Somnopolis

I’m having a lot of fun reading the black ‘n’ white collections of DC books, so on a whim I snapped this one up in Kinokuniya. All I have to go on where Booster is concerned is what little of the ‘bwahaha’ JLI era I have read and his actions in the prelude to Infinite Crisis, where he embezzled funds from Blue Beetle and then goes hat in hand to Max Lord to beg. Pretty low trough for him there. Afterwards there was 52, with a more repentant Booster trying to make amends, but not before a disastrous publicity stunt.

Now he’s a hero out of time, more so than before, whose heroic acts are not noticed by anyone as he secretly tries to fix events that have occured in the timestream. Dan Jurgens has returned to his solo title, so I thought it would be fun to see what the 80s book he wrote would be like.

I was pleasantly surprised. It’s witty, smart, there’s an ongoing subplot with Booster trying to upstage Superman in his own city and the timetravelling huckster is pretty damn heroic! Yes he is challenged by other heroes, including Supes and the Legion, of being a thief and a crook trying to hide his past, but as Booster points out, he came to the present to try and be a better person. He is sincere in his attempts to make amends, just not above making a couple of dollars here and there…..ok a couple of million.

Also Jurgens had already introduced something that I thought Giffen only came up with in the Formerly Known As… series, namely that Booster is not above flirting with, shall we say, more mature ladies. Apparently in the future age differences are not as big a taboo. Although when we finally see his future Gotham hometown, it’s not a world away from Judge Dredd’s Megacity 1. Occasional derivative notes aside, I thought this was an entertaining and surprising book.

Now to the sad news. Jurgens sets Booster up with a warm supporting cast, including Dirk Davis, his daughter, tech assistant Jack Soo and Goldstar PA Trixie Collins. Dirk, Trixie and Booster even had an unrealized love triangle brewing. Then there is a sudden switch in tone of the books. I would trace it first to a disastrous encounter with the aliens of Dimension X (after finishing Showcase Teen Titans vol 2 the other week it was a surprise to see them again so soon). Then John Byrne portrayed Booster in a very unflattering way during a brief two-parter. The final nail in the coffin was that bloody Manhunter crossover, which tore through the supporting cast, as of course one of them had to be a traitor.

Here’s what annoys me. My impression of Booster until now was that he was a huckster loser. I’m bothered because it seems the character has been pidgeon-holed as too silly due to his association with the JLI. I think there still is decent mileage in the idea of a self-proclaimed ‘capitalist superhero’, which Jurgens did a good job of exploring.

Perhaps some took his rivalry with Superman too seriously? It’s a shame, because this is a great book. I’m looking forward to reading his new adventures under Jurgens. And did I imagine it, or did he end the book with a Vonnegut quote?

I have finally cracked and will be buying a PS3 later in the year so that I can enjoy Tim Schafer’s latest title Brutal Legend. Darn you Mr Schafer!

In the meantime though I have discovered another combination of nerdy matters and heavy metal music. Now bands like Rush and Brock Samson’s favourite band Led Zeppelin have riffed of J.R.R. Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings books a few times in the past -

- would either of them have dared to write an entire album about the Silmarillion?

Blind Guardian did.

In fact they’ve gone one better and are about to release an album based on Robert Jordan’s interminable Wheel of Time series. They have also composed music inspired by Michael Moorcock and George R.R. Martin. I gotta say I’m impressed. Below is a track from the new album. The artwork featured comes from the Dabel Brother’s comic series based on Jordan’s The Eye of the World, with pencils by Chase Conley.

Bleeding Cool is reporting Christoph Waltz may be under consideration to play the Lizard.

Burn.

Dylan Baker played Dr. Connors in two of the Spidey movies, a set-up for the transformation that never happened (bit like Billy Dee Williams in Burton’s Batman).

What makes this worse is this isn’t the first time this has happened to Baker. In Todd Solondz’s Happiness he wowed critics by playing a character who was a paedophile in such a way that you actually feel sorry for him. Solondz recently released Life During Wartime, a sequel to his earlier film that recast all of the roles, including Baker’s.

Christopher Nolan’s Inception promises to be a movie that will divide audiences between those who love its dream logic action sequences and those frustrated by its shortcomings.

