympathetic, a professional with good intentions, but who’s simply been squeezed to hard and starts to exercise poor judgment. It’s hard to defend a ‘hero’ who acts this way, though, so I’ll be curious to see how long Dusk remains sympathetic, especially since hie girlfriend is also a cop and will presumably start hunting him down at some point. Roberto Viacava’s art is a little stiff, but still within the bounds of artists working for the third-tier publishers (where DC and Marvel are the first tier, and the major indies like Image and Dark Horse are the second). He’s good a good sense of composition and clean lines, which helps a lot. Absolution could end up going either way, but the start is promising. I don’t have enough exposure to Gage’s writing to have a sense for which way he’ll take it.

DC: The New Frontier

DC: The New Frontier volumes one and two
- by Darwyn Cooke

DC: The New Frontier
vol 1 & vol 2

DC Comics has seemingly had a long-running – but suppressed – fascination with the 1950s. Some of this is probably due to comics’ ongoing fascination with its origins, and DC’s modern era essentially began in the 50s when the Silver Age heroes debuted. (Marvel’s modern era of course began in the 1960s.) But the 1950s were the one era that DC seemed to completely ignore when it came to what was going on in the world, so it’s as if there’s a big chunk missing in DC’s cultural heritage. That may be what drives its occasional publication of stories using its characters but set in that era. While Justice League of America #144 (1977) is arguably more a continuity detail than a cultural exploration, the fine series Martian Manhunter: American Secrets is set very firmly in 1950s America, while the truly-excellent The Golden Age is very much about the twilight of the 1940s and the dawn of the 1950s, set exactly on the cusp of DC’s Golden Age and Silver Age, and set in the early 50s.

When Darwyn Cooke’s series DC: The New Frontier came out several years ago, I passed on it. Cooke’s art style is not really to my taste, and at a glance it seemed like yet another story about the origins of DC’s Silver Age heroes. Much like the Ultimate Marvel Comics line, I thought, “I’ve basically read this before”, and didn’t pick it up. But thanks to a recent sale at my shop, I decided to give it a try after all, since it’s been a much-celebrated series.

The story takes place out of the mainstream, and starts around the same time as The Golden Age in the early 50s, when most superheroes have retired – voluntarily or otherwise – due to governmental pressure. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are still active, but the Justice Society’s day is past. However, new heroes gradually pop up: J’onn J’onzz is involuntarily brought from Mars and begins his life as one of the few honest cops in Gotham City, where he runs across Batman. The Flash starts his career in Central City, and so forth. But the first volume mainly follows many of the characters in their civilian lives, considering the advent of the space age, and with varying degrees of nostalgia for days of superheroics past.

But eventually it comes out that not only has the government been actively pursuing the remaining superheroes (other than those who are working for the government), but there’s another force working in the shadows which poses a threat to the whole world. The second volume focuses on the heroes gradually pulling together and overcoming their differences to face this threat and through defeating it usher in a new age of superheroes working out in the open.

Structurally, The New Frontier is almost identical to The Golden Age: A diaspora of the older heroes, a shadowy threat, and a final pulling together to defeat that threat, with extensive character portraits along the way. While the sets of characters are different – TGA focuses on the older heroes, while TNF focuses on the younger ones – it’s almost like The New Frontier was written as an homage to the earlier series. Overall, the plot of TGA is far stronger, its manipulations of preexisting characters less radical and therefore more believable (although there’s an excellent scene in TNF in which Superman’s odd behavior is explained), and in particular its villain – although no less over-the-top – feels more meaningful than the fairly generic threat in TNF, which has no real ties to any of the characters or indeed to any real or fictional history. I think Cooke is trying to evoke the feel of monster movies of the era, but it’s a poor choice, as the threat just doesn’t resonate.

TNF is told in highly episodic form but some episodes are great and others are a drag. Unfortunately, it opens with a lengthy episode involving The Losers set at the end of World War II, which sort of works to set up the big threat, but really isn’t very relevant and isn’t very interesting. At best it shows that Cooke’s willing to be brutal to his characters, as most of the ones involved in this episode die by the end. After a fascinating summary of the standing-down of the heroes as a result of government persecution, we get a rather tedious bit with Hal Jordan (the future Green Lantern) in Korea, and a slightly perplexing confrontation between Superman and Wonder Woman also in Korea. It’s not really until J’onn J’onzz arrives that the story really takes off, especially an encounter between him and Batman. There’s also an entertaining Flash escapade. But the first volume spends a lot of time covering many different characters and setting the stage, but it does so haphazardly. The Hal Jordan stuff especially drags on and on. The second volume is much better, as things get moving: Hal gets his ring, the Flash decides to retire because the government’s after him now, a mission to Mars goes awry, and then the big threat rears its head.

