ghost writers in the sky

uh, action comics 866?

casio :: Jul.17.2008 :: comics :: No Comments »

yes, that’s right. They are making one. see the proof here.

casio :: May.18.2008 :: comics, hilarious shit, movies, music :: No Comments »

O.k, so the following contains ***IRON MAN spoilers***, but they’re only truly geeky ones, and I figure if you’re a big enough nerd to care, you’ve probably already seen the movie.

 They got it right! Finally, there’s a comicbook based film adaptation that accurately captures the particular tone of comics. It’s an almost intangible, unquantifiable nuance, and I had almost given up hope that it would ever be possible. Now,  I am a grown man who reads and loves superhero comics, a fact which many people have made fun of.  What these ‘people’ do not realise, however, is that since at least the late nineties, the major comic publishers have been targeting most of their comic output at an adult audience.  This is an audience who have grown up with these characters and storylines, and who have given up vast brain real-estate to the unimaginably complicated continuity, which is one of the all-important properties of the form. Continuity dictates that each and every comic that takes place in the Marvel Universe (or the 616 U, as it is known to we geeks, a number that refers to the screeds of alternate realities which have neccessitatively been created to deal with specific problems of continuity) meshes neatly and logically with every other comic since the early sixties. It’s set in stone. A fantastic four comic can not contradict events laid down in a wolverine comic (or if it does, this must be explained satisfyingly- and the ‘it took place in an alternate reality’ excuse is getting old, unless you’re Grant Morrison, whose comics are like printed l.s.d) This is one of the most rewarding parts of being a long-term comic afficionado. We get to know these characters, we love them, and the more we read about them, the richer and more inter-textual the meta-story becomes. I can’t really think of another artistic medium with that much longevity, changing and developing and growing in detail alongside one’s whole entire life (aside from coronation street. Charlotte pointed that one out)Up until now, movies adapted from comic books have neccessitatively ignored the issue of continuity, each film existing as a seperate entity (unless you count Daredevil and Elektra, and I don’t think we’re going to, given that they’re two of the worst pieces of shit ever made) .

The last ten years or so have been a very fertile and successful time for adapting comic books into movies. And largely, they have all SUCKED SHIT.  Marvel comics in particular have done particularly well at this, with the eye-wateringly popular X-men movies (much to my horror and bitter disappointment, largely shit), and the brain-meltingly successful spiderman movies (like unwrapping your christmas presents to find, in the boxes, only runny shit). They just didn’t seem to respect their source materiel, neutering what were potent and much beloved storylines with depth and resonance- admittedly, a successful tactic, given that most people are exceedingly stupid.

 Then along comes John Favreau from out of where?, and gets it so so right with Iron Man. The great thing about Iron Man is that he’s a super hero we’re allowed to dislike personally. He’s a fantastically wealthy arms manufacturer, insufferably smug, with no special abilities at all. He buys himself a set of superhero armor with daddy’s money.  Robert downey Jnr takes this on board, and plays stark with a casual assholiness, that you just love him for (”yeah, I’m a fucking cock, and what?”) RobertDowney’s Stark knocks back bourbon while riding through afghanistan in a u.s. army A.P.C. He fucks the living shit out of a poor defenceless (smokin hot) newsweek journalist dispatched to interview him, doesn’t even give her a quote, then gets his secretary to show her where the door is. He listens to Suicidal Tendencies for fuck’s sake. I was sitting there in the movie theatre just full-on loving this film- I mean, Stan Lee plays himself in it as some kind of silk-dressing-gown-wearin, brandy-balloon-clutching, Hugh Hefneralike, complete with bevy of brazen babelicious bimbos, true believers!!!, and then, there’s this sudden ending- BAM!, and I slump back in my seat grinning. Two hours had flown by. The credits are rolling, and I’m thinking about how cool the ending was, referencing the civil war and Iron man’s recent neo-fascist political leanings. He’s the ultimate American hero, clad in as much military super-tech as money can buy, spraypainted small-penis-red, and on the cover of all the magazines with Paris and Nicole.  

