On Untimely Death

I doubt a whole lot of people who happen upon this blog and read it even know who Mike Wieringo was; like I said in a previous post, I didn't know him personally. From the information that was available, though, I gathered a few things: he was a health buff, a well-liked person and apparently a very gentle person. Learnings these things about this person really got me thinking about the nature of death and how it can really catch people off guard at the worst possible time, and how it never seems to take the people that deserve it the most at the time it is most needed.

Yes, I know that last part was a bit brutal, but it cuts to the theme of this particular post, which is how completely mystified I am by the whole concept of "who gets chosen" to die. We all die, eventually, and I for one believe that when we find ourselves on the verge of the afterlife we are measured by how we lived our lives before. But clearly, some of us have to die before others.

In most cases the order of death is a fairly logical affair; the people who are old and/or infirm die first, and the people who are young and healthy die later, after they have become old and infirm. There are things that upset this balance, like wars, accidents and murders, and they are tragic, but to an extent they are understandable. The human hand behind these occurrences often rears its head, and even when it doesn't, depending on the circumstances, somehow people can bring themselves to accept these unfortunate facts of life.

I submit, though, that what truly boggles the mind is the occurrence of deaths like that of Mr. Wieringo, an avid vegetarian and regular exercise buff, dead of a heart attack, of all things, at the very young age of 44. Killed in an accident? Sad, but sure. Murdered in his apartment by a mugger? Terrible, but at the very least attributable to the evil of man. But dead of a heart attack? Considering the way he lived his life and considering how young he was? On its face it just doesn't add up.

I mean, this was essentially an act of God that took this guy's life, and I for one, can't help but ask why? The guy was a comic book artist, and a pretty good one in not only my opinion but those of his fans. He made people happy. He provided something valuable in its own way. And from all indications, he was a nice guy, not the egomaniac that so many comic-book professionals inevitably become.

There are millions of other candidates for what happened to him. Off the top of my head and enumerating the Filipino demographic alone I can think of more than a few, politicians, appointed government officials living on the take, Abu Sayyaf brigands, drug pushers...and the list simply goes on, ranging from the cliche to the more, um, personal choices. I mean, a lot of people on this list often live life to excess, abusing their bodies with food, alcohol, exposure to sexually-transmitted disease, and yet show up time and again on our TV screens and front page headlines in all their corrupt, often corpulent glory. They give nothing of any sort of worth to society; they only live to take, and taking is all they ever do up until the time they die, which in most cases can simply not come soon enough.

I may not have lost a direct relative in so untimely a fashion, but I've had enough of my friends die before ever hitting the age of 30 to feel truly embittered at the seeming arbitrariness of it all.

Marvel editor Tom Brevoort made a good point about living life to the fullest because there simply are no guarantees, and I won't refute that, but my gripe is that so many of the people who form a blight on humanity are living life to the fullest; how come they're still here?

Taking a Moment of Pause

I'd like to dedicate this post to comic book artist Mike Wieringo, who passed away yesterday at 44. Here's the link: http://www.newsarama.com/Chicago_07/Ringo.html

I don't have much of his stuff in my collection, but Wieringo is an artist who work I have always liked; I always found it to be crisp and clean. I have a few issues of his seminal Fantastic Four run with Mark Waid, including the very last issue of that run, as well as almost all of his issues of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man with Peter David. Really enjoyable stuff. I was also a huge fan of his blog at www.mikewieringo.com, where every new post came with a lovely sketch.

I didn't know the man personally, nor was I his biggest fan, so I haven't that much to say, but I would like to offer my condolences to all his friends and loved ones.

The comics community, creator and fan alike, has just suffered a terrible loss.

Finally, a Threequel that Gets It Right

I've made no secret of how disappointed I was with Spider-Man 3, or how much I loathed Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. The former I saw out of love for the franchise, and the latter out of a sense of completism considering that the second movie was left dangling; having no such reasons to see the other 'threequels,' namely Shrek the Third and Ocean's Thirteen, I happily saved myself the trouble and the money of going to see them.

I am a huge fan of both 2002's The Bourne Identity and its 2004 sequel, The Bourne Supremacy, and have both of them on DVD. The impetus to see The Bourne Ultimatum, therefore, was quite strong. Then, in a rare move by the a local distributor these days, Solar Films elected to release the movie a full two weeks after its American start date, and as a result I was able to catch a lot of spoiler-free, absolutely glowing reviews, which filled me with hope for what was hyped as the concluding chapter of the Bourne trilogy. By the time I actually saw the movie last night, my expectations were soaring.

Not only did the film, starring Damon and directed by his Supremacy collaborator Paul Greengrass, meet my expectations; it blew them away.

The movie basically picks up about five minutes before the second movie ends (in a brilliant piece of writing and editing I will expound on later) with the Russian police chasing Jason Bourne through Moscow scant moments after he has given a heartfelt apology to the daughter of his first targets.

What follows is a little bit of exposition, as few new characters are introduced, such as the British investigative reporter named Simon Ross (played by Paddy Considine) whose insatiable curiosity about Bourne and the covert government agency that spawned him serves as the catalyst for the entire story. Bourne reads one of Ross's articles about him and decides to track him down. Around the same time, Ross himself makes a cell-phone call to his editor and mentions 'Blackbriar' the name of the program created to replace the Treadstone program under which, many years before, Bourne had been created. Upon his very mention of the word 'Blackbriar,' the virtually omnipotent CIA, headed up this time by slimy Assistant Director Noah Vosen (a truly malevolent portayal by Oscar nominee David Stathairn), pinpoints Ross through the magic of surveillance technology and targets him for termination.

What ensues is a relentless chase across the world, with Bourne tracking down important clues to understanding his past. His relentless search takes him from London to Madrid to Tangier, where he must survive bombs, bone-crunching fistfights and neck-breaking car chases. At the end of it all, his dogged efforts culminate in an ominous confrontation in New York with the man who was effectively his maker, a chilling Dr. Mengele-like behavior modification specialist played by Albert Finney who answers every single question that has been festering in Bourne's (and every interested viewer's) mind since the first movie.

The casual action movie fan will come away satisfied with the various action set pieces, easily the best of any movie of the last several years. The climactic hand-to-hand fight between Bourne and a younger, equally formidable CIA asset (Joey Ansah) is the easily the most gripping of the entire franchise, and comes at the tail-end of a similarly thrilling rooftop chase sequence which has Bourne jumping from rooftops into windows. The end result leaves the audience gasping for breath. Of course, no Bourne movie would be complete without a mind-blowing car chase sequence, and this one doesn't disappoint. James Bond may have his Aston Martin, but in terms of sheer driving prowess he has absolutely nothing on Jason Bourne. In the same vein, the James Bond films, even the latest installment Casino Royale, have nothing on the Bourne movies in terms of balls-to-the-wall action. Yes, action movie fans from all walks of life should be comprehensively satisfied.

On top of all of this, however, an even nicer reward awaits the people who have patiently pieced together Bourne's history from the first two movies. Not only was I absolutely thrilled to have every imaginable loose end tied up with this installment, but I loved all of the little visual and narrative nods to the first and second movies that Greengrass sneaked in to let us know that finally, Bourne's about to come full circle. It was also a nice storytelling touch to give Bourne allies from within the CIA for the first time in the franchise's history; Bourne veterans Joan Allen and Julia Stiles reprise their roles as Assistant Director Pamela Landy and Logistics Operative Nicky Parsons, both of whom are now playing for Bourne's team. It gives the series a real sense of progression from the way things were in the beginning.

When Nicky, about to go on the run after helping Bourne and nearly paying for it with her life, washes the blond highlights out of her hair just before cutting it short, followers of the series instantly detect an homage to the first movie, in which Bourne washes and then cuts the hair of his then-love interest Marie, to change her appearance. Marie, by now, has been killed, and Nicky, it is revealed, once shared a past with Bourne. In this instance, however, rather than end up making love to Nicky as he did to Marie, Bourne sees her off to the bus station rather stoically. There's a touch of tragedy to the moment as we see in his eyes just how indifferent Bourne is to Nicky even after it's been revealed that they once shared something. The question is: is he genuinely indifferent to her, or has he trained himself to be completely cold again after having lost Marie to an assassin's bullet? It's an interesting little tidbit for fans of the series to chew on for a moment just before the final act rolls around.

(Spoiler alert)

The single most blatant visual homage, of course, is the shot of Bourne floating in the East River just moments before swimming off to his freedom and the end credits start to roll. A shot of Bourne floating unconscious in the Mediterranean is, of course, how the entire series began.

But what also gave me an honest-to-God nerdgasm was how brilliantly the last two sequences from the second movie were written and cut into the story of the third installment.

The second movie actually ended with Bourne placing a call to Landy while she's in New York. There had, in the film, been a bit of a time lapse between his time in Russia and the phone call to Landyk, and as a result when the third film opens with Bourne still in Moscow, one wonders what happened to his phone call to Landy. The answer? It's woven seamlessly into the narrative. The phone call actually begins the third act of Ultimatum, in what feels like a scriptwriting masterstroke. Whether this was deliberately done by the filmmakers when writing the second film or a clever idea on the part of screenwriters Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi, it was executed to absolute perfection.

The Bourne Ultimatum wraps up what has been a truly splendid cinematic trilogy, and while the door is still open for more, I left the theater feeling thoroughly satisfied with how everything had been resolved.

I would, however, be lying if I said I didn't want to see more of Jason Bourne's adventures.

