Battlestar Galactica: 'Lay Down Your Burdens' (2x19 & 2x20)

In my last review, I talked about how the show had never really developed any new plots after it resolved the stuff from season one in the big two parter, Home. This is a large part of the problems in the second chunk of season two, there was no direction to the show and most of the characters didn't have much to do. Now, it would have been possible to reinvigorate things by creating new character complications, however there was a sense that the premise as was had basically exhausted itself. It's telling that the only great episode in the season so far was the cylon episode, which had barely anything aboard the Galactica.

The season finale's first part opens with an overture sequence that recalls that fantastic start of Kobol's Last Gleaming. Talking about the first 100 minutes of this 135 minute two parter is a bit weird at this point, what you take away from it has very little to do with the vast majority of the events that occur.

I did like Sharon going on the mission to get the soldiers back from Caprica. For me, Sharon is by far the most sympathetic character on the series, this is someone who's constantly helping these people and still getting no respect. What more can she do to make them trust her? At this point, if she does betray them, it's not going to be because of some hidden cylon agenda, it's going to be because they treated her like shit for so long. If the storyline was done in reverse and a human prisoner was treated this way by the cylons, we'd be waiting for her to betray them.

At this point in the series, I feel like there's no inherent good and evil in the human/cylon relationship. As we've seen more the cylon world, it's become clear that there is division in their ranks, and they're recognizing that what they did to the humans was misguided. Plus, I just find the cylon world to be fascinating and on the whole, they're much more interesting characters.

The supposed moral authorities of the series are Laura and Adama, however the election plot just makes me like Laura even less. It's ridiculous for her to put the two Dean Stockwells out the airlock, even if he is working against the humans, this isn't a machine, it's a person with a unique personality, and killing him is just as bad as the cylons. Her constant opposition to Sharon, particularly the cruel taking of her child makes her an easily dislikable character, and attempting to steal the election only reinforces that. This is someone who's become corrupt in her power and awfully misguided.

This is a case where I feel like my emotional reading of the piece is not what the creators intended. Listening to the commentary, they indicated that the dilemma was supposed to be whether Laura does the honest thing or the thing that will ultimately help people. However, I don't see it like that at all. For one, considering these people have been trapped on their ships, on the run for a long time, it's perfectly logical to suggest settling on a planet, particularly when their ultimate destination is something that's only mentioned in ancient scriptures. They could be going for years and still not find Earth, so is it so absurd for Baltar to suggest moving to the planet?

I find Baltar's brand of moral ambiguity much more interesting than Laura's because the show treats him as a roguish character, while Laura is still held up as a paragon of virtue. Yes, he may inadvertantly lead to the destruction of Cloud Nine, and he may not be an ideal president, but your average person probably has a better life on New Caprica than they would if they were stuck on the ship still.

There were two really great scenes in the first chunk of part two. One was Lee's awkward walk in on Cara and Anders. This scene was a lot of fun for the fact that Cara was so oblivious to Lee's feelings, she was just totally lost in her moment. I also liked the gender reversal here, having her so possessive of a guy who is just on the show to be her boyfriend. You usually don't get to see relationships where the female character is both our point of view character and the one totally in control of the relationship.

The other great scene was the intercutting of Baltar and Gina's sex with his swearing in as president. It was really well shot, with a nice music cue and a great build to the nuclear explosion. I would have loved to have seen some more scenes with Gina during the weak part of the season, there was a ton of issues they could have covered with her, and considering her major role in the climax of the season, it would have been a wise choice to give her a bit more screen time.

So, from there we go to the great leap forward. I had heard there was some kind of shocking revelation that would change everything, and this was pretty surprising and certainly a smart creative choice for the next season. I love the initial jump forward, revealing Baltar's portrait and his harem of female admirers.

This time shift opens up a lot of creative possibilities and most of the rest of the episode is about revealing how things have changed for the main characters. The whole thing, from the meteor hitting the camera on, is full of throwbacks to the miniseries.

I guess the biggest issue I have with the end is the way the cylons are portrayed. In Downloaded, we're led to believe that the 'cylon heroes' will be changing cylon society and possibly seeking peace with the humans. Here, we find out that the cylons have abandoned Caprica and aren't going to fight anymore, so what is it that prompts them to return to go after the humans again? And what is it that prompts the 'cylon heroes' to decide to conquer New Caprica? I hope this is actually dealt with and not just written off as the cylons being bad.

There's a lot of potential with the new setup, the most interesting interactions on the show are those that takes place in the border between cylon and human society, and we'll be getting a lot more of that with everyone on one planet now. I think one of the big problems with the second chunk of season two was the fact that we no longer had the Caprica story, so we lost track of the cylons plan. Now, cylons and humans are inextricably linked.

What I hope we'll get is Six and Baltar reuninted, and Baltar working with her to try to find peace between the two races. Plus, we could get a bit of a love triangle with Sharon, the Chief and Callie. Plus, the cylon baby is still in play.

On the whole, I'd say it was a very smart choice, but not one that guarantees success. Alias did a similar jump at the end of season two and totally botched the follow up, leading to the series' decline. However, I feel like Battlestar has a stronger hand behind it, and we should get a strong rebirth with the third season.

