Radiant Comics

As far as I know origin stories are unique to comic books. There could be an argument that the gods and heros of old had origin stories but in the modern entertainment world comics, comic book derived movies, TV shows, and books are the main home of the origin story. Usually super-heros have special powers and skills. Their origin is the tale of how they acquired those abilities so a new comic book series will normally start with an origin story.

The problem I have with origin stories is that they are generally pretty boring. There is little variety to them. They are all transformation stories. A guy was one thing, something happens and now he is another. That is the overriding theme to every origin story. They do break down into a few flavors after that. There is 1) guy doesn’t have powers, guy has accident, guy now has powers. 2) someone or thing kills someone guy loves, guy goes out and trains or gets powers, guy kicks ass. 3) guy gets snatched or recruited by someone (good or evil), guy gets experimented on or put through a process, guy gets powers. Not a lot of variety.

Stan Lee always kept his origin stories short. Here are some page lengths for you: Fantastic Four 13 pages, Hulk 6 pages (though part of a 24 page story), Spider-Man 11 pages, Thor 11 pages, Doctor Strange 8 pages, Iron Man 13 pages, X-Men 23 pages, and Daredevil 23 pages. Stan usually got the origins over with quickly and went on to the adventures. Even his full issue (23 page) origin stories were part of an adventure. I think he knew that origin stories were boring. The interesting things start after the guy gets his powers. The reason people read super-hero stories is because of the super powers. A super-hero without his powers is boring. There are some very good comics about everyday people with no super powers. I read more of them than I do super-hero stories. So if you are going to give me a super-hero story there better be adventure, fights and special powers and skills in them. Super-heros can’t compete on a human interest level will Palookaville, Love and Rockets, Age of Bronze, Stray Bullets, Berlin, Eightball, Hate, Finder or any comics that do the human interest thing full time.

I bring this topic up because of one of the comics I bought this week: Rokkin 1 by Andy Hartnell, Nick Bradshaw, and Jim Charalampidis. It is not a bad comic, the art is nice and the script okay. The problem is the plot. Since it says “1st Barbaric Issue” on the cover I assume it is a Conan the Barbarian type of comic but I couldn’t tell by reading it. Conan has no origin. He just came out of the hills as a young man to make his way in the world and have adventures. Not Rokkin. He has an origin. I think it falls under category 2) someone or thing kills someone guy loves, guy goes out and trains or gets powers, guy kicks ass. I’m not sure because the origin story isn’t even over yet and there is no adventure going on. Welcome to 21st century comics.

Longer origin stories have been a trend for a while. When Marvel relaunched Spider-Man as Ultimate Spider-Man they turned Stan and Steve’s 11 page story into six whole issues. A lot of people like all of the extra “detail” in these long origin stories but I find them dull. I want an adventure. That’s what I tuned in for. I don’t like the predictable and origin stories are the most predictable of all stories.

In Rokkin 1 page one we have Rokkin bound in chains and falling into deep water (the ocean?) introducing us to his origin by way of narration. This is followed by a very pretty but pointless (story wise) two page splash. Then we have 12 pages of Rokkin (he’s a butcher) living his idyllic life before he loses his loved one. To be fair he and a few other guys did fight a monster for a couple of page but it seemed unrelated to the story. In the last six pages we see his life ruined by some evil invading army that kills his wife and enslaves him. End of issue. A comic killed by an origin story.

I hate to pick on Rokkin for a trend that it is merely a follower of. It is just the latest example I have found. Six issues from now Rokkin might be a really good book. The people who make it are certainly talented but I’ll never buy issue two because this boring origin story will keep me away.

Even people who liked the six issue Ultimate Spider-Man origin story liked it because it was Spidey. He’s a character they already knew and liked. I doubt many people are going to sit still for a long origin story about a new character. Comic book companies should take a lesson from Stan Lee and keep the origins short. Some new books might have a better chance of success that way.

I just thought I’d do some quick reviews of things I’ve seen and read lately.

