They Can’t All Be Winners

The picture on the left is the cover for the trade paperback compilation of Supermarket, a 4-issue mini-series by Brian Wood, best known for his work on Vertigo’s DMZ. DMZ is a very relevant, socially frightening look at a world where the United States is plunged into civil war over the abuses of the government, and as a result, New York city gets divided. The story is told through the eyes of a journalist that is documenting life in NYC. After reading the first TPB of DMZ I was incredibly impressed with the talents of Wood, and I was looking forward to more.

Unfortunately, Supermarket ain’t it. It’s not a bad book, actually, and there are many things about it I do like, but I found it fundamentally flawed, and, perhaps seeing how complex and interesting Wood can be with political/sociological material, I was expecting the same here, and didn’t get it. The story is about a girl named Pella Suzuki, a half Japanese, half-Swedish Eurasian girl who’s grown up in one of the most affluent and heavily guarded suburbs of a city so focused on capitalist excess it’s garnered the nick-name “The Supermarket.” She’s smart, young, educated, cynical, jaded and bored out of her mind. All of that changes when things go horribly wrong at home and she finds out her boring ol‘ parents have connections to two different organized crime groups; the Yakuza of Japan and a Swedish Porn cartel.

The story is propelled along by what originally caught the Wife’s eye when we saw this at the Fan Appreciation Comic Con; the vibrant and distinct artwork of Kristian Donaldson, a regular collaborator with Wood on DMZ who brought a much more bright, neon style, almost an 80′s Deco, if such a thing is possible, to the look of Supermarket, and it’s his beautiful line and color work that is probably the single, best, most coherent thing about this story.

The story itself is a bit disappointing to me, simply because I see so much possibility within it that was never fully exploited. Pella herself is a very likable, very compelling character who appears to be capable of far, far more than is seen here in four issues. At the start, she seems to have a hyper-awareness of street-level economics and urban anthropology, both of which she uses to great effect, and yet this distinctive and interesting characteristic all but disappears when the story kicks into high gear. At that point, it becomes a chase which, while in and of itself is not a bad concept, is disappointing because Pella is merely along for the ride and merely nudges the story along here and there, rather than use her formidable understanding of the city to survive. While I wouldn’t say that she is simply reduced to the stereotypical helpless maiden in need of protection from a heroic lad, she doesn’t rise to the occasion quite as much as a character as strong as she appears to be could.

I was also disappointed with the lost opportunity of exploring gang culture, in this case, Wood’s rendition of the Yakuza and the wonderfully original Swedish Porn cartel. They are named, they are introduced, we get a tantalizing hint of some wonderful, wacky history, motivation and conflict about these groups, and then they merely become bad guys that chase after Pella, with only the barest visual clues in their presentation from which to imagine what these groups are like in Wood’s world. But mostly, I just felt that this was a bigger story that just didn’t get the space it deserved and Wood–working within the constraints of 4 issues–pared it down to the barest essentials of Pella being chased and doing something about it. As a result, the book moves fast, almost too fast, introducing characters, giving teasing hints about how interesting they are, and then moving to the next chase, gun fight or other conflict at which point it’s all movement, action and more action.

Maybe I’m just not the intended audience for this book and it’s more for action-fiends (there is a lot of car chasing, gun firing and stuff exploding going on here) but I actually wished that Wood had more room to breathe, to flesh out the characters, to see a little bit more of this world, and to really give Pella a chance to shine, rather than simply move like an express train to the terminus of Plot Resolution and wrap everything up by the last page, leaving me with a sense of a finished story, but leaving an even larger hole for what a more complete world, character and plot experience Supermarket could have been had Wood been given two or even four more issues to explore this world with. Damn shame, that.