Related Posts
Battlestar Galactica (2x04-2x07) (3/26/2006)
Battlestar Galactica (2x08-2x10) (5/19/2006)
Battlestar Galactica: 'Downloaded' (2x18) (6/7/2006)

Meeting Morrison

On my list of idols there's many people, but I think no one has had a bigger influence on my life, both creatively and just day to day, than Grant Morrison. When I read The Invisibles in high school it totally revolutionized the way that I view the very act of reading and creating fiction and reality, blurring the lines between the two. That was my first experience of Morrison's work, and in many ways it's the nexus from which everything else branches off. You can see pieces of nearly everything he's done in The Invisibles, and it's the crucial building block of the personal philosopy/worldview he's created in his work. Since then, The Filth has built on what he did with The Invisibles and if you've been reading the blog, you're well aware of my love for Seven Soldiers. And that's without going in to the many other astonishing pieces of work including Animal Man, Kill Your Boyfriend, Flex Mentallo, We3 and New X-Men.

The major reason I'm making comics and films right now is because I read The Invisibles and seeing how much I was changed by an encounter with this fictional universe made me want to create a work that would make a similarly large impact on the universe.

I was actually working my booth at the MoCCA Art Festival, but I had to abandon it for a bit to go over and see Morrison. Waiting on the line took forever and I was perplexed by why it was moving so slow. While I was waiting, they were raffling off books and I won a copy of Invisibles 2.1, 1.13 and 1.12, 'Best Man Fall,' an issue I remember reading and being blown away by. I'd had a very similar idea for a story, the idea of following this peripheral action movie character and giving him a life was something I'd been thinking about for a whiles, so when I read the issue I was simultaneously annoyed that he took the idea, but also stunned by the issue itself. That was I knew this was a really special series, by the time I opened 'Entropy in the UK,' I was obsessed with the series.

The first time I heard about The Invisibles was around the time The Matrix came out, and people were claiming that the film was heavily 'inspired' by this series called The Invisibles. I was contemplating picking it up for a while, and I finally did in May 2002, I was in my junior year of high school and I remember reading the book and really liking it. Even after that first volume, I thought it was better than The Matrix, but I wasn't totally sold.

So, I grabbed 'Apocalipstick,' and I remember I started to look on Deja News to find out peoples' reactions to the issues when they were first released. I bought 'Entropy in the UK' off Ebay along with the first volume of Animal Man, and I grabbed 'Bloody Hell in America' at a comicon in Madison Square Garden.

It took me a while to actually read the series, I believe it was in August of 2003 that I read 'Kissing Mister Quimper,' and then I found out that Volume three would be out in trade in November. In October, I began a reread, a very intense read, poring over every word to try to really understand the series, and it was during this read that the series moved from an amazing piece of work to a life changing experience. I remember reading 'Kissing Mister Quimper' for the second time and having to stop reading on practically every page because I was making connections and really starting to understand the series.

The first read of Volume Three took place over a 24 hour period that was frustrating at times, but when Robin came back from the supercontext, and Jack spoke, I wasn't sure what I had read, but I knew it was something amazing. From there, I spread the series around, and with my friends I continued to ponder the meaning of the series, exploring Morrison's worldview and developing all kinds of new ideas. It was such an amazing time because I felt like the universe was alive and I was seeing it in a totally new way. Following this, I reaffirmed my commitment to films, started writing comics and that's basically led me to where I am today.

So, this is a guy who's been built up to a legend in my mind. There's always a certain oddness of seeing someone you've seen in pictures in person, and also a bit of awkwardness going to someone to get your stuff signed. But, I walked up to the table, and told him how big an impact his stuff had on me, and then asked him about the new Invisibles project that was mentioned a while back. I was expecting him to be a bit guarded about it, but he told me seemingly everything that was set about it.

Here's the news, the new Invisibles book will take place between the end of issue 3.2 and 2012, showing the characters on the way to becoming who they are in the final issue. He's talking to artists about it, and it'll be somewhat like Endless Nights, but with more connection between the different stories. The reason he's making it is because he likes the characters and wants to do more with them, it sounds kind of like David Lynch and Fire Walk With Me, where he just needed to return to the world. Part of me feels like the series was perfect as is, but I would absolutely love new Invisibles material, and I'd be intrigued to see how he reconciles the 2005 Ragged Robin lived in with the 2006 we live in. I remember reading the book in 2002 and wishing that I could be immersing myself in the fiction tank in three years, alas it was not to be.

I would imagine that we'll actually get a chance to see more young Robin, pre-jump. I would love that because some of my favorite stuff in the whole series are the parts in 'Kissing Mister Quimper' where she's at college and is talking about reading a book called The Invisibles and fancying the author. And just the coloring on those red tank sequences was awesome. I suppose we'll see King Mob building his corporation, probably paralleling Grant himself, who's got the mock GMWord thing up on his site. Dane is likely recruiting Invisibles around, building his new cell, Fanny's getting fat and Boy's probably just hanging out. I think it'd be a really interesting opportunity to assess the successes and failures of the work and the world as a whole in moving towards this jump into the supercontext that Grant's talked about.

One thing I've always wondered is the exact nature of the supercontext, and I asked him if we were going to see any post supercontext stuff in the new volume. He told me that it would be impossible to represent the supercontext in a 2-D book. He then told me a lot about the supercontext. The basic idea seems pretty close to what I'd deduced, it all ties into the idea of "As above, so below." The cells in our bodies are all working together and form something greater than the sum of their parts, a fully functional organism. And on a global scale, humanity is like this, we're individual cells that mistakenly believe in the illusion that we are individuals, not part of the collective. The supercontext is basically the point at which this organism becomes self aware and the illusion of individuality is destroyed.