Leonardo DiCaprio plays Cobb, a corporate spy whose talents lie in a specialised field of espionage known as extraction. He can break into a subject’s subconscious while they dream and remove information for his employers directly from the minds of their rivals. Cobb’s team is made up of fellow experts in extraction, each of them with their own specialised talents. The architect is responsible for ensuring the level of detail of the dream the subject finds themselves in. Then there is the chemist, who is responsible for the strength of the sedative, as well as a forger who can recreate the appearance of people the subject knows.

Cobb and his crew are hired by Saito, played by returning Nolan performer Ken Watanabe, to go outside their comfort zone and perform an ‘inception’ – the planting of an idea into the mind of a business rival Fischer (Cillian Murphy) in order to ‘inspire’, him to break up his monopoly. In return, Cobb is promised that he will be allowed to return to his family in America. He immediately agrees, despite the reservations of his partner Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). What the rest of the team do not realize is that Cobb’s dead wife Mal (Marion Cotillard)  is breaking into his dreams and working against him. His plan is to drag Fischer through multiple levels of the dreamscape, earning his trust by acting as a protector of sorts and tricking him into believing Saito’s simple idea. The dismantling of his father’s business empire.

Cobb is introduced to Ariadne (Ellen Page) by his father-in-law, a young student with a precocious talent for manipulating the dreamscape. Trained to be the team’s new architect, she becomes determined to discover the secrets of Cobb’s past and the reasons for Mal’s murderous attempts on their lives. In effect Ariadne stands in for the audience. Through her we learn the rules of extraction and inception, as well as the cause of Cobb’s debilitating guilt.

Before getting into what I disliked about Inception I would like to address its strengths. This is a marquee film that is filled with astounding images. Paris is folded like a pretzel and there are hallway fight scenes in zero gravity. The premise of dream thieves is fascinating, a concept that could have sprung from the mind of Philip K. Dick. That a blockbuster film is trading in these ideas is a credit to Nolan’s ambition and talent as a director who can woo modern day audiences. What’s more the film is an excellent showcase for young, up-and-coming talent. While DiCaprio is the ostensible star, this is actually an ensemble picture, the ‘dream heist’, storyline resembling a Freudian Oceans 11. Joseph Gordon-Levitt adds yet another wry performance to his CV, but it is Tom Hardy playing the quick-witted Eames who is the stand out. Adding much needed humour to the proceedings, his shape-shifting forger steals every scene he is in. Something of a relief I’m sure for Hardy, finally escaping the embarrassing memory of Star Trek Nemesis. With this and his performance in Bronson, I reckon we’ll be seeing his name in lights before the end of the year.

Ok now that that’s out of the way….this was a very frustrating film for me. For one a lot of media hype has been generated by the ’secrets’, of Inception and its purported ambiguity. Pajiba and Mightygodking have each addressed complaints of confusing plotlines and that ending. Personally I found the story of the film straight-forward, disappointingly so for a film about lucid dreaming and shapeshifting thieves of the subconscious, with Escher-inspired architecture to boot. Many scenes are given over to exposition and we know from the outset there is something wrong with Cobb. Had Mal’s fate been kept under wraps until later in the film, with the process of extraction running more smoothly, the plot might have been more surprising. This is a film with a smart premise that feels the need to explain itself to audiences, afraid they will be left confused. True this would be box office poison, but the quality of the film itself would have been more successful had it been more ambiguous.

Below is a diagram explaining the several dreamscapes invented by Cobb to entrap Fischer. As a visual aid it does the trick, but I do not recall feeling confused on this point. We are walked through each ‘dream within a dream’, so that we understand what is happening. Excellent work by @DeviantART

The ‘kick’, referred to in the visual aid is the means by which Cobb’s team surfaces from the dream. Gravity generally works and a montage sequence featuring Joseph Gordon-Levitt falling off a chair proves yet again, as Zach Gallifinakis has noted, that falling is the essence of physical comedy. Moments of humour are few and far between though. This is grim, dour stuff. The kick releases them from the dream, but can it lead to death? From dropping off a chair we progress to characters flinging themselves off buildings. What is real and what is fantasy? I have heard reviewers say that audiences may return to watch Inception two, maybe three times to work out what scenes occur in the ‘real world’. I suspect the only revelation after multiple viewings will be to discover tinnitus, as Hans Zimmer’s portentous score booms and blasts through the proceedings.

