The Asylum Heights comic experience. Asylum Heights is a satirical work of fiction, any resemblance to any people or institution living, dead or imagined is purely coincidental.
Asylum Heights, the online graphic novel experience; chronicling the quixotic misadventures of a group of stoned bohemian anarchists as they bumble through space, time and parallel dimensions with a decrepit apartment building
A few centuries ago, a bunch of over qualified doodlers became rather cocky when they realized they would be forever immortalized as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Subsequently, they felt that their work was obviously far removed and superior to all other artistic disciplines. Armed with high social regard, and super human martial arts skills, they divided artisan skills into "High Art," the painting, poetry and sculpting that they did, and "Low Art" being whatever was left. Historians often applaud this move, as without it, Art School undergrads would have a much harder time coming up with essay topics. The problem arose later, when the artistic philosophy of modernism stripped away the old hallmarks of master craftsmanship and spiritualist mystique. Without any grounding structure big "A" Art has transmuted into an ill defined nebulous entity which could represent anything, whilst simultaneously failing to be anything. This is why, after all these years, I'm willing to admit, I don't understand Art. Craft? Sure. Pop Culture? Definitely. Together, they give us Stained Glass Boba Fett Helmet Lamp!
All you need to know to fully appreciate a Boba Fett lamp, it that it's awesome. That it's awesome, and that awesomeness may be extended by checking out the matching Iron Man helmet lamp curtesy of Michael McLane over at Deviant Art. (I suppose this would be an opportune time to mention that I agree that, objectively speaking, Iron Man in a better hero then Batman.) What Art has lost, is a base metric for cross comparison. The quality of Craft is determined by Craftsmanship, the success of Pop Culture is set by its capacity for cultural resonance. After years of bashing my head against the pretentious academic/gallery Art sphere, I have taken a circular route in developing an appreciation for Popular Culture; A new found respect founded on the premiss that it's honest. The creators of mass media entertainment aren't saddled with abstract, intellectual bullshit, they just want something that enough people will like that they can make money. Pop Culture is filled with templates and formulas, but it is determined by a reactive, evolutionary process. The success or failure of one project will determine what the next project in the works will be. Its success is determined by its ability to connect with the prevailing attitudes, fears and ideologies of the society it's made in, its ability to find cultural resonance. One of the most fundamental tools in Art is the academic field of Semiotics, essentially the discipline of interpreting symbolism and encoded meaning. Capital "A" Art requires one to extract the pertinent symbolic elements and interpret them accordingly to determine the intended meaning. (It's Man's inhumanity to Man if you were wondering.) The same tools can be applied to mainstream culture, to remove the thin layer of highly considered veneer, and look at why it connected with contemporary culture. Simply put, Michael Bay's Transformers is a more poignant dissertation on the state of contemporary society then anything currently showing in a gallery. Which is why I don't care much for those films.
Considering that Marvel has turned the money tap to full with the Avengers this week, you already knew we were heading back there. Beyond the coolest wedding ever, if you want to see cultural resonance in action, just check out this gallery of the Avengers variant covers as classical works of Art. I have a particular love of the Black Widow splendid as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus, and not simply due to Scarlett Johansson's amazing super powers. The rise and increasing prominence of super heroes over the last seventy years is a natural byproduct of our current social trends. It's not that the themes of superherodom are so extraordinary, but they find success because they reflect the undercurrents of contemporary thought. The current super-hero archetypes are the classic hero archetypes which we have used for millennia. The main shift, is that the Zeitgeist is increasingly concerned with dawning post humanism and the social ramifications of unlimited power. Prometheus gave us the power of fire, stolen from the Gods, but we stole the power of nuclear fire all on our own. We are a people who are loosing reverence for gods, as we surpass their power with our own. Our heroes are traditional archetypes, re-conceptualized to conform to a shifting new perspective. Thinking about it, Super Man really is Achilles, a noble warrior of virtue who fights not for profit or glory, but because he must; A perfect hero, fully invulnerable and unstoppable except for one highly specific weakness. (Kryptinite sandals?) Would that make Batman Theseus? Given that the classical heroes of mythology and contemporary comic heroes are both shaped from the same clay of standing human archetypes, I should be able to find direct comparisons for them. I think I'm going to have to go give that idea some though sometime, and see where it leads.