Cooke’s writing is much better when there’s more going on, as he captures the essence of characters like Green Arrow and Adam Strange even though they get very little screen time, and his depiction of the characters putting aside their differences – especially Flash and the agent who was after him – to work together is very effective and even moving. But it sure took a while to get there. I think the first volume could have been tightened up considerably.

Cooke’s art is not really my cup of tea, as I said. The simple line-work and awkward poses that the style forces don’t entirely work for me. It grows on me eventually – much as the similar style of Michael Avon Oeming did – but it’ll probably never be a favorite of mine. It works well enough in this setting, although compared to, say, Paul Smith on The Golden Age, well, it doesn’t really compare. (Though to be fair I’d rate Smith one of the ten best artists in modern comics.)

It’s interesting that DC seems to set its retro series so far back in the past, as series set during World War II or the 1950s can give some lip service to the problems of the era (as Cooke does with a “John Henry” character here whose story gets shoved to the side in the second volume and never seems to come to a satisfying fruition), but ultimately their themes are about America’s ascendance in the world. Examining DC’s heroes in the context of the 60s or 70s might be a little too dark for their brand. (Though that hasn’t stopped them from doing their own take on the zombie craze in Blackest Night. But zombies and are perhaps less threatening than Vietnam, 60s counterculture, Watergate, and the oil crisis.)

Overall, I enjoyed The New Frontier more than I’d expected to, but I don’t think it’s in the same class as The Golden Age or American Secrets. If you’re looking for a good adventure yarn then this may do it for you, but I don’t think it lived up to the extensive accolades it received. I think it suffers most from feeling a little too generic in its structure and plot, although Cooke’s characterizations are often quite a bit of fun.

This Week’s Haul

Astro City: The Dark Age Book Three #4 of 4, by Kurt Busiek, Brent Anderson & Alex Ross (DC/Wildstorm)
Wednesday Comics #5 of 12, by many hands (DC)
Irredeemable #5, by Mark Waid & Peter Krause (Boom)
Sir Edward Grey: Witchfinder #2 of 5, by Mike Mignola & Ben Stenbeck (Dark Horse)

The third part of Astro City: The Dark Age comes to a close this week. The whole series leaves me with a bittersweet taste, and not just because of the story; The Dark Age is a 16-issue story (I thought it was originally going to be 12 issues) which has come out v-e-r-y slowly, largely (I understand) due to Kurt Busiek’s health issues. While I’m sympathetic to the reasons for the delay and I enjoy Astro City enough to keep with it despite the scheduling issues, a 16-issue story unfortunately suffers more than most from such delays, especially when it’s chock-full of teasers and questions that would be difficult enough sit through a monthly comic waiting to see resolved, and with a year or more between 4-issue parts, well, my enthusiasm has waned greatly over the life of the series.

And alas the story itself has not been one of the series’ best. The emotional center of the series is the pair of brothers, Charles the cop and Royal the small-time crook, who struggle with their relationship as a result of their divergent paths even as they’re united in looking for the man who killed their parents when they were children. Their story takes a significant step forward in this part as they each have cut ties with their previous lives and infiltrate the organization where their target works. Of course, since it’s an underground revolutionary group, that means the stakes are high. They make significant progress here, but with one more part to come, naturally it’s not over yet in this issue.

The problem with The Dark Age is that it’s also chronicling the history of Astro City through the 70s and 80s, so it casts its net widely with a huge cast of characters, and many of them just don’t get the time they deserve. The ongoing Silver Agent story is playing out fairly well, but the superhero group the Apollo Eleven see their story reach its climax in this issue, and honestly my reaction was something of a shrug. Usually Busiek has a deft touch when it comes to working superhero battles into the background of the main story, but something about his approach here makes the battle overshadow the brothers’ efforts, yet the battle itself isn’t satisfying.