Now, I've had some issues with the idea that we lose our individuality, and I asked him about this. He was very adamant about the fact that individuality is an illusion to begin with, so moving into the supercontext isn't losing anything at all. I'd heard about this in theory, but it didn't really work for me. However, he took things to another level with his explanation for this. The idea of the 'timeworm,' all your history stretching back behind you, through time, was present in issue 3.2, however, I'd always thought of the timeworm as an individual thing. Grant said that the timeworm extends from you now, back all through your history, up into your mother before you were born, and hers extends back to her mother, and it goes back like this all the way until the very first single celled organism. So, all of life is quite literally connected because we are born out of the same parent organism, and like a tree, we have branched out through time and space. So, if you were to view things from an outside of time perspective, you wouldn't see individuals at all, you would see just one massive organism growing out of itself and expanding.

So, once we move into the supercontext, we would be able to perceive things in this way, and experience any piece of the organism at once. This is what the John a Dreams story is all about, this is a guy who was liberated from the illusion of individuality, so he could move through and inhabit various forms, as well as his own native body. Because it's all branches of the same thing, he has the perception of everyone who's been part of this one organism, and that's everyone.

This fills in a critical piece of what I could never figure out about the supercontext. It's this literal connection between everyone, I conceived of it in theory, but the moment he talked about the timeworm stretching back up into your mother, it clicked for me, and I totally understood how he would conceive of each of us as just a small part of a much larger organism that stretches through time. And using this logic, to move outside of time is inevitably to move beyond individuality. To enter into the supercontext means to become aware of your lineage within the massive organism that is life on Earth, and in that context, you really are just a cell in something much larger. The jump in the supercontext is basically like John going into the timesuit, but on a planetary scale.

It was almost surreal to be talking with him about this stuff, this was a guy who seemed like he knew everything, I talked with him for a few minutes about this stuff, and he was very open, answering all my questions, basically talking about the stuff I discussed above. I would love to see him do a seminar or a Q&A and just hear more about how he views the world. I talked to him about a very specific piece of his output, a critical piece, but I would love to hear more, about his conceptions of fiction in relation to reality, the Flex Mentallo stuff. After talking to him for a while, I realized why the line was moving so slow, he was giving everyone a lot of time, and that's fantastic. I got the sense that he really enjoyed talking with people about the work, and I know that if he's anywhere near the area, I would love to see him again and hopefully get to hear him talk more. The five minutes I did have with him was one of the best conversations of my life.

Related Posts
The Invisibles: Vintage Reactions (3/1/2004)
The Filth: Issues 1 and 2 (12/18/2004)
Seaguy (4/9/2005)

Division Shadow: The Graphic Novel is Now Available

One of my big ongoing projects for the past year or so has been writing and producing a graphic novel, Division Shadow. If you've read the site for a while, and find yourself agreeing with most of the stuff I'm talking about, you'll probably really enjoy the book. The book is a big ensemble drama, with three seperate storylines, all connected through a covert military organization called Division Shadow.

The book's drawn by three great artists, you can read the serialized web version for free, or grab the complete graphic novel right here. It's 184 pages for only $15. I think it turned out great, and I'd definitely encourage you to give it a look.

Also, if you're going to be in New York City this weekend, I'm going to be doing a booth at the MoCCA Art Festival, which should be quite a gathering of indie comics people. I'm doing the booth with Jameson Lee, who made the sci-fi comics anthology Zebra, which will hopefully feature a short story by me in its second volume.

Ironically, I will have to abandon the booth for a while on Saturday to go over to the Grant Morrison signing at Forbidden Planet. Morrison's my favorite creator of fiction ever, and a huge influence on both my creative work and my life in general. He's been top on the list of people I want to meet for a while, so it'll be great to finally get the chance.

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Creative Projects (8/28/2005)
Division Shadow #1 Now Available (10/31/2005)

Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, part 2 and 'Downloaded'

I've been going through the second chunk of Battlestar Galactica's second season and on the whole it's been rather disappointing. The opening Resurection Ship two parter was solid, but from there we went into a bunch of forgettable episodes. For some reason, the producers decided to focus nearly every episode on the series' weakest character, Lee, the man who is put in mortal danger every week, but always survives it, the man who's loved by all women, the man who's very boring to watch. He's the Riley of this series, and to focus on him at the expense of the more interesting characters is ridiculous.

The show's always had a wide variety of elements, the military elements, the political elements and the cylon stuff. The military stuff is usually the weakest, only Starbuck can make those stories interesting, even though I like Edward James Olmos as an actor, most of his storylines are pretty boring. So, to focus most of the episodes on random military adventures is a big mistake. There's no sense of mortal danger from the cylons anymore, so the episodes where they fight rarely lead to major consequences.

There's some interesting elements, like the Cylon sympathizer group and the physical Six, but they quickly disappear and we're stuck with three out of four episodes in which Lee is in mortal danger. When he didn't die after the stranded in space adventure, it felt like a bit of a cop out, and that led to the showdown on the black market ship where he again survived. So, by the time we got to the hostage episode it was almost comical to see him in mortal danger again. Lee is pretty clearly a boring character, he's got no layers, and sleeping with a hooker doesn't instantly give him edge. He just drains the energy off the screen whenever he's on, so why give him all these episodes?

The thing that makes this worse is that for nearly the entire season we've got virtually nothing on the cylons. Every scene with Sharon was great, but she got very little to do, locked in a cell. The thing that makes this show unique is the cylons and the choice to not focus on them at all for the entire season was a huge mistake. There's no way to justify Lee nearly dying for the third time when you've got all this good story material out there untouched.

This part of the season exposed the fact that the creators built the show for the first season's plots and weren't really able to adjust after it ended. This leads to a lot of characters with no particular purpose and who haven't been given any new storylines.