Another Civil War Ending in the Making

I just picked up World War Hulk #3 (and two weeks after the release of #2, at that!), and although I enjoyed the artwork, I find myself having a problem with the progression of the story, so rather than go into the specifics of the issue (other than the art), I thought I'd discuss my misgivings about the direction of the story.

It's no secret that many were disappointed by the way Civil War turned out, with Captain America surrendering to the U.S. government even after he had Iron Man on the ropes, both physically and ideologically. All things considered, however, it must be said that the ending did give rise to a new and potentially very interesting status quo for the Marvel Universe, a development that was categorically promised by everyone at Marvel from the day the project was announced (as they do with every event).

What makes WWH different, and to my mind, worrisome, is that Joe Quesada has practically gone out of his way to say that this series is nothing more than a straight-up slugfest, a "light green sorbet." In short, it seems quite clear that this is not meant to be a status-quo shattering event; nobody's going to die, and nothing that occurs here is meant to have any serious ramifications for the rest of the Marvel line. Quesada and company have already said that WWH does not result in the post-Civil War status quo being reset in any way. Registration of superheroes will still be the norm.

So, when Hulk and his Warbound kick the collective ass of the Marvel Universe, round up all of the Marvel heroes and fit them with "obedience disks" and set them all up to do gladiatorial battle in Madison Square Garden, we the readers know that every single Marvel hero featured in these pages is walking out of there just fine.

So where does that leave the Hulk and the vengeance he has intended to wreak on Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, Dr. Strange and Iron Man?

I only hope Pak's imagination offers this story a resolution that doesn't feel like a cop-out or as anticlimactic as Captain America's surrender, because I don't see this ending well for the Hulk at all, and after everything the Hulk has been through, that just wouldn't feel right.

I am actually enjoying this series, but frankly I see Pak writing himself into a bit of a corner here, a trajectory that started as early as last year's Planet Hulk.

Well, as much as I hope the journey has a better end than that which I foresee, at least this series can boast some of the best art of any of the recent events. I submit that, all things being equal, meaning if there were no such thing as exclusive contracts or artists who couldn't meet deadlines, John Romita Jr. would still be the best artist for this project, so at the end of the day, Marvel can still put that feather in their cap.

Chasing Your Dream: A Review of Ratatouille

In 1999, as the traditional, hand-drawn animation feature film began its slow descent to oblivion, there was one particular film that really stood out; even amidst such thoroughly entertaining fare as Tarzan and Toy Story 2: Brad Bird's The Iron Giant. A critical darling, it nonetheless disappointed at the box office.

Five years later, Brad Bird would finally have his day, as his follow-up work, The Incredibles, made in collaboration with Pixar this time, proved to be not only a critical and box-office smash; it won him a well-deserved Oscar for best animated feature.

Two and a half years later, he's at it again for Pixar with Ratatouille, a strikingly original story about a rat who dreams of becoming, of all things, a gourmet chef!

This is the story of Remy, a rat with a highly evolved sense of smell and taste who lives in a rural hut in France with his family. Early on he discovers his great love: cooking. It is, in fact, his insatiable desire to concoct new and better preparations of food that, in a hilariously madcap sequence, leads to his clan's exile from their countryside home into the sewers of Paris. During this chaotic escape, which involves the rats fleeing into the sewers on makeshift boats, Remy who carts off a cookbook written by his idol, the late lamented chef August Gusteau is separated from his family.

When he finds himself in Paris, however, through a creatively bizarre turn of events, he is able to live his dream of becoming a chef, thanks to a human co-conspirator named Linguini, who works in no less than Gusteau's once-renowned restaurant! Of course, the requisite villain of the piece, an evil chef named Skinner, has his eye on Linguini for fear of usurpation, for reasons made clear in the film. In short, we have, pardon the pun, the perfect recipe for disaster.

It all adds up to a madcap comedy, with a skillful blending of laugh out loud slapstick moments and rapier wit.

All of this is carried brilliantly by the voice cast, led by comedian Patton Oswalt as Remy, and featuring a healthy selection of very credible actors such as Peter o' Toole as food critic Anton Ego, Ian Holm as the evil chef Skinner, Janeane Garofalo as tough-as-nails lady chef Colette and Brian Dennehy as Remy's dad. Pixar animator Lou Romano does a wonderful job as the bumbling Linguini.

What makes Bird such a master auteur is his mastery of both substance and style. He writes brilliant screenplays and is no less prodigious in bringing them to life, wringing every last trick out of Pixar's book to firmly plant the audience in Paris, France, and to make them believe that a rat could prepare such masterful culinary pieces. The other Pixar creators are geniuses in their own right, but as someone who's seen them all at least twice I can say with certainty that Bird really and truly stands out as the most compleat. The fact that the only Pixar film between Ratatouille and his last one, the Oscar-winning The Incredibles, was the surprisingly mediocre Cars helmed by Pixar vet John Lasseter, only highlights Bird's talent.

I have to admit that conceptually, I still have a problem with the thought of sewer rats preparing my food ("don't they have to get de-wormed?" I gasped to myself, even after a legion of Remy's rat clan had gone through a steam wash in order to cook a feast), but it's no fault of the filmmakers that I was unable to get over my squeamishness. If anything, it's a testimony to how convincing they were able to make this rats appear onscreen.

It's funny how, in a way, Remy is reminiscent of Bird in his hubris; he is actually rather overbearing when he is in his element. At one point, Linguini reprimands him by saying "your opinion isn't the only one that matters" but as the movie unfolds, both the audience and Linguini learn that, au contraire, in the preparation of great food, it is. This may be a bit of projection on Bird's part, considering there were several hints dropped in the featurettes in the The Incredibles DVD just how difficult Bird could be on the "set" sometimes.

Enough of this armchair psychology; with this movie, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

On Atienza Becoming DENR Chief

Sometimes, no matter how I cram this blog with crap about movies and comics and other inanities, I can't help but let something relevant sneak in time and again.

I am not, nor have I ever been a resident of Manila (though I did work there for nearly two years, and may yet again someday), but I am one with many of them in their outrage over the appointment of their former Mayor Lito Atienza as the head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Five years ago, while I was still a law student, I held down a part-time job as an internet journalist. My 'beat' was Manila and three of its historic landmarks: Mehan Garden, the Metropolitan Theater, and the Arrocerros (sp?) Garden, all of which fell prey to Atienza's ambitions.

Mehan Garden, of significant historical value, especially in view of the recent excavation of pre-colonial implements and tools, was the first to suffer as a school campus was erected right smack on it (notably next to a shopping mall, an act which would have violated quite a few local ordinances). Ironically, the people working on the campus buildings resisted attempts by the DENR to get them to cease and desist the construction.

The Metropolitan Theater was next; Atienza's ambition was to erect a 'Park 'n' Ride' right next to one of the city's few remaining art-deco buildings. Conservationists opposed it because it would obscure the building, but at the end of the day, almighty Atienza prevailed again.

But his biggest sin, that which makes his appointment as DENR Secretary an absolute travesty, is how he handed over Arroceros park over to several public school teachers and allowed them to erect a 'teachers' camp.' By the time incumbent Mayor Alfredo Lim upon rescuing Manila from a potential dynasty spearheaded by Atienza's son Ali, turned Arrocerros back over to the conservationists, the damage had been done; 70% of its trees had been chopped down, and a lot more would have fallen had it not been returned to the people determined to save them.

It's not unlike making Jack the Ripper the chief of police, really. What's truly scary about that sentiment is that if he kissed GMA's ass as much as Atienza did while in office, quite frankly, she probably would make him chief of police and then some.

I don't know what there is to say other than that this really shouldn't be happening, but I understand the people of Manila aren't taking this sitting down. While I wouldn't really give much for their chances of success in getting the appointment revoked, I wish them all well.

The Comeback Kids: A Review of World War Hulk #2

World War Hulk #2
By Greg Pak (W), John Romita Jr. (P) Klaus Janson (I) Christina Strain (C)

Talk about having your faith rewarded. Two posts ago I said I would be sticking around for the duration of World War Hulk because I was confident in the creative team's ability to make up for what I felt was a rather underwhelming first issue, and lo and behold, they have delivered, on all levels, it has to be said.

The story kicks off with Dr. Strange literally trying to conjure up someone who will "defeat and redeem" Hulk at the same time. In the meantime, the Hulk and his friends from Sakaar, known as his "Warbound" lay the smackdown on several members of the New and Mighty Avengers, then on the Fantastic Four as well (including new/interim members Storm and the Black Panther) but not after Reed makes a rather underhanded and, gratifyingly ill-fated attempt to deceive the Hulk. Rick Jones approaches the Hulk, calming him to the extent that Dr. Strange sees an opportunity to touch Hulk's psyche, which he is unable to consummate. At the end of the day, Hulk and his Warbound have just trashed three of Marvel's premier teams and General "Thunderbolt" Ross decides to have a go where they have failed.

Pak's script has some nice character moments (like Rick Jones' appearance) woven between some truly riveting action sequences, and Romita Jr.'s art...well, let me just say that suddenly his work on Eternals no longer feels like his best ever, in my opinion. Even Janson and Strain have upped their game. I know the second issue of this series was in the can long before I reviewed the first issue in this blog, but it almost feels as if art team in particular read what I had to say (and whoever else took issue with their work) and responded in kind. Christina Strain, if you're reading this, I feel you have done an astonishing job with this issue, and completely take back whatever I might have said about you not being appropriate for this book!