I got side tracked, I just wanted to share a couple more things to go along with my somewhat overly verbose overview of comic-con, like this gallery of gender bent cosplay. That, and as I mentioned, I didn't get the opportunity to see the next Generation cast reunion. This was because the part with the entire cast was an entirely separate ticketed event called Star Trek TNG EXPOsed. I just wasn't willing to cough up the equivalent cost of my weekend expo pass to see these people talk for a couple hours. Thankfully, the whole thing is on the internet, so let's just cozy up together here, and we'll give it a watch. Just pretend there's an Orion slave girl by ether side, (or a Wookie if you swing that way) and if the shaky cam gets annoying, just pretend you're watching Battlestar Galactica.
Tune in next week for more arbitrary words, that on rare occasion form together to convey information. Same Bat-time, same Bat-channel.
So, has everyone gotten into queue for the Avengers tonight? Do kids even do that anymore? Stan Lee has assured me the film is great, so I suppose they avoided the biggest traps of having too many heroes. Take a look at this fan art to tide you over, I know how difficult it is to have to wait to see latex clad Scarlett Johansson, and some other people too, I guess.
With every lap we make around Sol, I find that my ring of power weakens, leaving my mighty prowess of cynical pop culture obsession to wane. Every annum I need to return to my place of power, and regain my nerdtastic puissance, and that place, is Comic-Con.
The big news last weekend at this years Annual Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo, was the size. Given that Calgary is a city where multi-ethnic, Canadian, white collar office drones, desperately try to pretend that they're American Cowboys, I'm simultaneously shocked, and really not surprised by the explosion of this nerdfest's popularity. Six (possibly seven?) years ago at the first one, it was effectively what I had envisioned, a room, filled with a handful of my fellow Geeks dressed as sailor Mercury (the thinking man's juvenile nymph fantasy) who didn't want to drive for four days to go to San Diego. The thing is, Calgary is an incredibly corporate city, it's populated by accountants, managers, clerks and educated professionals, and outside of ten days a year, you will never see an actual cowboy here. The cowboy persona is a carefully fabricated image created because the Calgary Stampede brings in billions every year from foreign tourists. It's hard to turn away from that much money as a particularly capital fanatic society, unless you have a really good reason, something like Leonard Nimoy. Two years ago, the Expo organizers used the recent J. J. Abrams Star Trek to do something very clever. With the destruction of the planet Vulcan in the film, they decided to bring Spok home to Vulcan, that is, the tiny town of Vulcan Alberta. Leonard Nimoy had a parade through the town flanked by a colourful brigade of Trekkies, before presenting them with a gift of his original prosthetic ears from the show, and the (Paramount backed) title of Canada's official Star Trek capital. This was promptly followed by a guest appearance at the Calgary Comic Expo, making him the first big name nerd icon to ever appear in the city. Surfing on a wave of excitement and support, the organizers managed to top that in 2011, with the (only nominally more beloved) appearance of the irrepressible William Shatner. Our uber geeky mayor Naheed Nenshi come out and made Shatner an official Calgarian, and the city let a little glimpse of its worn Batman T-shirt show from under its starched white collar and cowboy hat. (The mayor made a Star Wars joke, and then apologized for having made a Star Wars joke in front of Shatner.) This also brought out a jaw dropping 30, 000 attendees, making it the second largest comic-con in Canada and launching it up into the leagues of the big North American Pop Culture shows. So 2012 had to be bigger, sticking with the Star Trek theme, the Comic Expo reunited the entire cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation; not to mention the likes of Adam West, Andy Rheingold, Bob Mcleod, George Perez, Geof Darrow, Frank Cho, Ian Boothby, Tony Moore, Dave Prowse, Amanda Tapping, James Masters, Katee Sackhoff, Robert Englund, Billy West and John DiMaggio, and some really neat old guy named Stan Lee (just to name a few.) Going all out, they booked the entirety of the largest space in the city, and prepared for a whopping crowd of 35, 000 to beat last year. It must have been a bit of a shock on Saturday Morning to look out and see a roaring sea of 50, 000 Geeks clamoring at the gates. In less then a hour after the doors opened, the building hit its maximum occupancy, and the fire marshal closed the door, stranding a crowd large enough to sack 12th century Constantinople fuming outside. Organization and communication systems were completely overrun, vendors and volunteers were locked outside, and some vestige of order was only managed on Sunday by refusing entry to any one without an already existing pass.
