* On some alternate Earth that is home to a Sean T. Collins with more money, more shelf space, and an even more absurdly patient wife, that Sean T. Collins has quite a few action figures for grown-ups, like the DC Direct Green Lantern Series 3 figures reviewed at FarePlay and the Target-exclusive Red Hulk Build-a-Figure Marvel Legends wave on display at Marvelous News (via Topless Robot). Stranded here in the infant universe of Qwewq as I am, however, this present Sean T. Collins can merely observe that action figures of superheroes and the stories that they are based on both bear witness to the simple fact that taking a character and changing his color scheme around is awesome.
Also, the Sinestro Corps storyline was great.
* Speaking of alternate Earths, Bruce Baugh imagines what the Star Wars movies would have ended up like had Obi-Wan’s original story about Darth Vader and Anakin Skywalker been the literal truth. He prefers this what-if scenario, me not so much (the prequels’ bobbling of Anakin can be ignored, while “Luke, I am your father” would be sorely missed).
* And speaking of Bruce Baugh, he (and his commenters) draws our attention to a couple of cases in which enterprising World of Warcraft players managed to loose gigantic, near-indestructible, killcrazy creatures into normally peaceful environments. Hilarious carnage results! As with an earlier incident in which players used their in-game pets to transmit a blood-borne pestilence from a dying demigod to an enemy city, thus wiping it out, WoW’s corporate overlords (the real gods of the game, apparently) quickly undid the catastrophic results of these ingenious shenanigans. I don’t play the game and maybe I’d feel differently if I did, but don’t you think they should have just let it be? It seems to me that if you are a resident of a fantasy world that’s crawling with bloodthirsty beasts and demonic entities large and small, roughly based on our own medieval past, the occasional apocalyptic plague and/or out-of-nowhere Godzilla attack is just part of the cost of living. Or perhaps it’s just that, as with that infamous massacre of the in-game memorial for an IRL deceased player, I’m amused and fascinated when players use the rules of a highly structured world against it, as it were. On the other hand, I can see how allowing such maverick moves to go forward unchecked would set up a lousy incentive structure whereby players would spend more time testing the boundaries of fairplay than actually playing. Then again, I’m sure that’s the case with a goodly number anyway.
* Jon Hastings argues that contra The Blair Witch Project (which he didn’t even like), Cloverfield‘s first-person hand-held camera conceit never rises above the level of gimmick, providing some grist for conversation among critics but never really influencing the stylistic and staging and writing choices made by the filmmakers. I think he’s mostly right, except that the limited perspective made for a hellaciously effective slow-reveal for the monster. I think the audience would have gotten pretty impatient if the filmmakers hadn’t allowed themselves that excuse.
* In the comments at this very blog, And Now the Screaming Starts’ CRwM questions whether nihilistic old Frank Miller has the proper sensibility to properly optimistic old Will Eisner’s worldview in The Spirit. I think he’s being willfully uncharitable to Miller (eg. jokingly singling out a sole comment Miller made about humanizing the Spirit by making him trip after a rooftop leap as though that’s as far as he’s going to go on that score), but I suppose more importantly I think he mischaracterizes Eisner (some of his later works are breathtakingly cynical), Miller (it’s tough to think of a creator as obviously in love with his characters as Miller with his Sin City crew or Batman), and whether Miller views the darkness of his own work as a sign of maturity (he’s always struck me as quite knowingly a kid in a candy store).
* Joe Quinones has finished his pretty rad series of Scott Pilgrim drawings done in a more “mainstream” style. (Via Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley.) Here’s Knives Chau:
As with Kevin Huizenga’s drawings of C.F.’s Powr Mastrs characters, I could stand to see a lot more of this sort of thing.
* Chris Butcher has posted a long out of print interview with Black and White cartoonist Taiyo Matsumoto, including a lengthy bibliography. The interview’s from 1995, which god help us all was thirteen fucking years ago.
* Finally, your quote of the day comes from Matthew Perpetua in response to Rich Juzwiak’s wonderfully repetitive “I’m not here to make friends” reality-show cliche montage:
Maybe that should just be the official motto of this country in the 00s.
America: We’re Not Here To Make Friends.
The handling of pulled-in monsters is a really tricky thing. It’s quite possible – often done, in fact – for a small group of very skilled players to really ruin a lot of others’ fun on a more or less permanent basis. That sucks. But the occasional surprise like yesterday’s is a treat. I’m glad I don’t have to make the balancing decisions.
Re: BWP – it’s a movie I respect and I’d only say good things about it. Except that I didn’t think it was scary. Still – I’d like to revisit it, especially since the sequel majorly creeped me out.
Re: Cloverfield – yeah, I think you’re right that the format helps them sell the slow reveal. And, of course, that’s my favorite part of the movie: our limited POV towards the monster. Still just a gimmick in my book, though. As a student of film history, I know that marketing and hype have always been a part of Hollywood filmmaking, but I still get annoyed at Cloverfield‘s kind of AICN-directed marketing, to which the “slow reveal” is tied. It’s linked in my mind with some of the worst impulses of the comic book fandom I grew up in during the late-80s/early-90s.
Personally, I think it would have been much more badass if they had marketed Cloverfield as a straightforward Felicity-like movie, with no mention of a monster at all – a multi-million dollar practical joke!
Re: Eisner/Miller – it’s interesting because, though Miller’s work is formally influenced/inspired by Eisner’s, their sensibilities are very different. Miller’s seems to be much closer to Koike Kazuo’s. For all of Eisner’s stylistic influence, there aren’t many cartoonists who seem to be influenced by his themes/sensibilities. Chris Ware is the only big name that springs to mind. And, to a lesser degree, Ben Katchor.
Re: Star Wars – my opinion on the prequels has completely turned around since I watched them all again over one weekend a few months ago. I’m completely in favor of the Star Wars story that we have. That said, it reminds me of Steve Ditko’s desire to have the Green Goblin be just some guy and not someone who was already involved in Peter Parker’s life. At the point that decision was being made, I think it would have been the right one.
Breathtaking cynicism?
In Fagin? That ends with Fagin and Dickens hashing out the source story’s prejudices and begins with a lecture about the responsibility of the artist.
In Protocols? The entire project is predicated on the idea that you can fight hate with knowledge.
What later works are you talking about?
Eisner wasn’t naive about the state of the world, but I don’t think he was ever all that cynical. He sometimes wrote tragedies, and he could use cruel irony when it fit dramatically (Family Matters being his most brutal, I think), but he never created worlds as cynical and hopeless as, say, Sin City.
On the one hand, I’m angry you didn’t link to Kevin H.’s Powr Mastrs.
On the other hand, I’m glad you made me go look for it cause I’d never been to his blog before, so it was amazing to see all the stuff he posts there.
Also, here’s a link:
http://kevinh.blogspot.com/search/label/Powr%20Mastrs
Also, I wasn’t ever really angry.
Would you believe I looked for that label on his blog and somehow couldn’t find it? I’m stupid. Anyway, FIXED.
CRwM: I honestly can’t remember reading anything by Eisner from his Contract with God-onward era that left me feeling optimistic about the state of humankind. Meanwhile I don’t think Sin City is hopeless at all. A down ending doesn’t mean it’s hopeless!
Jon: In many ways that Green Goblin decision set the self-reflexive tone for the entire genre, one it follows to its detriment to this very day!