Comic Reviews, 10/10/12.

-  Batman Incorporated #0

This may not be “Exhibit A” of why DC’s rebranding strategy blows, though it is certainly C or D.  I’m not begrudging them for what they’re trying to do with all this “New 52 Issue Zero” stuff, and I honestly think it will lead to their intended goal: attracting and keeping new readers.  But in the words of many o’ Conservatives, the strategy will and does have a slew of “unintended consequences”.  One is bothering people like me, who read very few mainstream DC books (umm… ONE); whether it crossed their minds or not, they’re risking the loyalty of their current readership to fish for new readership.  Does the risk outweigh the consequences?  But forget about numbers and market shares and all that shit and think about comics artistically for a minute.  Is it good for a comic artistically to disrupt the flow of a story arc by shoving in an introductory single issue into the mix?  What does it do for the comic?  What does it take away?  With a Grant Morrison book (especially this one), this takes away more than it gives.  To be honest, it gives very little.  What we see here are tropes, scenes, and iconic imagery from the entirety of Grant Morrison’s Batman opus: the Island of Doctor Mayhew, the bell and the open window, the funding from Wayne Enterprises, the recruiting.  None of this is necessary.  Part of the fun of getting into a Morrison comic is the wanting… the craving, to go back and re-read older issues.  When you do this on your own, it’s rewarding.  When someone points out all this stuff to you to get people to read what you’ve been reading for some 7, 8 years, it’s insulting.  Granted, Morrison and the art team of Burnham/Irving do an admirable job with the task given.  But no new revelations plus a hand-holding journey through the past just equals tediousness in the end, I’m afraid.  Skip this, return with #4 (which really is #12 considering they already started into “#1″ earlier this year and not counting this #0 which isn’t really part of the run and…. see how confusing this shit is?) which promises to plow the story forward.

-  Manhattan Projects #6

The title of this issue — “Star City” — refers to a sprawling metropolis of the former Soviet Union, the scientific and ideas mecca of the State.  We have yet to cover any sort of Soviet ground beyond a vague propagandist notion of who they are and what they want via the Manhattan Projects leering eyes.  Misunderstood by the Americans, perhaps… but they are not the good guys.  This is made clear (though I find it interesting that they implore the Aldo Raine style of permanent Nazi branding; instead of a knife they opt for a cattle prod).  The irony of Communist nations of the past is on full display here: even the greatest mind(s) of the State are subject to Big Brother compensation.  Such is the case with Helmutt Grottrup.  Grottrup, like many of the physicists and inventors in the book, was a real person.  German, he worked for the Nazi’s during The War, developing the V-2 alongside Wernher von Braun (also a character in the book).  After the War ended, he opted to work for the Soviets.  He thought, mistakenly, that he would be his own master in The Union.  That he would not be anyone’s underling, a less than desirable experience under von Braun.  But things didn’t change.  In the Soviet Union he worked under a man named Sergei Korolev, not so far a character.  Korolev in the book might be replaced with a certain Dmitiry Ustinov.  Ustinov was the Union’s Minister of Defense for years during the Cold War.  Except in the book he’s represented as a brain in a jar with a large robotic body.  Anyways, most of this issue involves Ustinov and Braun shoving Grottrup in corners to work and question nothing.  Then there’s quite a twist at the end.  I love how this book is simultaneously batshit crazy yet steeped in reality, and real people and projects.