The space crunch at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo has led to a sudden vigorous discussion around town this last week about available venues. It has been increasingly problematic over the last few years that the city does not have a large enough venue for big shows and exhibitions. There is a lot of money floating around, and Calgary also has a fanatical love of money, so the notion that we'd be loosing money due to a lack of basic infrastructure investment is mildly insane. It turns out that we are currently looking at the tenth largest venue in Canada, despite being the third largest city. (Toronto, Montreal, Calgary; Due to the actual city of Vancouver being technically quite tiny, because its metropolitan area consists of several abutting municipalities, were it to unify into a single mega city as is regularly brought up, it would be twice the size of Calgary. But I digress.) Given how much real, countable money is going back into peoples hands for refunds right now, due to simply not fitting into the building, I suspect a new convention center is going to erupt from the ground like a mushroom in the next few years. --They didn't sell more passes then there was available space, but no one considered the possibility of needing to cap the day entries. What were the odds they'd hit that kind of wall?
I hope the promoters really think about more about maximizing efficiency and organization for the next Calgary Comic-con rather then on growth. We've obviously hit a temporary wall to growth, which is fine given that we have a really comfortable scale right now. It's large enough to bring in recognizable names (maybe next year we'll have a Star Wars cast reunion, or possibly a panel with all the various Bat Men, that'd be cool) but not so large as to be overwhelming like San Diego or New York. There lies a fine balance between not having what you want to see, and not being able to see it when it's there. It is a strange phenomena though, that comic-con is one of the few places I don't mind standing in queue. It's the magic of nerdliness that allows me to hold a conversation with anyone casually standing beside me as though they've been a cherished friend for years. Usually on the morning commute, you can't turn left and start a debate over the technical aspects of Spider-Man's web shooters, that's something very special. Not to mention that I can barely let my gaze linger dangerously focused on latex bound cleavage without being interrupted by a "Hey Dude!" and a round of hugs with old friends. So, I guess I had better get on with the show.
I had quite a number of pleasant interludes last weekend. One of my favorites is always putting a human to an internet identity. Last year I met Scott Kurtz (by "met" I mean I made a fangirl "squee" sound and he drew Scratch Fury in a PVP book for me as I lay there convulsing) so that was pretty awesome. This year I spent some time talking to the very talented and lovely Ms. Laurie B. a local pin up illustrator. I've been a secret internet stalker of her work for some time, as she creates the absolute cutest cheesecake girls I have ever seen. I really think that she is the spiritual successor of Dean Yeagle; half him, half Disney design bible, it's a pretty sexy combination. I bough a little book of pin-ups which includes a gender bent KISS and Han Solo among other delights.
