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.

The Politics of Frank Miller

300 is the spiritual sequel to The Matrix from all indications. I say spiritual because, really, they have nothing to do with each other, obviously being very different films, with different stories, basic philosophies, and characters.

What is similar is the pop culture impact both appear to have had. Just as Wachowski brothers' first (and so far, only) truly significant opus pretty much stuck to the collective consciousness, so did Zack Snyder's adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel based loosely on some historical battle leave a rather lasting impression on moviegoers from all walks of life. What, to me, makes 300 that much more remarkable an achievement is the fact that the characters in The Matrix walked around in black leather and blew away people with impunity, the first of which is something young people love to do and the second of which is something they would love to do, so it already had a leg up with viewers (especially the sickos who went on the Columbine massacres shortly thereafter). While I'm sure a lot of viewers would love to be able to dismember people they hate with a passion, I can't imagine they would embrace the idea of walking around in leather thongs while doing so.

It only just recently struck me how similar they were, though, when I read a scathingly bad review of 300 on someone else's blog, in which the film was described as fascist, racist and homophobic. Oddly, as much as I had enjoyed the film for its gripping visuals (and little else), I could not really argue his points. All I could think was how I liked it because it looked cool, choosing to ignore any of its political overtones, intended or otherwise.

I found myself whisked back to early 1999, when The Matrix was leaving its initial impression on audiences here. I had seen it for either the third or fourth time with my then-girlfriend who, shortly after the screening, posed the question for me: "What was so great about that shoot-out in the building's lobby?" to which I could not pose any real answer, when she hit me with yet another question (or maybe it was the same question, I forget. We've been out of touch for a while now, so I can't exactly ask her): "If those guys weren't agents, then weren't they basically killing actual people?"

She totally had a point; taking away how "kewl" the whole sequence came across with its slow-motion photography, wirework and rave music soundtrack, it was basically an act of mass murder as Neo and Trinity slaughtered a bunch of human guards, all of whom were presumably hooked up to the matrix as they had once been. They hadn't killed the evil agents or computer programs (which was something clarified in the second installment as the Merovingian's goons were more categorically described as computer programs and therefore more expendable) but human beings. Unfortunately, just as I was able to gloss this little fact over ("they had to kill them or be killed" I finally managed to say, rather lamely), so did many other filmgoers, possibly including the perpetrators of the Columbine massacre.

300, I think is similar in that many viewers like myself were willing to overlook a number of its shortcomings (like how it fudged history, and how terrible the dialog was in many instances) in favor of its visuals. In that it is truly remarkable, but now that one realizes that Miller's politics, while he is certainly free to adopt them, really are rather abhorrent, whatever his avowed persuasion, one worries about how other viewers might have been indoctrinated.

Most notably, Miller's statements on the invasion of Iraq has revealed that he is essentially one of George W. Bush's staunchest allies in this endeavor. When interpellated on his stand on the matter he attempted and failed to liken the American invasion of Iraq to its having joined World War II upon being bombed by Pearl Harbor. He also went on to talk about what barbarians people are in the middle east, unwittingly exposing himself for the utter bigot that he is. I didn't know there were people who still embodied the White Man's Burden anymore, but apparently Miller still bears it quite proudly.

300, fortunately, was written before Bush even stole the 2000 U.S. Presidential Elections, so may arguably be free from the taint of an analogy, but clearly Miller's belief system was already in place.

Furthermore, it seems that Miller and DC have plans to release a Batman graphic novel called Batman vs. Al Qaeda. Miller actually compares this effort to the comics of the 40s which had Captain America punching out Hitler. Oh, for God's sake. Note to Paul Levitz: it's one thing to edit a cowardly George W. Bush out of the pages of The Authority, and another to feature U.S. Army recruitment ads in every other issue of DC Comics on the stands today, but by doing this you are practically screaming on behalf of America's oldest purveyor of superhero comics "we're Republicans and proud of it!" Your liberal fanbase may cringe in shame, and considering they've dwindled as of late, and especially considering that America's "War of Terror" is rapidly losing popularity, that may not be a good thing.