-  The Massive #4

At some point this comic will dip in quality.  The interest it extracts from the reader will level off.  And it will still be good, but not this good.  Luckily, this peak still feels very far off on the horizon.  That is because this world that Brian Wood has crafted with THE MASSIVE is so vibrant and alive the nooks and crannies to explore are next to endless.  We’re still learning about “The Crash”; the series of cataclysmic natural disasters which led to a series of cataclysmic sociopolitical disasters.  But forget all that for a moment.  We also don’t know much about The Kapital or The Massive… the two ships of the (supposedly) pacifist conservatory non-profit Ninth Wave, or their crews.  Not to mention Ninth Wave itself.  Wood throws in a little taste this issue of the history of the organization and that of the main character, Callum Israel.  Ninth Wave had apparently gotten itself on the shitlist of many governments when they used The Massive (the larger of their ships) to blockade oil tankers from exporting out of the Middle East.  When 9/11 happened, their name was brought up vaguely, but not outright named.  Ninth Wave went off grid.  The organization stayed largely silent during a large chunk of the first decade of Century 21.  All charges were dropped and their reputation was cleared though.  So they resurfaced prior to The Crash.  And now, in a post-Crash world their conservationist mission continues; as they see it as important as ever before.  A post-Crash World where, as is shown in this issue, the rules and ethics of society have been swept aside.  Callum knows this, and admirably (even with a gun pointed in his face in this issue) he sticks to his vow of non-violence.  But he wasn’t always that way.  We also get a good helping of Callum’s life pre-Crash.  Very, very interesting.  We learn of his history with a private military contractor (something all too familiar since the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan).  A glimpse at his former partner then and now reminds us that even with post/pre Crash Worlds, very different Worlds, some people never change.  They only amplify.  The biggest part of this issue that moves the story along is Cal getting supplies from a shady character, to say the least.  The rest is backstory.  But the backstory is so damn interesting, I’ll take issues like this all day long.  This has got to be one of the best books on the stands right now.

-Sonny

Web Kid Cinematography.

-  I was unaware that the cinematographer for Whedon’s Avengers flick is the same guy who did Atonement, Seamus McGarvey.  That is excellent news, considering how beautiful Atonement (a quite a bit of his other work) is.  He was nominated for an Oscar that year for cinematography.  Along with No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, and The Assassination of Jesse James By the Coward Robert Ford.  What a year that was.  Yikes.  Very very pretty movies.  Anyways, there’s an interview that just hit the interwebs with Whedon, who talks about creating the iconic imagery necessary for a film like that without it feeling to contrived.

-  Interesting analysis of the modern whistle-blower.  From what they face socially and professionally, to the legislation surrounding them.

-  It must be hard to sell a yacht in this economical environment.  So hard, apparently, that ETAP Yachting is branding their product as unsinkable shelters for survivors of a coming-soon apocalypse.

-  “We, The Web Kids” by Piotr Czerski at Pastebin:

“The Internet to us is not something external to reality but a part of it: an invisible yet constantly present layer intertwined with the physical environment. We do not use the Internet, we live on the Internet and along it. If we were to tell our bildnungsroman to you, the analog, we could say there was a natural Internet aspect to every single experience that has shaped us. We made friends and enemies online, we prepared cribs for tests online, we planned parties and studying sessions online, we fell in love and broke up online. The Web to us is not a technology which we had to learn and which we managed to get a grip of. The Web is a process, happening continuously and continuously transforming before our eyes; with us and through us. Technologies appear and then dissolve in the peripheries, websites are built, they bloom and then pass away, but the Web continues, because we are the Web; we, communicating with one another in a way that comes naturally to us, more intense and more efficient than ever before in the history of mankind.”

Via Grinding.be.

-  Now Playing:  “Keep Warm… With The Warm Digits” by Warm Digits.  Old-school, 80′s style electronic music.  Bit of a Kraftwerk-ian feel to it: analog based, repetitive, happy.  At least, a lot happier than what I’m used to listening to.  They also employ a great bunch of live drumming.  Which is always refreshing.

-  I’ve got the MN High School Hockey tourney on today.  Always entertaining.  These kids hit hard, Jesus.

-Sonny

Psy-vertising; Human Blooded Cyborgs?

Couple science fiction-esque links for you here.

A website called Physorg.com is running an article discussing the key to “cyborg interfaces”: biological components, in this case human blood.  A group if Indian researchers have published the concept in the International Journal of Medical Engineering and Informatics.  You need to speak some amount of science to read this (ha):

“There are countless patents linking the development of memristors to applications in programmable logic circuits, as components of future transistors, in signal processing and in neural networks. S.P. Kosta of the Education Campus Changa in Gujarat and colleagues have now explored the possibility of creating a liquid memristor from human blood. In parallel work they are investigating diodes and capacitors composed of liquid human tissues.“

The BBC Tech department is always good for a news story straight out of a Philip K. Dick novel.  In this story they talk about how the advertising of Minority Report may be closer than 2054 (when the movie takes place), it may come as soon as… wait, next year??