The stars of this show, however, are Pak and Romita, Jr.

For me, Pak's breakthrough here is how he manages to make me utterly despise Reed Richards.

I never hated Richards, no matter how badly Civil War went, because I felt he was being rather badly written. His callousness towards his family just seemed too much like a plot device to justify Sue and Johnny Storm defecting to the side of Captain America.

His decision to shoot Hulk into space, though he made it together with Iron Man and the rest of the Illuminati, however, feels like something that Reed, with his control-freak, I-know-better-than-everyone-else personality is entirely capable of, as is reflected not only in the currently ongoing miniseries starring the Illuminati but in key issues of Fantastic Four going as far back as Mark Waid's "Authoritative Action" run. Richards has a history of showing incredible hubris stemming from his intellect, and Pak taps into that with his particular take on the character. He's not evil; just arrogant to the point where it doesn't occur to him that he might be wrong. This makes him no less detestable in my eyes.

It burned me up to see Reed making yet another, last-ditch attempt into hoodwinking the Hulk and enthralled me to see the green goliath give Mr. Fantastic the pounding he has long deserved. It's a given that some fans will quibble about Richards' elasticity enabling him to take a whole world of punishment, but that's their problem. At least Marvel made it a point to emphasize at the end of Planet Hulk (and even during this issue) how much stronger he became as a result of the warp core explosion that killed his queen, Caera the Oldstrong and their unborn child.

What made the FF fight that even more engaging was the Hulk/Thing showdown, easily one of the best action sequences I have ever seen committed to paper.

Another thing that made me enjoy this issue exponentially more than I did the first was something fairly simple: they showed Mr. Fantastic getting beaten up, as well as the result of the beating, with his face looking like hamburger. This was a huge contrast to the off-panel thrashing of Black Bolt (with that admittedly killer splash page serving as the prelude) and the pulping of Iron Man in his new Hulkbuster armor (after his irritating, self-righteous speech) which didn't show a battered, bloodied and defeated Tony Stark.

Stark, in particular, really deserved to be beaten within an inch of his life, and while I'm sure his punishment from Hulk will go beyond a mere slugfest (as strongly suggested by future solicitations showing the Illuminati going up against each other as gladiators), I would really have liked to see him drawn as only Romita, Jr. can draw folks who've been beaten up. One of my favorite things about JR, Jr., not only does he draw the best fights in the business, but the best aftermaths of fights as well.

I'm a little disappointed in the appearance of General Ross (who I was sure was dead up until this issue) because I can't help but wonder what he hopes to achieve that Marvel's heroes, who have time and again made short work of military technology could not. And it's not like the Hulk hasn't made mincemeat out of them before.

Still, Pak promises excitement in the next issue and, considering what he pulled out of the bag with this one, I completely believe him.

Big, Loud, Colorful and Stupid

I grew up on The Transformers back in the '80s. I had several of the toys and watched the animated "movie" on home video over twenty times. I was well and truly hooked on those toys. When I outgrew them, it was rather abrupt, and I ended up giving away the toys to my younger cousin, something, in retrospect, I regret doing considering that most of them would have been worth a fortune now had I saved them then.

Even as a one-time fan, however, I had little to no expectations of the Transformers live-action feature film when it was announced that Steven Spielberg would be producing it, and less so when Spielberg tapped Michael Bay to direct it.

It wasn't even the fact that I had very little respect for Bay as a filmmaker. My problem with the film, conceptually, was that I wasn't entirely sure it would translate, not just visually, but from a storytelling point of view.

When I saw the trailers, I had a couple of problems with how ungainly the digital robots assembled by Industrial Light and Magic looked. Of course, Bay's lightning-quick cutting style ensured that I didn't get that good a look at them.

Still, I will admit I felt a bit optimistic about some early good reviews I picked up here and there, with even Roger Ebert, a critic with whom I often agree giving the film a thumbs up.

When I finally got to see it in theaters last night, I found, a bit to my dismay, that the concept did not translate very well at all.

First of all, I would like to give ILM their due for an absolutely heroic effort in bringing Hasbro's famous toy line to life. I don't know who signed off on the final designs for the robots, but they do look fantastic onscreen, especially the colorful autobots, both standing still and in the action sequences. Bay's films, for better or worse, work best when they're zooming along at two hundred miles per hour. The man crafts very effective chase sequences, even if that's just about all that he does well.

Another high point of the film for me was Peter Cullen's distinctly gravelly rumble, which brought back wonderful childhood memories, even if his dialogue still sounded somewhat cartoony (more the fault of the scriptwriters than Cullen himself).

Speaking of cartoony, that's the best way I can describe the plot, the script, and most the characterizations involved, not including the CGI robots. I won't even bother with a synopsis here, other than to say that the heroic Autobots came to earth to save humanity from the evil Decepticons. In true Bay fashion, there are a couple of gaping holes in the story that just had me shaking my head throughout the entire third act. The robots look cool, but Bay does nothing to convince me that they could possibly live in the real world, because to this viewer his movie doesn't play with even a semblance of verisimilitude.

This movie's script simply does not stand up to scrutiny, just as it will not stand up, down the line, to accusations of being one big General Motors/toy commercial.

Oh, and I cannot, cannot conclude this review without lamenting how Hugo Weaving was utterly wasted in the role of Megatron, considering (1) his fleeting screen time and (2) the heavy filtration his voice was subjected to, which rendered him completely unrecognizable but for a couple of inflections in his delivery. There are dozens of throwaway voice actors they could have hired for this tiny role, even if cartoon series original Frank Welker sounds too old by now. A throwaway role deserves a throwaway actor.

Overall, this movie looks cool, and that's pretty much the only good thing I can say about it.

Double-Feature: World War Hulk #1 and Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America: Spider-Man

My sabbatical from regular collecting is partially over as I have started buying comics again with relative frequency. I bought the first issue of World War Hulk last week and plan to buy it to its conclusion. Today, I bought a one-shot spin-off of Captain America's death. As I am still a floating employee (sigh) with a DSL connection and lots of idle time, I thought I'd share my thoughts on them.

Review 1: World War Hulk #1

Story: Greg Pak

Art: John Romita, Jr. (pencils)
Klaus Janson (inks)
Christina Strain (colors)

Last year, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Strange and Black Bolt, known to Marvel Universe fans as the Illuminati, hatched a scheme to exile Hulk to another planet where, they believed, he could find the peace that always eluded him. He was tricked into embarking on a space mission for S.H.I.E.L.D., and in space was sent off to a far-off planet. Unfortunately this planet, called Sakaar, turned out to be inhabited, and he spent the rest of the year fighting for his life in the 'Planet Hulk' storyline.

A year later, post 'Civil War,' Hulk returns to Earth, royally pissed. He shows up in New York riding a spaceship and accompanied by a motley crew of aliens whom he befriended on Sakaar, tells the people to evacuate the city and to bring forth Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic and Dr. Strange. For impact, he shows the people of New York the mangled body of Black Bolt and tells them he'll do the same thing to the whole planet if he doesn't get what he wants.

And so World War Hulk begins.

The issue has an impressive page count (42, to be exact), and to an action fan it isn't disappointing. There are two major punchups in this issue, and that's pretty much all there is to it. Of course, in this post-Civil War climate, what happens to Iron Man is a source of much satisfaction for many Marvel fans.

It's funny; I am and will remain a Marvel fan. I enjoyed 'Civil War' and what I read of 'Planet Hulk.' For some reason, however, this series doesn't do for me what either 'Civil War' or 'Planet Hulk' did.

'Civil War,' for all its flaws, tried something different. It took risks. And it was lavishly illustrated from start to finish.

'Planet Hulk' had wall-to-wall action, but also incredible build-up and intricate development not only of the characters Hulk met but of the world they inhabited. I realize that it's foolish to compare them here considering that Pak had to build Sakaar up from scratch, but still it feels like his writing as been considerably dumbed down for 'World War Hulk.'

In 42 pages, all that happens is that Hulk lands on the moon where the Inhumans live, then on Earth, and punches out two of the Illuminati. That's literally all that happens.

Another thing that disappoints me about this book is the art, especially considering Romita, Jr. is one of my favorite artists of all time. Whereas with his last work, 'The Eternals' I felt that he had achieved new levels of excellence, this one leaves me cold. There are still a few shining moments, a couple of cool splash pages, but overall his visuals feel just like the writing: simplistic and devoid of any nuance.

For this I fault his inker Klaus Janson, and colorist Christina Strain. Janson may be a frequent collaborator with Romita, Jr. but he's far from the best. Strain, for her part, seems best suited to coloring the simpler, anime-styled 'Runaways' than something meant to be so epic. They should have brought out 'Civil War' colorist Morry Hollowell or Matt Hollingsworth onto this book.

Online fanboys are ecstatic over this book the way they were livid over 'Civil War', so the relative sales of the two miniseries will show just how 'important' they are. I for one wasn't that crazy about this book, but I won't presume to speak for anyone else.

Still, I hope the storytelling crew go a little more into development from this point beyond having Hulk punch out the Marvel Universe. Having created a whole world for Hulk barely a year ago, I think Pak has what it takes to keep this story engaging till the end.

Review 2: Fallen Son, the Death of Captain America: Spider-Man

Story: Jeph Loeb
Art: David Finch (pencils)
Danny Miki (inks)
Frank D'Armata (colors)

Having read this issue, I've reaffirmed something I felt since I spent an unconscionable amount of money on the paperback of 'Daredevil: Yellow,' I hate Jeph Loeb's writing. I hate it because, in essence, just about nothing happens in any of the stuff he writes. His 'Batman: Hush' arc with Jim Lee was nothing more than an excuse to have Lee draw Batman's rogues gallery, his scripts are little more than excuses for splash pages, and his dialogue is the stuff of bad TV shows.