What this film desperately needs is a sense of fun. At times it resembles The Matrix, the Wachowskis lightening the Cartesian dilemma of surfer-dude Messiah Neo by introducing comic book action and Hong Kong fight scenes. The above mentioned Oceans 11 reveled in the banter and camraderie of the casino thieves. Inception fails to convince us that Cobb, Arthur, Eames and Ariadne are individuals. God love him, I could not understand Watanabe’s Saito half the time. It occured to me that as they are all sharing the same dream the actor could have delivered his lines in Japanese, with the others immediately comprehending.

Ultimately the characters seem more like archetypes. Eames represents the mind’s capacity for imagination. Arthur is rational thought, linear and direct in his approach to problem solving. Whether this is intentional or not is immaterial. As I have no investment in the characters I do not care whether they live or die. The rescue of Saito, to my mind, is merely a means of Cobb exculpating his own feelings of guilt. As a result the ending, if you accept that the proceeding is nothing more than a dream, represents his final decision to embrace the dream. At one point he remarks to the team that a positive fantasy is more successful than a negative one. His brain has decided to abandon his paranoid fantasies and accept a happy ending.

Personally I left the cinema disappointed. I have heard Inception described as a smart film for stupid people. That seems like a terrible waste to me.

So I’m reading the infamous ‘revamp Superman’ pitch by Tom Peyer, Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Mark Waid (here) and I notice the following line.

We believe that the four of us understand the new face of Superman: a forward-looking, intelligent, enthusiastic hero retooled to address the challenges of the next thousand years

The next ‘thousand years’, you say? Isn’t that the projected amount of time for a …..Reich? Oh my goodness!

Der Ubermensch!!!

Just kidding. I’m sure it was unintentional. A thousand Nietzsche scholars just cried out in their sleep.

30 Days of Night

28 Weeks Later

Watchmen

Knight and Day

What do these films have in common? Well 1), they all, to one degree or another, suck. I mean that in the sense of being disappointments and wastes of story potential, not in the generic ‘Wow Soultaker sucks’, sense.

2) All four trailers were scored by Muse. So I feel there’s an important lesson here.

Films trailers that feature the music of Muse, will inevitably suck.
Screw you Matthew Bellamy.

You look at someone like Trinity from the “Matrix” movies, and you see a woman who can be strong, sexy, dangerous and modern. Why can’t Wonder Woman be those things? – J. Michael Straczynski, taken from his Comic Book Resources interview.

Oh dear. DC comics announced some time ago that Gail Simone’s run on Wonder Woman would end by issue 600. I felt this was a real shame, as Simone had done some sterling work on the title. Wonder Woman is a character who has bounced from revamp to revamp, her history and mythology becoming increasingly confused. Creator William Moulton Marston pitched her as a female Superman and included hints of fetish culture in her character (he was an interesting man). This was toned down by later writers and indeed in the 70s she was stripped of all her powers and became Diana Prince, fashioned after The Avengers Emma Peel. This too would be revamped, after Gloria Steinem complained about how a feminist icon had been, if you will, ‘emasculated’. Then there was the George Perez revamp from the 80s with the focus on Greco-Roman myth; the more recent take by literary luminary Jodi Picoult, which returned the Diana Prince persona and pitched a Wonder Woman who could not figure out how to use a petrol pump. As a character she’s been up and down and all around, so it was a relief when Gail Simone took over the book and tried to integrate all of the above into a more progressive, forward-looking take on the Amazon princess.

But guess what? Turns out – they’re doing another revamp. And they’ve hired J. M. Straczynski no less to do the job. Above is a promotional sketch by artist Jim Lee, his take on a more modern and practical superheroine, designed to fit into a more urban setting. As per JMS’ interview:

I also wanted it functional. As so many female fans have said over the years, “How does she fight in that without all her parts popping out? Where does she keep stuff?” She can keep or shed the jacket, there are pockets, it’s tough and serious looking while still attractive. It’s a Wonder Woman designed for the 21st century. Not to get all “Project Runway” on this, but what woman wears the same outfit for 60 years without at least accessorizing?

Personally, I think it looks like Joss Whedon’s Fray (who himself pitched a Wonder Woman film script that was rejected).

Which is to say, it’s just another kick-ass heroine in an urban setting. Now while I didn’t agree with Perez’s over-reliance on the Greco-Roman aesthetic, I have always thought that what makes Diana special is that she comes from a completely different world. I also feel that Amazon culture should be just as alien to us as Superman’s Kryptonian heritage. It should be another civilization with its own traditions and technology, that just happens to coexist with our own.