My alma mater (The Alberta College of Art and Design) was there handing out something awesome as a promotion for the school, a cosplay costume field guide. It was like a treasure hunt, you went around the convention and checked off every outfit you saw. I made them promise to do a happy dance or something to that effect if I completed it, but I just couldn't find anyone dressed as Robocop. You win this round, dignity. The spread of costumes this year was rather interesting, with a massive spike of sailor scouts and power rangers, and a heavy emphasis on more obscure video game characters, with a virtual extinction of the Rorschachs, Slave Leias, and non-Wolverine X-men that have been so prevalent recently. (There is never a shortage of Wolverines.) I also noticed an extremely high concentration of Wonder Women, I was pondering if it was in retaliation for the tacky new biker outfit, as I never saw one of those. It does make me wonder, that if there is so much support, why can't we get a Wonder Woman movie together? Come on, D.C. You've gotta do something right on occasion. I would also take the hint that with the persistent concentration of steam punk outfits, perhaps a film or television series is in order; It'd be a huge hit if they bothered with a somewhat better script then Wild Wild West. (Side note: That Steam Punk wheelchair from that particular film was in attendance.)The costume contest was a disappointment this year, yet I'm not sure why. There was no shortage of great costumes in attendance on the floor, but very few entered into the costume contest. With so few entries, the whole affair took only a half hour, and I can only assume it was the tragic result of the doors being locked. The handful of entries that were there were of a very high caliber, and every one deserves a commendation for their efforts. I took particular delight with a lego man Darth Maul, and a genre spanning team up between Scorpion and Sub Zero, and Jay and Silent Bob. Though the thing that really got me, wherein I barely refrained from exploding into a giant green radioactive rage monster, and throwing chairs was the host, Where is Liana K!
I searched high and low and yet found no trace of recurring comic expo darlings Ed and Red (Steve and Liana Kerzner.) This means I've now gone more then a full year without my Ed and Red fix, I don't know if I can take it, I may start cracking up! I'm still in mourning from when City TV pulled Ed and Red's Night Party off the air, one of the few shows I'd actually buy on DVD if it were possible. (Much Music died the day Ed the sock left.) Frankly, if I'm going to have to travel across the entire North American continent just to watch an episode of This Movie Sucks! I'll be highly unimpressed with the modern digital age. Last year they threw a rocking comic-con burlesque after party. It was awesome.
Even without Liana K's surprisingly accurate Power Girl frame, I did happen across a phenomena I have not experienced since being jaded in Art College, a phenomena I have named "cleavage glory." An effect that would be intimately familiar to any male who has passed through adolescence, as it is where the appearance of cleavage flips some primordial fuse that immediately disables all higher cognitive functions. This results in a temporary form of extreme mental retardation wherein one is incapable of forming simple sentences or much of anything, as there is only just enough brain power available to realize how completely stupid you must look. Here, look at this demonstrative example, Super Bat and Double-F (which is, like all things on this website, slightly not safe for work, so get back to work you lousy slacker before the boss finds out.) Je suis desole pour tous mes compagnons Anglophones. But I'm afraid this one is only available in French. (Boo!)
Double-F there is Marie Claude Bourbonnais, a professional model from Quebec city who was in town promoting a new multi-media integrated concept project called Heroes of the North. (Which I won't talk about just now because I'd like to cover it specifically, and this brief overview is already halfway to a novel.) She plays a villain called the Hornet... did I mention recently that I have a massive crush on the Wasp? I bought a print of her drawn by none other then Dean Yeagle, so how about that? She may even replace Scarlett as the girl I'll send my legion of deathbots to kidnap and bring to Mount Evil Skull, in order for her to be my evil empress of Earth. With her unrealistic J. Scott Campbell frame, and cute Francophone accent... O.K. next topic, quick.
Something I was particularly pleased with was the panel with Josh A. Gagen, Pete Williams and Andy Rheingold, who are (to answer your question "who?") the guys that created Undergrads. Easily one of my favorite TV shows ever produced, done back when MTV still had some cool left. It's like the Big Bang Theory, if it was actually made by Geeks instead of being a terrible exploitive cash in by the guy who did Two and a Half Men. It has been a decade since its one, thirteen episode season, and the guys decided to come to this convention to try to drum up some interest in the show. They're currently trying to buy back the rights to the show, to shop it around other networks, or to possibly do an online project. What they didn't realize, is that it has been playing nightly on Tele-Toon (a Canadian cartoon network) for that entire time, as there is massive, nearly fanatical grass roots support for the show up in this country. I know it takes a lot more than fan love to revive a show (otherwise we'd be watching Firefly right now) but it worked for Star Trek, and if there was something I'd like to see crawl back up from the underworld, it's this show.