So, with the show drifting away, everything snaps back with one fantastic episode, 'Downloaded.' The first scene of this episode had more interesting stuff than the previous seven episodes combined. One of the most interesting themes in the series is the increasing similarity between humans and cylons. This episode pushes that to an extreme, focusing on two humanized cylons.

I love the fact that Six has her own imaginary Baltar. That would apparently confirm that Baltar's Six is a hallucination, not the original Six manipulating him through a chip. I loved the Cylon bar, and seeing Sharon in her apartment, struggling to readjust to life in the cylon world.

The ending of the episode sets up a fantastic situation, where Six and Sharon will use their status as cylon heroes to subvert the collective mentality of the cylon world. Because they stand out, they have the influence to alter the direction of the cylons' war. It's also notable that they acknowledge it's wrong to wage war on humans.

At this point, I would be happy to never see the Galactica again and focus solely on the two Cylon heroes and their quest to change the world. I don't know if it's a deliberate choice, but the entire season, and this episode in particular, seems designed to make the cylons more sympathetic than the humans. The way Sharon's birth plays out, they're making Adama and Roslin into easily hatable characters. And it's not just because the perspective was switched here, Sharon has been extremely loyal to them and they give her no repsect whatsoever. Roslin's became a very unlikable character because of this.

The humans who raise the issue of trying to resolve things with the cylons are dismissed, but it looks the cylons themselves are going to make an effort. So, the cylon heroes are the most heroic people on the show right, and also the most interesting. I hope we get to see a lot more of them soon.

Related Posts
Battlestar Galactica (2x01-2x04) (3/24/2006)
Battlestar Galactica (2x04-2x07) (3/26/2006)
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The Sopranos: 'Kaisha' (6x12)

The first half of this season was arguably the best the show's ever been. The intensity of the first six episodes was unmatched, from the shocking first episode ender to the innovative Kevin Finnerty stuff, up through Tony's rebirth with a new worldview and Vito's exile to New Hampshire. There was a sense of the show moving forward, interrogating its own world and building something new. However, in the second half of the season, things began to drift, first the Artie episode, which at the time was a disappointment, but is actually one of the strongest episodes in the season's second half.

Starting with The Ride, things drifted into a gloomy haze, where stuff happened, but there was no sense of forward momentum. There's certainly good moments in every episode of the season, but it was hard to shake the sense that nothing was moving anywhere. The show was so tight and focused last season, each episode an emotional journey, it was odd to see the drifting, sloppy storytelling we got with the past couple of episodes. I was wondering if this was all about lulling us into a calm before the season finale, it definitely wasn't.

This is an episode that's alright, there's some really strong moments, but at this point in the story, we needed a bit more. The chronology of the episode was part of the problem. For one thing, it felt odd to have a Christmas episode in the middle of the summer. However, there's also the fact that some very big storylines got compressed into one episode, where they might have worked better with some room to breath.

The episode tracks the diverging fates of Tony's two "sons," Christopher and A.J. As A.J. is finally getting things together, Christopher is falling apart. The choice to makes Kelli such a non-character creates an interesting audience reaction to the scenes with Julianna. Even though they're clearly destructive together, and Christopher is cheating on his pregnant wife, I was more behind Chris's relationship with Julianna than his marriage. It may be designed to mirror Christopher's own view of things, he got married on an impulse and doesn't really love Kelli, so we barely see her, just like he barely sees her. So, we are complicit in his infidelity.

I did like the scenes of their relationship together, particularly the dissolved together scene of them watching a movie and doing coke. That was visually striking, but the chronology mixing used to introduce the relationship was just odd. Chase has been using a bunch of odd narrative devices recently, the flashback to Chris telling Tony about Ade, Vito's voiceover, and those worked, but this just feels sloppy. The story would have had more impact if we had seen it in chronological order, and that would also have emphasized the irony of Christopher going to seek help ultimately leading to his falll into greater drug problems.

The really confounding thing about the episode, and the second chunk of the season as a whole, is Chase's utter disregard for the basic rules of narrative storytelling. He's always refused to play on the traditional TV rhythms, not giving viewers what they want, but here he's going beyond not playing with traditional TV conventions, he's abandoned any sense of dramatic storytelling, quelling most of the big emotional moments before they happen and playing the major events in a nonchalant way. Look at the death of Vito, one could argue that the emotional moment was when he leaves New Hampshire, and from that moment on, he's dead, but the actual murder was so anticlimactic it made the whole arc seem less important in retrospect.

I'm assuming this is deliberate, the first half of the season showed that Chase still could do tight drama as well as anyone, and this episode presents a bunch of opportunities to rev things up, but he always chooses to go with a more relaxed, resigned mode. I think it's getting a bit ridiculous at this point to keep teasing war with New York when it's inevitably defused before it starts. This same stuff has been going since season four, if you keep going back to the same situation without ever actually playing it out, it stops having any impact.

I'm guessing that Chase's motivation is to make the show itself mirror Tony's new mental state. When he first feels that way, he's excited with the new possibilities of the world, but as things go on, everyday's gift turns into a pair of socks, and so did the show. There's major stuff going on, but it's not played up in the way that previous seasons had.

This episode does confirm that Tony's had a lasting change. After some shakiness in the last couple of episodes, we see his new mental state on display when he chooses to give Christopher a pass about Julianna, and again tells Phil that "there's enough to go around." That scene was the best in the episode, Tony's very real emotion was powerful to watch, you got the sense that he was making a final reachout to Phil, to put the death of Billy behind them and really move on. And in the end, when A.J. brings Blanca home, he's the one who tells Carmela to accept her. This is huge growth from the experience with Noah and Meadow in season three.