That's exactly the case here.

In this issue, Spider-Man mopes over the death of Captain America, knocks out the Rhino and talks to Wolverine. And THAT's it. Considering this issue's average-panel-per-page count is about two, I can't say I'm surprised.

That said, I understand why Loeb is so popular with comic-book artists: he basically panders to them. When they're splash page types, he apparently crams his scripts with big, bonecrunching action splash pages and double-page spreads. The artist never really has to adjust to Loeb's style.

As a result, David Finch, Danny Miki (who should have inked WWH instead of Klaus Janson) and Frank D'Armata knock this issue out of the park with their gratuitous splash pages and astonishing rendering. His run on 'New Avengers' didn't look this good. Heck, not even Jim Lee's 'Batman' issues looked this good.

Still, one really gets the sense from this particular issue (and this string of one-shots as a whole) that Marvel is simply milking Captain America's death for every penny it's worth. I still don't understand why they had to kill him considering 'Civil War' had put him so squarely in the spotlight, but I just hope they know what they're doing. The world doesn't really need a 'Reign of the Captain Americas' or a mullet-haired Steve Rogers to come back from the dead in a year's time.

At least we got to see Finch at his very best...

Toycon '07 (or, the fun side of fanboys)

Up until last weekend I was a toycon virgin, not having been to any of the five cons that have been held since the event was started in 2001.

It was a pleasant experience; though I spent most of my time manning the booth and hawking the product I'm distributing, I did manage to get a good look around (and to add to my car collection somewhat). I also had a good time watching the "cosplay" section where a bunch of geeks got up on stage dressed as their favorite pop-culture characters.

This is fanboy (and girl) hood in one of its better moments. A good time was had by all, and at the eleventh hour I even got to buy some cars cheap (always a good strategy to remember when buying stuff at affairs like this).

All in all, it was a lot of fun. I hope the upcoming Komikon in October is even half as enjoyable.

On Fanboys Part II (or, how to cause your brain to atrophy)

I found myself with a lot, I mean a lot of extra time on my hands earlier today. I am still regularly employed, but am now what is popularly known as a "floating" employee, a creature peculiar only to government service. It's a long, sordid story I'll save for another day and venue.

What this post is about is how I killed that extra time. When I find myself with time on my hands I try to get some reading done; I read up on the rules and regulations governing the agency I work for, I check my e-mail and similar things as well.

Today I read a "talkback" section on the popular geek site aintitcoolnews.com, and I'll be amazed if I'm not slightly dumber for having done so.

Read a paraphrased exchange between a couple of fanboys writing on this "talkback" which concerned the look of Batman's new motorcycle (prosaically called "The Batpod"):

Talkbacker #1: Eli Roth sucks! Hostel 2 sucks! Thank God it tanked at the box-office! Fuck Eli Roth, the ego-maniac is blaming the fans for not supporting his movie! He's blaming everyone but himself for such a shitty movie! Fuck Hostel! Fuck Roth! Fuck fuck fuck!

(Goes on for several posts bashing Eli Roth, clashing with another talkbacker, who, incredibly, feels the need to defend Hostel 2 and Roth on a thread completely unrelated to either, then, finally...)

Talkbacker #2: Hey could we stop talking about Eli Roth? This thread is about Batman!

Talkbacker #1: You seem to like Hostel 2 a lot! You must be Eli Roth.

(Mercifully, whether it was because he was kicked off the thread or because he just got tired of inflicting himself on other people, Talkbacker #1 stopped posting).

I'll come out and say it: one of my ultimate fantasies is to write a novel with a strong, underlying fantasy theme, and to have that novel adapted into a major motion picture.

THIS IS THE KIND OF DEMOGRAPHIC THE PRODUCERS ADAPTING MY WORK WILL BE TRYING TO PANDER TO?!?!?

GOD help anyone trying to launch any kind of creative endeavor anymore...


FUCK you ignorant, narrow-minded, grammar-syntax-and-spelling-impaired neanderthals! Go back into your parents' basements and stay there until evolution kicks in!

Ugh...I think I'll just write for myself from now on...

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

He he. My last post was about fanboys, and this one is about a movie that many of them are dead certain to wail on, considering they have been doing so since before the movie was even released: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, sequel to 2005's Fantastic Four.

I will be first to admit that I actually found the first movie entertaining, albeit flawed on many levels, including the fundamental ones.On this blog and sometimes to others I eventually ended up making excuses for this movie rather than openly extolling it, and so I perfectly understood the tidal wave of fanboy venom that swept over it.

The first Fantastic Four movie, incidentally, is another example of the meaninglessness of fanboy outrage considering the movie made $154 million in the U.S. and Canada and over $330 million worldwide. Not bad for a movie "everybody hated." Still, I won't debate how much they bashed it because to no small extent the film deserved as much.

The question, now, is whether or not the sequel deserves more of the same. To this, I say quite categorically: NO.

Is this a great film, in the vein of the first two Spider-Man movies, Batman Begins or X-men 2? Well, no, for reasons I will explain, but unlike in the first film, director Tim Story and his writers hit a lot of marks they previously missed.

The first and most important thing they got right was that the scripting was incredibly tight (to a fault, actually) in that they dove right into the story. The movie is about the threat of Galactus, the world devourer, and his herald, the Silver Surfer. Both are characters well known to fans of the comic book and are explained well enough. The surfer, Norrin Radd (voiced by Laurence Fishburne, played in motion capture by Doug Jones and given glowing silver flesh by WETA Digital, the folks responsible for Gollum and King Kong), serves Galactus because it is the only way to save his own world from being destroyed. Of course, the Fantastic Four have to try to stop him.

This puts a little kink in the plans of team members Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic (Ioan Gruffudd) and Sue Storm, a.k.a. the Invisible Woman (Jessica Alba), who are planning to get married. We have a few character moments here as Sue frets about how their lives as costumed adventurers are likely to get in the way of their ever having normal lives. There's also a little subplot about how Johnny Storm, sue's brother a.k.a. the Human Torch (Chris Evans) is a self-centered little brat who needs to grow up. The final member Ben Grimm a.k.a. the Thing (Michael Chiklis) is kind of left to the sidelines in terms of character arcs in this movie.

Things get interesting when U.S. Army General Hager (Andre Braugher) taps the Four's support to stop the Surfer, whose presence has been causing temporal anomalies all over the world and, after one botched attempt to catch him, they end up recruiting as well the team's nemesis from the first movie, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), who has been rejuvenated courtesy of an encounter with the Surfer fairly early in the movie.

To go into the details at this point would involve spoiling some plot points, but suffice it to say it all plays out pretty well from here.

Like I said, the script is very tightly-woven, a stark contrast to all the endless exposition that characterized Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End and the narrative clutter of Spider-Man 3. Whatever anyone might say about this movie, no one can accuse it of having too much going on.

At 90 minutes, though, the film is a little too compact, and there are character moments which could have been expanded somewhat. This is a film about family, first and foremost, and while Story and his writers Don Payne and Mark Frost don't quite forget this aspect, sometimes it's the little things that matter. It is possible to do a kid friendly movie with expanded characterisations after all. In addition to reading the comic books, Tim Story should keep a DVD of The Incredibles handy every time he wants a lesson in the way superhero family dynamics should play out onscreen. It's as if, every time the characters are about to have more than a minute's worth of meaningful conversation, the filmmakers shy away, as though they're repulsed by the thought of developing the characters a bit more. While I understand that the Spider-man movies, for all my love for them, kind of laid it thick on the weepy character moments, I honestly believe that the makers of the Fantastic Four movies could really learn something from Marvel Films' flagship franchise. The sad thing is, a few of the character moments that were allowed actually played out pretty well, making it all the more disappointing that Story didn't really allow them to breathe a little more.

One area in which I cannot complain is the action. In this respect Tim Story really comes into his own. From Johnny's first encounter with the Surfer, to the showdown between the Surfer and the U.S. military to the team's re-match with Dr. Doom (which, incidentally, features the debut of the Fantasticar!), the action in this movie is excellently staged, and the crew from WETA Digital and the other supporting VFX studios really pull through brilliantly. There are still some spotty moments with the effects animation of the Fantastic Four themselves early on in the film (Reed's stretchy dancing in a nightclub is particularly wince-inducing), but when the action kicks in the effects go from splotchy to spectacular in no time at all. And the Fantasticar deserves a particular shout-out because it was great to have the filmmakers nail such a memorable part of the Fantastic Four's lore. They got it absolutely right (except for a little bit I'll mention later). Johnny Storm's flying effects, which were pretty okay the first time around, look even cooler now even against the VFX wonder that is the Silver Surfer, and there's even an added treat, featuring Johnny, towards the climax of the movie.