Invincible Ultimate Collection 1: I just picked this up and it contains the first 13 issue of Invincible from Image comics. I had read a couple of these issues but no where near all of them so this is my first in depth foray into the world of Invincible. I must say that I liked it. It is a super-hero book about a high school kid who gets super-powers. The art is nice and the plots and scripts are good. There is fighting going on but the book is mostly about the kid and his friends and family around him. High super-hero drama ensues. Recommended.

Superman Returns: I can’t believe people are liking this. The Superman being super scenes are well done but everything else is a mess of clichés and coincidences. We have: a) the villain of the piece explaining his plan to one of the heros before he puts the plan into effect. Of course this ruins the plan eventually. Why did he open his mouth in the first place? Because clichés are east to write. b) The villain having the hero in his power and wanting to kill him but not actually killing him. I thought after Austin Powers made fun of this by having Seth Green say to Doctor Evil, “Dad, I’ll go get my gun and shot him in the head and he’ll be dead” that maybe this cliché would go away but it hasn’t. If the villain is willing to kill a billion people (literally that was his plan) why isn’t he willing to kill the couple that stand in his way? These questions are getting rhetorical. c) The whole Superman being away for five years didn’t work for me because, coincidentally, the day he gets back Lois need to be saved from certain death and Lex Luthor’s plan goes into effect. If he stays in space for one more week Lois would be dead and Luthor would rule the world. How’s that for good timing? And how about this? A two and a half hour super-hero movie with no fight scenes! Superman fights no one! People say it is hard to write Superman because he is so powerful that no one really challenges him. So how did the writers solve this problem? By having him fight no one! Not a good solution. Not recommended. Stay away.

In Her Shoes: A movie about two sisters trying to get along. From that description it’s hard to believe that this movie is twice the movie that Superman is but it’s true. A movie about a straight laced sister and a wild one trying to make their way in life if much more entertaining than that hackneyed Man of Steel movie. This movie is also less of a chick flick than Superman and there are just as many fight scenes. Recommended.

The iSight: Boy that iSight is a cool thing. It’s the Mac web cam. It’s more expensive than your average web cam but it is of the highest quality. It has a firewire connection, which to me, is better than a USB one and a good lens. I’m not into internet chat because I don’t like to type. I find it much more fun to talk. I just had three of my buddies on line all talking over the internet. And we could see each other. With four people on the conference the video quality isn’t near what it is with just two but is sure was cool. Recommended.

Girls Volume 2 Emergence by The Luna Brothers: The second trade in the series. It reprints issues 7-12 of the Image series. Girls is the story of a town that has been invaded by aliens. At least I think that they are aliens. That hasn’t been revealed yet. It is mostly about the townspeople and how they try to figure out what is going on and what they should do. To say more would be to ruin some surprises. If any of those alien invasion shows that premiered last season on TV were as interesting as this series then they wouldn’t have been cancelled. Recommended.

The World Cup: I have watched more soccer this year than I have in the past. It can be an exciting sport but it has some flaws. Yes, the ties. This year Italy won the cup over France on penalty kicks because of a tie. Penalty kicks? To use a basketball analogy it’s as if the NBA championship was won by the team that made the most free throws after they played the game. What is the point of playing the game if the outcome is going to be decided afterwards by another game with completely different rules? It is hard to overcome the fact that it is very difficult to score in soccer. The only solution I see to this problem is in substitution. All sports have rules about substitution but soccer’s are really wacky. You only get three subs a game and once a person goes out he can never come back in. That is crazy. Especially when teams are playing into two overtimes. In basketball if you want to rest Shaq for a few minutes in the third quarter, so he will be fresher in the fourth, you do. Not in soccer. As a consequence there were some really tired athletes playing some really poor soccer in overtime. Give ’em a break and keep them fresh for the whole game and maybe then someone will score so things won’t have to be decided on penalty kicks. C’mon, “penalty” is right in the name. It should be a clue that it is a bad way to decide a game. Recommended with modifications.

Blade The TV Series: Okay, I really only watched this out of one eye while I was doing some painting. It never really commanded my attention and was a little too dark and moody for me. I just don’t care about grim sour pusses hunting vampires. It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t my cup of tea so you’ll have to decide on this yourself.