So, as Tony becomes more accepting, Carmela is shown as callous and manipulative. In light of the episode's ending, it's pretty clear that she knows what happened to Adrianna, and was just using the threat of getting a private investigator as a way to put pressure on Tony. She can use it as an all purpose upper hand when dealing with Tony, for the first time, she has actual power in the relationship. She may not be Angie yet, but she's got something.

A.J. goes through the most growth here, and actually gets a nice, if slightly rushed, resolution to his season long arc. Tony's words have clearly made an impact on him because he's giving his all at the construction job. The key moment is when he doesn't use violence to get rid of the guys outside Blanca's apartment, but instead chooses to stick with what he knows works and bribe them with a bike. Now, this strategy might not be best for the long term, but it represents A.J. moving beyond being just Tony Soprano's kid. After being used by countless people to get to his father at the clubs, A.J. uses his own wiles, not his name, to win over Blanca.

Even if it's drifted a bit, the show can still be so tight, conveying volumes with one line. At the Christmas party, someone asks A.J. where he got the necklace and he says "The mall," a foreign concept for people who always have to know a guy. A.J. best asserts his independence when Tony says he's got a guy and A.J. says "I've got a job." Tony has been so successful that his son now seems to be on the path to the legitimate life that he could never acheive. Tony, for all his new worldview and goofy beret, still thinks in a box where he has to use force and bribes to get his way, he can't get it through hard work. It's the same for Carmela, who never thinks about actually making her house comply with the building code, it's got to be a shady deal to make things happen.

If Meadow really has left Jersey behind, it'd be fitting to end things with Tony and Carmela watching their kids move out of the mob world, feeling a touch bittersweet that their children succeeded where they could not. The message of the series is clearly once you're in, you never get out. That was established with Eugene in the premiere, with Vito's arc and now with Christopher's drug addiction. So, the fact that A.J. never got involved could be his salvation.

Because Chase is so maverick in creating the show, I hesitate to speculate on the final eight episodes. People are talking about this episode as the calm before the storm, but I just don't see it that way. I don't think there will be a storm, and if there is, I doubt it'll be played up in the way that people are expecting. I think things will finish out like this, with Christopher and the other mobsters getting gradually destroyed, with only the next generation potentially escaping. And, at the end, I'm guessing that Tony will be right where he is now, with a new outlook, but ultimately bored with his life, watching his kids leave him behind.

Now, it's possible that Chase really is lulling us into a false sense of security, but considering the way the show's been going, I doubt it. The Golden Age of the mob is gone, it's now just a gradual move towards extinction.

Ultimately, while I respect Chase for telling the story in such a bold, nontraditional way, there's a reason that certain tenets of drama exist, and to violate so many rules means you end up with a show that's ultimately rather flat. We need some kind of payoff or change to remain interested and, while the show's certainly still good, this second chunk of season six is the weakest the show's ever been. This episode was alright, but I just neeeded a little more.

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The Sopranos: 'The Ride' (6x09) (5/9/2006)
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Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #4

The second trade closes with this issue, a major departure from the previous Manhattan Guardian stuff, and probably the strongest issue in the series. I was a bit wary as the issue began because Morrison seemed to be doing the same kind of Silver Age pastiche that Alan Moore did in Tom Strong, the kind of stuff that seems to be more fun for the writer than the reader. However, as the connections get revealed, the real purpose of these flashbacks become apparent.

Like Zatanna #3, this issue is remarkable in the way it draws the different story strands together, connecting all the Seven Soldiers titles and filling in the background on a lot of what we'd seen before. Throughout the series, we've seen many hero teams take on the Sheeda and fail, the knights, the heroes from SS0 and now the Newsboy Army. In the overall context of the series, this is setting us up for the union of the seven different miniseries characters in SS1. There's a major emphasison the failures of groups of six, all seven are needed in order for things to succeed.

If I have one major problem with this issue, it's the fact that it basically abandons Jake's story. In light of this and Shining Knight #4, it looks like SS1 is either going to be a really crammed issue, or we won't be getting too much resolution for the individual characters. Like Shining Knight, this issue ends with Jake claiming his role as hero and setting out to fight for good. Each of the series involves a crisis of purpose for the hero involved, every one of the major characters is feeling depressed, and uncertain of their fight, but by the end, their commitment to doing good is reaffirmed and they set out to battle the Sheeda.

Tracking back a bit, this issue does a great job of filling in some of the relationships we'd previously seen alluded to. It turns out that many of the supporting characters who've passed through the books were part of a superhero team in the past, the original Newsboy army. So, we find out why Ali Ka-Zoom was so sad about the death of Don Vincenzo a.k.a Kid Scarface, they were teammates on this vintage team.

The adventures of this kid gang parallel what happened in Klarion #3, where we saw a group of kids living a utopian, Lost Boys style existence. The gang here pledges to create a United Nations of kids, and never succumb to the problems that plague grown ups. However, as is inevitable with the passage of time, the kids move beyond this childlike state and take on the characteristics of adults.

One thing I didn't catch on the first read was the sexual relationship between Chop Suzi and Captain 7. She's become pregnant, and their move into the adult world of sexuality is what makes them reluctant to embark on the childish mission to Slaughter Swamp. The brilliance of Baby Brain is that this is a character who literally cannot grow up. So, the process of change is most painful for him, he's got to watch all his friends mmove on, while he is unable to move into the adult world. And the only method of persuasion he has is to cry until they agree to go to Slaughter Swamp with him.