Happily for me, I am joined in my disdain for Miller's attempt to superimpose his politics onto his comics by highly respected DC comic book writer Grant Morrison, who basically exhorted Miller to give up his 'graphic novel nonsense' and basically join the army where he could really 'fight' Al Qaeda.

Viewed in the context of how Miller thinks, 300 becomes a lot less enjoyable, so my advice to anyone who watches it is pretty much to leave your brain at the door. 300 is not Braveheart nor anything meant to inspire people to acts of valor, and it certainly shouldn't be superimposed on any political situation prevailing today. It's a slick, visually-supercharged comic-book adaptation and should be appreciated on those terms, not in terms of its or its principal creator's politics, because that will probably just leave a bad taste in the mouth.

Taking Pause

About six weeks ago I wrote that my collection of diecast cars consisted only of about 35 to 36 cars. Since then it's ballooned to almost twice that, not counting the cars I bought then gave to my son, having decided I didn't want them in the collection.

I have committed a lot of the faux pas I was trying to guard against when I set out, the principal one being that I have diversified a bit too much in terms of what I have bought. For example, I have added eight Volkswagens to my collection: five Beetles, two Karmann Ghias and one VW-derived Dune Buggy. It's not that there's anything particularly wrong with VWs, but when I set out on this hobby, truth be told they weren't that high on my priority list. Absolute truth be told they were nowhere on it. I got into it because they seemed to be the hottest car on the forum, and I wanted to know what the fuss was all about, easily the worst reason to pick anything up. Sure, I like having them now, but having spent nearly two thousand pesos on them in a week I wonder if I couldn't have found something else, something cheaper to like.

It hasn't been all wanton acquisition, though; thanks to the forum and some re-shipments, I was able to complete all six Ford GT paint jobs released by Jada Toys, easily one of the high points of my collection. I picked up all of their Shelby Cobras as well. I've also picked up some nice Matchboxes, including some of their new releases. The collection may have grown pretty fast, but at least I haven't bought anything I utterly regretted buying.

I also recently marked another significant milestone in my collection as well, this past week I've finally gotten hold of the car I was looking for when this entire spree began: a 2006 Matchbox Jaguar XK. It only just hit the Philippine market recently, despite being available elsewhere for some months now, which explains why I could never find it.

So now I have something like twenty times as many toy cars as I did three months ago, and there's nothing currently on the market that I'm consciously looking for. Even though there are still quite a few cars out in cyberspace that I'd love to add to my collection which aren't about to show up on shelves here anytime soon, I'm quite happy with the collection I have now. Considering my price bracket (generally speaking), I've acquired some real gems. In fact, out of almost 70 cars, I can almost count on one hand the ones I paid a heavy premium for, even online.

Inevitably, though, I have to ask myself if I've peaked a little too soon. In some ways I feel like I've acquired too many cars too fast, though I was spurred primarily by a fear of scalpers at first. Still, I'd be an utter liar if I didn't admit that in the latter stages I was practically hunting them down out of compulsion. In fact, the thrill of the hunt is slightly blunted by an easy find, even if it's a good one. My trips to Festival Mall became a little less special for their frequency (though thankfully it's been over a month since my last trip) and I find myself a little less attracted to "exotic" cars (i.e., the more expensive stuff as opposed to the garden variety Matchboxes and Hot Wheels).

I have to admit I lost perspective there, so I think it's to time to take a breath for a little bit, especially considering I now have everything I really want that I can buy off the rack, or even online at reasonable prices.

I don't quite want to go the way of eBay yet; that could open a whole new can of worms.

