Comics & Games

Gaming and other writing temporarily broken up helping out Sonny Liew with some editing on additions to Liquid City:  Volume 2, the second in the anthology series that The Wife and I contributed to.  Meanwhile The Wife is busy churning out visuals for our own contribution to this book.

Faint Ray Of Hope

I just saw the trailer for The Watchmen. The movie itself could still reach inconceivable levels of suck-age.

But at least they got the look right, and some of the images are ripped straight from the panels of the comic.

Pleaaaaaaaaaaaaaase Zach. Don’t screw this up.

Saturday On The Streets

What started out just being a run for a carton of milk ended up being a pleasant afternoon on Bloor, a chance to finally try out a Fish n’ Chips place we’d been trying to eat at for over a year, a visit to the art store for the Wife’s supplies, a talk with one of her gallery curator friends, and a trip to the Evil Bookstore where I once again found stuff I couldn’t resist like a copy of Eternals by Neil-O, and Spiderman 3 on Blu-Ray for less than $20.

All in all, a pleasant day.

Damn

Warren Ellis can make damn near anything interesting again. Who would’a thought that he could have taken a failed enterprise like the old Marvel New Universe label and suddenly create a story with such a promising start? I’m all excited about this now…

The Haul

It being my birthday and all, I got Stuff. I also met up with the Best Friend and the Math Genius for dinner, which was a very surreal thing. I think the last time I met up with those two in such a capacity, we were all in university, getting drunk at my house, and the Math Genius and I were hopeless losers with exactly Zero Chance In Hell of ever being liked by a girl. Flash forward a decade and a bit later and suddenly the birthday get together is with Best Friend as a successful TV writer, me married with the Wife in tow, and the Math Genius talking about the fact that he’s got a kid on the way.

Holy hell, how did that happen?

As far as stuff goes, I got this: Finally, some really good comic porn! It’s okay to call it porn since even Alan Moore himself has called it porn. This is another one of those books that, when it first came out, I immediately knew there was no chance whatsoever that it would ever be for sale in Singapore, but thanks to the miracle of free speech type rights in North America, I can now own this without getting arrested!

The Tick is something both the Wife and I enjoy, although I enjoyed this original animated series when it first ran back in the 90′s, sporadically on a TV station I can’t even remember now.

Comics & RPGs

Final Fantasy IX was finally finished last night. Wow, that only took eight years…

I liked it, and enjoyed it, but not as much as other FF games in the series. Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of the series, called it his favorite in the series, and in some ways, it does feel like a nostalgia trip. The game, even by the RPG standards of the PS1 in 2000, feel very traditional, and the story runs the gamut of themes and character revelations that Sakaguchi had previously explored in almost every other FF game he’d ever made up until that point.

Where the game really lost me though was in the ending. After playing games like Konami’s criminally underrated Suikoden series, or the much darker–and much more intelligent–Shin Megami Tensei games of Atlus, the resolution of FFIX felt very artificial. Villains are cast away at the last minute to reveal new menaces, gigantic plot points that seem critical to the continued existence of the world are ignored, and completely implausible events (like surviving what amounts to apocalypse) have no explanation at all. On the the other hand, the game is easy to get into, the themes themselves of friendship and sacrifice can’t be criticized and it was fun. It just wasn’t as fun as other FF games or other RPGs by completely different companies that have come out in the last few years. Of the FF games I’ve played in the last several years, Final Fantasy X had a pretty good story and played solidly, coming off as a much worthier successor to the FF mantle than this. That’s not to say FFIX was bad game, but it covered almost no new ground, and when that happens, you’d better at least have a hell of a story to tell. FFIX didn’t.

On the comic front, now that Blogger is clearly working again, these are the goodies that were picked up. The first is volumes 1-3 of Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. I read the first trade paperback back in Singapore and for some reason, it took me nearly two years to finally get my own copies. But I’m glad I did. The best way to describe this series is, in writer Kirkman’s own words, “a zombie movie that never ends.” Kirkman decided to do something decidedly crazy and tell the ENTIRE SAGA of one man’s attempts at survival in a world where the zombies have taken over. He starts with hoary cliche of waking up in a hospital from a coma with no awareness of what’s transpired, and eventually teams up with others, but aside from this archetypal beginning, he does what no movie or novel can attempt; he shows us the changes in his character as the weeks, then months, then years take their toll. A movie simply doesn’t have the duration to develop the character properly in that huge amount time, and a novel could do it, but without the horrifying visuals to accompany. Kirkman is already up to volume 8 in TPBs (with each volume representing six issues) and it just gets more and more painful, horrible and compelling to read. I’m REALLY getting into this one.