I wonder whether The Dark Age suffers from being too ambitious a story for the series’ structure (never mind its schedule). But for whatever reason, I don’t think it’s been a standout moment in Astro City‘s history. On the bright side, artist Brent Anderson’s work is as powerful as ever, filled with a wide variety of character designs and page layouts, and doing a fine service to the various emotional tones that the story paints. If I have a complaint, it’s that I find the nature of the grimaces and shouts that his characters’ faces exhibit get to look a little too much the same one issue after another.

On the bright side, Busiek recently announced that Astro City will be going monthly thanks to positive developments in both his life and Anderson’s work approach, which has to be one of the brightest bits of comics news in years. Given the series’ track record I’m cautious optimistic that they can pull it off, but honestly even if they “just” go bimonthly or quarterly, a regular schedule would be an improvement.

On the other hand, Busiek’s Green Lantern story in Wednesday Comics is pretty dull, and this week’s page is just a flashback to Hal Jordan’s rivalry with the pilot who started turning into a monster a few pages ago. I think we’ve seen Green Lantern for about 3 panels so far, and none of the Hal Jordan stuff has been particularly interesting. Disappointing.

The Superman page has some memories of Superman being rocketed from Krypton. It always bugs the hell out of me when I see – as we do here – Superman’s ‘S’ shield being used on Krypton, and it has ever since the first Christopher Reeve feature film. The shield to me has always been a symbol of Superman’s humanity and heritage as an Earthman, that he’s Kryptonian by birth but that’s all in the past. It’s an indication to me that the writer or editor Just Doesn’t Get It where Superman is concerned. But that’s been the case for the whole story here so far.

This issue has not one but two heroes saving planes from crashing into the Earth. The Supergirl page is a lot more fun than the Hawkman page – the writing on Hawkman is bad and getting worse. Supergirl at least has no pretentions of being more than an amusing little yarn involving her flying pets.

The best stories in the issue are The Flash (as usual), Metal Men (Dan Didio seems to be surprising everyone by writing a perfectly readable story), and Supergirl. I’m intrigued by Adam Strange and disappointed (after some earlier enthusiasm) in The Demon and Catwoman. This week’s Batman page is the best yet, but it’s too bad it took this long for me to find the story more than bizarrely paced.

Mark Waid’s Irredeemable seems to have gotten a lukewarm response from the comics press so far, with comments that Waid isn’t doing anything new with his Superman-analogue-gone-bad yarn, although he’s doing it very well. Personally, I think he’s doing it very, very well, and it’s near the top of my stack to read each week it comes out.

Waid is playing to his own strengths in considering what a character like Superman could do if he decides to go bad. Although there’s been plenty carnage and dead characters (not to mention millions of dead civilians), the Plutonian seems to be playing with his prey, and that allows Waid to consider that such a character can behave like the villain in a horror movie. With his speed, he can suddenly appear and disappear without anyone seeing them. With his superhuman senses he can be aware of what people are doing the world over and bring secrets to light that no one else could know. That we don’t know what the Plutonian’s motives are (Mind control? Parallel-world double? Or just gone bad as the facts suggest on the surface?) make it all the more frightening. He doesn’t seem to be trying to conquer the world, and the notion that he’s trying to get revenge for having been treated badly doesn’t seem believable either.

Although Peter Krause’s artwork is a little sketchy for my tastes – I think he could use an inker who smooths out and solidifies his pencils – his designs and layouts are terrific, with a classic superheroic look but with just enough of an edge to do justice to the premise.

This week’s issue, #5, is only 99Â¢, and the collection of the first four issues also came out this week, so I highly recommend checking it out. Maybe it’s not a revolutionary comic, but it is a very good comic. And in particular, anyone who enjoyed Waid’s series Empire ought to love this, because it’s even better.

Walkability

A few months ago I wrote about how I’ve been walking to more places near my house this year, and later how walking to get lunch was a nice fringe benefit of working from home. Now J.D. Roth has written his own entry on walkable neighborhoods.

J.D. emphasizes his most important point:

To me, a â€œwalkable neighborhoodâ€ doesnâ€™t mean a neighborhood where people could walk to-and-from stores; it means a neighborhood where people do walk to-and-from stores. Thatâ€™s a subtle but important difference.

