Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

OK, so — not all of these came out this week. Yes, one or two were from last week. Dude, I’m way way behind on buying comics. Give me a break, OK?

Prince of Power #1 (of 4)

BEST OF THE WEEK! (Er, well, last week, technically. But I just read it today.) Man, thank the heavens above Amadeus Cho, angsty billionaire super-genius, isn’t a DC character — I’d hate to see him get offed in an undignified manner as soon as Hercules inevitably returns to reclaim his “Prince of Power” title. Writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente copy and paste the sense of fun and mythological underpinnings from their run on The Incredible Hercules into this new Cho-focused mini (yes, whimsical sound effects included). They had me laughing by the end of the recap page, people. If you want fun instead of grizzly murder, this is the book for you. Grade: A-

Legion of Super-Heroes (Volume 27) #1

I should be thrilled with this book: the writer of my favorite era of the Legion is back writing the newly-restored original version of these characters. This new LoSH should be a slam-dunk, but it’s just… not. I don’t remember the Levitz Legion feeling quite so choppy in its storytelling or stilted in its dialogue. The art from Yildiray Cinar is gorgeous in some parts and amatuerish in others. And there’s too much focus on a character I have no reason to give a shit about yet. I’m not giving up on it yet, but this wasn’t the strongest start. Grade: C+

The Avengers #1

If you dig Bendis’ overall take on the Avengers — and from the sales numbers, it seems you probably do — you’ll dig The Avengers #1 as it’s a quintessential example of Bendisy Avengerism. This one’s mostly a team-building issue, but sets up this first arc as being time-travel-y (a concept for which I am a big sucker) and pulls in characters from a direct-to-DVD movie and a classic mid-90s limited series. (For the record, I still disagree heavily with having Wolverine in the Avengers. Do we really have to have all of the hot movie properties in one book?) Grade: B+

The Return of Bruce Wayne #1 (of 6)

(Yes, another last-week book. Deal.) An interesting beginning, but I’m more excited to see where Grant Morrison is going with this series than I was in the particulars of this issue. I always love seeing artwork from the underappreciated Chris Sprouse, though, and he doesn’t disappoint with Hairy-Chested Batman Amongst the Clan of the Cave Bear; I wish he were drawing all six issues of this series rather than just this first one. While it’s not absolutely required that you have read Final Crisis before reading this book, wow would it ever be a good idea if things like “context” are something you’re into. Grade: B+

Brightest Day #2

I missed the first issue and my local shop didn’t have any, so I know I’m coming in a little late — but I shouldn’t be this lost after missing one issue. I have no idea whatsoever what’s going on, since (much like 52) this isn’t one story, but rather a whole bunch of stories (hopefully related, in the end) which each get advanced just a touch in each issue. It’ll probably read just fine when collected, but right now it feels like I ate the individual ingredients for a recipe instead of waiting for the meal to be cooked. Grade: C

When did Sam Mendes and John August get attached to a potential Preacher movie?  Last I heard, it was still in the muck-encrusted hands of that hackiest of hacks, Mark Steven Johnson — the “director” who blessed us with the atrocious Ghost Rider, Daredevil, and shat all over my favorite novel of all time.  If Mendes and August are attached — and they’re already talking sequel before the first script is done — man, that might conceivably become — gasp! — a really good movie.

It might actually be time for me to get excited about this project…

(I originally posted this at my personal site, but I realized that it fit in here at the JOB, too!  Enjoy!)

Now this is what I want out of a summer blockbuster. Star Trek delivered all of the action, all of the spectale, all of the emotion, all of the characterization I could have asked for and then some. [1]  I found myself immersed in the world, in the stunning visual design and the engaging characters, in a way I’ve never been before with any of the previous Trek films or TV shows.  Star Trek truly managed to do something new with these characters and ideas that have been around for forty years:  make me care about them.

I truly loved the fact that, unlike other recent reboots and reimaginings which simply restarted their stories from scratch, Star Trek managed to explain its own revised continuity as part of the story itself — admittedly, the world of Trek is much more suited to such meta-shenanigans than other series. Director J.J. Abrams and screenwritersRoberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were able to utterly reset our expectations of this world and these characters while still letting the previous stories stand. And wow, do they up the stakes in a big way; there’s one event in partiular in this newly-reimagined universe that would have seemed unthinkable in the original series. When they say “everything you know is wrong”…well, it’s still hyperbole, perhaps, but it’s not as far from the truth as you might think.

Not Exactly Spoilery But Certainly Geeky Digression: I read a comment on a well-known science fiction author’s site today from a commenter who was pissed off because, he said, the new movie threw out all of the previous continuity, rendering moot all of the stories we’ve experienced before.  I took away the exact opposite idea:  to me, the new movie said “everything you’ve already seen still happened, but now this is happening, too.”  But maybe it was a little bit easier for me to take that particular bit of continuity shuffle from all of my years of reading comic books, where this sort of thing is far from a novel idea, especially for readers of DC Comics and/or Grant Morrison.