WE3 is another one of those bizarre, off-kilter gems for Grant Morrison. You really just never know whether the Morrison book you’re about to read is going to kick you in the intellectual groin, or make you feel uncomfortably emotional. WE3 struck me as the latter. Taking a fairly minimalist approach to dialog, Morrison tells the short tale of 3 cybernetically enhanced house-pets that have been engineered and trained to be lethal killing machines for the purpose of testing the viability of cyborg animal warriors. When they prove successful, they are, as prototypes, marked for disassembly. Of course, they don’t stand for it, and it’s hard to pin down what it is that’s so difficult to ignore about the plight of these animals. A dog, a cat and a rabbit with rudimentary communication skills, struggling to survive against the American military. It’s almost like Water Ship Down meets The Terminator. And it works brilliantly. It’s not a long story, but it manages to tell itself in an elegant way, and Morrison keeps the “realism” of the situation firmly at the fore. And of course, it really makes wonder who the animals are, the humans or these incredibly loyal, noble and hideously manipulated pets.

Seaguy on the other hand, is one of those intellectual groin kicks I was talking about. Bizarre, random, non-linear, and prone to driving you insane if you try to actually make sense of it, this is like a less directed version of other Morrison efforts such as The Filth or The Invisibles. The story, such as it is, centers on Seaguy, a man with no superpowers whatsoever, living in some creepy utopian version of our world where the heroes sacrificed themselves years ago to fight a final villain, and the world has been at peace ever since. His best friend is a floating, smoking, talking tuna that hates water, and his only goal in life is to become a hero so that he can gain the attention of an ample-figured amazonian warrior-ess sprouting a full, curly, Greek beard, known only as “she-beard.” There’s also a famous cartoon character and his massive theme-park empire known as “Mickey Eye,” a new kind of living artificial food source called “Xoo,” and don’t even get me started on the true origin of the moon.

It is bizarre. I like it. I don’t claim to understand it, but I like it.

And finally there’s this. But I can’t talk about it yet because I haven’t read it. Which I can’t do until the Wife is finished.

Wow

Today ended up being another run to the art supply store on Queen Street West (where we saw the fringes of the fire) and while in that part of town, I decided it was time to indulge in more comic book-ery. I’d heard many, many, MANY good things about The New Frontier and had passed it quite a few times in book stores in Singapore. I didn’t pick it up at the time because they were only available in hard cover, but seeing those price-tags in the Silver Snail comic store, equivalent to their American prices, and in two easy trade paperbacks, it was time to take the plunge.

My God am I glad I ever did.

It was an exciting experience reading this story. My brain was roughly divided into two halves, the “adult” that marveled at the writing, the characterization and social observations of the tale, and the kid inside that was screaming, “HAL JORDAN IS THE GREATEST GREEN LANTERN OF ALL! NO ARGUMENTS!”

The story is another one of those alternate-history tales that places the DC superheroes within the actual historical context of the late 50′s/early 60′s. The Korean conflict is winding down, Kennedy has yet to take office, and Sputnik has just shot into orbit. It is the dawn of the silver age of DC superheroes and local boy (yes, he’s from Toronto) Darwyn Cooke takes that turbulent setting and asks a–in retrospect no-brainer question–”But how would that period have REALLY affected the DC superheroes?”

This story answers that question to remarkable effect. The communist witch hunts, racism in the American deep south, and the questions of obeying your government versus doing the right thing are all touched upon in the story, and it is both uplifting and provocative to see how the iconic heroes handles these situations. It also helps that I’ve always REALLY liked Green Lantern and to see his origin story handled with so much more depth and characterization just had me grinning from ear to ear the entire time. Hal Jordan will always be Green Lantern to me, and to see it happening for the first time in a new light like this was fun in the extreme.

I loved this story. It brought out the best of modern comic narrative while at the same time somehow maintaining that sense of wonder comics usually only inspire in children yet to be jaded by the realities of life.

Also, the Blu-Ray direct to video animated version of this story goes on sale tomorrow.

I may have to pick that one up reeeeeeal soon.

Another Low Grade Work Day

Finished up a comic script, started on another article for GameAxis. That’s about it…

Wednesday With Turtles

Aside from a bit of the usual walk around the neighborhood to do some shopping I got this in the mail. I’d been extremely curious about it ever since I saw the trailer, and a lucky day on eBay with seemingly no one interested in the Blu Ray netted me the disc at a surprisingly low price.

So now I have watched TMNT in high-def. Was it a good movie for me? Yes? Did I enjoy it? Yes. Is it as good or better than the best of Old Disney, Miyazaki or Pixar? Not on your life.