Slaughter Swamp is a place of transformation, and hence the ultimate enemy for these kids who seek to live forever in a pre-adolescent world of imagination and wonder. I loved this whole sequence, it's very creepy, disturbing in a way that few comics are. There's a sense of everything breaking apart, the era that was being brought to a quick and drastic close.

As they approach the house, they see a lot of black flowers, each one representing someone lost to the Sheeda. Seeing the Queen watching the kids through the mirror is a throwback to Snow White and reinforces the fairy tale feeling that's present in the whole series. Apparently, the Time Tailor is different from the other bald men, they seemed to be working against the Sheeda, outfitting the new Seven Soldiers for battle, while the Tailor works for the Queen, gathering people for her to transform, as he did to Spyder in SS0.

Considering the chronology, I wonder if Spyder was working for the Queen when he went to Miracle Mesa, as a mole inside the group of heroes. I had always assumed that he was turned after the fight, but it would make a lot more sense for him to have been transformed in the swamp and sent in to facilitate their destruction. That's why he's the only one who made it out.

I love the tie in with SS0, when Ed talks about places unhinged from time and space, and indeed, I can feel the "strands of the web tightening." Ed himself sums up the theme of the issue eloquently when he says "In the end, the world just got too big...and too real for our little band of neighborhood heroes," the fantasy of childhood was over, the possibility inherent in being young destroyed when the Time Tailor reveals their future lives to them.

The idea of identity as a suit that you wear is a Morrison staple, tying back to fiction suits in The Invisibles. It's an idea reflective of the fact that personality is largely a construction and we can choose to reinvent ourselves with a different identity. Here, it seems like the Time Tailor is literally making their destinies and forcing it upon them. I'm not sure whether it's the same process that Spyder went through back in SS0, but it's a similar co-option of fate. The page in which their destinies are revealed is disturbing, and lends a poignancy to the previous issues. In light of what we know now, Don Vincenzo's final stand against the Sheeda isn't just about defending his home, it's about getting revenge for the fate that was forced upon him in the Swamp, a final act of defiance. Similarly, Ali's last stop to help Zatanna is a chance to make up for his failure here.

The background narrative of Chop Suzi and Captain 7 continues here as we find out that Suzi likely died in childbirth, and Captain 7 was branded a child molester for his relationship with her. He claims that it was consesual, but as of now, we have no way of knowing. I'm hoping that will be followed up on in one of the other books. For these characters, being a child molester is the ultimate crime, it represents bringing the adult world of deviant sexual desire into the innocence of childhood and puncturing the imaginative world that children lived in. Because he's older than Suzi, regardless of whether it was consesual, that puncturing of innocence definitely happened to Suzi because of Captain 7. However, it's still disturbing to see the team turning on their own and sending him into Ali's cabinet.

One ambiguity in this issue is whether Lil' Hollywood is meant to be Gimmix. They share a lot of characteristics, and Gimmix could certainly be an alcoholic. I'm guessing that'll be followed up on in one of the next issues. Another lingering issue is the idea of the Sheeda insects taking control of peoples' heads. In this issue, we see Mo Colley possessed by the Sheeda, but it's unclear whether this is the process that controls Spyder or if the thing that the Time Tailor does is something totally different.

The issue ends with Jake reclaiming the mantle of hero. The panel of Ed holding the gun is excellent, and all of the moody, blue art in the finale is fantastic. I think this is the best thing Cameron Stewart's ever done, bouncing between the crazy Silver Age stuff and the rainy present.

And emotionally, we get to see the resolution of Jake's dilemma. In issue three, he bottomed out, and decided that his personal life was more important than being a hero. Here, he becomes aware of the threat that the Earth is facing and decides that he needs to do something. I love the tie back to Larry, revealing that he was a superhero in the old days is perfect, in Jake he sees someone with the potential to pick up where he left off, and when Jake reclaims the mantle of hero, he atones for any culpability he had in Larry's death.

The ending reminds me of the final moments of Angel, rain pouring down, invaders from another dimension flooding in and no hope of victory, only the commitment to fight for good. I love Jake taking Ed with him and his final conversation with Carla. Then, the closing page hits the perfect high note to send our hero off for the final battle with the Sheeda.

With this each issue, this series gets deeper, adding thematic and narrative layers that enhance the reader's emotional involvement. With each series, Morrison is developing his trademark themes in new ways, and the interlocking narratives are something really unique. This issue was not only great on its own, it made the recent issues of Shining Knight and Zatanna better as well.

I've got the third trade on order, so it should be here soon. I can't wait.

Related Posts
Seven Soldiers #0 (5/17/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #1-2, Zatanna #1, Manhattan Guardian #1, Klarion #1 (5/21/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #4 (6/15/2006)

Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #4, Zatanna #3

Seven Soldiers rocks on with two issues from my favorite series so far. I wasn't sure how each individual sesries would end, Grant claimed that each series would have a standalone beginning and ending, and in this case, that's not quite true. I suppose Justin's character arc is fulfilled, but I definitely needed a little more when things ended. I guess that's what Seven Soldiers #1 is for.

The issue itself errs a bit too much towards action and the real highlight is Simone Bianchi's beautiful drawings. Bianchi is a master artist, and each panel is gorgeous. His design of the queen is fantastic, and I love the double page spread of Vincenzo emerging from the cauldron.

The end of the issue forges a lot of connections between the other series. Apparently, the Queen is married to Melmoth from Klarion, which raises the question of whether Melmmoth is working for the Sheeda or against them. The issuse also introduces the idea of a girl knight, who we now know is Misty.

