BEGGARS CAN’T BE BLOGGERS

Movies and Comics – I Will Try To Fix You With Comics Edition

BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON  by Mike W Barr and Jerry Bingham DC Graphic Novel  Grade: B

Mark Hamill delivering the introduction to a book published in 1987 amuses me as it was 5 years later before he would become an integral part of Batman, voicing Joker in the classic animated series.  I think I read this 10 years ago and didn’t care for it.  But since then, two things happened which inspired me to give it another shot:

·         Batman’s child was reworked back into continuity (despite Grant Morrison stating he didn’t read SOTD before writing the origin of Damian Wayne).

·         I saw the last installment of the Dark Knight Trilogy and was underwhelmed.

This is a story of Batman’s partnership with Ra’s al Ghul and his daughter Talia.  Basically they form an unsteady alliance to take down a terrorist and his weather machine.  It’s as silly as it sounds, but I’ll admit, I’ve never read a Batman story where so much happens in just 78 pages.  It’s a lot to swallow that Batman would give up crime fighting upon learning his wife is pregnant, and then ditches her after she fakes a miscarriage.  If anyone takes a backseat, it’s Ra’s al Ghul.  Ra’s seems way too forgiving here, and he nearly gets his butt kicked before Batman bails him out.  No one wants to see Ra’s be anything else other than a complete bad ass.

If there’s a reason to recommend the book, it’s the art.  Bingham penciled, inked, and colored this story and it’s fantastic.   I‘ll have to remember Bingham because other than some Superman stories, I’m not too familiar with the guy.
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ALAN MOORE: WILD WORLDS DC/WILDSTORM by Alan Moore - TPB Grade: B

DC released this collection shortly after Moore completed his strong ABC run and walked away from their Wildstorm imprint.  Surely no one who purchases this trade is expecting the quality of Top 10 or Promethea.   Moore created the ABC sandboxes from scratch (except League of Extraordinary Gentlemen???), worked with better artists at ABC, and "Wild Worlds" is certainly not up to such hight standards.  But I disagree with anyone who says Moore "mails this in". Are these more mainstream adventures than what we expect from Moore?  Absolutely.  But there is still great wickedness on display here.

 In his WildC.A.T.S./Spawn crossover the main characters meet, fight each other, then fight the bad guy.  That’s pretty standard, and if Moore had pitched anything else in doing a WildC.A.T.S./Spawn crossover the book would’ve never seen print.  And I certainly disagree with the Goodreads' reviewer who typed in the single word critique of "retarded".  I'm curious why someone with such an active vocabulary would waste any time not posting comments on You Tube.

The WildC.A.T.S./Spawn adventure feels much like a 90's era Age of Apocalypse tale.  Paradox alert:  Spawn is both the main villain AND a member of the invasion party, so there are some trippy time travel elements at play here. And I forgot the obvious rule that if a new character conceals their identity, there will be a earth shattering reveal in the last act. 

He’s not reinventing comics with this one, folks.  Moore is throwing a smackdown, and anybody expecting otherwise should cool their expectations a bit.  I thought the crossover was a lot of fun, however.

The Voodoo story is challenging initially.   At first it plays like an exploitation picture, with the casual use of the N-word and several women being referred to as "bitches" And then that tone is shattered by beautiful interruptions of crackerjack prose when Moore introduces his godlings.  To top if off is a stripper, who was superhero in a former life, and there’s never any attempt to explain her motivation for going X-rated.  Obviously there are misogynist elements but nothing as offensive as a typical Garth Ennis comic.

This is about an empowered, sexy woman, who cuts loose and faces down the devil in a wild finale.  There’s no real scorekeeping as our entire cast transform into magic-washed marionettes, and parade through a battleground that is literally half church/half strip club.

This is what happens when Moore produces a drive-in movie comic, Roger Corman by way of Anne Rice.  I'm more than okay with that.

The chapter dedicated to Deathblow is perhaps the wildest read in the collection.  The title character awakens as a woman in a barely inhabited world.  She soon discovers she is only one version of Deathblow, and the surrounding world is a deathmatch arena with the "Deathblow" identity on the line. 

The Mister Majestic one shot didn't do much for me, but I will confess I'm not too familiar with the character.  Majestic is winding down and saying his goodbyes as the universe snuffs out.  The WildC.A.T.S.stand alone that closes the book is saved entirely by the artist but I had trouble remembering exactly what happened one day later.  Minor complaints for two stories which take up very little space in the book.  DC could have omitted them entirely and shaved a buck off of the price.
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THE CAPE by Joe Hill (story),Jason Ciaramella (writer) ,Zach Howard (penciler)   TPB   -Grade A+

This is a horror story which I initially balked at and dismissed as just another supes’ origin story.  Also the fact that NBC produced a miniseries with the title didn't do it any favors.  But there’s nothing ready for network primetime here.  It’s not safe, and the protagonist who wears the magic cape just happens to be a sociopath. 