The last two years I saw Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner respectively. This year, with the complete cast of the Next Generation, (despite how much I love that show) I never saw a single one of them. Not a Sir. Patrick Stewart, no Jonathan Frakes, no Michael Dorn, not even a LeVar Burton (who taught me to read.) It would have been cool to get a photo taken with the full cast, but at $500, I can think of a lot a lot of other/better things that money could get. If I were to cough up real money for someone to take my picture with something, it'd be the Classic 1966 Batmobile, I love that car. I'm thinking that when my shitty, Ford P.O.S. finally dies, I should strip it down to its frame and rebuild it piece by piece into the Batmobile. My unwieldily land yacht isn't that much smaller then the prototype 1955 Lincoln Futura (Batmobile.) Fuck classic muscle cars, this is way cooler. (But I digress.) I did see the spotlight on Stan Lee, I made it a top priority to see him, as given his age, there may not be another opportunity. He started working at (what would be) Marvel back in 1939, and that is a very long time ago. Stan is one of my all time most beloved human beings. I know intellectually that he essentially rode Jack Kirby to success, but I just love him so much, I don't care!
"I never thought that Spider-Man would become the world wide icon that he is. I just hoped the books would sell and I'd keep my job."
Have you ever noticed how many of the best comic creators and illustrators are perverts? Just a though. Stan Lee had far too little time to talk, as he had barely gotten started delving into stories of the early days of Marvel when it ended. He just touched on some of the classic tales of Marvel lore; such as how the Incredible Hulk was originally grey but the magazine printer couldn't keep the tone consistent in the first issue, so they had to switch it to green. It was great to her how the Fantastic Four were created purely by way of Stan's ego (highly believable.) He had a hard time believing the whole Super Man secret identity, no so much due to the laughable disguise, but because if he had super powers, he'd be running around showing off and picking up girls. So no costumes, so secret identities; the Fantastic Four only gained matching outfits because of fan insistence. So Mr. Fantastic is a super genius version of Stan Lee, someone who'd kinda out of it and talks way too much. Ben was created as a counter point to Reed's flightiness, making him very grounded, and solid... like a rock. The other half of the team were added due to the insistence of the publisher, you need a heroine, and you need a teenager (because otherwise kids won't buy it, right?) Not wanting to just have the cliche boy wonder, Stan gave them reasons to be there, Susan became Reeds fiance, and Johnny was her kid brother. It was interesting hearing him just openly talk about the process. How did they come up with the Green Goblin? After the Rhino, Scorpion, Vulture, Lizard, and various bugs they started running out of animals and opted for mythical ones, like Goblins, not too many of those in comics. Additionally "Green Goblin" has a good sound to it, and the colours would print.
One Stan Lee story I loved, and had never heard before was the ballad of Gwen (Gwendolyn) Stacy. Gwen Stacy was the original love interest for Peter Parker (Spider-Man) and first appeared in The Amazing Spider-Man #31 back in 1965. However Stan didn't want them to have such a simple "boy meets girl, they fall in love" plot, since that's really boring. So to keep it interesting, they came up with another girl to distract Peter and have a convoluted love triangle with, a girl Named Mary-Jane Watson. I agree with Stan that it would have been great if they introduced her in the film more like they did in the comics. Peter's Aunt wanted him to meet the "nice girl next door", so like all young men, the notion of meeting a "nice girl" his aunt likes isn't very appealing. So Peter goes out of his way to avoid her until he gets trapped in the house with Mary-Jane coming over, and on the very last panel of the book, he opens the door to see this gorgeous redhead who says: "It looks like you hot the jackpot, Tiger." The problem was, that when they got into writing these characters, Mary-Jane became far more interesting, she ended up with all of the personality while Gwen was "a nice girl." At the same time, they wanted to throw in something dramatic to the story, and so the plan was hatched to solve both by killing Sergeant Stacy, Gwen's father. His death would give the dramatic twist they wanted, and give then something to work with in developing Gwen into a more complex and interesting character. The thing is, that right after that Stan Lee went off to Europe to do some business and left the other writers in charge of Spider-Man. So he was a bit surprised when he got back to see that in the very next issue, #121, June 1973, Norman Osbourne Killed Gwen Stacey. Pater subsequently married Mary Jane.