The two page spread of the Don firing two Tommy Guns while riding a flying horse is just as good as it sound, and Justin's defeat of Galahad is another great fight scene. Things end with Justin gunning for the queen's head. I'm not a huge fan of ending with the flashback, I feel like the emotion of the story was in the now, and I would have rather went out with Justin holding the head. On the whole, this series has two fantastic issues, the middle ones, and a couple of solid issues that were hurt by the fact that they focused a bit too much on fighting. However, it's a critical piece of the overall Seven Soldiers project, giving us the most information on the Sheeda and what their plans are for the modern world.

Zatanna #3 is the best issue of the Seven Soldiers project so far. Last time, I mentioned that Zatanna reminded me a lot of Gilmore Girls, and this issue takes that even further, with more self deprecation and pop culture references from our gorgeous, but deeply insecure heroine. As Zatanna says, she and Misty have been having "Thelma and Louise meet Bewitched" misadventures, such as the episode at the beginning.

I really like the confrontation with the Tempter because it ties into a lot of classic Morrison themes and also works as a showcase for Zatanna's wit. She defeats this guy through witty banter, tying into the idea that words themselves are magic spells. On the larger level, Zatanna and Misty are working, like nearly every Morrison hero, to eradicate outdated ideas and move humanity forward. The Tempter is essenitally the traditional idea of Satan, and in our world, the idea of the devil actually tempting you to do stuff seems ridiculous, hence the destruction of his corporeal form here. I'm intriuged by the idea of "logical immunity," Morrison doesn't discuss the concept in depth, but from what I can tell, it's the idea that in the past, people used to be more accepting of the supernatural, however, our knowledge of how the world works, logic, has overwhelmed superstition and made it impossible for a guy like The Tempter to exist.

Next, they run into Ali Ka-Zoom, who burns his cabinet, a ceremony that is clearly part of moving beyond this plain. Morrison deals a lot with the idea of people having a specific role to fulfill, John a Dreams in The Invisibles moved through time to perform specific tasks in the service of a goal, individuals are small parts of a larger machine moving humanity towards a specific endpoint. When he burns the cabinet, Ali says "Sometimes it's like there's mystery string holding everything together," unseen forces manipulating people to specific points in space and time. This is Ali's final task, and once he's done, he can return to the bus and move off to the other realm.

The moment where they stumble upon the massacre from Shining Knight is fantastic, the most powerful connection between the series so far. It's odd to see these characters I was so used to seeing in Bianchi's style rendered in Sook's, but it works because it allows us to view the events from Zatanna's perspective. The moment where Misty sees the spider and cries reminds me of a bit from The Invisibles where King Mob is overwhelmed by pure emotion and starts crying. It's one of the things that Morrison does well, it doesn't feel melodramatic, it legitimately feels like the character has come into contact with some higher intelligence and is so moved, they have no choice but to cry.

In light of this issue, it seems that most of Zatanna's guilt stems from the revelations about brainwashing in Identity Crisis. I read that series a few weeks ago, so it was cool to see a tie in.

However, the big moment at the end is the revelation that Misty the stepdaughter of the Sheeda Queen sent through time to the present. This revelation is brilliant because it ties the series together and gives us a picture of how large this conflict is. This is a totally unique storytelling experiment because it truly is one story, we're just seeing different pieces of it through the different characters' experience. This is a direct followup to Shining Knight, without actually featuring any of those characters. It's really exciting to see the pieces connect across the stories, it's like reading a superhero Magnolia.

The best stories usually feature fully realized worlds, where it feels like you're getting a peak into their lives, and after the work ends, they will continue. That's the brilliance of the original Star Wars trilogy for me, it never feels like someone sat down and decided how things would happen, it's like someone stumbled on another world and took a piece of it, but it continues offscreen. The structure here makes this even more notable because we get to see plot elements existing free of the confines of their specific story. So, Don Vincenzo dies in Shining Knight and we don't really need any more, but this issue gives us a bit of a coda for him, as well as providing emotional closure for Ali Ka-Zoom. It's exploring this world through seven unique sets of eyes.

Reading this issue had me so excited about the story Grant had created. The revelation of who Misty was puts everything that happened before in a different light, and connects the seemingly random adventures with the overall story of the Sheeda. But, we still get to enjoy the banter and character work that made the series great. It's not that Zatanna takes on the mythic style of Shining Knight with this revelation, it's more about looking at the same elements filtered through multiple lenses. It's a story that proves what is said is really determined by who's saying it.

EDIT: I just got the third volume and reading through the 'previously,' I found out that the Queen's comment in Shining Knight about "blood of the womb" and the "girl knight" are not a reference to Misty, it's actually meant to reveal that Justin is a girl in disguise. Reading through the issue, that makes a lot more sense, it was just something I didn't catch.

Related Posts
Seven Soldiers #0 (5/17/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #4 (6/5/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Zatanna #4 (6/15/2006)

X-Men 3

Been behind on this one, originally when I saw it, I didn't think it was worthy of a review. But, reading peoples' reactions to it has brought up some things I felt needed to commented on. X-Men 3 is a decent film, it was fun to watch, but there's clearly some major flaws in the narrative construction.

The film takes on way too much, I would have loved to seen all these plots interweaved in a 4-6 hour miniseries, but trying to fit everything in a 100 minute film prevents us from actually becoming engaged with any of the characters. The Phoenix is one of the core elements of X-Men mythology, and the choice to handle it as such a small background piece of this film was very odd. The whole point of the Phoenix story was to show that absolute power corrupts, and in the comic, this was wonderfully conveyed by having the use of that power seem attractive. Jean was drawn out of her shell, dropping her inhibitions as she became more powerful, facilitated by her attraction to Jason Wyngarde.