The story’s inspiration seems to unfold from the urban myth of the hoodrat who ties a beach towel around his neck and takes a fatal leap from his two story rooftop.  One such child survives his brush with death but never matures into a responsible adult.  This is the “what if” story of “what if” Superman was a major jerk and took what he wanted all the time.  And didn’t care about anyone.

It’s a quick read and avoids familiarity by strapping us to the back of such a demented wild card.    And the art by Zach Howard is delish.  Take a look at this:

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BLUE ESTATE VOLUME 1 -  By Viktor Kalvachev and various - TPB -  Image Comics - Grade B+ Yes, the quotes on the back cover compare it to Tarantino, and maybe one day we'll stop doing that for every new crime comedy.  But it's appropriate here because it suffers from some of  Quentin's faults;  the zingy pop culture references and an overpopulation of hip, seedy characters.  Introducing this many colorful junkies & thieves within a modest four issue framework is, of course,  overwhelming, and the writer never gets around to an actual story before his camera swings around to another crew,  as we bob & sway through the surf guitar tracklist, and we transition from penciler to penciler.

But I am recommending it without reservation because I WAS entertained and BLUE ESTATE is unlike most current books, even the indies.  It's perverse and Kalvachev's creative design is a punked out tribute to pulp fiction (the genre, not the movie- though Hell, it's pretty much that too.  There's a Travolta stand-in who's suggested to have intercourse with a Samuel L. Jackson stand-in).  It's very similar to 100 BULLETS without the conspiratorial nervous system, or STRAY BULLETS minus the blender narrative (though we do flash back then forward a few times).
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BATMAN: EARTH ONE - By Geoff Johns & Gary Frank - Graphic Novel - DC - Grade B+ First I want to recognize what an improvement I thought this was over SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE, a book where the revamping of an origin mostly felt uninspired.  It was rumored that these books (and the ALL STAR books prior) would be DC's version of Marvel's "Ultimate" brand, a streamlining of a universe to make franchise characters more "newbie" friendly and uncluttered from continuity.  For the most part DC succeeds here, with Alfred Pennyworth landing the biggest transformation.  Taking a queue from the recent Bat-Movies and the brilliant characterization by Michael Caine; Alfred is no one's manservant but rather a scarred veteran owing a debt to Bruce Wayne's father.  It's suggested at the end that everything young Bruce knows about tracking & dismantling monsters is honed from the skills Pennyworth brought back from his war.

Is EARTH ONE needed?  Probably not.  It borrows too heavily from Batman: Year One yet misfires in remaking Jim Gordon a whelp to Gotham's corruption.  And I initially hated John's new narcissistic, celebrity cop Harvey Dent, but must admit I'm intrigued by Dent's final scene.  Also Oswald "Penguin" Cobblepott is completely wasted as Gotham's Mayor (the offscreen mayor is an evildoer we learn at the beginning but it's disclosed he's Cobblepott in the climax, right before his demise.  So what's the point burning an A-list villain?).

Gary Frank's art is solid as ever.  Wonderful facial expressions and actions scenes throughout.  I have no problem recommending such a nice looking book.


- Dale Beggars

BEGGARS CAN'T BE BLOGGERS - Movies and Comics

Outbreaks:  Real Life and Fiction - Contagion and Vito
Contagion – Warner Bros. – PG13
Vito – HBO – Not Rated

There’s plenty reason to revisit "Contagion”; the big budget suspense from 2011 which divided critics, yet was a modest success.  It’s solid storytelling all the way around, from a script which avoids the clichés of last minute antidotes interstate highway traffic  jams , etc… to it’s haunting score by Cliff Martinez.

Living in Dallas County in the midst of a West Nile Virus outbreak, where 10  have died (so far)of the 217 cases reported, I find myself returning again to it’s message,  that our world has traded immunity for speed.  And the local controversy ensuing over today's aerial spraying confirms, like many of the film’s characters soon realize,  there are no compromise-free solutions  in the age of digital media, and the mass hysteria that accompanies it. 

Director Steven Soderbergh makes the inspired choice of allowing the Nipah virus be the main character, in a film peppered with A-list stars, like Matt Damon & Kate Winslet, all of whom disappear for large amounts of screen time as we shift to another spot of global outbreak.  The virus kills a major actor in the first 15 minutes and it’s immediately unsettling because no one's safe .  No matter the billing, or how prominently the actor is featured in promotional material.

And, yet, the film's message about the media/government war in controlling the story is what unsettled me most.  Those responsible for spreading truth, whether it's the CDC's Laurence Fishburn or blogger Jude Law, are compromised by a need to protect loved ones, or their opportunity to make money in promoting alternative treatments.  If an outbreak of such magnitude occurs, "Contagion" says it will be almost impossible for those individuals in power to not recognize it as a chance for advancement, instead of the catastrophe that it truly is.