And then, after the credits, in a scene written especially by Brian Michael Bendis, Samuel L. Jackson turns up playing Nick Fury. Now this is pretty fuckin cool casting. When Marvel created their new ”ultimate” universe a few years ago, the editors actually obtained Sam Jackson’s permission to use his likeness in their comic portrayals of Nick Fury. It worked really well, and for Sam to be playin the mafucker in a film? Thats just some shit goin around and comin back around on a motherfucker. This dude Samuel Jackson has had a pretty seriously fuckin cool career so far. He was Jules in pulp fiction, Mace Windu in Star Wars, Frozone in the incredibles, and now.. he’s NICK FURY, pretty much the coolest guy in comics. So Nick Fury turns up at the end of this perfectly brilliant Iron Man film and mentions the two words that blew every Geek’s mind in that theatre: “the”, and “Avengers”. So, BAM! we have continuity!! Iron Man is part of a larger world!! They’re going to make other comic movies- and if it’s the Avengers, we’re talking Captain America, Thor, uh, Spider Woman, The Wasp, The Vision (who knows, they’re all cool)- and they’re going to cross-over. We’ve already heard that Nick Fury’s in the new Hulk movie as well. If they make oruigin flicks for all the Avengers, and then an Avengers movie, I can pretty much die happy.

  UPDATE!! The Avengers has an IMDB page !!!

casio :: May.10.2008 :: comics, movie review :: No Comments »

(k so this post is re/ some seriously 1337 hardc0re comicbook g33kc0re crue sheeits and is rife with <****MAJOR MARVEL SPOILERS*****>, but you should be all over this, boye, so get caught up, or you don’t ride !!!11!)
I read the best comic of the year so far today, and it was Secret Invasion issue number one, Brian Michael Bendis’ intricately planned assault on the marvel universe. For the last three or four years, Bendis has been writing a whole bunch of marvel titles that splintered out from the disparate Avengers as they coped with the fear, conflict and suspicion brought about by the civil war and its aftermath, and the attendant deaths of Captain America, Clint Barton/Hawkeye, and The Vision. Bendis has deconstructed the core political structures of the classic marvel universe, and has written some truly riveting comics in doing so (secret war, new avengers, alias, mighty avengers, avengers disassembled, the Illuminati, House of M).
Having never been much of a fan of the avengers and captain america et al, Bendis’ comics gave me that shiver of recognition, the headlong rush of true geek thrillpower. His writing is epic in scale, detailing world-changing events with Machiavellian intricacy, while simultaneously developing the beautifully human characterisations of a huge cast. He is a virtuoso of the almost imperceptibly self-depreciating tone that is the mark of a great superhero comic. To read a bendis comic is to L0L, and to also say ‘woaah’ under one’s breath occasionally (fuck why don’t I just marry him already). And then the aliens turned up.

                                    
        Turns out the skrulls (pictured above in figurine disguise),  were understandably seriously fucked off by Black Bolt, Stephen Strange, Reed Richards, Xavier, Namor, and Tony Stark   (the old-boy network of the marvel universe, also known- in a thinly veiled freemason reference- as the Illuminati)     attacking their throneworld in a misguided attempt to stop them invading earth (the ‘holy land’ and focus of their religious fervor) so they just went ahead and invaded earth. Secretly. Possessed of a new technology that enables them to shape-shift in order to undetectably mimic human beings, they assassinated or abducted a whole bunch of people and replaced them. Elektra was viciously killed,  and shape shifted back into a skrull, then Black Bolt turned out to be one too. Holy fuck the skrulls killed Black Bolt, king of the inhumans!  

(and elektra! she was freakin ’sweeet!)   . Faced with evidence of a skrull invasion, Iron man shits his shiny iron pants. 

Now, the next bit of the story is available free online as a 7-page digital comic and can be read here. It’s the ’secret invasion prologue’ wherein

 Dum-Dum Dugan, director of S.H.I.E.L.D, is assassinated and replaced too! Suddenly nobody can be trusted. Paranoia is rife. In rereading the last 3 years worth of Bendis’ comics, we realise that everything has been going very wrong for a long time. 

   Then!!!… in issue one of the 8-part Secret Invasion miniseries, the hidden skrulls activate, and the massive scale of their attack on earth begins to be revealed. This is epic, classic, jaw-dropping Marvel business with brilliant pencils by Lenil Yu, a huge reveal every two pages, and so many ‘wooaaaahh” moments that, as soon as I finished reading,  I flipped back to the first page and started again. This comic moves so fast that I missed stuff the first time.“A thing like this deserves the promise that all the answers will be revealed,” says Bendis. “This is a big story with a beginning, middle and an end. This will not drag on. This is an accumulation of all these ideas and threads that we’ve be planting for so long. So we came up with a story that we thought was a big, giant pay off for those who’ve been following ‘New Avengers’ and the other Avengers book and all these other things like Skrull fans from their appearances way back in ‘Fantastic Four.’ But if you haven’t been following those things and are just buying this particular thing, you’re getting a hell of a yarn as well. I think it works on both levels and I thought that was very important.” It’s pure guaranteed 100% uncut freebase geek crack, baby, and it goes on for seven more issues, right through the winter, .

casio :: Apr.06.2008 :: comics :: No Comments »