Anyway.

One of the things I never quite understood about the original Enterprise crew was exactly why this crew was supposed to be special. Yes, Kirk and Spock in particular were compelling characters-cum-icons — there’s a reason they’re still part of the pop culture landscape after forty years — but to me the original Trek always felt like “Kirk and Spock and Those Other Guys (Oh, and the Woman, Too).”   (This isn’t a point I’m interested in arguing — it’s just my relatively uninformed opinion as someone who was never much into Trek.) But in this movie, Abrams and company show that each of these people is indeed special in his or her own way and adds his or her own special brand of brilliance and ultra-competence to the crew. Abrams gives each of the main crew a chance to show off their various skills, and it works spectacularly.  I felt like I was watching these characters for themselvesand not for their (not-even-assigned-yet) Five Year Mission.

And speaking of the characters, the casting in this new movie is almost perfect, especially given the fact that none of these characters is exactly as you remember them from before incarnations. The worst possible decision would have been for Chris Pine to have attempted to ape William Shatner; except for one (I’m sure very conscious) moment toward the end of the movie, he utterly avoids any Shatnerisms. But he brings the core essence of Kirk — the complete self-conifdence, the lusty roving eye, the anti-authoritarian streak — and makes this new James T. Kirk a compelling, if different, character in his own right. Zachary Quinto’s Spock is much more at war with his dual nature than his predecessor, though he’s certainly the actor who looks the most like his character’s previous portrayer.  I especially enjoyed Anton Yelchin’s Chekov and Simon Pegg’s Scotty, both of whom were primarily played for laughs.  (It worked, too – Star Trek was quite a bit funnier than I expected it to be.)

Not Exactly Spoilery But Certainly Geeky Digression: I found it notable that while most of the secondary characters never had their full names mentioned on the show — usually that information got revealed in after-the-show sources like movies or novels or role-playing games — every one of the main Enterprise crew gets his or her full name dropped at some point in the new movie.  Just another little touch I liked.

Yes, the science is wonky and didn’t make much sense.  I truly didn’t care — some people like science fiction for the science, but I’m more into the fiction part.  And the fiction in this movie worked fantastically for me.  I was sad when the movie ended and came out of the theater already looking forward to the inevtiable sequel.

Grade: A

[1] This opinion was not colored by the fact that I’d just seen the craptastic Spider-Man 3 twelve hours before.

Once upon a time, DC could have announced Kevin Smith writing a new Batman miniseries and then a monthly series to follow and I would have eaten that shit right up.  I liked his Green Arrow fine and really enjoyed his Daredevil, and of course I really liked his movies up through the mid-2000’s or so.

But then Smith blew most of his comic-writing cred with me by writing a couple of series he never bothered finishing for Marvel.  (Or Marvel never bothered asking him to finish them, maybe.)  Further, I didn’t much care for the issues that did come out.  And then he did a recent Batman miniseries which turned the Joker — in theory one of the scariest, most bat-shit (so to speak) insane villains DC has — into a Clerks-style innuendo-filled fop.  And on top of that, he had one of his cronies (Walt Flanagan, previously best know as the owner of the small priapic dog who bedeviled Jay and Silent Bob in Smith’s comics of the mid-90’s) do the artwork, which just feels a little more obviously nepostistic to me than I might care for.

So, yeah, totally not excited by this announcement (nor, particularly, the Green Hornet book he’s going to write based on his aborted film).  Even with the gaps built into the schedule to allow him to complete this thing, I have no confidence it’ll actually get done on any reliable schedule, or at all.  Note that I’m not necessarily speculating as to the quality of these books, mind you — they could be perfectly entertaining.

As long as he leaves the Joker out of it.

Well, so far none of you out there have responded to our wonderful do-it-yourself Mayor of New York contest thingie. So our very own Ben thought he’d show you how it’s done:

There you go. And he’s got more where that came from. Y’all’z gots to step it up, y’hear?

The Source has the full-color version of Frank Quitely’s cover for Batman and Robin #2. As much as I love Quitely’s stuff in general, am I the only one a little put off by the scratchiness/sketchiness of they style he’s using for B&R? I mean, don’t get me wrong — it’s still gorgeous stuff, but the sketchiness makes it look rushed to me, and “rushed” is never a word I think of when I think of Frank Quitely. Opinions?

So I see on @superpow3r’s Twitter feed this morning that the tabloid AM New York has an early-morning spoiler about who will be elected the new mayor of Marvel New York City in today’s Amazing Spider-Man #591.