There are a couple of noted improvements in the actors' performances as well. Gruffudd, who looked really, really uncomfortable in the first movie, seems to have settled more comfortably in his role and now ably projects Richards as the team leader. I particularly loved how he delivered a speech about nerds and football jocks which the scriptwriters lifted almost verbatim from Warren Ellis' recent Ultimate Extinction miniseries. In that moment, Gruffudd truly embodied Reed Richards. Evans and Chiklis continue to play well off each other, with Johnny Storm's goofy, visibly uncomfortable attempts to talk about Ben's relationship with Alicia Masters (Kerry Washington) being good for more than a couple of laughs. While Alba is eternally miscast, I'll be charitable enough give her some points for trying. McMahon delivers an adequate, if somewhat unremarkable performance as Dr. Doom, though I do feel they ramped up the sense of menace a touch. I did like Braugher as General Hager, and of course the inevitable Stan Lee cameo, this time done in a meta-fictional, tongue-in-cheek fashion, consistent with the general tone of the movie.

The movie definitely could have been done better in some key respects. The ending was something of an anti-climax, though to avoid spoiling it I won't go further into it. I'll give a hint; don't expect a blue -and-purple-clad giant (Galactus' comic-book incarnation) to show up onscreen. I also really, really, really didn't like the fact that the Fantasticar was a Dodge (see it to believe it). It's as offensive as the thought of the Transformer Bumblebee being a Camaro rather than a Volkwagen Beetle just because General Motors paid Dreamworks a fortune. Corporate America rears its ugly head again, though at least the involvement of DaimlerChrysler meant I got to see one of my favorite supercars, the Mercedes Benz SLR McLaren, onscreen for a few glorious moments.

Overall, one thing I found genuinely annoying about this movie is how clear it is that, to this day and age, Twentieth Century Fox still treats their comic-book properties like second-class citizens.

With the exception of the intercalation of Venom, Sony, from the get-go, always let Spider-Man director Sam Raimi make the movies he wanted to make. He got to pack in all the character development and pacing quirks he wanted.

It has not been the case with Fox, either in this franchise or in the X-Men franchise. In the two X-Men movies Bryan Singer directed you could almost hear him shouting out his frustration at how little Fox would let him do and how parsimonious they were with their budget. X2 was a great movie, but one wonders what Singer could have done had Fox not clipped his wings.

Here, Tim Story seemed hell-bent on telling a better story than he did last time, but the film felt genuinely restrained in certain key aspects, like the character moments I mentioned before. It's my honest hope that, now that Marvel Films are now independent of any one studio, their talents, such as Jon Favreau who is currently filming Iron Man, are able to truly flex their creative muscles and not have to kowtow to studio executives.

Flaws notwithstanding, for the reasons stated above, this movie was genuinely entertaining, a popcorn movie, as it were, and deserves to make at least as much money as its predecessor did, whatever fanboys may have to say about it.

'Nuff said.

On the Fanboy

I am a fanboy. I have a stash of 500 comic books. I've seen each Spider-man movie at least three times in the theater and I intend to buy Spider-Man 3 on original DVD when it comes out. When I have spare time I like to look over message boards (to which I do not contribute anything) and am alternately amused and infuriated by how stupid my fellow fanboys can be.

All this said, I found myself scratching my head at an article in a recent issue of Time magazine about how Hollywood is now striving to pander to fanboys in order to ensure the profitability of their products, be they movies or TV series. There was also a little sidebar addressing the opinion that mainstream movie reviews are useless and obsolete.

I much preferred the article about movie reviewers, which was written by Richard Corliss (a man I have taken the time to bludgeon in this very blog) because in no uncertain terms Corliss comes clean and says that reviewers have never pretended to matter as far as a movie's box-office popularity is concerned and that if anything, their real purpose is to champion movies that would otherwise get swept away in the tide of summer and winter blockbusters. He gave really good examples like Little Miss Sunshine and Pan's Labyrinth, both great movies which might have been neglected were it not for critics calling attention to how good they were. I acquired a new respect for Corliss then, though I still hope he doesn't ever go back to making box-office predictions.

I found myself floored, however, but how influential the article seemed to suggest fanboys, especially the noisy, opinionated variety that infests message boards, have become to the extent that a movie can rise or fall on their support or lack of it, because to my mind this is complete and utter bullshit.

I will rattle off my long list of media products (not just limited to movies) the success of which angry fanboys could not stop, as well as the products their ardor could not save. I'll actually limit my discussion to online fanboys, who tend to opine most viciously and are apparently the most closed-minded to any form of disagreement.

Marvel's recent event miniseries Civil War sold about 2.2 million copies in the United States and Canada (not even counting all the tie-ins or the international orders) and is still racking up the reorders. It is, hands down, the most successful American comic book of the new millenium in terms of sales and yet if the online fanboy community is to be believed, it is the worst comic book ever published. I'm not here to debate the artistic merits of this particular piece of work, but the sales figures, juxtaposed against the vitriol spewed online by people who profess to be its core audience can be intepreted two ways: online fanboys are idiots who complain about something and then buy it anyway or online fanboys are a lot less influential than they think they are.

This year's summer movie showdown is another good example: Spider-Man 3 received a widespread thrashing from online fanboys, with all but one of aintitcoolnews.com's reviewers bashing it (that one being uberfanboy and AICN co-founder Harry Knowles), while Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, received glowing praise from all of them (the AICN reviewers), as well as snarky predictions (from AICN's "talkbackers") of its box-office supremacy over the web-slinger. Well, while both films are seeing their daily grosses eroding faster than the topsoil in Ormoc, it seems there's a very real chance POTC:AWE won't even hurdle the $300 million mark in the U.S. and Canada, a figure once taken as a given. SM3, in contrast, appears to be a lock for at least $335 million in the same location. Again, I won't go into the artistic merit of either of these movies, but it just seems painfully obvious to me that fanboys don't matter nearly as much as they think they do.

Probably my favorite example of how meaningless fanboy bitching truly is, however, would have to be the recent James Bond sequel. There was an online campaign to get Daniel Craig sacked from the job of playing Ian Flemings' spy, the ultimate male fantasy role model (on a site called craignotbond.com or something like that) as well as a couple of really nasty gossip tidbits about how he couldn't even drive his Aston Martin. None of this prevented Casino Royale from becoming the highest grossing Bond movie ever (not counting inflation) and one of the best-reviewed releases of 2006. In short, the fanboys were wrong on both counts. Craig, as if to rub salt on the collective fanboy wound, won a British Academy of Film and Television Award for his portrayal.

We can also go into the many fanboy-geared products their love couldn't save. For example, the 1997 film Starship Troopers generated a following of Heinlein disciples, video-game nuts, fans of extreme post-modernism and sadists in general that justified a TV spin-off and a direct-to-video sequel, but for all of that the movie couldn't even gross more than $55 million in the U.S. and Canada and barely even hurdled $120 million internationally.

Another movie made solely on the clamour of fanboy demand was Joss Whedon's Serenity, a film based on the extremely short-lived Firefly series. The film's final box-office gross? $25.5 million in the U.S. and Canada. Fanboys seemed happy with it, but apparently it just wasn't enough.

And let's not forget all of the Kevin Smith movies that fanboys couldn't even elevate past domestic U.S. grosses of $31 million (his biggest, I think, being Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back). One has to wonder if that's the sum total of the fanboy community's contribution to any movie's box office.

Fortunately, the Time article featured a quote from someone who said that if fanboys were as powerful as some studios think they are, then the recent Tarantino/Rodriguez double-feature Grindhouse would have been a big hit, which it wasn't.

Still, the message is clear that Hollywood seems to think fanboys, highlighted by their obnoxious online self-proclaimed spokespersons are a lot more important than they actually are. Of course, at the end of the day, it's all about money, and in their never-ending quest to find the foolproof formula, studio heads are turning to the latest fad in money-making: appeasing the 15-35 year old demographic.

I'd like to give my own personal news flash to the studios: Spider-Man 1 and 2 raked in huge amounts of money and garnerned stellar reviews because Sam Raimi, a very talented filmmaker (and admittedly also a fanboy) was allowed to bring his own, uncompromised vision of Spidey to the screen. He didn't buckle under to fanboy outrage about the organic webs or any of the other crap they loved to sling at the two movies. These two movies, in my opinion, will stand the test of time, for all their flaws, as work with artistic integrity. And you know what? As much as I loathe a great many of them, I have to hand one thing to fanboys: they respect vision. Fanboys came to respect Sam Raimi because, as much as they reviled him when he first got the unenviable task of bringing the web slinger to the big screen, he stood his ground and let his vision prevail.

Spider-Man 3, while entertaining in its own right, will, by contrast, be remembered as the movie where Raimi was forced to give in to fanboys who were screaming for the appearance of one of the objects of their affection: the shallow, two-dimensional villain known as Venom. It's not really the diminished grosses or the harsher reviews that's the problem; these were just the consequences of a bigger transgression, which was that the studio tried too hard to appease the fanboys and deviated too much from the extremely tight, character-centered approach that had made the first two films both box-office smashes and critical darlings. Fanboys, especially the ones Raimi won over, will allege that this was one the studio fucked up, but to my mind a lot of them have no one to blame but themselves for forcing, through their messageboards and online noise, upon Raimi a character with whom he had no affinity whatsoever.

Batman Begins was also successful because director Chris Nolan, a talented individual, was likewise allowed free rein in how to bring Bruce Wayne and his caped alter-ego to life. Fanboys respected that, too.

At the end of the day, there is no fool-proof formula for making a hit. None. The best bet of any studio is to put the most talented people possible on a film, get the most skilled marketers plugging it, and hope for the best. Fanboy buzz will only get a movie so far.

Please, Hollywood, stop deifying these self-important, contempt-filled, syntax-and-spelling-impaired morons whose opinions will only get more vociferous and obnoxious once they realize how much power is being artificially bestowed upon them. Just try to make good movies by using talented directors, scriptwriters and actors.