Artist Day

Today was spent largely living in the Wife’s world, that is to say, the world of an illustrator. We hung out with a guy named Huan, a very talented Vietnamese-Canadian artist who’s part of an artists group here called the Sketch Motel of which the Wife is a part of. We had a fine meal at a restaurant who’s name escapes me, which is situated on College Street, the somewhat more upscale version of Bloor where the Wife and I usually frequent. After that, it was sitting around at his place while all kinds of artsy things were discussed. Being a geek, I perused his collection of DVDs to borrow a few things and made off with the Sci-Fi triple pack of The Last Starfighter, Titan A.E. and 12 Monkeys. It’s nice to be able to see a real community of like-minded people all just pulling together like this and sharing, talking and generally encouraging each other.

In other news I also just found out that mutual friend of ours in Singapore by the name of Sonny Liew, a comic book artist, just got nominated for an Eisner Award for best penciller. If you don’t follow comics, that’s basically the equivalent of an Oscar Nomination, so I’m mightily impressed, especially considering that Sonny is such a nice, humble, obscenely talented guy that quietly goes about the business of creating some drop dead gorgeous artwork. He’s amazingly talented, and completely deserves the nomination. And, if nothing else, he’s another one of those annoying stories about what happens if you just knuckle down and decide “I really want this,” and then go on to get it through sheer hard work and love of the craft. I know of too many stories of folks with aspirations to writing, art or film who don’t make it, citing various reasons like how insular their particular chosen industry to break into is, or how unfairly stacked against them the odds are, when all it really boils down to is their just not willing to do the work, and would rather just watch movies and or distract themselves with other pop culture pleasantries rather than simply sit down and sweat it out. I’m really happy this is happening for Sonny.

And here’s the latest from the Wife. Actually, it’s one of the first things she drew when she arrived in Canada, it just took her a while to finish it, but now that she has discovered the wonders of Canadian beer, I guess she felt obligated to finally color and finish her interpretation of Canada. Witness, Beer:

No Post

It’s the Wife’s birthday. That is all.

Oh That Whacky Colonel…

Not much going on today, except for the usual run for groceries as well as a visit to Kentucky Fried Chicken, aka KFC. It had suddenly occurred to me (because the Wife recounted a dream today in which KFC food was involved) that we actually hadn’t been to one since we returned here, and I was curious to see whether or not the food was the way I remembered it.

So we tromped on down to the Bloor Street outlet, I was once again reminded of how weird localizing a global franchise can be. The Wife, for example, now had to deal with the fact that there is only ONE kind of KFC chicken available at KFC outlets, as opposed to the two available in Singapore, one being “original recipe” and other being “crispy, spicy” skin, which is generally the more popular one among Singaporeans since, well, they can’t eat anything that doesn’t have spice in it. Of course, their definition of “good and spicy” means “blow out the neurons in your taste buds for the next week” to the typical North American palette unaccustomed to the agonizing sensation of your tongue burning into a small, thrashing shrivel. The other big difference is that fact that here, they offer you ketchup instead of… you guessed it, chili sauce.

However, I suspect that as a result of the ingredients being “indigenous” and the chickens themselves also likely not having to be flown in from some far away country, she was impressed with the fact that the fried chicken actually tasted healthier than its Singapore counterpart, in addition to having considerably less fat attached to it. The additions of gravy and macaroni salad (items unavailable at Singapore outlets) was also a surprise.

Oh, those little things we notice… So far the fast food in Canada is proving to be superior to its Singapore counterparts (we tried a McDonald’s over the weekend and at long last, I could order a quarter pounder again, something that was removed from the Singapore menu about six or so years ago) and the food tasted soooo much better. However, one thing about the Singapore menu that I will dearly miss is their occasional limited time offer of something known as a “black pepper” burger. It’s a regular hamburger, with onions, and the same gravy like, black pepper sauce that is used for certain crab (and other) dishes. That was tasty.

Top Gun For Geeks

This is another one of those series that is near and dear to my heart. Thanks to that surprise purchase of used/rented copies over at an EB Games at Yorkdale mall last month, I was able to finally sit down and play the second most recent addition to the Ace Combat series, Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War.