And my first thought was: there’s only one possible person who could be elected mayor of New York which could possibly be that interesting that any tabloid would run a story on it this morning.* And whaddayaknow, I was exactly right! Just from reading that there existed a link to the tabloid which had the spoiler. I’m a pretty bright guy and all, but if I got the Big Twist from that little fact alone…I’m thinking it’s probably not quite the shocker** Marvel expected it to be. (In all fairness, whether it’s truly a massive surprise or not, this development could lead to exactly the kinds of odds-stacked-against-him stories Spider-Man is known for. I have a hunch it’ll play better than Oliver Queen-as-mayor of Star City did..)

And hey, this looks like a brilliant opportunity to kick off our DIY Humor feature which I made up right this very second! Think you’ve got a better idea for who should be the new mayor of Marvel New York than [name redacted]? Well, show us!

Take the image above and insert who you think would make a good/horrible mayor. Bonus points if it’s someone who’ll make Spidey’s life a living hell, because, well, Spidey’s just not Spidey if he’s not spouting wisecracks while suffering immensely. Post your doctored image to your own blog or site and either email us your entry at crew@jimmyolsensblues.com or just ping us back. We’ll provide a list of all entries we get, so all seven of our readers will see your stabs at humor!

By the way, maybe those of you who read ASM on a regular basis can tell me: has [name redacted for those who might actually be spoiled by this] actually been running for mayor? Or is this supposed to be the result of some surprisingly massive write-in campaign?

* Well, unless Marvel decided Norman Osborn had time to for mayorial duties as well. Or maybe Barack Obama — he seems to sell a lot of comics these days.

** Now if Spidey nemesis The Shocker were elected mayor…

Those wizards of wonder at Action Age Comics launch the long-awaited series The Chronicles of Solomon Stone — so long-awaited that your grandfather got sick of waiting for it and went off to fight the Nazis instead! This, friends, is comics the way it oughta be: free.

Go. Read. Love.

Hey, look, it’s a new post! Sorry we’ve been away for so long, but at least we’ve been Twittering, and that’s not nothin’, right?

sigh Sorry. We’ll try not to let it happen again.

We were brought out of semi-retirement by this “Scott and Jean” meme started by Alert Nerd which has been making the rounds the last couple of days. The point, for those of you might not have seen it or don’t feel like clicking the link, is that we comics readers each have those things which we feel so strongly about we can’t even rationally discuss the topic. I don’t think I’m so far gone about my choice that I can’t even talk about it like an adult, but I did feel passionately about the issue, even though I knew at the time that passion was going to prove fruitless. Anyways, here’s mine:

I firmly believe Magneto should have been capital-D permanently never-ever-comin’-back Dead at the end of Adjectiveless X-Men #3 (1991).

Chris Claremont brought Magneto through an absolutely fabulous character arc in the X-Men titles throughout the back half of the ’80s and the beginning of the ’90s. He added nobility to the character and a sense of depth rarely seen in comic-book bad guys before that point. Under Claremont’s direction, Mangeto went from regular full-on supervillain, to a man trying to fight his own nature and be a force for good, to a man crumbling under the weight of expectations he couldn’t bear and returning to what he knew — even as he knew he was disappointing those who had put their trust in him.

At the end of X-Men #3, Magneto died (in the sense that there’s any such thing as “death” within the ever-continuing genre of mainstream superhero comics, of course). He went out almost literally crushed beneath those expectations, and it was a perfect ending for the character — and for Claremont’s run on the X-Men, as that issue was the close of his almost-two-decade run on the title. Claremont was the one who added such dimension to the character, and I thought Marvel should have left the character dead.

I knew it wasn’t going to happen, of course. That’s just not the way comics work. They did leave Magneto alone for a couple of years, but he’s been back and re-killed and re-brought-back a couple of times over the eighteen years(!) since Claremont ended his story. Even if subsequent writers hadn’t had their own ideas for what to do with the character, the X-Men movies and Magneto’s prominent place in them would surely have convinced Marvel to bring him back then. Don’t mean I think it’s right, but I accept that that’s the way it is.

And funnily enough: now Marvel’s given Claremont his own book, X-Men Forever, which continues the story exactly from the end of this issue, letting Claremont explore what he might have done with the characters had he not gotten shitcanned from the books. I wonder how long it’ll take before Claremont brings Magneto back himself in that book?

If Batman Begins represented a step or several forward from the superhero movies that came before, so does The Dark Knight represent another leap. The Dark Knight retains all that I loved about its predecessor – note-perfect acting^[1], solid writing, gorgeous cinematography and art direction – and adds several new flavors to its casserole of excellence, most notably a deepening complexity and thoughtfulness. The Dark Knight isn’t a superhero action movie. It’s an ethical treatise with punching.

(Perhaps very mild spoilers to follow, but likely spoilers only to those who’ve never paid any attention whatsoever to Batman and his rogues gallery.)