Think about people like Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi and Chris Nolan who, unfettered in their vision, can come up with hits whose artistic merit no one can really question. These are people who, when given material to adapt, understand that material and what makes it work in its original incarnation. Raimi understands Peter Parker's guilt and sense of responsibility. Nolan understands that underneath Batman's cowl is a tortured soul. Jackson understands...well, that the LOTR trilogy is all about people and their frailty before anything else. It's not about fanboys barking at these guys what they want.

Sure, fanboys matter on some level, but if we're the only audience whom the Hollywood execs try to please when making their comic-book/action/sci-fi/fantasy movies, they'll have a lot more Grindhouse sized flops than Spider-Man sized hits. And you can take that to the bank.

Three-quelitis' Latest Victim: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End

Not long ago, I said I hated the Jerry Bruckheimer approach to filmmaking, and now, having seen the second sequel to Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl entitled POTC: At World's End, I can emphatically reiterate this sentiment.

The movie embodies so many of the things that I hate about a Bruckheimer production, from the eyeball-searing special effects to the overbearing music score to the ludicrous dialogue, this time taking the form of clumsy "inspirational" speeches delivered by a truly uncharismatic actor (Keira Knightley). If I had heard her say "our enemies" one more time I swear I would have thrown something at the projector.

I write this review as someone who genuinely enjoyed the first POTC movie and even its sequel, Dead Man's Chest. Both of those films, the first much more than the second, had a sense of fun driving them. The beauty of the first film really hit me upon repeat viewings: it had all the proper ingredients of a good action adventure movie: an engaging plot, a truly despicable villian, a charismatic lead character, and a plucky, beautiful heroine. Of course, the key ingredient, without which everything else is useless, is a well-woven narrative. The movie fails in this respect, and everything else comes tumbling down. It's a chop-suey of iconic visuals that have no real emotional impact, mainly because they feel like parts from different movies thrown together.

The opening scene, where several people, including a young boy, are hanged for aiding pirates, with its somber lighting and grim music score, is a potentially powerful scene...that belongs in another movie, not one that's supposed to be fun. Clearly, the intent is to establish the villain, Cutler Beckett, as a badass, a fearsome adversary, but in truth and in fact it just does not have the desired effect. From start to finish, he is incurably bland. The sad thing is that this is not the only scene that feels sorely out of place in this film, because in a lot of ways the movie does not even seem to know what it is, with its mishmash of jokes, murder, mayhem and bad "Braveheart" speeches. If Keira Knightley's condition for coming back to the series was that the writers churn out these prosaic "we must fight" speeches for her, then I frankly hope her clout in Hollywood diminishes greatly over the next few years.

I won't even go into the specifics of the chaotic plot, other than there seems to be some kind of ham-handed allegory as to how corporate capitalism, as represented by the East India Trading Company, is bad, while independent, free enterprise as represented by the pirates, is good, or something like that. Everything else is a hopeless mess.

The film does have its redeeming moments, such as all of Johnny Depp's screentime. Although his sashaying drunkard does get old at some point, it's still head and shoulders more enjoyable than most other things in the film. Geoffrey Rush, who played the campy pirate villain to perfection in the first movie is here considerably less menacing but nonetheless a welcome addition to a mostly uninspired cast. He does his fair share of scenery chewing, and is easily the most "piratey" of the bunch.

Although done to excess, the digital effects are still topnotch. The last act was good for the most part though they really tended to go overboard (no pun intended). Still, on the top of visual effects achievements, one of my biggest, and I mean literally BIGGEST pet peeves was how the writers killed the Kraken, the gigantic squid that dragged the Black Pearl and Captain Jack into Davy Jones' locker at the end of the second film, OFF CAMERA. The once fearsome beast shows up here only as an enormous carcass washed up on land. What an anticlamactic end to such a magnificent movie monster. I don't know if they were trying to save money on the effects they would need to animate it or were just too unimaginative to think of how else it could have been killed (they had a sea goddess, for crying out loud, who could probably have dispatched it easily). The climactic whirlpool scene was indeed breathtaking, although the classic Bruckheimer overkill pops up again and again.

The biggest problem with this movie was that it didn't keep things simple, the way the first one did. As with its box-office rival, Spider-Man 3, its makers tried to cram too many things into one movie, and when one thinks about it there were just so many narrative dead-ends that the film could certainly have done without, particularly the proliferation of double-crossing.

Well, the box-office verdict is mostly in, and it appears that this installment of POTC, largely expected to smash Spider-Man 3's opening weekend record, fell short. While I wasn't too thrilled with Spider-Man 3, this is still good news to me because for all its flaws, Spider-Man 3 was still better than this piece of crap. At least that movie's beating heart was the story itself, rather than a prosaic, ill-conceived story device created so Orlando Bloom could utter hideous lines like "it's always belonged to you."

With apparently all three of the 2007 summer's big threequels being huge disappointments, I hope Hollywood learns a very important lesson about market saturation...

...ah, who are we kidding?

The End of an Era

Last Thursday, I picked up issue #13 of Ultimates 2, which marks Mark Millar's and Bryan Hitch's final issue on the series before they pass the baton on to a new creative team.

Since it first launched in January of 2002, The Ultimates has come to redefine comics as readers know them, as most vividly exemplified in Marvel's recent Civil War event. Grim and gritty comics may have had their heyday in the 1980s with Frank Miller and Alan Moore leading the way, but it was only with Hitch's 21st century take on Marvel's Avengers that comics achieved such remarkable verisimilitude. Comics had a real world feel and a "widescreen" scope. Thus was Millar's and Hitch's legacy to the world of illustrated storytelling clearly etched into history.

It's been 26 issues of mayhem, wall-to-wall action interspersed with scathing political commentary, presented in some of the most stunning artwork ever seen in a mainstream comic book publication, and as the curtain falls on one of the most visually arresting creative collaborations of all time I cannot help but feel a little empty inside.

Issue #13 wraps up Millar's "Grand Theft America" storyline, which has a number of the world's Eastern powers such as Russia, China and Middle Eastern nations such as Syria conspiring to overthrow America, the "new Roman Empire" by throwing together their own assemblage of superhumans. This politically-charged scenario, which has the coalition's team known as "The Liberators" violently taking over both Manhattan and Washington D.C. in a lightning strike by issue #9, ends with an extremely violent confrontation between Asgardian half-brothers Thor and Loki (who worked with the Liberators) and their assembled forces.

That Millar and Hitch wrap up their tenure on the most successful 21st century reimagining of some of the comic world's most recognizable superheroes to date is saddening, but what is more disappointing is how they seem to drift away, at the eleventh hour, from the controversial realpolitik approach that has made this book so memorable, towards more conventional superheroics. Thor is revealed to be an actual god and not the lunatic he was set up as in the first five issues of Ultimates Vol. 2. The Ultimates break away from the U.S. government and are funded by Tony Stark instead. Sound familiar? Yes, it sounds a lot like Millar is trying to make the series a lot more like its mainstream counterpart, the Avengers, who themselves have gone in the other direction, with one half of the team becoming civil servants and the other half going underground.

Millar's change in direction, whether intentional or not, seems to perfectly accommodate succeeding writer Jeph Loeb, who is not exactly the left winger Millar was.

Still, at least all plot points are tied up quite neatly, with nothing left to the imagination, and at least, even after all the set-up for the next creative team has been established, Millar and Hitch manage to sneak in at least one nicely dark scene as one of the team members, the lone traitor in their ranks, is murdered in cold blood. This is a character whose mainstream counterpart features quite prominently in the Avengers titles, and so the death is a nice way of asserting the independence of the Ultimate universe from the Marvel universe proper.

I don't know what Millar's and Hitch's next project is, but if, as Millar once boasted, they can make Superman as interesting as they've made Captain America and company, I'd definitely start reading the Man of Steel books quite regularly.

When Studio Executives, and Not Filmmakers, Make Movies.

I hate the Jerry Bruckheimer approach to making movies. With a few exceptions, the man has been responsible for some of the trashiest movies of our time. He is the man whose movies exemplify the phrase style over substance, and in many instances his movies don't have either of these two, but try to pass of bombast, thundering music, slow motion photography and repeated use of orange-tinted lighting as style. As much as I enjoyed it, I think last year's Pirates of the Caribbean sequel was made very much in this vein, with some rather mindless action sequences and a reed-thin plot holding everything together.

Which is why I found myself genuinely saddened by what happened in Spider-Man 3, even after I read about it breaking box-office records. It struck me, even though I enjoyed it, that the people behind the movie were taking the Bruckheimer route.

What made the Spider-Man series special for me was that it eschewed the traditional action-movie formula and went for character and story development above all else, with the action set-pieces being more incidental than instrumental to Peter Parker's journey from boy to hero. It was very much the case with the first movie and even more so in the second. Sam Raimi and his screenwriters proved that you could make Jerry Bruckheimer and George Lucas money without going for all-out action sequences or a million digital effects shots. Raimi's weapon of choice as always the strength of his characters and the actors who played them, and the human drama that took place between them; the action was never center-stage. It's not an easy balancing act to achieve; last year Bryan Singer tried aping the Raimi formula with his attempted Superman revival and flopped spectacularly, whatever Warner Brothers execs may claim.

Unfortunately, it seems that Raimi's weapons were very much blunted for the third (and, potentially his final) installment of the series. For this, we have to thank Avi Arad and the suits at Sony.

