As always, I'm reading and watching and absorbing...
Batman: Earth One - At what point are we just muddying the waters?
For the umpteenth time an author has taken Bob Kane's outline - loving parents, murder, training, revenge - and written the same story with different beats and notes, and I don't see the need for it. Yes, if the story is well told, that's all the matters, but I didn't so much think this was all that well written.
It's fine - with Alfred's prosthetic leg, Mayor Cobblepot, a cowardly and broken Jim Gordon, a handsome Harvey Bullock - it's just not anything special. Meh...
Superman: Earth One: Volume Two - Read above...repeat...
Only here Clark Kent wants to get some action and is regretting the fact that his powers prevent...um...well...coupling with a human woman. It's somehow distasteful to me, even down to Clark and Pa Kent talking about the inevitable difficulties of carnal love. And the fact that they make his love interest an escort/prostitute so that he can turn away and stay friends. It almost feels like the writers here are teasing something far more lascivious than they're willing to deliver here, too.
They also write Clark as more violent - he picks up and threatens one of his 'love interest's' johns when he threatens to get violent with her and then also appears in the bedroom of a general who tells him to get out of his country. Again, I found it distasteful.
Marvel Knights: Black Panther - Things started off promisingly enough with the John Romita Jr art style and the cool music, but things just petered out over the course of these six twenty-minute episodes. Over the course of the two-hour running time, there is probably a very fine, maybe one-hour of story padded out with a whole lot of 'previously on' and 'next time' clips.
Even the Romita style disappears by the end of the series and is replaced with a far more cartoony style, meaning that the only thing worth recommending here isn't even there for the full time. Blech...
Red Hood and the Outlaws - From the casual, trampy, over-sexed Koriander to the ridiculously spiritual Jason Todd, this series should have been aborted from the get go.
Ted - Easily the best work of the weeks.
It's crass and foul and offensive in oh so many ways, but it's surprisingly moving and actually kinda touching when things nearly take a negative turn in the climax.
It's tough to talk about the best moments of this one because they're pretty much all wrong and the kind of jokes that I shouldn't tell on this blog what with the students around and all.
The Bostonian accents; the realness of Ted, himself; the vulgarity...it all works wonderfully
5 Reasons to Punch a Dolphin in the Mouth - I'm guessing that most folks who are on the web have read some of
The Oatmeal's comics, and this is a book-long collection of those. Supposedly there are a few non-web gems here and there, but I couldn't tell 'em from the regular ones. It's chucklesome, but it's nothing that I need to ever flip through again.
Wonder Woman: Blood - Back to the New 52 for DC...
I was surprisingly happy with this, considering how crap I've thought the New 52 volumes have been.
In total, the read of Wonder Woman is good times all around.
Great use of Wonder Woman's Greek mythological family for the reboot and gorgeous artwork from Cliff Chiang...
Sadly, then, Chiang gets replaced by Tony Akins after the first four issues. The artwork isn't bad there, it's just not quite as awesome.
T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents - Dumb...avoid it...
Twilight Zone: The After Hours - I'm thinking that an
Twilight Zone story from the original series (and that was remade in the 1980's version) doesn't need a
graphic novel adaptation - even if it was a
student project.
This one really doesn't work because the plot - a woman wanders around a department store and eventually learns that she is actually a mannequin come to life and whose time in the world is up so that another mannequin can take a turn (oh, spoiler, I guess) - requires mannequins to come to life. This is a little tough for a still image storytelling medium to convey. In a number of panels it's confusing trying to tell whether the vague sense of unease is because the people are alive or aren't moving.
Skip it...
Pitch Perfect - The plot is thoroughly predictable, mixing up sports cliches (the team almost loses before the finals but is saved at the last moment, a star player on the bad team ditches his teammates but has to be replaced by a benchwarmer who comes through at the last moment, the former star on the good team has to learn to give up control to the up and coming, more creative and free star, shockingly the two best teams in the country are from the
same school!) and college movie romantic cliches (the main character finally gets around to watching the movie the love interest had wanted her to see all along, and it brings them together for good).
Luckily, the actors are thoroughly engaging and likable. Anna Kendrick is quickly becoming one of my favorite actors, showing a joy in her performance and never quite pulling off the edgy girl so much as the cute girl trying to be edgy. The performances are also a blast - if the alleged spontaneity leads to some pretty spectacular and unreasonably polished impromptu accomplishments...
If those seem too hokey or twee for you, avoid this. I, however, thoroughly enjoyed the film - and especially appreciated the performance commentary from Elizabeth Banks and John Michael Higgins.
Big Man Japan - What the heck did I just watch?
Man, this is a weird, weird film. The trailer for which does absolutely nothing in selling what the film really is: a fake documentary film about the man who transforms himself into Japan's last giant defender.
Instead of the constant, wacky action that the trailer seems to suggest makes up the bulk of the film, we get a sad story of a man whose responsibilities to his nation have robbed him of any semblance of a life more than solitary meals at the local noodle restaurant.
And then the Power Rangers show up to save the day.
Seriously, with absolutely no reason for it, no groundwork laid for it, the conclusion shows a superteam of totally not-previously-mentioned or alluded-to show up to fix everything and then yell at each other.
Freaky weird...and not in a good way...
The Unwritten (vol 1-5) - This one fell into my library queue almost by accident as two different year-end lists had it on their best-of compilation for 2012. I'm not one to avoid the best stuff...if the library has it for free, so I gave the first five volumes a chance.
What I found was an incredibly rich, involved, detailed plot winding its way through the volumes requiring a lot of attention and willingness for me to let the story reel out a bit before I found the true thread. It's not an easy read, but it's a rewarding one.
The plot seems silly and highly derivative as a Harry-Potter-esque main character (Tommy Taylor) seems to have come to life, crafted into the real world from pure story-telling energy by his author father - but without Tommy knowing it. He thinks he's just a real boy whose dad used his name for the most famous stories in the world. The truth, however, is even far more complicated as Dad created Tommy to fight a centuries-long secret cabal of...storytellers, I guess...who have been shaping our world through the magic of stories for longer than anyone can imagine.
Magic, literary references (thankfully explained as most go over my head), friendship, love, and myth ensue...
I'm hooked...
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