I had better just stop now, lest I run out of internet. When the internet tubes get full, that's when the sharks get out and start flying out of peoples modems, biting their faces off.
Didn't I promise you some new stuff? I do have a couple little things in the works, (pin ups, extras) they'll be done soon, but things keep popping up. I'll write a break down of this years comic con before the end of the week. I'm also sorry for setting yesterday's comic to post in the evening instead of morning, I'm not sure how I did that, given it's set with a 24 hour clock. Oops? Here, allow me to make a peace offering of music video.
Well, I rather enjoyed that. Please, a full round of virtual applause for London Based, Gary King, Lee Wilson-Wolfe and Ged Adamson of Leather Hands. Any chance you guys may come to the Rockies?
Whoah, shit, man, everything is, like, really real, you know, man? Just gimme a second, I've gotta go make everything o.k. There, that's much better. Thanks Neil DeGrasse Tyson! You're the best! Although, "o.k." is pretty good and all, it's still not awesome. Well, it's that magical time of late April, the perfect time to talk about weed so how about a bunch of weed strains named after people who've smoked with? Not quite there? What if said weed was smoked in a modified V.W. Bug R.V? More? Well, how about the weed, in the bug, with... the Avengers, only, the Avengers are Dinosaurs?
Awesome! We have achieved awesome! We are now cruising at an altitude of 27 kilo Awesomes, without a cloud in sight.
So where to from here? I'm mid way though a little site extra that I hope you hideous surface mutants will enjoy, and I hope to have that done and up before the end of the week. So anyone not attending some manner of comic book convention will have something to occupy themselves. In the meantime I guess I'll just "occupy" myself a little while carrying on with the Avengers. I was thinking, wouldn't it be really cool if they did make a dinosaur based superhero movie? I'd love to get really exited over an idea like that, only Theodore Rex keeps popping into my mind. I would never underestimate the power of stupid. Take a look at the Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, they had to find some way to make that show less perfect, so they ruined the opening sequence, blocking out the awesome theme music for an idiotic narration that fills me with rageahol. So, instead of Dinosaurs, what if the Avengers just spent the entire movie boning? Yeah! That might work! In fact, look at that! They made that movie! In all fairness, I have got to give some respect to Axel Braun and company. The Batman parody they did a few years back was brilliant, and I don't mean that sarcastically. I would have actually mistaken it for the sixties Adam West Batman, were it not for the penises popping out. (I'm fairly certain I don't remember that from when I was a kid.) No disrespect to the Disney cronies, but I think the perverted parody may have more street geek cred:
"In this parody I wanted not only to showcase a more complete Avengers lineup than the one offered by the Hollywood movie, but also to do justice to some of their costumes like the blue/purple Hawkeye outfit that was inexplicably ditched by Joss Whedon in favor of a boring black one," said Braun of the film. "Oh, and Lexington Steele as Nick Fury is way more badass than Samuel L. Jackson."
Iron Man, Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye, and Thor team up with She-Hulk, Spider-Woman, Ms. Marvel, Sharon Carter, The Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man to defeat the Hulk. Though I could not help but notice that once again, my beloved Janet is nowhere to be found. I am the only person on this planet with a crush on the Wasp?
Oh no! We're loosing Awesome! Quick! Look at this!