My last review is short. Season three of Deadwood kicks ass. Must see TV.

If you read my last entry then you know what comic books I bought last week. You can see that I purchased Brave New World 1 from DC Comics. Like most comic book fans I started reading comics in my childhood which means that I grew up on super-hero stories. Colorful costumes, super powers and all sorts of wacky and cool names make up the world of the super-hero. I still love comics but I have generally left the world of super-heros behind. Despite the fact that super-hero comics are written for an older audience than when I was a child I still find them lacking in variety and originality. I’m not into escapist fantasy so it has to be really good escapist fantasy for me to like it.

Working with continuing characters has its pros and cons. The main pro is that people love to buy what they are familiar with. This keeps super-hero comic book companies in business. It far outweighs any con when you want to sell comics. If there is a book that people are familiar with next to one they are unfamiliar with my guess is that four people out of five will pick up the familiar book. It is the way people are. If you find something they like give them more of it. Even after they stop liking it they will remember once having liked it and want to rekindle that feeling. A powerful market force.

Another pro is that if people are reading a comic about a character they already know then an author can do more elaborate things with that character. The reader doesn’t have to filled in on the basics of the character. Certain past events don’t have to be rehashed and motivations are already established. The offense gets the ball on the fifty instead of the twenty to use a football analogy. Unfortunately I think this also leads to a con. Super-hero comics can be very esoteric. In a lot of cases if you don’t know the history of the character you can’t understand the story. A lot of writers use the reader’s familiarity with a character as a sloppy storytelling short cut and confusion ensues. This makes it very hard to garner any new readers. A balance must be struck. And it often isn’t.

Balance is important in another aspect of continuing characters. People don’t want change and at the same time they want something new. Fans like it when something dramatic happens to the character but not something that changes things too much. When the balance isn’t struck slow change creeps in, often unintended, until characters become unrecognizable. Then they are revamped and relaunched. This is why fans come and go. My X-Men of the late 70s aren’t your X-Men from the early 90s. Too much has changed.

Brave New World 1 is part of “Infinite Crisis” DC’s continuity shattering crossover event. Marvel Comics also has a continuity shattering crossover event of it’s own going on right now called “Civil War”. I don’t really care about either of them since I don’t read any of their super-hero books regularly but I particularly question Marvel’s event. They guys who run Marvel Comics went on record a few years ago saying how they don’t care about continuity. They just care about good stories. Continuity was to be damed if it was making their comics too esoteric and getting in the way of good tales being told. I found that position a bit extreme but this is how they wanted to solve their problem with esotericism.

I also found it odd that the concept of continuity in a story telling universe, born from Marvel Comics, had gone mainstream with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and movies like The Matrix and then Marvel decided to abandon it. Huh? Everybody else finally comes around to Marvel’s way of thinking so they jettison it? I am baffled. You can see why I am disinterested in a company’s continuity shattering crossover event when they have publicly stated that they don’t care about continuity in their story telling universe. DC at least cares about continuity and the things that happen will affect their comics in the future. Marvel writers can ignore whatever they want. If chapter ten can ignore what happened in chapter two why did I bother reading chapter two? Why would I bother reading chapter eleven? That’s why I don’t bother with Civil War.

All that being said her is a quick review of DC’s Brave New World. The stories are all prequels of new comic series that take place after their continuity shattering crossover event.

Martian Manhunter: Everything he knew about himself was wrong and now he has to start over. Blah blah blah blah blah. Who cares? Not me. Every character has its fans but I don’t know many who care about MM.

Omac: Nothing like the old Kirby series. Some kid being chased by robots. I have no idea what is going on except Superman shows up and is too much of a Mary to kick their robots asses. Just throw them into the sun and be done with it. Superman indeed.

Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters: Are barely even in their own prequel. It is just some guy hitch hiking. And the government is gonna kick some super-hero ass with their own super-heros. Just like a hundred other comics of the last ten years.

Creeper: I haven’t read too much Creeper over the years but I always liked Ditko’s version. I liked the hook that he was a reasonable guy acting crazy as the Creeper. An interesting concept. Every version I have read since then has had the Creeper as actually crazy. Boring. There are a thousand crazy characters and a thousand “trying to keep his crazy side under control” characters. This version of the Creeper is the “trying to keep his crazy side under control” character. Wake me when it’s over.