On Self-Help Seminars

Last night my wife and I attended a "sampler" as it were, of an ongoing self-help seminar spearheaded by some Fil-Am who has apparently dazzled a lot of people with his words of wisdom. Our experience at the sampler consisted principally of former participants of the seminar sharing their experiences and attesting to how they had benefited from the seminar. Some ofthe guests shared some of their frustrations, and I even got a crack at the mike to talk about some of the things I'd like to do with my life which I haven't gotten around to doing. It's not that I really wanted the help; I just like to talk, really.

I found myself struck by the seminar, which is a lot like the seminar Greg Kinnear's character in the film Little Miss Sunshine was trying so hard to push. I was struck by how shrewd its organizers were, basically catering to people with specific insecurities, the most conspicuous of whom seemed to be the ones with relationship problems. I was, during the break (during which Theia and I sneaked out) even approached by a strikingly beautiful facilitator who asked me if I planned to register to which I politely said no. I marvelled at how clever they were; what better way to attract a young man into their seminar than by having a very attractive young woman make the spiel?

I'm not really going to dump on the seminar (thought at P19,000 for four freaking days it is definitely pricey; my Mandatory Continuing Legal Education didn't cost nearly as much) because from what I saw in that room there was definitely a market for it.

What strikes me is how, even in a country such as the Philippines which puts a high premium on family values, there are apparently quite a few people who have managed to alienate themselves from their respective communities and families.

I've never been a particularly outgoing guy, but when I form friendships and other relationships I value I make an effort to nurture them. It's not something I always knew how to do, but I learned it over time and am still learning it. And I certainly didn't need someone else to teach me how to do it. How far gone, then are some people, that they would need someone to tell them how to talk to their family, or something like that?

Is this a signal of the inevitably decay in society? Is this "me" culture which has so many people present at that seminar feeling lost a product of too much Westernization? I really don't know, and it sounds like something that should be viewed a little more scientifically. Whatever it is, I honestly think it's sad that, rather than seek the aid from one's own community, be it from the parish priest or one's extended family or network of friends, there are people willing to shell out large amounts of money just to learn how to relate to others.

The Passion of Will Smith

The Pursuit of Happyness marks Will Smith's best performance as an actor since his first leading role on the big screen in Six Degrees of Separation. He may have landed an Oscar nomination once before for doing an eerily accurate impression of Muhammad Ali, but this was the first time in his career he's truly played against type, and it works beautifully.

Happyness (the misspelling is part of the story) is the story of Chris Gardner, a bone density scanner (don't ask) salesman whose fortuntes, at the beginning of the movie, are pretty much in a downward spiral. It is when he learns that he can improve his station in life (i.e. make more money) by being a stockbroker, his path for the next six months is set. He joins an internship at the Dean Witter brokerage where for six months, he will compete with several other candidates for the chance to be declared their new broker.

There's just one problem: as an intern he is not paid any salary, and unfortunately selling his machines gets progressively harder, especially when the IRS hits him for just about everything he's managed to make. As a result, he and his son Christopher (played by Jaden Smith, Will's real-life son, who is a revelation all his own) end up homeless, sleeping in shelters and train station bathrooms.

Of course, this is a feel-good movie, so one doesn't have to be a brain surgeon to know who will eventually beat out all of the other interns for that coveted job with the brokerage.

Still, the journey there is so excruciating, so full of cruel twists of fate that although the audience is aware (having in fact, informed at the very beginning) that this movie was inspired by true events, one cannot help but feel the hand of contrivance pop up time and again in the screenplay. There's a little silliness in the script that is called for, while other times it seems rather unintentional. It doesn't really matter whether or not it really happened, because as far as I'm concerned it's all in the telling.

This movie is billed up as a feel-good movie, but to my mind it plays very much like Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I don't know how many other people will draw this parallel, but in each stroke of misfortune that Gardner had to endure I saw the inordinate cruelty with which Gibson depicted Jesus Christ's suffering, the difference being that while, word for word, the Bible describes what happened to Christ, screenwriter Will Conrad presumably had a bit more leeway. That notwithstanding, he and director Gabriele Muccino pile on the pain and suffering for nearly two hours straight until both Gardner and the audience can barely stand it, at which point they finally offer up Gardner's moment of redemption.