This revamp risks making Wonder Woman herself derivative of less well-known DC properties, such as Black Canary and Huntress, urban vigilantes who happen to feature in another Gail Simone book, Birds of Prey.

Beyond the Jim Lee redesign though, the other objection I have to this is it’s so familiar to JMS’ previous work. If you’re a fan of his television work, or comic book career you start to notice some recurring themes. First off, he introduces religious/mystical aspects to most of his characters. Peter Parker is a science student who happened to be bitten by an irradiated spider that gave him superpowers. Under Straczynski it was revealed that Parker was always destined to be Spider-Man has he was the bearer of the mystical spider totem. He’s fond of conspiracies. Babylon 5 was a key example of this, with an overarching storyline that featured the heroes fighting against a vast political plot to enslave the galaxy. Then there’s his take on ‘gritty realism’, all dark alleys and looming abandoned buildings. I foresee plenty of this in Wonder Woman’s future. Midnight Nation sketched an America of shadowy cities and towns, that also turned into an overwrought religious allegory.

His Wonder Woman pitch contains all of these elements, with a time travel plot to handwave away Diana’s current status quo; a conspiracy behind the destruction of her home Paradise Island, led by a mysterious figure controlling the foes hunting for the now young and vulnerable Amazon; and finally the much proclaimed ‘urban setting’.

We learn that Paradise Island fell when Diana was just a child, when the gods withdrew their protection. Hippolyta and many of the other Amazons died in a last-ditch defense against an army with weapons that could kill even them, while some of her guards and handmaids smuggled a young Diana off the island. She was thus raised in an urban setting, but with a foot in both worlds, courtesy of her guardians and teachers from Paradise Island. They expect her to retake Paradise Island, defeat the army that’s still hunting for the escaped Amazons (and Diana in particular), and restore all her people to their previous glory. This is a lot to ask of someone who has no recollection of that world, and obviously has no idea about the timeline shift.

So gone is the proud warrior/ambassador to Man’s World. Now Wonder Woman is just another confused and angry hero with an attitude and undefined abilities. That’s enough of a premise to string readers along until the next inevitable revamp. Christ on a bike. The reaction from fans has not been entirely positive (here and here).

Thankfully others are having fun with this, including artist Chris Samnee, who has his own take on the controversy – as well as some good news for Aquaman!

Arkham Asylum is, simply put, one of the most successful games released in recent years. It is not only a fantastic action game, with cinematic cut-scenes that don’t distract from the gameplay but actually improve it (rare), side quests that add to replayability, but more than any of that it manages to synthesize every version of the Batman at once.

Written by Paul Dini, who also worked on the Batman animated series, Arkham Asylum also boasts the vocal stylings of three of the show’s voice actors. Returning are Arleen Sorkin as Harley, Kevin Conroy as Batman and Mark Hamill knocking it out of the park with his demented Joker taunting the player throughout the game.

The ‘inmates take over the asylum’, plot draws on two miniseries from DC Comics. Grant Morrison and Dave McKean’s Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth and Arkham Asylum: Living Hell by Dan Slott and Ryan Sook. The game retains the ghostly undertones of the first book, but also introduces characters from Slott’s less surreal and more plot-driven miniseries. Aaron Cash is one of the attending guards at Arkham, who lost his hand in an attack by Killer Croc. The game picks up on the allusions to J. M. Barrie’s Captain Hook, in keeping with the multitude of references stuffed into the Batman mythos by creators over the past seventy years.

Recently Mightygodking wrote an interesting piece regarding the animated series’ take on the Joker -

Now, the animated series’ Joker is a far more human character. One of the episodes I watched recently was “Joker’s Millions,” in which a flat-broke Joker gets a massive inheritance from a gangland rival, clears his name, and blows a bunch of money, only to find out later that most of the money was fake; with the IRS after him for inheritance tax, he can’t admit that he was fooled or he’ll be humiliated. Can you imagine the Joker, as seen in most contemporary comics, being portrayed as so down on his luck? [.....] This is a Joker with highs and lows, who feels joy and disappointment, a Joker with honest-to-God passion. This is a Joker who wants things, and can’t always have them. This is a Joker who retains the grandness of his philosophical and conceptual war against Batman, but is also petty enough offended when he’s tossed out of the Gotham City Comedy Competition.