This series by Namco has been getting better and better with each version. I still remember playing the very first game back on the original Playstation back in the 90′s and it was fun–if light–exercise in a more forgiving, “arcade-y” experience of fighter combat, rather than the full on, hardcore simulators that PC games are so renowned for. You didn’t have to worry about keeping track of a buzillion mechanical variables, and your plane managed the neat trick of having infinite gun ammunition and carrying upwards of 40 missiles at a time. As you can see from the screen shot, the game is damn good looking, especially if you’re playing on a High-Def TV in widescreen. Sure, it’s not in the least bit realistic when you take a direct hit from missile and still keep flying, but the goal of the game here is to capture the visceral thrill of aerial dogfighting without getting bogged down in aeronautical mechanics.

And perhaps it is just a guy/boy thing, but there is something deeply gratifying about chasing down a plane, lining up the shot, watching the smoke trails of your missile scream ahead of you and watching the enemy plane go up into a ball of flame and broken metal that plummets to the Earth.

However, I’m particularly impressed with Ace Combat 5 for a number of reasons. Ace Combat 4: Shattered Skies was a good looking game, but they really amped up the detail for #5, as these images will attest. The oceans are beautiful the way they reflect light and the planes are just ridiculously rendered with color variation on the plating, tilting ailerons, the works. But then this is the work of the Japanese and the Japanese are nothing if not fanatical when it comes to getting the details right, particularly if its in relation to military technology. 98% of the planes in the game are actual military aircraft that are fully licensed by the manufacturers, including Boeing, Mcdonnell-Douglas, Lockheed Martin and others all gave their blessings to having accurate visual reproductions of their planes appear in the game.

However, for me, the thing that really sucked me into this game in particular was, you guessed it, the story. Definitely not for the faint–or feminine–of heart, the plot is pure Japanese; honor, friendship, duty and sacrifice, sometimes entailing the ultimate sacrifice. The plot centers on two fictional countries, Osea, and Yuktobania, who have been allies for the last 15 years thanks to being forced to team up to fend off an invasion from a larger more aggressive country, that ended up detonating seven nukes on its own soil in the closing days of the war. Now however, a small island airbase becomes the first line of defense for Osea when Yuktobania begins attacking without provocation.

As to be expected, it’s up to the “rookie” (that being you) to rise to the occasion but what really sets the game apart is how serious they treat the whole thing. The military briefings really feel like you’re in a ready room being drilled on mission specifics, but the thing that really makes the game shine is how it carries the story on WITHIN the game through all that panicked chatter on the radio. It’s a HUGE difference from games of old where you would usually just hear music and the drone of your engines. Here, your wingmen are doing the usual “It’s no use, I can’t shake ‘em!” but on top of that, when you’re providing air support for ground forces, you’re hearing the combat chatter on the ground with people screaming “Where’s Baker Unit? WHERE’S BAKER?!? THEY’RE DOWN?! WHY ISN’T THAT HEAVY ARTILLERY GUN TAKEN DOWN YET, WE’RE LOSING MEN HERE?!?” Or you hear people praying, or people just confused and afraid as medics make announcements on the channel that they can’t keep up with the incoming wounded…

And suddenly you remember that yeah, it was your job to take out those guns and when you hear the people crying out in agony over the radio, you actually start feeling a greater sense of urgency, and you (or at least I did) actually start thinking, “I gotta’ make sure those boys get home.”

And it gets really, REALLY bad (in that really good, evocative sense) when they actually start to recognize your flight squadron and you hear them saying “We’ll get out of this alive, we’ve got them on our side. I believe they’ll keep us alive.”

And for me, hearing stuff like that, really just makes me buckle down and really, really REALLY want to make sure that those little virtual soldiers make out okay. I know that it’s nowhere near the kind of pressure an actual combat pilot experience in wartime, but for the first time in a aerial combat game, I actually feel a sense of responsibility to the soldiers down below because Namco has taken the time to make sure that you can hear the progress of the battles. And when you fail to perfrom your duties properly, you hear them die.