I agree totally. While I could walk to more places in my area, in reality I mostly head into our city’s downtown, which is much more interesting than any of the local neighborhoods (and is, indeed, one of the nicest downtowns in the county, in my opinion). But it’s a 30-minute walk away, and I’m rarely motivated to spend a 60-minute round trip just commuting to and from downtown. In reality, I only walk there when I’m going down to catch the train up to San Francisco. Plus, downtown has abundant parking. So I drive there instead. I think the presence of downtown in easy driving distance, but somewhat more difficult walking distance, greatly reduces the walkability of my own neighborhood. Consequently, although was have a few little strip malls within half a mile of my house, I think the presence of downtown dissuades potential restauranteurs and retail stores from opening up in my area. They’d rather be downtown, where the people are.

Serious walkers – and I know several – may laugh at my being daunted by a 30-minute walk one-way, but honestly my time is more important to me than either getting some walking in or reducing my environmental impact by driving less. I’d rather spend that time biking, and I tend not to use my bike to commute, except to work, for various reasons. Also, my environmental footprint is already fairly small; I drive a Honda Civic, and only put around 7K miles on it a year, which is a minuscule impact compared to most of my fellow Americans, I’d guess.

The other neat thing in J.D.’s post is a reference to Walk Score, which will compute the “walk score” for any address. I both love automated computation engines like this, and view them with suspicion. That doesn’t stop me from playing around with them, though, so, I checked out walk scores for many of the places I’ve lived:

The house where I grew up has a score of 62, “somewhat walkable”. This surprised me, since the nearby town center has a Starbucks, grocery store, hardware store, post office, bank, and subway station. Not much retail or dining, though, which might hurt it.
The apartment I lived senior year of college has a score of 86, “very walkable”. It was a 30-minute walk from campus, and a 5-minute walk from the New Orleans streetcar line, plus various other stores. It didn’t feel quite this walkable, though.
The apartment I lived in during grad school in Madison has a score of 86 too. It was right next to a 7-11, a 20 minute walk from downtown, and had many other things in easy walking distance. It was a great location.
The apartment I moved to after grad school has a score of 89, also “very walkable”. It was close to a grocery store and a 10-minute walk from downtown, so this makes sense.
The apartment I lived in when I first moved to California has a score of 49, “car dependent”. It was a 10-minute walk from downtown, and downtown was a pretty desolate place at the time (it’s better now, including having a light rail station). But yeah, getting around was difficult. I hated the location, mainly because all my friends lived at least a 20-minute drive away. (The apartment was nice enough, though.)
My current home has a score of 75, “very walkable”. This seems high to me, although I agree the area is not really car-dependent.

As you might guess, when we next move Debbi and I would like to get closer to downtown. Though overall our current place is a pretty good location. And it has another advantage that’s the exact opposite of walkability: Outstanding freeway access.

Tower Defense

In case I didn’t need another way to waste time, I recently discovered the tower defense genre of computer strategy games. Specifically, I discovered them for my iPhone. I think this puts me, what, about 3 years behind the curve for the genre, and a year behind for the platform?

Anyway, Tower defense games involve placing towers on a map in order to fend off invading hordes of creatures. The towers are statically placed, but they can be upgraded or torn down. You have a certain number of resources with which to build towers, but you can more resources as you fight off each wave of attackers.

I was initially intrigued when I saw the demo during this year’s WWDC of the game Star Defense (links to individual games herein will take you to the App Store in iTunes). Of course, that was months ago, and I just this weekend got around to downloading some tower defense games. I actually decided not to start with Star Defense since it seemed like a relatively advanced example of the genre, with 3-D maps where many others have 2-D maps.

A cow-orker of mine pointed me at TapDefense, in which the hordes of hell are trying to storm the gates of heaven, and your towers all have medieval or magical themes. TapDefense has the cardinal advantage of being free. It also has the advantage for a newbie of having good built-in help, as well as a tutorial.

But one of the nifty things about the App Store is that so many good products are quite cheap. So I bought two more which seemed to have good reviews: geoDefense, and Sentinel: Mars Defense, which were both only 99 cents. I ended up going right to Sentinel mainly based on this review of its sequel, Sentinel 2:Earth Defense (which itself is only $2.99).