The thing is, as with Jesus Christ's footnote of a resurrection in Passion, Gardner's success does pretty much nothing to change how terrible I felt after having been put through such an emotional wringer for something like ninety-nine percent of the movie. At some point I was practically groaning at how excessive all the things that were happening to him felt.

Fortunately for this film, Smith elevates it past its script and direction by suffusing Gardner with dignity even in the face of all of his travails. Although Gardner isn't a fountain of wisecracks throughout the movie, Smith still brings to him the charm that he has trademarked (and he does get a few good one-liners in besides). Not only that, but Smith and son Jaden play wonderfully off each other. I don't usually much care for child actors but this kid really knocks it out of the park for me.

At the end of the day, this is every inch Smith's movie, and his ninth or tenth career $100+ grosser. Forget Tom Cruise; THIS is Hollywood's biggest movie star. And he's a better actor to boot.

300

300 is some good, solid entertainment, and easily the best action film I've seen all year.

In a nutshell, it's a retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae, in which a small cadre of Spartan warriors led by King Leonidas (Gerard Butler in what is surely the role that will launch him into stardom) took on a much larger force in the form of the Persian army and inflicted severe losses on them before being killed to the last man. Of course, that it was directly adapted from Frank Miller's vision of that battle adds another dimension to the filmmaking altogether.

The end result is an hour-and-a-half-long, magnificently shot and choreographed fight scene, abetted by some highly stylized visual effects which embody the best "real actors against virtual backdrops" film so far since the genre was launched with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow a few years back. If appreciated on these terms, then the film is pure delight.

Apart from that, it's not what I'd call a brilliant film, and anyone who's seen Gladiator and Sin City is sure to recognize their love child, with a little DNA infusion from the Matrix. In short, one of its maladies is that it suffers from a lack of originality.

Another is a script with some rather halting dialogue. I remember how Peter Jackson (or was it Fran Walsh) when accepting the Academy Award for the Best Adapted Screenplay congratulated the actors for being able to spout out some difficult dialogue. On the off-chance the scriptwriters should be similarly rewarded for their efforts they should be doubly grateful because just as 2005's Sin City carried some of Miller's clunkier dialogue onto the screen, this movie does the same.

Still, apart from the stunning action sequences and set pieces, the film boasts yet another asset, and that is Butler. His acting is unabashedly over-the-top, which is presumably his way of dealing with the larger-than-life persona Miller bestowed upon Leonidas. His charisma is such that even though the screen is filled with men in leather thongs, all with virtually identical bodily proportions he still stands out for the sheer ferocity of his performance. The other actors, with the exception of David Wenham who plays the narrator and Rodrigo Santoro who plays the disturbingly strange God-King Xerxes, kind of just melt into the background.

As spectacular as the fight scenes are, though, one finds oneself desensitized to the violence after the first five minutes of the big battle. And yes, I will concede the point raised by many reviewers that the repeated device of slowing the action down and showing in great detail the dismemberment and/or impalement of the Spartans' enemies does get old pretty quickly, to the point where everything seems more than a bit cartoonish after awhile. Gamers should absolutely love this movie, especially when the decidedly anachronistic rock music starts to play; it feels out of place in a period film but right at home in a stylized video game.

These shortcomings notwithstanding, one cannot take away from director Zack Snyder, who remade Dawn of the Dead some years ago, what he has achieved, and that is a visually-arresting spectacle that faithfully translates its source material to the big screen. I won't even go into the political interpretations of this film because I don't think it was meant to be digested with anything even approaching depth; it's just a rip-roaring good action yarn and not much more than that.

The Politics of Marvel

Well, apparently, Captain America is dead.