Happy April 20th internet! Doug reviewed a movies I actually like, so what better way to celebrate this beautiful Friday then to sit on the web and bitch about movies! I am fairly certain that's why it was invented. The thirty second Golden Raspberry awards were held a couple weeks ago on April fools night. The Razzies were a little different this year, with a single film sweeping the "awards" and garnering a prestigious pile of shame for Adam Sandler's Jack and Jill. A really momentous achievement given the sheer volume of commanding competition. It really could have gone anywhere, with a market saturated with half baked flops, remakes, sequels and spin offs. It must be a tough choice when competitively retarded films (Bucky Larson, Big Mammas: Like Father, Like Son, Zookeeper) face off against some of the most expensive terrible movies ever made (Twilight, Transformers.) The Oscars however, were boring in their stark predictability. There was such a small handful of Academy worthy movies made, that there was a 100% chance of guessing the nominees, and a better then fifty chance for the winner. The only upset for the evening in my book, was I though Harry Potter should have won for best make up design, as those bank goblins looked way more like Margaret Thatcher then Meryl Streep. I wouldn't say this was evidence of a slow decay of modern film, were it not for the fact that they are now making a sequel to twins. Only this time, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny Devito are triplets, and will be joined by Eddy Murphy. I can only assume a fat suit will be involved, possibly due to male pregnancy. This is the sign of the coming cenemageddon, and I blame the producers.
The #1 movie in America was called "Ass." And that's all it was for 90 minutes. It won eight Oscars that year, including best screenplay.
Assuming the four other people who were going to see John Carter have already done so, let's talk about where it went wrong. It's not a bad movie, but it's not a good one ether. John Carter is the principle character of a series of pulp fiction novels written in the early 20th century by Tarzan Author Edgar Rice Burroughs. Carter is a Confederate officer who is magiced away to Mars to fight monsters, make out with hot alien processes, and generally kick ass. Pretty straight forward in terms of making a movie, especially given that literally every single Sci-fi adventure ever made has ripped it off at least a little (it constitutes roughly 36% of Star Wars.) Except for 2001: A space Odyssey that is, as Stanley Kubrick literally built a space station and uncovered an alien artifact exclusively for the pre production of that film. Given that John Carter is looking to hopefully make back its cost through the international market and V.O.D. and D.V.D. sales, it's probably not quite what the producers at Disney were hoping for, yet they're entirely to blame. Gut reaction tends to put blame on a director when a movie fails, but I really like Andrew Stanton, and the entire production team did a great job; Costumes, effects, and cinematography were excellent, and even the actors weren't bad. The bizarre editing however, is eclipsed by the sheer madness of the producers. The first peculiarity I couldn't quite wrap my mind around was the studio, Disney Pictures, it just seems like an odd fit, given the massive success of their last Sci-fi action adventure ... 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea? (1954) Disney Pictures should not be confused with Disney Studios, the Umbrella that controls Pixar, Jim Henson Studios and roughly two thirds of the known solar system. The studio is a doubly odd choice given that we're talking about pulp fiction. The basic pulp fiction story is pretty simple, you have a manly man detective/spy/soldier/pimp/gambler/Han Solo who needs to rescue a hot reporter/spy/heiress/alien princess from the nefarious mob/spy/biker psycho/giant alien monster and does so in the most bad assed, sex and violence filled way allowed by the socially contextual pop culture boundaries of the time. Not what springs to mind when I think Disney.
Andrew Stanton joined Disney by way of Pixar, and is a very good writer and director; I don't want there to be any confusion about my position about that. However, from the perspective of a film producer, let's look at his body of work: A Bugs Life, Finding Nemo, WALL-E, the Toy Story films. His entire career has been in making simple, original, animated, "family" oriented films. So his very first live film, first general audiences action film, and first adaptation also happens to be a hugely super expensive project, laden with historic baggage and studio politics, being made for copyright reasons a century off from its intended audience with one of the most rushed production schedules possible ... and nothing could go wrong with that! An adaptation is different from creating an original story, and is quite a bit more difficult; you are engaged less in a creative process, and more of an editorial one, choosing what is needed, and what fits best with the adapted medium. The Lord of the Rings trilogy was such a brilliant example of effective adaptation, because Peter Jackson was good at skipping over technicalities of the text in order to preserve the spirit of the story. John Carter was a miserable failure at this, it was as though they took the standard Disney formula, and tried to forcibly squeeze in as many technical details of Barsoon as possible. The film has several stuttering starts at the beginning as it tries to shoehorn in stuff from the book in order to free up time later when in focuses on familiar Disney stuff (like romance and friendship.) The film really suffers from an identity crisis, just look at the end of the first act; Carter has been captured by the green Martians (Tharks) and we have our first real fight sequence. Now, in a Disney film, this is where the main character receives their emotional motivation for the movie, this is when Mufassa dies in the Lion King sending Simba off for some hakuna matata in the Second act (that sounds dirty.) However, in an action film, this is when the "shit gets real," in Die Hard, Bruce Willis offs a terrorist and we get a second act of awesomely improbable explodey traps laid from aid ducts. So, in John Carter we get, both? An action packed awesome fight scene, overlaid with super sad, emo music and inter-spliced with images of, I guess, his family? That I don't think was really mentioned before or after? Something must have been cut in editing. You can't have us be emotionally invested in people we know nothing about that serve no role in the movie, you're just ruining the first big action scene. Build it up with some low tense music, really focus in on those aliens getting murdered to build up the danger, the hit the action with some adrenalin pumping music to match the mood. Why is he having an emo moment? He's fighting a fucking monster! His attention is on the fucking monster! Let's just have a fucking monster fight! That's the problem with John Carter, it's in constant self denial, it fights itself constantly, and I'm starting to wonder if any producers in Hollywood (Outside of Stephen Spielberg) have any idea what they're doing.