What does it mean to say someone is a “hero?” How far would you go to save the ones you love from danger? How about people you don’t even know? How far can you be pushed without losing yourself to madness? The Dark Knight asks these questions and turns them over and over, examining them from numerous points of view, presenting several ideas but never providing answers – The Dark Knight is an action movie that wants to engage your brain as much as, if not more than, your adrenal glands. Most of the major characters faces down at least one of these ethical quandaries (except for the force-of-nature Joker, who clearly gave himself over to madness long before this story starts) and each makes choices true to character. That a movie about a man dressed as a flying rodent and a psychotic clown dares ask these questions at all is astonishing; that The Dark Knight does so with such force, daring and reflection is almost beyond belief.

Director Christoper Nolan and his co-screenwriter/brother Jonathan Nolan get what makes these characters so fascinating and so iconic. They understand what those of us who read comics have understood for decades: that there are depths to be plumbed there, that the easy identification of Batman as silly spandex hero^[2] isn’t the true measure of the character. The Nolans understand the deep-seated near-schizophrenic split between Bruce Wayne and Batman, and they understand that while the Joker will always be Batman’s most notable enemy, his truest mirror is Two-Face.

While I still have trouble imagining any superhero movie ever receiving a Best Picture nomination, I’ve never seen one that deserves it more than The Dark Knight – this movie’s not so different thematically from 2006 Best Picture winner The Departed, which considered similar ethical questions. And those predictions that Heath Ledger will receive a posthumous Best Supporting Actor nomination could well likely prove to be spot on: Ledger really was that creepy, that riveting, that good as the Joker. Ledger’s Joker should wipe all memories of Jack Nicholson’s wacky clown from the cultural consciousness – his Joker now surely must be considered definitive. Ledger even manages to find the humor in this most decidedly unfunny clown. His gait, his voice, his manner all contribute to create one of the most engrossing and engaging movie villains in a long, long time. I never before considered myself a fan of Heath Ledger; I am now, and I wish I had more of his work to look forward to.

Most of the other actors have much more grounded, less showy parts to play (of course), but they do so with as much skill and grace as Ledger. Christian Bale one again proves to be an excellent Bruce Wayne; while these movies don’t play up Batman’s supposed role as “World’s Greatest Detective,” we certainly do get a sense that Bale’s Wayne/Batman (much like Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark in Iron Man) thinks about what he’s doing and the weight he’s chosen to carry on his shoulders. Gary Oldman’s James Gordon, one of the only honest cops in Gotham, gets far more screen time than he did in Batman Begins, and Oldman nails Gordon’s solid nobility in the face of chaos and madness. Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are, well, Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman; neither’s role is large, and more screen time for either would have been welcome. Maggie Gyllenhaal brings sass, charm and intelligence (three qualities which Katie Holmes entirely failed to bring to the same character in Batman Begins) to her Rachel Dawes, the only significant female character in the movie; more screen time for her also would have been a good thing. But The Dark Knight runs two-and-a-half-hours as is, and the movie devotes so much of its energies to dissecting the characters of its three leads that some of the minor characters had to stay pretty minor.

Strangely, Batman himself is almost a supporting character in The Dark Knight – perhaps one reason why the word “Batman” isn’t in the title. There’s even some ambiguity as to whom, exactly, the title of “dark knight” could be referring – Batman or the film’s true protagonist, Gotham District Attorney Harvey Dent. (Yes, Batman is the “dark knight” as countered by Dent’s “white knight,” but Dent ultimately goes to some pretty dark places.) The Dark Knight is Dent’s story, the telling of his evolution from moral crusader in pursuit of justice to agent of chaos in pursuit of fairness, most certainly not the same thing. Eckhart’s Harvey Dent exudes a fire and passion for his crusade, and the distorted reflection in the mirror he holds up to Batman provides the most gripping character exploration ever seen in a summer blockbuster superhero movie^[3].

The Dark Knight is dark and disturbing and one of the tensest movies I’ve seen in a long while; it’s also fantastically smart and daring and complex, and it ultimately suggests a fundamental belief in human nature’s capacity for goodness. That dichotomy, as much as anything else in Christoper Nolan’s masterpiece, represents the core appeal of Batman himself, and that appeal is why these characters endure. Nolan has just assured that his vision of them will endure a lot longer.  Grade:  A.

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[1] The major exception to that “note-perfect” acting was from the mannequin-like Katie Holmes; her replacement by actual actress Maggie Gyllenhaal was a significant upgrade.

[2] Please note that I have plenty of love for silly spandex heroes, too, but that interpretation has long since proven not to work out so well in movie form (ref. Batman and Robin, 1997).

[3] I don’t mean to damn with faint praise; I do realize that “gripping character exploration” isn’t normally a hallmark of big-budget summer action flicks.