27 April 2007

Six Months In

So the soccer endeavour is now six months in and the smoking thing is two & a half months out and the skills are starting to slowly improve. This session will mark a two games per week schedule, with games nights back to back on Wednesday and Thursdays. The rather interesting side effect here is that I have become obsessed. My beautiful wife and I watch FSC incessantly and we are considering discarding other, more important pieces of furniture in favor of a professional-grade foosball table. Of course, it doesn't hurt that it is a very exciting time to be watching futbol right now. Between the FA Cup finals, European Cup trials, Premiership regulation, Serie A and Mexican leagues all going, we almost forgot about the beginning of the MLS season and the debut of Beckham on American soil. Almost too much to watch!

26 April 2007

Please Comment!!!

So I'm sitting here, working rather fruitlessly on a cover letter for a teaching position I'm applying for on Friday and needed a break. So I decided to check on the site to see if my father had been by to heckle me from the Comments Section and feel somewhat forlorn due to the lack of attention paid to my Comments Section.

And then my beautiful wife tells me that one of her friends checks the site but refuses to post comments until I write something about something other than comics as she claims she doesn't know anything about comics. So first off, point taken, James. I will write more about other topics.

However, and this goes for everyone who stops by for a spell,please comment, regardless of whether you think you know something about the subject matter or not. I beg you to do this for a couple of reasons: 1) it lets me know you're there and that someone is reading, 2) I value your feedback, good, bad or indifferent, 3) if you ask me a question I will answer it to the best of my ability and this may in fact contribute to or at least inform future entries and 4) it gives me a break from my father heckling me from the sidelines if someone else is doing it for a while.

The bottom line here is that a big part of the reason I created this blog was to get something "out there" and hopefully to get some feedback on my writing. This was started as an exercise and any feedback you can give helps me out enormously (yes, Dad, even the jabs about trying to get published).

But, at the end of the day, our friend is right as I had intended to post here on a variety of subjects and will try to mix it up a little for your reading and viewing pleasure.

Til next time...um...make mine Marvel...?

23 April 2007

Required Reading: Invincible



Okay. I hadn't intended to ever talk about a superhero book here. Really. But I was at my friendly neighborhood comic store the other day and picked up a bunch of back issues of this book. And I have to say, it deserves mention. Bearing the byline "probably the best superhero comic book in the universe!" Invincible is certainly one of the best out there.

I started reading this book back when it first hit the shelves because of the art. Period. I like the stylized, clean lines, the primary colors, the fresh approach to the character's costume designs, the dynamic page layout. And then I started reading.

This is classic comic-book stuff. This is so classic, you already know the story. Young kid finds out he's in fact the bearer of great power. The moral struggle not to be tempted or corrupted by that power. All the secret identity gags. The monsters and robots and aliens and mad scientists bent on world domination or destruction (take your pick). The tangled love interest or interests. The nursery of supporting superheroes all waiting in the wings for their big chance. The drama between the hero and his non-super-hero-ing friends. I mean, all of it. And it's fucking GREAT!

Created by Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker and published by Image Comics, this book is definitely an illustration of the importance of craft. Taking on so many over-used and stale conventions of a spun-out genre and bringing new life and importance to that same genre, without coming across as spoof or copy-cat takes an immeasurable amount of skill. To make it relevant to both readers inside and outside the genre is just plain awesome. And that's precisely what Kirkman and Walker, and now Ryan Ottley having taken over permanently on pencils, have done here.

Whereas I wouldn't call it "the best...in the universe", I would rank it up there as one of the best superhero comics out there right now for a couple of reasons. First, and probably foremost, this book takes what made the superhero genre the mainstay of comics (that is to say everything good about them) and crams it all into one, slick, shiny, easy to swallow, great-tasting monthly pill. Invincible tackles all (and I do mean all...) the conventions of the superhero comic and not only doesn't get bogged down in them, it brings them new life and reminds us why we read them in the first place!

The character Invincible has powers reminiscent of Superman, personality close to Spiderman, and friends that would at turns feel at home in the pages of the X-Men, the Avengers, the Justice League of America, the Teen Titans or the Superfriends. The books' pacing and action and humor and, most importantly, humanity is reminicient of Jack Kirby and Will Eisner and Stan Lee and all the other legendary creators that made this medium worthwhile in the first place. Kirkman has managed to infuse his writing with a reality and three dimensional quality that seems lacking in many modern "realistic" books that confuse graphic violonce and overall moroseness with actual feeling. And the book gives us all this in a post-postmodern package that is hip and un-embarassing.