I once wrote in this blog that Arad was a genius and the next Bruckheimer. I now basically recant on the former and while I'm still standing pat on the latter, I have to say that is not a good thing at all.

Looking back at the entire slate of Marvel films that have hit screens since Blade knocked Saving Private Ryan off the top of the box-office charts in 1998, I have to say that the only true standout, quality films they have produced are the first two X-Men movies and the first two Spider-Man movies. All four of these movies were brilliant in that they effectively crossed over from fanboy fare into films that everybody could appreciate, and they definitely (especially the two Spider-Man films) transcended the whole "comic book movie" stigma. While Avi Arad's name is attached to all of these movies in one fashion or another, he should not dare take credit for their artistic integrity. Credit for that should go to Bryan Singer for his vision of Marvel's merry mutants and Sam Raimi for his masterful rendition of everyone's favorite web-slinger. These movies were great because the directors prevailed over the studio execs in the most important creative choices.

Arad has been rather public, almost to the point of gloating about how he strong-armed Raimi into shoehorning Venom into the second Spider-Man sequel. Having seen the movie twice, I can say for certain that this was a huge mistake.

The Spider-Man movies have followed a very definite, deliberate trajectory since the first film, as exemplified, I would say, by Peter Parker's relationships with both Mary Jane Watson and Harry Osborn. These are the most important threads running through all three movies.That, and the lessons Peter learns about his power as Spider-Man and his responsibility to the people of New York City. This particular installment was meant to be a movie about forgiveness. This was exemplified by the story of Sandman.

Throwing Venom into the mix, however, just made things that much more convoluted, and if the story feels bloated and overlong, it's simply because the way the entire series was designed, it simply was not meant to accommodate the rather one-dimensional Eddie Brock. All of Raimi's villains of choice have been conflicted men corrupted by power, in stark contrast to Brock, who is a corrupt man who is corrupted even more by power. He does not belong in Raimi's universe, no matter how much aplomb Topher Grace invested in his portrayal.

I don't know how much money Sony threw at Sam Raimi or how many of their executives got down on their knees to get him to tell the press that he had learned to like Venom even after his initial vehement dislike, but from the way Spider-Man 3 played out it distinctly feels to me like he was lying through his teeth. Venom just did not belong in the story. Maybe, just maybe, the black suit did, but not Venom.

(SPOILER WARNING)

Sure, Venom may have served a useful story purpose by bringing out dark (dork?) Peter and providing a device through which Harry Osborn was finally killed off, but that could have been done in another manner, if the writers were creative enough.

(END SPOILER WARNING)

Here's how the story could have played out without Venom:

Peter is harassed by Harry, who gets the bump on his head.

His relationship with Mary Jane is strained because of how full of himself he becomes (which happened even without the black suit)

Enter Sandman (hehe), Uncle Ben's real killer, whom Spider-Man defeats and believes dead.

Harry reenters the picture and schemes against Peter. Mary Jane leaves Peter upon Harry's threat, just like in the movie.

Sandman's daughter dies of the sickness (which she really has) which is ailing her.

Meanwhile, Sandman reassembles himself and, in a rage, kidnaps Mary Jane to get back at Spider-Man (don't ask me how he knows to kidnap her, I'm sure they could have thought of something).

No matter how distraught he is, Peter peels himself away from Harry, goes up against the extremely powerful Sandman and is having a hard time beating him.

Harry finds out (perhaps not through the butler, a rather clumsy device) that Peter didn't really kill his father and decides to help Peter out, even though his experimental goblin formula is highly unstable and causing his body to rapidly deteriorate.

The two of them team up, and using a combination of Spidey's skill and Harry's Goblin-tech, they are able to subdue the Sandman to the point where he is helpless, but Harry's "New Goblin" formula ends up killing him...JUST LIKE IT DID IN THE COMICS.

Peter is in a position to kill Sandman, who, now helpless, gets to tell Peter his sad story, and Peter ends up forgiving him, just like what actually happened. Sandman is either carted off to jail or slips away in the sewage system, I don't know.

Peter and MJ bury Harry, then get back together.

The movie, with a few tweaks, could have worked just fine had it played out this way and would have been much closer in spirit to its two predecessors. Not only that, it would have been a lot shorter to boot.

Arad may be patting himself on the back with the new sequel's record-breaking box-office, but by shoving something down the throat of his one remaining creative genius, Sam Raimi, he basically diluted the quality of what, in my opinion, could have been the best comic-book based film series of all time.

I still enjoyed Spider-Man 3, Arad's and Sony's tampering notwithstanding, but in my humble opinion it could have been so much more...had it focused on less.

I can only hope that the upcoming Iron Man is made more like the first two Spider-Man movies, because it strikes me that if Sony makes any more Spider-Man movies, they will try to ape the formula of this third one more than that of the first two.

Filmmaking, really, should be left to the filmmakers and not to their paymasters.

The Joy of Re-Reading Old Comics

My collection of toy cars grew by yet another car yesterday: a 1965 Shelby Cobra, part of the "For Sale" line of cars which basically consists of die cast cars designed to look like cars you would find in a used car lot, replete with uneven splotches of primer and chalk on the windows advertising what good shape the car is in. It's very nice. Like most of my cars, however (with the exception of the boxed ones, which I can pop out of and return to their boxes), it is staying in its clamshell case in which I bought it, where I can admire it and nothing more. Until I'm rich enough to build a glass or acrylic case to hold all these things and protect them from the elements, it is in their clamshells that they will stay. As much as I enjoy admiring them, I have to admit there isn't much more than that.

Which is why, even four months into this hobby (which has currently slowed down considerably), I can still say with certainty that comic books still trump diecast cars for one important reason: you can read them and re-read them, unless you're one of those sickos who buys multiple copies and has them "graded" for the sole purpose of hawking them on eBay. I'm proud to say that, as much money as I made off my comics online, at least I read them first.

My collection, much leaner now than it was two months ago, has a few truly great reads, some of them in single or two-issue stories, but for the most part in terms of four to six-issue storylines.

It's gratifying to revisit old series which I would take months to collect and complete and just read them all again in one sitting. The beauty of being a Marvel collector is that most of their latter-day stories were designed for such readings, and so for the most part they hold up so well that whatever delay may have been incurred in waiting for all four, five, six or seven issues of a miniseries or storyarc is suddenly forgotten.

There are some really good examples of such series that come to mind.

One of my favorites is Mark Millar's 12-issue run on Spider-Man, which still holds up well three or four reads later. Although this story has been accused of ripping off the format of Batman: Hush, its narrative architecture holds up a lot better than Jeph Loeb's flimsy excuses to have Jim Lee draw Batman's entire rogues gallery. Millar's opus is one big, 12-issue arc divided up among three smaller arcs, and they're all really fun reads. Artists Terry and Rachel Dodson and guest artist Frank Cho make it a real visual treat as well, though not necessarily on par with Lee's amazing illustrations.

Another series I really loved to revisit was J. Michael Straczynski's inaugural arc on Amazing Spider-Man, entitled "Coming Home." It's a pretty back-to-basics Spider-Man story with a couple of twists and from the outset JMS makes it pretty clear he has his own direction planned for the character. Artist John Romita Jr. absolutely shines, especially during the balls-to-the-wall action sequences.

Another series that Romita Jr. did really well recently was The Eternals. On an initial reading of the last couple of issues, which I didn't pick up right away because I was busy buying diecast cars, I found the series to be anticlimactic. Though upon re-reading them I still get that vibe, I have to admit now that there was some definitive progression in the story. After all the hype, though, I have to say that the real star of this miniseries was JR Jr., much more than its heralded writer Neil Gaiman.

Of course, not all series hold up to re-reading, no matter how deliberately Marvel plans its arcs, and in one case lateness really did hurt the overall quality of the story. The Spider-Man/Black Cat six-issue miniseries which officially took Kevin Smith about three and a half years to finish is one such example. Three tightly plotted and scripted, rather gripping issues came out in 2002, with an extremely formidable new villain and a hell of a cliffhanger that had the readers wondering if the Black Cat was going to get raped. Three years later, the remaining three issues of the series came out, and the plot just took a completely wrong turn. Even after reading it again over again I found that the whole thing just stank something terrible. It was as though Smith completely lost a handle on the story and just decided to churn out whatever came to mind. Not even Terry Dodson could save this book.

Lateness, however does not hurt a storyarc if it's already been carefully mapped out, and if the only thing that causes the delay is the art.

A surprisingly good example of this would be Joe Quesada's Daredevil: Father miniseries which, like Smith's Spider-Man miniseries, took over two years to finish. Quesada's lateness is much easier to forgive than Smith's considering that Joe doubled as the writer and the artist of the series, on top of that whole Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics business. At first I thought the ending had been re-tooled towards the end as well, but when I re-read the series, and I've done so two or three times, I actually realized how very tightly, yet intricately everything was woven together. I'm generally not a fan of artist-writers, but Quesada really hit it out of the park with this one. Of course, it helps that these six issues showcase some really terrific art, with the latter chapters featuring, in my opinion, some of the best art of Quesada's career.

My favorite example of a series whose quality is unaffected by lateness, however, is, yes, I'll say it: Civil War. Yes, there were mischaracterizations. Yes, it was flawed storytelling, which is a little disappointing considering Millar's talent, but from the first page of issue #1 to the last page of issue #7 this series was just totally riveting. It really and truly had a what-the-hell-is-going-to-happen-next vibe --(even when it was predictable!)-- and this ability to generate anticipation for the next installment is one of the best things that a serialized form of storytelling can have going for it, other shortcomings notwithstanding. It didn't hurt that it had some of the best art produced by any Marvel artist, or any artist in GENERAL, for that matter, in the last two decades or so. As good as Millar's writing is, Civil War would simply not have achieved what it did in terms of graphic storytelling without Steve McNiven's steady, if not necessarily quick pencil. He was definitely worth the wait.