It's a story that has featured prominently in all of the comic book sites I read and in some mainstream media sites as well.

Is it permanent? Nah. They would never kill off an icon like that permanently. In both major comic book companies, Marvel and DC, the only icon who remains dead and buried is Barry Allen. As Spider-Man said, once, in one of the earlier JMS issues "that never seems to last very long around here, does it? Just about everyone I know has been dead at one point or another."

Is it a stunt? Well, Marvel haters would happily dismiss it as such, but I honestly think there's more at work here than the commercialism that drove the death of Superman or even (let's be fair here) the cloning and replacement of Spider-Man.

For one thing, one has to consider that Marvel is currently riding on the wave of the publishing phenomenon called Civil War, the best-selling American comic book of the new millenium (the half-a-million-selling issues of Tokyopop stuff aren't American), the seven issues of which have sold over two million copies on the whole. Captain America was one of the two principal characters of that book, the other being Iron Man. It was all about them, really, and it sold like hotcakes.

For another thing, most of Marvel's line (including the Captain America title) has benefited massively from that mini, and it has launched a number of books out of it, besides, including a revamped New Avengers book and an all-new Avengers book.

Oh, and they already have two gimmick event books linedup for the year, one involving the Hulk and the other involving the X-Men (neither of which I am buying, happily for me).

So no, I don't think the flagging popularity of any character came into play here.

I honestly believe that this is Marvel flipping the bird yet again at the Bush administration.

Tony Stark's pro-registration forces may have won the Civil War, and it's a way of acknowledging the current status quo in America with the Patriot Act in place. Now, however, it feels like Marvel is saying that when certain freedoms are curtailed, America might as well be dead. I mean, one of their most important characters is wearing the American flag and lying bloodied on courthouse steps, for God's sake. You don't get much more political than that. It may be a little prosaic, but at least it isn't so much about sales as it is ideology.

And Marvel has brought forth some of the best talent in its roster to tell this story. The current Captain America writer Ed Brubaker is probably one of the most well-loved by fandom since Mark Waid, if not more, and I have yet to hear anyone saying anything bad about Steve Epting's moody, stylish art. Marvel's even lined up a miniseries about the reactions of different heroes to Cap's death called Fallen Son, written by Heroes producer/writer Jeph Loeb and drawn by John Cassaday, David Finch, Ed McGuinness, John Romita Jr. and Lienil Yu. It's not as if they're getting by with gimmick covers or pre-sealed bags. Whatever one may feel about this story, at least Marvel's telling it in style.
Right now I love how Marvel is basically wearing its anti-Bush sentiments out on its sleeve. Its staff was actually anti-Bush even when it wasn't fashionable, the only blip being the time some right-wing journalist wrote a propaganda piece for the war in Iraq which they couldn't bring themselves to publish for the longest time and finally ended up printing as a one-shot rather than the originally planned miniseries.

So what's my guess as to how and when they'll bring Cap back? None, really, but maybe they'll bring him back in time for the 2008 elections, or after the mostly-Democrat Congress has impeached Bush, or after America has elected its first woman or black president.

Will I buy this story? I'm not really sure, but I certainly applaud Marvel's decision to print it.

Getting the Big Boys to Pay.

Oddly enough, my new hobby, collecting diecast cars, has even helped enlighten me on how incredibly stupid car companies, particularly American car companies, are.

As a collector, I have found myself gravitating towards the Ford Mustang. Old and new, they comprise a big chunk of my collection, to the extent that I have more Mustangs than any other single type of car. It's the icon I'm drawn to, really, more than anything else.

In my excitement over this particular make of car, I read a bit about them on the internet and watched some youtube videos of my favorite show, Top Gear in which the new Mustang was reviewed. Predictably, the Mustang was lambasted by the show's hosts in view of its poor handling. The same went for the Shelby GT500, the 2007 version of the legendary 1967 Shelby GT500; its poor handling caused a couple of reviewers to give it the thumbs down.