At least Phil Collins wasn't playing the soundtrack in this one.
The thing that really aggravated me about John Carter was it is the great grandfather of all action adventure science fiction, (my favorite kind) and could have helped revitalize a genre that has seen rather sparse fare lately. A problem I attribute to Michael Bay. Did you hear he's making a Ninja Turtles movie? Like the rest of the internet, I has shocked and aghast! Michael Bay is making another movie! I don't care if he's doing the Ninja Turtles or Matlock, as whatever convoluted mess is flashed in front of my eyes as dazzle camouflage will look about the same. I hate Michael Bay, but not because of the shameless hollywood sellout profiteering off of cliched explosions, violence, and derogatory sexism, those are the things I love! It's that there is only so much of a pyrotechnics budget in Hollywood, and Bay is squandering it like a film cancer. It's just that I hate having to sit through two and a half hours of mindless crap for a half hour of robot violence, explosions and hot girls dislocating their spines for sexy car hood poses. I'm certain those giant fireballs and taught hind quarters could have gone to some more deserving movie, with cinematography that lets you see what's happening, a coherent plot and characters I don't despise. Do you know where some of that could have gone? John Carter! Damn it Disney! Princess Jasmine wore more titilating clothing then Dejah!
I'm sure we could find a mutually beneficial middle ground.
Go check out Qualano over on DeviantArt, compensating for bad movies with extreme image awesomeness, who aside for Dejah Thoris also has an excellent Tarzan, how about that? Let the Awesoming continue!
And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!
Once every seventy thousand years, the triple moons of G'Th'oth, fourth planet of the G'N'Nnnnnnngh! system, align in just the right way to gravitationally bend the radiation from a nearby black hole to send a concentrated beam of pure hyper-awesome straight to Earth. this is what that looks like:
Not that the gravy train can stop here, we're so overladen with awesome, that it's splashed over the sides and smothered Lilliputian cities, Au Jus. So as the Blefuscans cheer, let's go check out the next thing along this cavalcade of awesomeness. How about a series of renaissance masterpieces, Photoshopped to conform to modern proportions of beauty. --"Apart from highlighting once again the amazing possibilities of digital technologies applied to art, this job from Anna Giordano is indeed a good cue to reconsider both the subjectivity of cultural standards (in facts, ours are so different from the past ones) and the inclination of modern society and advertising companies to edit most images of feminine body in order to reach a fake perfection, corresponding to an unreachable reality." You can read about the series a bit more over atDigital Meets Culture
I forgot to mention that those of you who are NOT in the Calgary area, (or those who are simply permanently adhered to the couch) you can watch the Flat Track Fever Roller Derby Tournament right now! Live! Over the Internet! Over at canuckderbytv.com
Also, tomorrow's comic will show up later in the day. With this Derby tourney, I didn't anticipate working for forty hours this weekend. It has made it difficult to scrounge up a couple hours to finish it.