Man, it’s just a really, REALLY impressive game from a narrative standpoint. How many games actually make you feel a sense of responsibility for your fellow soldiers?

Rent

Not the musical either, but the actual business concept of paying money in order to stay at a designated property designed for long term habitation. Our otherwise quiet Sunday has been officially disrupted by a Good News/Bad News event.

The good news is, it looks like our rent is now more or less safely covered for the next two years.

The bad news is, it looks it will be covered by two more years of doing the children’s comic for that Singapore kid’s magazine on the other side of the planet.

Oh well… It may not be exactly pushing the envelope of comic narrative, but that’s one less worry as we set ourselves up here. According to the Wife’s theory, now that she has firmly committed to pumping out artwork for this project, life will now complicate things by giving her even more comic work to worry about, thus displacing her anxiety about being able to make ends meet financially, with being able to make ends meet time-wise. She’s more or less resigned herself to the idea that there will always be something to worry about, and is now more concerned with finding tolerable anxieties rather than getting rid of them outright.

Tomorrow, how to evoke emotion with F-22 or SU-35 airplane and 80′s synthesizers.

Boring Ol’ Saturday

Woke up, did work. That is all.

Healthcare, The Business Of Art & Geeking Out

Did no writing of any kind today, but that’s all right, ’cause it was a pretty busy day.

First of all, we FINALLY got around to venturing out into the southern downtown core to pay a visit to the offices of the Ministry of Health and get that damn Ontario Health Insurance Plan card, known by the otherwise extremely ugly name “OHIP.” I managed to completely misunderstand the details laid out by the website and thought that we would only get our OHIP cards issued to us three months after submission. Turns out that what they mean is we actually qualify for OHIP coverage three months after ARRIVAL, so since I’d arrived in Toronto on January 12th, I actually qualified for it now. The Wife’s coverage will kick in on the 18th, when she arrived, so she’ll probably get her card about a week after mine.

Having done that, we made our way out of the Yonge Street area and went on over to an area a couple of blocks south of Queen Street West in order to collect prints for the Wife’s first commission in Canada, although the artwork itself is going to be going to Australia. Go figure. Some guy saw her website and just e-mailed her outta’ the blue saying “I want some a’ them thar, sex-ay ladies to adorn my swingin’ bachelor pad, how much?” Oh, I guess he would’ve said “Mate” in there somewhere, since Aussies are supposed to do that.

Still, it was a pretty cool studio we went down to. The guy running it had a deal going with a photographer who’s gallery we visited a few weeks back, and since then, we’ve stopped in to chat with said photographer whenever we’re in the gallery district of Queen Street West. It’s kind of weird how as soon as a Creative Type here in Toronto finds out you’re in a similar line, suddenly it’s all “Aw hell, we’re all in it together, right?” and you make friends FAST. So when the Wife needed to figure out how and where to get archival quality prints of a couple of her pictures, said photographer recommended us to this one man operation digital print studio hunkered down on the 4th floor of this crumbly old 19th century office building that looked like it probably housed the Oracle of the Matrix on one of its floors. He was a pretty friendly and informative guy, and it was pretty cool being walked through the various grades of paper and showing how each on handles ink and color differently. Now some guy in Australia is going to have these signed, archival quality pictures, hanging on his wall and making it abundantly clear where his priorities lie:

There was one other one, but heck, you get the idea…

After that, we finally got around to subjecting the Wife to that most unique of all North American geek experiences, the comic book convention. Unfortunately, we got there pretty late, it was going to close in an hour, so things had calmed down somewhat. But that didn’t stop the fat-to-muscle ratio from climbing to tremendous levels of imbalance, nor did it impede the collection of loud-mouthed attempts at Jay & Silent Bob-esque witticism, or variations on the kind of laughter one normally associates with a seriously pissed off donkey. It’s called the Toronto Hobbystar comiCON Fan Appreciation Event, though how this con differed from any other comic con is beyond me. Still, it was nice that, at least on this first day, when you paid your $10 admission, you immediately got a “coupon” for $10 that was redeemable at any of the vendors inside the convention hall. We wandered around and saw a lot of interesting stuff, and eventually settled on these:

I’d already read this, thanks to the editor of GameAxis more or less stuffing it down my throat with the addendum that it was written by Brian K. Vaughn, the Y: The Last Man guy, and this was a very different story from the kind he’s telling in Y, but still a cool one nevertheless. The Wife was drawn to it by the artwork, but it’s a happy bonus that there’s a darn fine story included as well.

One odd thing occurred while we were making our purchases. I mentioned to the guy behind the counter that we’d just moved into town and he asked where from and when I mentioned from Singapore, but originally from Edmonton, he kind of looked at me and asked “Why would you come here? EVERYONE’S going to Edmonton, it’s the place to be! You’re the first guy I’ve ever met who came from there to here. Why would you want to come to Toronto of all places when you could go back to there?!”

This baffled me utterly, as I had memories of Edmonton being a safe, quiet, suburban wasteland with nothing particularly cultural, historical or “happening” about it. I had no idea that it had become the cultural capital of the country. I’m not entirely sure I like the direction Canada is taking if this is the case, ’cause while the West Edmonton Mall is admittedly impressive, it’s… a… MALL…

The other one was this, and once again, it was the Wife’s eye for artwork that initially got the attention, but I got very interested once I saw the name of the writer, Brian Wood, a guy who’s doing a very interesting series for Vertigo called DMZ. Again, it’s thanks to the editor over at GameAxis that I was tipped off to the intense and very socio-political writing of Wood, and DMZ was a very scary, very realistic take on what would happen if there was a new civil war in America in the 21st century, and what would happen if New York got divided between the government
and the rebels, thus becoming a demilitarized zone. Supermarket looks like it’s going to have a similar critical vibe to it, so I’m looking forward to reading this.

Of course, no comic book convention is complete without a few guests, and one of the biggest surprises was seeing this guy over here:

Carmine Infantino is one of the Elder Statesmen of comics, particularly if you’re a fan of DC comics (and really, what discerning comic reader with some taste isn’t?) this is the guy that was a key pillar in defining the Silver Age of comics, giving us the iconic red and yellow uniform of the flash, dredging Batman out of the campy 50′s and making him a detective again, as well as giving us more science-fictiony characters like Adam Strange.

I was a bit horrified however, when I saw him sitting glumly at his table, being entirely ignored while artists of the 90′s like Whilce Portacio (no disrespect to the man, he’s had his own share of troubles with his sister’s illness and his own struggle to regain control of his hands after a diabetic coma) were completely swamped by legions of fans. It was like night and day; here was one of the guys that made comics such a treasure they were eventually acknowledged as a legitimate art form… and absolutely no one was talking to him, no one was getting autographs and no one was interested in any pictures. Granted, the guy’s been retired since 2005, but my GOD, this guy one of the originals in the industry.

The convention is going to run until Sunday and although I’m kind of curious, I’ve decided that 12 noon might still be a little too early for me to get up to trundle back down to the Toronto Convention Center and check out a Saturday afternoon talk by comic writer Dan Slott of She-Hulk fame, but I suppose there will be other opportunities. Not having actually read any of his stuff, I don’t feel a particular desperate need to hear his pearls of wisdom the way I would were Neil-O to show up, but I suppose if I ever got around to reading his stuff, I’ll then slap my head in regret and wonder why I passed up the opportunity to see him in person. Oh well…

And finally, on the way home we had to walk through many tunnels to return to the Toronto equivalent of Grand Central Station in New York, only this one is called Union Station, but it pretty much feels like Grand Central; massive, classical architecture and the buzz of thousands of people hopping subways, streetcars, “Go Trains,” the local lines that carry commuters to outlying towns, as well as the passenger trains that go cross-country. We took a few pictures of the place before heading back to our neighborhood for groceries and dinner, so here they are…

Work & Insomnia

Not much going on except some continued work on the final GameAxis article, a few touch ups to the 4th to last installment of the kid’s comic, and slogging through the hazy days of a ’bout of insomnia that has the both us unable to sleep until some time after the sun rises.