Sentinel has great graphics and sound, but I’m glad I didn’t make it my first-ever tower defense game, since its help is pretty minimal. On the other hand, having had that first experience, it was pretty easy to figure out what to do. The bad guys come in five varieties (fast-and-wimpy, slow-and-tough, flying, teleporting, and big-slow-and-really-really-tough) and each wave consists of one type of baddies which are tougher and more numerous than the last batch you saw of that type. So you need to diversify your towers to deal with all the different types, but you get a bonus if you spend minimal resources in doing so. The Easy setting is really, really easy, while the Hard setting is pretty challenging.

The tower defense genre seems to be a comparatively passive game, where you place a tower or two, do a few upgrades, and then see if your changes deal with the attackers. If they don’t, then you may need to quickly place a few extra towers to deal with any who got by, but for the most part you’re watching the results of your handiwork, which is fun, but also a bit monotonous – in a hypnotic way. I found that a half an hour slipped by in my first game of Sentinel before I knew it – it didn’t feel that long.

As a mix of combat game and puzzle, the genre appeals to me, although the monotony makes me wonder if it will have any staying power with me. Though I’m not going to judge the whole genre on just a couple of examples, as it’s easy to envision variations on the theme. But it’s something new and different to me, and it runs on my phone – a feature of the iPhone I’ve underutilized, this game-playing thing – so I’m going to give it a whirl.

Changeling

I was interesting in seeing Changeling when it hit the theaters last fall, but somehow ended up missing it. Thanks to the wonder of On Demand television (which I imagine will put video rental places out of business even faster than NetFlix is) we were able to watch it last night. I recall writer J. Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) talking about it in the lead-up to its release, and as he always does he made it sounds really interesting. And sure, while he’s promoting his own work, Straczynski does tend to play fair when talking about it.

The actual film in fact exceeded my expectations, considering I was originally disappointed that it didn’t have any fantastic elements despite the premise: In 1928 Los Angeles, Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) is a single mother to Walter (Gattlin Griffith). When Christine one day has to go in to work unexpectedly, she comes home to find that Walter has disappeared. The LA police – famously corrupt in that era – are at first uninterested in the case, but five months later bring Christine’s son back to her. Except that as soon as she sees him, she realized the boy isn’t Walter, but someone prentending to be Walter. Railroaded by Police Captain Jones (Jeffrey Donovan, who plays the lead in the series Burn Notice) into accepting him anyway, she soon collects objective evidence supporting her position.

So you can see why I might think such a story written by a science fiction author, and titled after a creature from folklore might have a fantastic premise underlying its story, but in fact the film is based on a real incident involving abducted children and their apparent murder, and is played absolutely straight. The film’s Wikipedia entry has several statements that the story was considered too fantastic by some despite its being largely true.

The story has an interesting episodic structure in which each episode seems to belong to a different genre. Walter’s disappearance is worked for pure suspense, while the abducted children starts as the tail end of a detective story before turning into a slice of a horror story. Police corruption and indifference is a major theme, and Christine also does a turn in a mental institution (and it sure seems like 1920s mental institutions were good places to stay well away from). There’s also the reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), who has been crusading against LA police corruption and who becomes Christine’s strongest ally.

The acting in the film is its strongest asset, ranging from good to excellent. Jolie’s performance as Christine is quite good, wavering between personal strength and seeming well out of her depth, her voice becoming tremulous at many moments. But the outstanding performance is by Jason Butler Hamner as Gordon Northcott, the man accused of the abductions, who seems convincingly psychopathic while also being a huge coward. He has perhaps the most demanding role in the film, and he does a fantastic job.

As a period piece, the behavior of the LAPD feels very odd and scary compared to what we see in modern crime dramas, and yet still similar in many ways. (This may be an indication that I watch too many police procedurals on television.) The story feels like part of a bygone era without feeling stale.

At 2 hours and 20 minutes running time, the film has plenty of time to go into its various subjects in depth, and director Clint Eastwood approaches the story in a very matter-of-fact, low-key manner, which works quite well. There are a few dangling elements, some of which can be resolved by reading the historical record of the incident, and other of which are ambiguous because, well, they were never fully cleared up, but which leave the viewer with some things to think about afterwards, which is fine for a film based on a real and complicated incident.

In summary I recommend this film if you’re into any of the elements described, especially if you enjoy a story about improbable circumstances portrayed without sensationalism.