Atom: Looks like we have a “Team Atom” now as he has some science type people helping him. A new guy is the Atom too so he needs the help. It was an okay story but they made the mistake of having the Atom fight other microscopic guys. What is the point of having a tiny character fight other tiny characters? It becomes like any other super-hero story except the furniture is really big. That has always bugged me.

Captain Marvel: The whole Marvel family have lost their powers and the powers have gone into Captain Marvel making him stronger. Ten pages to tell a one sentence of story. Welcome to modern super-hero comics.

Brave New World 1. Is it worth a dollar? Close call but no.

Right now I can hear a mixture of the J.S. Bach I have playing and the rain falling outside. The music isn’t up very loud and that makes the sound of the rain very annoying. I’m not much of a classical music fan but for some reason I am drawn to Bach. Especially the Brandenburg Concertos. I don’t even know what a “concerto” is except it sure looks like “concert” to me.

I find music to be an interesting subject. Not making music, because I have no talent or understanding of that, but listening to it. I think there are fewer music fans out there than most people think. By that I mean fans of music in general. Most people are fans of a specific genre of music and that type of music defines their relationship to music. There are heavy metal fans, dance music fans, techno fans, emo fans, classical music fans, jazz fans, and many more varieties that I am not even aware of.

A music fan has an eclectic library that crosses genres and conventions. Music means many things to a music fan. To genre fans music generally means one thing. To dance fans it means dancing. To metal fans it means getting loud and getting mad. To classical fans it means escape into a different world. Or something like that. The meanings can vary by individuals but overall the type of music they like gives them a certain kick that no other music can. And they dig that kick. A music fan is always on the lookout for a new kick. This is the distinction I make between a music fan and a fan of a specific type of music. Most people are neither though. Most people’s musical taste is defined by the era in which the grew up. Check their playlists.

Lists are interesting. Those “100 Best Whatevers of All Time” lists are what I’m speaking of. You know the ones. A magazine or organization gets together to decide “The 100 Best Movies of All Time” or some such nonsense. I find these lists interesting because the thing that you can tell from them is the age of the people making the lists. With music this is most true. A few years ago a friend of mine asked everyone for their top ten albums of all time. What struck me most about the lists that people responded with was the fact that everyone picked albums from when they were in their late teens to early twenties. Being that almost everyone was in their mid thirties when they made their lists there were no albums from after ’92 or so. Nirvana’s “Nevermind” may have been the latest album on anyone’s list. I think this is because late teens to early twenties is prime listening to music time for the average person. They’re young, hanging out, partying, and listening to music. Music is also marketed heavily to this crowd. If you are eighteen companies come to you with music. Ninety percent of radio stations are aimed at your age group. There is no escape.

Most people stop listening to much new music after a certain age. I think this age is around twenty six. They still may listen to music but it will be the music of their youth. It takes time to find new music and more time to listen and get used to it. Time people don’t have anymore as they get married, get jobs, and have kids. Since most pop music is made and marketed for teenagers an older person really has to hunt for something new. Finding music is effortless when you are eighteen and effortful when you are twenty eight. Only music fans or genre fans find the new stuff then. When twenty eight year olds gather for a party they put on the music of their youth. The same with thirty eight year olds. They have less time to party and want to get in the mood quickly with familiar music.

I consider myself a music fan. I’m not into a specific genre of music and I am always on the lookout for something new. I’m not a hardcore music fan as are others I know but I get by. I have had a hard time finding new music in the past few years. I used to buy CDs just by their description but as the price of CDs rose to around twenty dollars I stopped that practice. I used to have a subscription to a magazine called College Music Journal which came with a CD every month filled with new music. But like many subscriptions it got too expensive and I let it lapse. Plus the age of the MP3 was on us and CDs became cumbersome. Bootlegging stuff from the internet is fine if you want to listen to the same music everyone else listens to but it is hard to find new stuff that way. For a couple of years not much new music came my way. Now I’ve started cruising iTunes. It’s not bad for finding new music. I can sample a lot of things and buy a few songs for buck a piece. I recommend it. So put your ear to the ground and listen.