What bothered, me, however, was not the bad review, but a certain technical detail about the car, namely that it employed a live axle, which means that instead of rear-wheel independent suspension, which is what most current performance cars (and most passenger cars for that matter) employ, both its rear wheels turn on a solid metal rod.

Ford and legendary Mustang Tuner Carroll Shelby have defended the decision to deprive what is currently their flagship muscle car of the best technology available, stating that to put in this system would have made the car more expensive by about 5000 dollars and that the handling would not have significantly improved anyway (the latter of which I severely doubt).

It's not like I would ever buy this car anyway, but I was intrigued, so I dug a little deeper and learned what the ultimate cause for the cost-cutting was: Ford is basically in deep shit, having posted its biggest financial loss in years.

Like the other big two car manufacturers, Dodge and General Motors, Ford's primary lines of vehicles are its big, stupid, gas-guzzling SUVs and its pickup trucks, which basically panders to big, stupid Republicans. As is the case with so much else, Americans just have to do everything in ridiculous excess. What do you expect out of a nation where "food fights" are a staple in many of its slapstick comedies?

Well, apparently gas prices have severely curtailed the Americans' propensity to guzzle gas, and so all of the big three have suffered severely for it, with Toyota overtaking GM as the world's number one seller of automobiles, which says a lot considering GM has divisions all over the world churning out all kinds of different cars.

Because Ford, however, has ventured most of its eggs in the SUV basket, it's lost money hand over fist and now can't even afford to put independent rear-wheel suspension in arguably one of its most important products. The proof that things have gotten progressively worse for them is the fact that the previous generation Mustang did, in fact, have IRS.

So it is of some consolation that at least some of the conspirators behind the death of the electric vehicle are finally paying their dues. People are finally using their most powerful weapon against the capitalist; the dollar, or more appropriately, their refusal to spend it, and have brought one of the world's biggest capitalists to its knees.

However, the new Mustang, medieval suspension notwithstanding, is apparently quite the seller, with its iconic appeal and good looks. The other big two car companies have taken their cue and are reintroducing their own sixties icons, namely the Chevrolet Camaro and the Dodge Challenger. Thinking that the SUV is on its way out, the big three may come to believe that the solution is to go retro and bring back the muscle car. The only problem is, these muscle cars still use five-liter V8 engines. It's kind of amazing how myopic these people can be. One would think car executives are smarter than the morons who buy their products.

Of course, if the market is flooded with gas guzzling muscle cars, with gas prices continuing to escalate, it'll only be a matter of time before people stop buying these cars for the same reason they did their SUVs and pickup trucks, and start going back to their gas-sipping Toyotas, Hondas and other non-American cars.

It'd be nice, actually, if some Japanese or European company actually bought Ford out, the way Ford bought British companies Jaguar and Aston Martin. It would be nice to have business managers with long-term vision, and not just a desire to make a quick buck, running the company, and maybe the electric-car technology Ford (and its co-conspirators in the big three) sat on may see the light of day at last. Or, at the very least, a change in company philosophy would come about, with much less reliance on motor vehicles with a displacement any bigger than two-and-a-half liters.

This is Ford's chance to effect a huge paradigm shift; having been screwed by the oil companies who really couldn't give a damn about anybody's bottom line but their own, it is in a position to start hitting those companies back by making cars less dependent on their products. It can join other eco-warrior car companies like Honda and Toyota and make a clean break from the rest of the Detroit conspiracy with cheaper, and more importantly more fuel-economical cars.

Maybe using a revamped business policy that steers away (pardon the pun) from SUVs and excess, they can actually start making money again, and afford to put some real suspension in their Mustangs. Maybe (gasp) they can start making the Shelby GR-1 concept car a reality.

It's poetic justice to see the big three floundering as a result of all their indulgence. The trick now is how to do the same to the oil companies.