This Week’s Haul

Blackest Night: Tales of the Corps #3 of 3, by Geoff Johns, Peter J. Thomasi, Chris Samnee, Mike Mayhew & Ivan Reis (DC)
Justice Society of America #29, by Bill Willingham, Matthew Sturges, & Jesus Merino (DC)
Madame Xanadu #13, by Matt Wagner & Michael William Kaluta (DC/Vertigo)
Wednesday Comics #4 of 12, by many hands (DC)
Ignition City #4 of 5, by Warren Ellis & Gianluca Pagliarani (Avatar)
Dynamo 5: Fresh Blood vol 3 TPB, by Jay Faerber & Mahmud A. Asrar (Image)

From that cover, maybe the final issue of Tales of the Corps should have been titled “Boobest Night”. Geez, guys.

This has actually been a fun series, and the two stories in this issue are quite good, focusing on a pair of Green Lanterns. I especially like Mike Mayhew’s art on the Arisia story – where has this guy been hiding? (Well, here, apparently.) It’s tough to pull off an anthology series, but this has been a nice diversion.

Bill Willingham and Matt Sturges take over the writing duties on Justice Society this month. I think Don McPherson’s put his finger on it when he says that the book doesn’t really feel like it marks the beginning of a new era as the cover proclaims – fundamentally it feels like an extension of Geoff Johns’ run, with too many characters and not enough characterization. On the other hand, there are a couple of mysteries thrown into the mix almost immediately, and my experience with Willingham’s writing is that his mysteries usually pay off. But yeah, at first blush it’s more of the same (and I suspect that might be by editorial fiat, since, after all, JSA has been selling well for years). But hopefully it will evolve into something better in the coming months.

I really wish Willingham or someone else would pare the team down to just 7 members or so. Writing for more just leaves lots of characters without any screen time, and is rather a waste.

The stories in Wednesday Comics finish their opening acts this week (if one assumes a 3-act structure), so most of them are just keepin’ on keepin’ on. The pleasant surprise this week is that Metamorpho has more than a single panel of story, so (a little) something actually happens. On the other hand, I’m disappointed at the turn The Demon and Catwoman story has taken, with Selina turning into a puma, which basically removes her from the picture as a character, and the Demon isn’t much of a character (he’s a Kirby DC creation, after all).

Other strips I haven’t mentioned yet: J.D. asked me about Batman last week, and I agree that it’s a rather undistinguished strip. I think scenes with heroes in their secret identities are very underused these days, so I appreciate Azzarello playing around with Bruce Wayne a bit, but overall I have a hard time figuring out what the point of the strip is.

Much as I enjoy Amanda Conner getting to draw Supergirl with a variety of facial expressions (such expressions being her fortÃ©), the story is just her zipping from one place to another, and is thus rather dull.

Deadman appears to have been sent to hell or some equivalent, which isn’t very interesting. Deadman can be a hard character to write as a leading man; I think this story would have been better served taking a page from the Deadman shorts from Adventure Comics back in the 70s, where he basically works on helping someone else through their problems. Not that he can’t be written on his own, as the Andrew Helfer/JosÃ© Luis Garcia-Lopez mini-series from the 80s that wrapped up the plot threads from the Neil Adams run was fantastic, and the Mike Baron/Kelley Jones series from the 90s was an interesting take.

Harry Potter VI

Last Sunday we went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the new film in the series. My expectations for the films at this point are moderate at best: The book series bottomed out with the awful Order of the Phoenix and never really recovered. The original of this one was padded and poorly plotted, although it had some good character bits in the middle.

The story basically survives intact in the film, although with many of its warts still showing: Many sequences are slow, especially the beginning (in which Dumbledore and Harry persuade Horace Slughorn to return to Hogwarts) and the end (the retrieval of the Horcrux is tense, yet tedious). But the stuff in the middle is still quite entertaining: Harry, Ron and Hermione falling for various other students, Harry awkwardly captaining the Quidditch team (I rather wish the series had more consciously explored the theme of Harry being thrust into a leader’s role while being anything but a natural leader), and Harry learning potions with the help of the textbook of the Half-Blood Prince. The flashbacks to Voldemort’s past are interesting and not as overdone as they are in the book.

The film has been getting strong reviews, and overall I enjoyed it despite its flaws, but it’s not nearly as good as the best in the film series, The Prisoner of Azkaban, although with stronger source material it might have been its equal.