“Written by the Centre for Future Studies, it predicts an advertising revolution taking place over the next 12 months.  Their report – commissioned by 3MGTG, which specialises in digital advertising – foresees the first step to be advertisements that adapt to our moods.  The tech has been dubbed ‘Gladverts’ by the report’s authors.  They envision a world where emotion recognition software (ERS) can tell if you are happy or sad and then serve up an advert based on how you feel.  In Japan, technology company NEC has already developed a system which can work out a person’s gender, estimate their age, and serve up adverts suited to that demographic.  In the further future, this targeted advertising may go a step further by not only knowing your mood, but also information such as age, sex and interests, possibly powered by social networking profiles.“

This, of course, has privacy aficionados calling foul.  Delving into personal information all for the chance to get us to maybe buy something… can you blame them?

-Sonny

 

Superhero Flicks to Hit a Peak?

In a recent interview with something called STV comic book writer Mark Millar discusses the down-slope of the superhero blockbuster movie trend.  For those of you who don’t know, Millar is a Scottish comics writer known for both independent and creator owned work, and also big-time blockbuster style super-hero work.  He’s written X-Men, Superman, even an updated version of The Avengers called The Ultimates.  He’s the creator of supremely successful film adapted comics like Kick-Ass and Wanted.  Personally, I’m not a fan of the guy’s writing.  While entertaining at times, it’s over-the-top immaturity is the kind of thing you think is the epitome of story telling when you’re 15 years old because the characters use words like “fuck” and there’s lots of blood and violence.  At times it’s beyond awful.

That being said, I do somewhat agree with what Millar was trying to say in this interview:

“Where I think it’s going to be difficult is once you’ve done that thing of putting all those characters in one film…you know, it’s like having Harry Potter, James Bond and Spider-Man all in one movie. I think what’ll be difficult then is to try and top that because people want to see it get bigger.”

If the Avengers is the apex of the money-making/popularity arc of mainstream superhero blockbusters, then surely Marvel is making massively grave business decisions.  DC seems to be taking the passive route with their slate of movies, but Marvel has done nothing but go balls to the wall: signing actors on for 7, 8, 9 films in a single contract, setting up individual franchises for long, multiple movie runs, creating the first web of movies connected together through rigid inter-film continuity.

Can you imagine the money that would be thrown away if Millar is right?  If The Avengers starts the downswing?  Not only is Marvel planning movies after the big fish, all I’m assuming will play off of the concepts and threads introduced in the big fish, but they’re intent on making multiple big fishes and I’d assume expecting to make Dark Knight type numbers/money with each and every one.

If this is true, something very interesting (and, in a lot of ways, fitting) could happen in the summer of 2012: The Dark Knight Rises provides a literal death of the big superhero movie.  Meaning… it is very possible based on what we’ve heard Nolan say and what characters are slated to appear in the film that Bruce Wayne/Batman could die in the final act.  It is very possible.  Nothing would be more fitting.

Each of the previous films have represented a wider trend, and not only a trend but a peak or epitome of that trend, in comic book movies.  Batman Begins invented the “reboot” craze which has led to countless fresh starts of long thought dead franchises (and it still stands as the best “reboot” of all of them).  The Dark Knight, no matter how you feel about it (I’m looking at you Dark Knight Sucks) took the comic book movie to new heights, at the very least in terms of ticket sales and money.  Could The Dark Knight Rises represent a death of the comic book movie via its main character, the face of successful superhero movies, dying in its final act?  Stranger things have happened.

-Sonny

Rotting Apple (Worms and All).

The apocalypse is coming.  Board ur windows and burn ur Apple products.  You’ve been warned.

Steve Jobs and co. are ready to patent a new advertising technology which practically defines “intrusion” in both a technological and marketing sense.  The new idea is to display advertising on nearly anything with a screen: “computers, phones, televisions, media players, game devices and other consumer electronics.”  Apple’s calling it their “enforcement routine”, which makes users watch ads they don’t want to watch, unwarranted.  Apparently it demands attention.  Yes, it freezes your device until you either click it, answer a question, or simply demonstrate you’ve noticed the fucking thing.  The tech would be embedded into the hard drive/CPU of the device, and ads would appear at any time they’re programmed to (and yes, one could easily program random times).  So, obviously, it would only come on Apple products like iPods, Mac Notebooks, and Apple TVs (because you know they’re working on that too).

Microsoft lovers shouldn’t get too cozy either; the software giant is reportedly working on developing the same technology.  Here’s the article.  Found via Warren Ellis’ site.

-Sonny