Since I’m not feeling particularly stressed I don’t know what’s up with that…

The End Of The Trilogy

The final film, Gamera: Revenge of Iris has been viewed, and holy blue blazes am I ever impressed. I’m absolutely going to go out and get this trilogy for myself, because it’s just one of the most entertaining Daikaiju movies I’ve ever seen, and one hell of a cool monster movie series PERIOD. I don’t know what the hell the crew was on when they made this trilogy, but it worked some kind of sublime movie magic on them, because this series simply got better and better with each subsequent film. Daikaiju films had always been a fun–if guilty–pleasure for me, what with the rubber suited monsters trashing an obvious model landscape, but this 1999 movie is, hands down, the single best giant monster movie I have ever seen in my life, regardless of which country said movie was made in.

The first Gamera movie was a good, fun update that managed to bring Gamera into the 90′s but still maintain some of the roots with Gamera’s original, more kid-friendly “Friend of Children” aspect, but took some very bold steps making the treatment of giant monsters much more realistic. The second film took this a step further, concentrating on the very convincing actions of how the normally helpless military conducts itself in the face of awesome forces simply too large to deal with.

This third and final film by this particular team just amps up everything. There’s a lot more CG used (although rubber suits are still in effect for the fights) and this new, near-millennial standard of special effects is ridiculously impressive.

The plot of the film centers around some returning characters from the first and second films, and how they react to a girl named Ayane who has a deep and abiding hatred for Gamera; her family was killed as a result of some of the collateral damage Gamera inflicted on Japan during the first movie. Through a complex set if circumstances involving a little bit of science fiction and some classical Asian mythology, she manages to find and nurture a creature that may just be the mythical opposite number to Gamera, and she names it “Iris” after the cat she used to own that was amongst the casualties of the building Gamera destroyed which contained her parents.

And from there, it’s on. The team that created this film were No-Holds-Barred in their depiction of giant monster movie mayhem, and the destruction of Japanese cities is stunning in its brutality. Entire crowds get swallowed up in columns of flame, buildings come crashing down, and the combination of CG, rubber suited monsters and model building are some of the best ever seen in cinema.

Of particular mention is the climatic showdown between Gamera and Iris in a complete, scale model of the Kyoto Station, one of the most spectacular examples of futurist architecture Japan has to offer. The 80 meter Gamera and Iris duke it out in the station which has been painstakingly recreated to the point that when they bash against walls, girders and other obstructions, the station breaks apart into tiny scale components, as opposed to being obviously hunks of painted styrofoam.

This is, quite simply, the closest thing in a live-action movie I have ever seen the apocalyptic excesses normally shown in Japanese anime like Akira or Neon Genesis Evangelion. To see it in live action, with convincing CG and models just brings home how horrifying this destruction is to a whole new level. Many fans of the Daikaiju genre have said that this third and final film of the 90′s Gamera trilogy actually surpassed the very best that Godzilla had offered and I’m inclined to agree with them. Aside from the majesty of the destruction on hand, the returning characters bring a familiarity and likeability to them simply because you’ve seen these people in previous movies and feel a link to them. And even if the film does occasionally get bogged down in some out of place sentiment or nobility, it hardly detracts from the fact that you have never, EVER seen a giant monster movie like this. From now on I will heartily recommend the Gamera trilogy to friends as the high-water mark the kind of fun you can have watching guys in rubber suits beating the crap out of each other. Brilliant stuff.