It’s interesting to see all the actors growing up. Daniel Radcliffe looks less buff than he did in Phoenix where his appearance seemed a little odd. Rupert Grint seemed to grow into his body awkwardly, especially in Goblet of Fire, but he seems to be past that; he’s the actor who’s changed the most in appearance as he’s grown up. Emma Watson has changed the least, looking much the same at 18 as she did at 11. Tom Felton’s features have become much more defined as he’s grown up, and he doesn’t have the smooth, dark-elfin look he had when he first played Draco Malfoy.

I can’t believe I’m going to sit through two films to see all of the final book, Deathly Hallows, which was another padded book; that means a lot of the padding is surely going to make it into the films (which already run long at over 2-1/2 hours apiece). But no doubt I’ll do it.

Things Coming Together

The broken-bike-seat saga (such as it was) ended happily: I went to the bike shop and bought a new set of screws for the seat.

The guy who helped me said that the screws break all the time, usually for the same reason mine did: Trying to over-tighten them. “That’s why the company charges $20 for them.” He was more scandalized than I was at the cost. I told him I’d had that first screw for 7 years, which works out to less than $3.00 a year, which ain’t bad.

They also suggested I put some grease on the screw before putting it on. “What kind of grease?” I asked. “Grease with a ‘G’,” they said. Hey, what do I know from grease? Turns out there are several different kinds of grease, at my local hardware store, anyway. I went for grease with a “cheap”, mainly because I don’t need a big tub-o-grease. (Insert snarky comment here.)

They also sold me a packet of goo to put on the shaft of the bike seat, which increases friction and thus reduces slippage of the seat, which is the problem I was having which led me to over-tighten the screw in the first place. So I tried it out. It seemed to help, from my first experience. (They also cautioned me not to use it on the screws, which amused me: Yeah, don’t use the friction-enhancing goo as a lubricant. Got it.)

Anyway, all that taken care of, I biked in to work again today. Made good time, too!

Things Falling Apart

It drives me nuts – probably a lot more than it should – when stuff breaks. Well, sometimes I just take a “it happens” attitude, but if it’s something I really need to fix, then I resent needing to spend the time to fix or replace it. And when several things break in succession, well, that’s obviously worse.

A couple of weeks ago I had the classic moment when I realized I’d left my pedometer in my shorts – which were currently in the washing machine. Once it dried out it seemed to be working again, but in trying to get it all back together I lost one of the nuts which actually holds the battery compartment in place. I couldn’t figure out where it went (probably fell behind the bookcase), so I finally gave up and just ordered a new pedometer, as the old one was, well, getting pretty old anyway. On the bright side, the pedometer Debbi and I each use is down to $24 at Amazon.com.

Several months ago, the zipper on the bag I take everywhere with my laptop and books and such broke. Well, the bag has, like, 12 pockets, so it was only one zipper – but it was the one for the laptop pocket. And, the zipper itself is fine, it’s actually just the handle which snapped in half. The fix? Take some ribbon and tie it through the remainder of the handle, and voila! New handle! Well, new handle until the remainder of the old handle decides to just fall off one day, taking the ribbon with it, and probably turning into a cat toy. So now I need to figure out a new way to get the ribbon on there, without it slipping through the gap the old handle likely slipped through (which I probably widened in my failed attempt to replace the old handle with a handle taken from a discarded suitcase).

And most recently, today I was biking in to work, and during my water break decided to raise my seat again. It keeps slipping down from the most comfortable position, so I’ve been raising it about once a week, which involves loosening the screws which keep it in place, and then tightening them again. This time, metal fatigue took it toll and the screw snapped in half, so the seat wouldn’t stay in place. Fortunately (?) I’d stopped in front of my friends Susan & Subrata‘s house, so I sent Susan a text message, and 30 seconds later I hear her yell, “Come on in!” So she gave me a lift home and I showered and started my day over again.

I’ll have to go buy a new screw for the bike, and I wonder if I should buy a new seat as well, in the hopes that a new one won’t keep slipping down. On the other hand, given that I seem to have one major failure in my bike every year, maybe I should just buy a new bike.

Sigh.

The upside is that S&S’s son Ajay took his first steps over the weekend, and I got to play and laugh with him while Susan was getting ready to drive me home. He’s a cute little guy.

Anyway, now that I’ve got all this out of my system, I can work on getting stuff repaired.