While Invincible may take everything good about superhero comics and mold it together, it also strips away much of the bad. For instance, there is no uncontrollable spin-off of titles. One of the things that makes mainstream comics so inane and inaccessible is that you need a frigging TomTom to navigate a given title. I mean how many X-titles and Bat-books can you really have? When I pick up a comic, I don't want to get half-way through and be told that in order to get the full story, I have to go back to the store and hunt down six other issues of six other titles. It's bullshit. Plain and simple. And it pisses people off. If I were new to this medium and I encountered that, I can tell you one thing: I would not only not buy the other six issues, I would never go back. Invincible is one title, one story and though many characters from other titles show up in its pages, it seems usually to be only for a short while to say "hi" and move on.

One of the reasons I stopped reading this back when and have now had to go back and catch up on what's been going on is that early on there were problems (to put it mildly) in getting issues to print. Although billed as a monthly book, I was finding myself waiting for the next issue for months at a time (another thing that would prevent me from ever picking up another comic book if I were a newbie and that I now just accept as part of the business). Thankfully, these timing issues seem to be largely a thing of the past and the back issues are blissfully packaged for you in trades (all named after sitcom titles, interestingly) and can be found at your local comic store http://www.comicbookresources.com/resources/locator/ as found with this trusty little tool.

In summation: for the unitiated among you, especially those of you who just don't get why a thirty-year old will still shell out hard-earned moolah for a flimsy, overpriced pamphlet of pictures about spandex-wearing fantasy-beings, check this out. This book is a reminder of how it once was and why comics, specifically superhero comics, are still around today. For those of you who still shell out that hard earned and know why, check it out, if you haven't already. You'll be surprised to remember just how good a superhero comic can be. I was.

04 April 2007

Required Reading: 300



Please, please please please please. Read this book. The reason I'm pleading with you in so undignified a manner: I saw this movie this past week. What's worse, I took my wife to see this movie this past week. And I have to refer to earlier statements I and others have made. Namely: we, as a community and industry are alienating anyone that at one time may have given this medium a chance.


Look. I listed this graphic novel as one of my favorite books in my profile. I bought and read and sung this book's praises when it was first released in May 1998. I have three copies of all the original issues; one copy for myself, one to lend out and one just in case. And I have the hard cover. Frank Miller and his work has been one of the primary reasons I continue to read comics and among his work, I rank this peice at the top. Needless to say, I'm a fan. In other words, I'm less than objective here.

300 (Fank Miller / Lynn Varley; Dark Horse Comics, 1999, $30.00; http://www.darkhorse.com/profile/profile.php?sku=48-339) is a graphic re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae, focussed on King Leonidas and the 300 Spartan warriors that set out to stop the Persian hordes of Xerxes the Great at the Hot Gates. Upon its release, 300 received Eisner Awards for Best Limited Series, Best Writer/Artist and Best Colorist in 1999. The series continued Miller's stark and unique vision that he established most fully in his Sin City series while bringing a new dynamic to comics in the well-researched historical drama of ancient Greece.
The themes of this book, though seemingly macho and mundane, are appropriate for the given subject matter and it is widely seen as well-researched and overall historically accurate in its telling. It is at turns, engaging, intriuging and suspenseful, violent and heroic and overall remarkable. Miller and Varley both, in an attempt to get it that much closer to right, travelled to Greece to flesh out the research they'd already done, visit the sites, gain an appreciation for the land and speak to the people. ...all in the name of getting it right. Of making sure that the story did justice to the notions of heroic sacrifice and moral victory that are embodied here.
And the movie took an amazing peice of work, a jewel of the industry, and shat upon it. I don't actually know what Mr. Miller's thoughts are on this movie, though I assume he had a pretty big part in the making of it, given his involvement in Sin City. I can't imagine that the folks responsible for this film intetionally cocked it up. And there are quite a few redeeming qualities. The photography is amazing. I think it works much better in color than in the black-and-white of Sin City. The acting, for the most part was worthwhile, though in places a bit melodramatic. And, to be fair, they did a better than average job translating it to film.
So what, then, is the problem? you ask? It is this: in the editing room and production room decisions that were made on this project, the point was almost completely passed over in favor of a violent fantasy movie rather than the complex and fascinating historical narrative that was the book. I saw gratuity take the place of complexity and subtlety (I'm thinking here of the splashing blood shots and the treatment of the Oracle at the temple). Embellishment in places where there was none needed (the monstrous masks and visages of the Persian elite). And a quick treatment of the main themes of the book in the trite delivery of several of the more important lines seemed more filler as opposed to the actual substance.
So, my recommendation is this: please please please please please read this book. Do yourself a favor and pick up one of Frank Miller's best works and what I see as a pretty big argument to continue reading comics, and forget there's even a movie by the same name out there. Besides, I'm sure it will be a mainstay of SpikeTV within a year anyhow...