Mark Hammill’s Joker sounds the same, cackling maniacally as he tears the asylum apart. But unlike in the animated series, this version of the villain is happy to take lives. Staff, emergency crews and police officers are slaughtered by his goons. The player’s Batman can do little more than contain the carnage on the island of Arkham (touches of Alcatraz here). The Batman does not kill, but there is something sick about the city of Gotham and life is cheap. The game embraces the twisted morality of the comic and while the masked Bruce Wayne does not take a life, he doesn’t go out of his way to save the criminals who fall to their death. A series of bonecrushing blows would appear to break every bone in a goon’s body, yet when the player checks them the game states they are ‘unconscious’. Yeah. Right.

The violent fight moves Batman uses in the game are acrobatic and swift, the most spectacular combos achieved by unbroken chains of contact hits against enemies. The developers introduce an inventive array of animations to give players the sense that they are the Batman. ‘Detective mode’, allows the player to analyse crime scenes and anticipate foes. It combines the character’s tech-savy side with his martial artist skills to great effect.

Now. Boss fights. Original games often introduce throwaway boss battles that become repetitive after the first couple of levels. Arkham Asylum has the advantage of being able to draw on an incredible rogues gallery. There’s the Joker’s lover and sidekick, created by Paul Dini and Bruce Timm for the animated series, Harley Quinn, here redesigned to look like a demented hospital nurse. Then we have Killer Croc, a monstrous sewer dweller, into whose lair you have to travel….moving very slowly. Bane is more muscle than man and in confronting the villain who broke the Bat’s back in the comics, you discover the true extent of the Joker’s plan. Poison Ivy essays a disturbing transformation that’s half hentai, half Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors. But the pick of the bunch, the absolute terror that is  – Scarecrow

The game makes excellent use of a villain who can cause nightmarish hallucinations due to a gas of his own invention. Batman is dosed at least three times during the game and forced to relive his parents’ deaths, not to mention in a great scene, a reversal of the game’s opening where he is brought to Arkham in chains by the Joker himself. The character’s redesign is a combination of the movie version played by Cillian Murphy and the comic book version, with some frighteningly Freudian dentata to boot. The Scarecrow boss fights are for me the highlight of the game.

Now I have heard complaints about the final fight with the Joker is anticlimactic, but personally I think it’s in keeping with his character. In a horrible way, once again in keeping with the Batman storyline, who’s to say he didn’t win in the end? Hundreds of lives lost, or destroyed and the Arkham institute itself turned into a death camp.

Fun game though.

I haven’t really been paying attention to this years World Cup (ouch Australia….ouch…), but vuvuzelas are like, totally fucking annoying yeah?

Yeah.

As a simple, callow youth I was troubled by the popularity of Seattle grunge band Nirvana.

There they where, mixing it up in 1991, bringing us all down after the now suddenly less threatening and dangerous Guns and Roses, with their stories of depression and anti-psychotics, leaving me with quite the pickle. See I wasn’t necessarily a happy kid, but I was also not depressed….like all the time! Which was cool now. All the older guys in school liked Nirvana, one going so far as to grow his dirty blonde hair long like Kurt Cobain’s and taking to wearing a stripped jumper. So they’re all chanting along to Smells Like Teen Spirit and I’m left wondering…what the hell are the lyrics?

Then Tori Amos came along in 1992 and sang the song in a clear and legible manner.

Tori Amos - gift from god

Thank you Tori! Here’s her take on the grunge classic.

Which brings me to my point. Oftentimes a song will be incredibly catchy, but the lyrics absolutely indecipherable (and anyway, I was also more of a Pearl Jam fan. Jeremy rocks!). Now you may have heard of a young man named Hunter Davis. He’s an actor, in fact here’s his website, and a remarkable impressionist. He’s become known for his spot-on take off of Ian McKellan. Lets have a listen.

Ain’t he great! Now bear with me for a moment….this was the original.

Whatwhatwhat!? What was that! Very catchy, great song from Disney, but I hadn’t the foggiest what the Duck Tales theme song was about.

Life is a like a hurricane, here in Duckburg? Racecars, lasers, aeroplanes, it’s a duck-blur? Might solve a mystery or rewrite history? DuckTales

Woo-hoo? I guess, right?

Thank you Hunter Davis for performing this important public service. You’re good people. You can find more of his videos on youtube here.