The film's aftermath shows us the trash on the streets, the looted homes, the people shot dead in their drive-ways... Millions dead.  Governments crippled.  Some A-list actors survive, but the modern world has changed significantly because of a microscopic organism.  A tiny organism within a grotesque one, whose antibodies were long ago overwhelmed by personal status updates.

With the coverage of West Nile locally, I've also been thinking of another film recently, the outstanding documentary "Vito”, about the life of activist and film scholar Vito Russo .  As West Nile related deaths emerged in Dallas over the years the local newscasters would close stories with a disclaimer; the victim was elderly or infirm.  It struck me as admittance that West Nile was NOT a concern because it only killed sick & old people.  

And in the 80's activists like Russo and Larry Kramer knew the Reagan Administration wouldn't lift a finger to combat AIDS until, in Russo's words, "the right people started dying".   And, this is just opinion, but the face of HIV changed nationally when Magic Johnson announced he'd been infected.  Which, along with Reagan's exit, perhaps went a long way to proving Russo's point.

Anti-Reagan protests footage is featured prominently in "Vito" as Russo, Larry Kramer, and their colleagues make desparate efforts to no longer be ignored.  It's amazing to survive the 1980's and wonder how the hell so many of us didn't care that the Feds disregarded a health crisis, based purely on a prejudice for the victims.

But the biggest reward in "Vito" is learning that Russo was not so incredibly different from any passionate film buff, like myself or the friends I grew up with.  The way he recharges himself with film, and then channels that into one the great essays about not only gay culture, but to old movies, "The Celluloid Closet", is an inspiration to all of us freaks who stay up late watching TCM.    

It's through Russo's fascination with old cinema and it’s stereotypes that he researched and authored the book, which was later turned into it’s own documentary.  Some “Closet” clips are featured in the HBO film, in brilliant testimony of how Hollywood completely undermined the legitimate status of a culture.  We see, for instance, how many Hitchcock films featured a gay conspirator or remorseless killer.  

And suddenly, I get why so many people were upset with Sharon Stone’s bisexual character in Basic Instinct.  It's not that there aren't gay criminals and killers in the real world.  There are.   

But there are almost never any gay heroes in the film world.  And that ultimately is why you should see "Vito".  Vito Russo is one.

Random Fandom

Comics

Suicide Squad - DC- New 52 - 1 through 12

The DC Comics clearing house of super villains known as the New 52 monthly title, "Suicide Squad" has been back for one year, and it just gets better and better.  Admittedly, I came late to the party, being a fan of Gail Simone's version of Deadshot and not being familiar with writer Adam Glass.  Also the brief controversy about the new younger, slimmer Amanda Waller at launch allowed me to wrongly conclude this was a soulless, extreme makeover of one of DC's better team concepts.   

It started getting really good with the Harley Quinn origin story, complete with Joker flashbacks and a really creepy showdown between Quinn and Deadshot.  These two, with government liason Waller, are the major players of "Suicide Squad" with King Shark popping up in (cannibalism) relief.  Don't think too hard about the logic of a rogue cannibal team member.  League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, The Ultimates, and The Dark Avengers all had cannibals, but I must admit King Shark is the first one who's consumed a teammate who went on living within his intestinal tract before making a grand escape (why I love comics).

The stakes are enormous in Task Force X, where members carry a surgically implanted neck bomb.  Glass doesn't play with our expectations too much in this respect; Chances are if it's a villain you've never heard of, they won't make it through the arc without Waller igniting a neck bomb, or King Shark turning them into a human PEZ dispenser.   This is the fun of it.  Metas get lied to by the government.  They die horrible, final, goodbye forever deaths within the confines of a monthly title.  Go figure.

DVDs

The Grey ***1/2 - Way better than it has any right being. In the age where "Man vs Nature" is a requirement for Hollywood to overdose a movie with CGI & 3D, The Grey dares to be existential.  At one point I felt like I was reading the greatest Wolverine comic ever written.  I mean that as the highest compliment.  It's a beautiful, bloody film about the shadows in our own hearts, and the shadows where the beasts prowl.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel *** - Predictable as hell, but a joy to watch.  Reminded me of those Neil Simon movies from the 70s where a list of comic actors have their lives changed on holiday* (* also see "The Love Boat"). Three locks on Oscar noms for Dench, Smith, and Wilkinson, all playing transformed

seniors.  And if you love Indian Food and aren't craving it at the end of this movie, then you filled up on too much popcorn.

Audio

The Nerdy Show Podcast - Gay guys talking movies and comics. The panelists stray into some explicit descriptions about what they would do sexually with certain teddy bear comic writers, requiring FF>>or fighting through. But I like listening to these guys, especially the episode where one expressed outrage at Chick-Fil-A, and then two minutes later admitted eating there that week (but justified it because his coworkers paid for it).

- Dale Beggars