Right now there's nothing out that I'd really care to buy (and the Dark Tower comic adaptation is a tad rich for my blood at this point), but I know there's stuff in the pipleline, like JMS and Quesada's four-issue team-up for the former's last storyarc on Spider-Man. As I understand it, much if not most of it's in the can, so I won't have to worry too much about lateness. Well, whether it's on time or late I look forward to buying it, reading it, and re-reading it.

So frankly, even after I'm swimming in money and all my cars are sitting in polished glass cases for admiring eyes to see, I will still love reading my old comics again. Hell, maybe even after I've made a mint off my cars on eBay I'll still be re-reading these things. They're just so much fun.

A Pleasant Surprise

I love watching movies in provincial SMs. I get most of the amenities of the SM movie theater (a decent, though not necessarily stellar sound system, nice clean seats and a decent snack bar) at roughly half what I pay for a movie in Manila.

Today I watched Bridge of Terabithia with my son at SM Dasmarinas. I watched it for the two reasons only: I was trying to beat the heat by killing time in a mall and it was the only movie I could get my son into that looked halfway decent. I had seen some of the early trailers and was initially turned off by by what appeared to be yet another fantasy clone spurred by the success of the Harry Potter and Narnia film adaptations. Never was I happier to be proven wrong.

Bridge to Terabithia is apparently based, not on a fantasy novel, but a coming-of-age book which has more in common with the film My Girl than it does with Harry Potter. For those who have forgotten that movie, it was essentially about friendship, pre-pubescent love, and dealing with loss. I am actually glad to have been completely ignorant of this as the story unfolded because I found myself surprised at almost every turn.

Its story revolves around Jesse Aaron (Josh Hutcherson), an imaginative and very artistic ten-year-old boy who is bullied at school and neglected at home. He is very much the loner until he meets a kindred spirit: the new girl in school name Leslie Burke (Annasophia Robb of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), who like him is ostracized because of being the new kid in school but more importantly because, like him, she is an artist, although her inclination is towards writing. She is also ignored by and large by her parents, both writers. They also turn out to be neighbors. A match made in heaven, obviously.

Terabithia is Leslie's creation; it is the name she gives to a large tract of forest land into which the two children wander by swinging across a frayed old rope. It is a fantastical realm with all kinds of creatures, and because Jess is as imaginative as Leslie they both see wondrous and scary things, all of which are rather well-rendered in CGI by Oscar winners WETA Digital.

In this world, Jess and Leslie reign supreme. They are the fastest, the strongest and the cleverest. They are, as Leslie proclaims, the rulers of the realm.

Then, however, tragedy strikes and the focus of the story shifts considerably in tone. Director Gabor Csupo and his stars, however, make the segue seamlessly, and the end result, for me, is truly moving.

Their story, which is one of friendship which evolves subtly and beautifully into a very genuine young love, is, however, told with both taste and finesse. Csupo eschews the usual conventions of romance, abandoning the more overt physical manifestations of love like holding hands and kisses in favor of some very expressive facial acting by Hutcherson in particular. This is very much a story about emotions, and they are conveyed very convincingly here.

The visual effects lack the verisimilitude of the WETA Digital's prior work in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and King Kong, but this makes perfect sense considering that this world is more impressionistic in nature; it's a fantasy realm born out of two children's very active imaginations. They are wondrous to behold when appreciated on those terms.

Terabithia is easily the best release of 2007 that I've seen so far, providing a welcome contrast to the all-out stupidity of Ghost Rider and the mindless carnage of 300. It's the first film I've seen this year with nuanced, sophisticated storytelling which is funny considering it was based on a children's book. I think it succeeds, however, because it does not at any point treat its audience like children.

On Idolatry

The question of whether or not veneration of religious icons is tantamount to idolatry is nothing new. It is, I'm pretty sure, one of the reasons why many protestants look down their noses as us Catholics. Here in the Philippines and in other Catholic countries our ability to worship God seems dependent on our ability to give him, his suffering as passion as well as his glorious resurrection, a face.

For my part, I don't have anything against the veneration of icons because I subscribe to the idea that they are merely tools through which we are able to better worship God.

What bothers me, however, is how the concept of using these icons as tools, as means to an end, has been perverted to the extent that some icons have become ends in themselves. In other words, when people start worshipping and placing faith in a statue and not on the God whom the statue represents, something has gone wrong in my opinion.

In the Philippines alone we have enough stories about religious icons to fill several historical volumes, stories about how this statute of the Virgin Mary helped the Spanish defeat the Dutch or how that statue of the Boy Jesus healed the sick or something like that. While I don't disbelieve these stories, I hardly consider them grounds to get down on my knees and worship a block of wood or plaster.

And yet...I know of how droves of people make pilgrimages to grottos and shrines...perfectly intelligent and discerning people, just to pray to statues.

I want to clarify that I do not think less of these people for their chosen form of worship, but I do think that many of us have lost the point of the religious icon.

I think the religious icon, particularly the statue, was originally meant as an expression of love for the faith by those responsible both for its sculpting and/or commissioning. In that, it is a profound act of faith. When people who see this statue remember the sacrifice of Jesus, or the love of the blessed mother, then the love the sculptor has expressed becomes multiplied.

When that love, however, ends with the statue, to the extent that the worshipper asks the statue for miracles or favors, then the original intention is lost. The intention was not, in my opinion, to create love for a statue but for who or what that statue represents. When I say what, I refer to actions, like the sacrifice or suffering depicted in such imagery.

I would liken it to someone who watches The Passion of the Christ over and over and ends up praying to the DVD rather than to the God whose love is supposed to be depicted therein. As patently ridiculous as this sounds, one must consider that the religious icon is meant to be a representation and nothing more. How this has been distorted to the point that people make regular pilgrimages to ask favors of a piece of plaster isn't necessarily a mystery; in an age of mass media, fast food and other forms of instantaneous gratification, it makes sense that people would much rather put all of their faith in something they can see than a person they only read about in a book or heard about from their priest.

I wonder when we will transcend it, anyway.

A Collector's Sense of Closure

Well, it's been a bit of a bloggerific weekend for me, this being my third post in as many days.

I haven't really "retired" from collecting comic books, but I would like to call my current state of non-collecting an indefinite sabbatical, while I sort out other matters in my life, and while there isn't anything that particularly tickles my fancy.

Whether I've quit for now or for good, though, I couldn't stop without finishing up the storylines or miniseries I've already begun. Just today, after almost four months of having quit cold turkey, as it were, I finally completed the seven-issue miniseries The Eternals, by Neil Gaiman and John Romita Jr., which I once upon a time trumpeted in this very blog.

I maintain that these pages feature Romita Jr.'s best work since his seminal Daredevil miniseries with Frank Miller, but I confess that as a whole the story was rather anticlimactic and therefore not nearly as satisfying as I would have wanted. It really strikes me that in seven issues, Gaiman did not tell a complete story. Sure, there were a lot of pretty pictures strung together and some enjoyable dialogue and characterization, but all told the whole thing felt largely pointless, in that this is a story with a clear beginning, a clear middle, but no clear resolution to the big dilemma set up for the characters.

Essentially, we learn why the Eternals have forgotten who they are and have lived the last few years thinking themselves to be merely humans. We learn that their enemies, the Deviants or Changing People want to reawaken a Celestial (Jack Kirby's fantastical version of God) buried near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and we see the Eternals finally all come around and remember who they are and what they have to do, with the exception of Sersi, whose memory remains clouded although she has her power of transmutation back.

But there is so much more that is left to be told, which is why Gaiman aptly captions the last panel with "The Beginning..."

Clearly this series was meant to whet the readers' appetite for more Eternals, but personally I don't think I'll be coming back for seconds, considering the price tag of these issues (P240 in most stores P200 in a couple of others) and given that for most of the series we didn't even get to know the characters, except perhaps Makkari, in any significant way. I see no reason to follow their further adventures when I haven't particularly connected with them in this story.

Say what one will about Civil War, at least a lot took place in those pages, which, all told are fewer than those it took to finish Gaiman's latest tale.

Still, I'm glad I've given myself this closure, the same way I'm glad I waited for Kevin Smith Spider-Man miniseries to end, as big a disappointment as it turned out to be (for all its faults, Eternals played out a lot better).

I have only one more miniseries to finish, two issues of the creator-owned Criminal, and my sabbatical begins in earnest. I'm glad I didn't buy Captain America #25 (and yes, I did spot one in a comic book store, still selling at a normal price, but I put it back on the shelf) because that would just start the collecting cycle all over again. I still love the comics I have (and a much trimmer collection it is now by over a hundred issues), and I'm quite the completist as well (which would explain how quickly my diecast car collection has grown), but to start up new storylines when there isn't anything out there that strikes any particular chord with me would just be prodigal at this point.

So, Mark Millar, Steve McNiven, and all you other creators whose work gets me to the comics stores in a flash, take your time with your next projects or your sabbaticals; I'm glad for some time off from this hobby. It is my hope that, if or when I should revisit this hobby, I'll have quite a bit more money to spare, and that there will be projects worth that money.