Your mileage may vary based on your personal experience with the eponymous Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I’ve heard some off the cuff remarks of “This ain’t your father’s TMNT” and I find myself strongly disagreeing with that. The thing is, this IS your father’s TMNT, what it isn’t is your older brother or cousin’s TMNT. For most people the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was a bright, bouncy, puerile animated series in the 90′s with essentially hazard-free adventure, pizza loving cuteness, and now forever grating–at least to me–TMNTism of “Cowabunga.” Or, it is a couple of movies that have short martial artists in rubber suits, slowly performing Ninja-ry hi-jinks in their prosthetics while Vanilla Ice enthusiastically encourages them with rap.

The problem here is, the teenage mutant ninja turtles didn’t begin in the 90′s with an animated series. They began in the 80′s with an independent comic book. Life for the turtles began in 1984 as black and white indie comic put out by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, and was actually a semi-satirical take on the gritty Frank Miller aesthetic that was already taking over the comics industry (and would help to ruin it to some degree for the next decade) even back then. This was not a story about fun lovin’ “turtle dudes” that talked like surfers, loved pizza and occasionally battled with ninjas for fun and… more fun. Riffing off of everything from the origin of Daredevil to Miller’s Ronin, these turtles were deadly serious about their duty to kill a villain named the shredder, and when they got into fights, there was plenty of injury amputation and bloodshed. The comic walked a fine line between telling a story of its own and poking fun at some of the conventions of the day, and it became first a cult hit, and then gradually the monstrous merchandising machine that became the cartoons and movies most people think of today.

This was my first experience with the turtles, so I’m one of those curmudgeonly Elder Geek types that grumbles about the popular associations of the turtles with most people today. I remember a group that was actually very capable in combat, agile, serious, and bound by a similar code of honor as the samurai of Japan. They just happened to be reptilian.

This new CG animated film went a long way towards repairing the damage that the other media have inflicted on the series in the last few years. Taking an art design that matches some of the environmental realism of high end CG productions with a character design that is simpler and more Pixar-ish than Final Fantasy, this TMNT movie manages to approach a ratio of about 65% original comic and 45% animated series and movies in tone. The story itself seems to be a sequel from the live action movies, with Shredder already defeated and the turtles themselves having lost some purpose and gone their separate ways. Like the cartoons, they more easily identified by their differently colored masks, and like the cartoons, they can still be seen eating pizza, and Michaelangelo is still the joker of the group, with Donatello being more technologically oriented.

Everything else however seems to be taken from the comic, or as far into the comic as you can go with a PG rating. Raphael is definitely more of a loose cannon “Wolvie/Berserker” type, as he was in the comics. Leonardo is far more serious and concerned with concepts like duty and honor. And of course, there is the action. For the first time, these guys moved the way I had always imagined they would. Athletic, dynamic and dangerous. No other previous attempt has ever accurately rendered the turtles in action, but this one has done it.

The story moves along, and is never dull, though there are some pacing issues, some characterization that could have been developed, and there is never really a truly stand out moment plot/characterwise, though none of it is ever done badly. The story and characters never fall, but they don’t exactly soar either. The action however, is extremely well done, and the state of the CG animation and modeling is quite impressive. I think part of this might be that the movie is on Blu Ray, so this gave the film creators the ability to do virtually perfect transfer as they there was no loss of image quality due to attempt to compress it to get it all to fit on a disc. The end result is some of the most detailed animation I’ve ever seen, with some insane bells and whistles such as the fight between Raphael and Leonardo that takes place in the rain, and you can make out every single raindrop, and see every last one bounce off their shells and heads as they fight.

But probably the most impressive thing to me about this movie (aside from the fact that writer/director Kevin Munroe is an admitted fan of the original comics) is that this is NOT an American production. The animation was actually done by Imagi Studios in Hong Kong, and it makes a VERY impressive statement about what their animation industry is like now. I had thought that the only decent CG animation in the world was currently coming out of either America, or Japan, but if this is any indication of the future, then those guys in Hong Kong are gonna’ be one to watch.

Another Day At Home

Not much except a run to Bloor, some… uh… vaguely middle-eastern-ish lunch in the form a thing called a Shawarma, that reminds me a lot of the old Donairs I would have in university at “Kathy’s Greek Delites” except about 10 times better, and a trip to the used book store which resulted, for a mere $10 in this:

The best line this comic has to be the exchange between Wolverine and The Thing after they’ve defeated a giant monster.

Thing: Didn’t they come up with a cure for your kind?

Wolvie: You got a problem with mutants?

Thing: I meant Canadians.

And that, is just one more example of why Joss Whedon is a genius.

In other news, one of the earliest reviews for the Final Cut of Blade Runner is out and this looks like it’s going to be a doozy for high-def owners. Check out this screen capture from the high-def version, go on, click on it, good God, it’s amazing how they’ve cleaned this thing up. I’ve been waiting soooooo long for a decent transfer of this movie to finally come along, and the wait is finally over.

And now it’s time to go back to more article writing…