I have always found that reading reviews is a hit or miss proposition. Especially reading reviews about creative endeavors. Reviews of products are generally more informative. No one is trying to be super witty when writing about a vacuum cleaner or ink jet printer.

I was on a website and they just hired a writer to review the art world. The writer’s angle is that he is no expert. He is just a guy that likes some art occasionally. Guess he’s too busy keeping it real. I’ve seen this angle before and it always seems to crop up in relation to art. After all, who could imagine a book reviewer saying that his strength is that he doesn’t know much about reading but read a book once. The review was mostly about the writer’s day out and had zero insight into the the art. This is why so many reviewers fail. They make the review about themselves and not whatever they happen to be reviewing. I don’t care about the writer’s story about how cool he is.

Video game reviews can be exceptionally deceiving. Some magazines and sites give good reviews to almost every game because they depend on ad money from those games. A lot of eights are given out to games that deserve sixes. It is also tricky to give ratings to video game sequels. A new, exciting, and innovative game can get a nine out of ten and then the sequel, a year later, gets a seven. The sequel can be equally as good but since the first one was “innovative”, and it can be the smallest thing that makes it so, the second has a good shot at being disappointing to reviewers. They can really love the slo-mo “bullet time” game play in December and be bored with it by May.

My least favorite video game reviews are the sports ones. Reviewing sports games is tough because video game makers can’t reinvent football every year. A sports game is given updated rosters and tweaked a little bit here and there. Features are added and taken away only to reappear another year to give the illusion of “upgrading” the game. As a result there are three reviews for sports games: 1) The “This is the worst game ever” review. Believe them. A sports game has to be genuinely bad to get this review. 2) The “This is the best game ever” review. This usually happens when a “major” upgrade happens to a game such as when a new system like the PS3 or XBox 360 comes out. It is the first game on a next generation system and everything looks shinny and new. It could also be the second game on a new system where they really tap into the new graphics power. The games are usually good but take the reviews with a grain of salt because they inevitably lead to: 3) The “This is good but not as good as last year’s game” review. This review is totally based on last year’s review. You can’t have two “best football game ever” years in a row. It is never a bad review. Its a “we were more excited last year when everything was shinny and new” review.

I do like all the new internet sites that I can go to for reviews from average people. They are not quite average because they have taken time out of their lives to write a review of something for free so maybe they are above average people. They generally want to inform and have their opinions heard so there is a genuineness to the reviews. They are definitely a positive addition to the world of reviewing.

I often say that I don’t like reviews when they are all about trying to be clever. That is when the review stops being about the work and starts being about the reviewer. This does happen but upon reflection I realize that I don’t mind if the reviewer is being clever. I mind it when the reviewer fails at being clever. Then he is just wasting my time.

My all time favorite clever line from a review comes from way back in 1988 or so. I don’t remember who wrote it or what movie it was referring to but I remember the line. “If a million monkeys at a million typewriters would write the complete works of William Shakespeare than this movie was written by three monkeys over a long weekend.” I love that line.

I had an idea the other day for different concept in reviewing. Go back in time and examine the mediocre. Most people who go back and review stuff from years ago examine only the really good stuff or really bad stuff. It’s the most entertaining. The mediocre stuff gets forgotten. The comic book “The Human Fly” came to mind. It was from the late 70’s, had 19 issues and even as a kid I knew it was mediocre. Sure you can find some retro-reviews of it on the internet but they really only deal with the first issue or two. No one examines the whole series. What did the series as a whole have to offer us? That is when I realized the flaw in my concept. I’d have to suffer through that crap. I still have The Human Fly 1-19 on my shelf but I haven’t read them since 1978. Why would I? They’re mediocre. I still have them for sentimental reasons, but really, read them?. With all the good comics out there why would I read mediocre ones? Even really bad ones are more fun. That is why the mediocre never gets examined. It is too painful. If there is something to be learned from the mediocre it is up to a stronger man than me to find it.