I think the filmmakers made the right choice when they chose to drop the space stuff from the Phoenix storyline, that was nonsensical at the time, and nearly any time Claremont's X-Men headed into space, things went awry. However, I think the choice to make the Phoenix a part of Jean's mind is a mistkae. The Phoenix storyline was all about the conflict between Jean the person and the Phoenix, this superpowerful entity, and in the end, Jean's innate goodness allows her to overcome the corruption of the Phoenix. Of course, we've already seen a wonderful film adaptation of the Dark Phoenix saga in Buffy's sixth season.

But, things still could have worked without that. The big issue I have with the storyline is that they skipped the best part, the whole Hellfire Club thing. That's the funnest part of the original Dark Phoenix stuff, and the moment where Claremont really came into his own. There's an issue that ends with Wolverine rising out of the sewer, ready to bust up the Hellfire Club, and in that moment he becomes an icon. Wolverine was never meant to be the spotlight X-Men character, but in that one panel, Claremont puts the character into history.

So, that's great stuff, and would have given Wolverine a badass moment that he lacked in this film. He just kind of went along, without Cyclops to play off of, it's tougher for him to misbehave. The one scene that really crackled was when Jean tries to seduce him, I would have loved to seen him have sex with her right there, and then deal with the consequences, rather than the lame refusal. It would have created more complexity and given Jean a better reason to go over to Magneto.

Jean had basically nothing to do the whole film, so her acts of evil feel like they're just there to justify killing her later. You get no sense of her joy at being bad, and that's what the whole Jason Wyngarde seduction in the comic was about, making being evil seem attractive.

So, that was rather botched, but it's not a huge surprise because the world the films created doesn't really accomodate the more outre aspects of the mythos. The cure storyline makes a lot more sense, but the major issue here is that our "heroes" have no real stance on the issue. They're bothered by it, but don't seem to actively oppose it, as Magneto does. What this means is that Magneto and his crew have all the narrative agency, and the X-Men seem to stand in the way. Magneto, while he was a bit more extreme, was the most charismatic character in the film, and I thought Wolverine was being excessively sadistic when they give him the cure dart. At that point, they should have killed him, the way it was played felt cruel.

The cure could have supported its own film, and allowed for more philosophical exploration. A major problem with the film is that nearly every conversation exists to convey some information. So, the opening dialogue lets us know what everyones' powers are, and later on, there's all matter of infodumps going on. If the film had another hour or so, we could have had some more indepth exploration of how these people feel about the cure.

I would have liked to see someone argue with Rogue about her choice to get the cure. Rogue's power doesn't really help her, and I think it's perfectly legitimate for her to want to lose it. But, it should have been more about her, and less about just wanting to get together with Bobby.

One of the best characters in the film was Kitty Pryde. She feels just like Claremont's incarnation of the character, and you could easily fill in her parents' divorce as another reason she's so depressed after Xavier's death. The ice skating scene was really nice, and her chase with Juggernaut at the end was well done too.

The other really well done character was Beast, who came across as a fully developed character in a brief amount of screentime. I thought he was more interesting than Logan or Jean in this film. I wish we got a bit more insight into Angel, because as it was, there wasn't much of a point for having him in the film. Whenever I saw him, I would just end up thinking back on his time on Six Feet Under.

The final moment of the film was absoultely ridiculous and basically rendered everything that happened before pointless. If Magneto has his powers back, then the whole conflict over the cure is irrelevant. This is the equivalent of Raiders of the Lost Ark ending with some guy in the warehouse saying "Oh wait, this isn't actually the ark," then cutting to credits. All the fighting has been for nothing.

Despite the harshness, I actually this film is only a little bit weaker than X2. Certainly on a narrative and character level, X2 is much tighter, but the pleasures of the two films are the same, seeing some classic moments and characters represented on the big screen. I would argue that it's actually impossible to make a satisfying two hour X-Men movie. The reason for this is that the Claremont run was 190 issues, and there's been hundreds more after he left.

X-Men is very different from Superman or Batman in this respect. Those characters are icons, with a certain set of characteristics, but around that, you can tell pretty much any story. Batman in the comics has been through so many different incarnations, whatever movie you make, you can probably find a comic it's similar to. X-Men actually has a fairly linear narrative, and for Claremont and Morrison's time, nuanced characters who grew and changed.

To try to condense this history and character development into a two hour film is like trying to make a movie adaptation of the Buffy TV show. There's so many villains and stories, you can't make a satisfying two hour film, inevitably supporting characters will get short shrift. This film is the equivalent of making a Buffy movie that combines the season two Angel going evil arc and the battles with the Mayor in the third season in two hours. It's just not going to happen.



If someone wanted to make a real adaptation, I would love to see a high production values, TV show adaptation of the Claremont run, or Grant's stuff. Obviously, a lot of Claremont does not hold up, but that'd be a much better venue to tell the story in. The best you can hope for in a two hour film is either a total reconfiguration of the mythos, which X-Men 1 and 2 did to some extent, or just a collection of interesting sights that recall moments from the comic.

I will admit that my view point is very colored by reading of the comic. Right before seeing X2, I was reading the Morrison run, and Singer's version of the mutants couldn't match up to Grant's ultra stylish, pop incarnation. I watched this coming off the complete Claremont run, and the character interaction just isn't as strong.

I hate to give the typical fanboy "it wasn't as good as the comic" critique, but sadly that's what I'm doing. I chose that angle, because if I wasn't relating this to the comic, I'd see it as just an overstuffed, unremarkable action film.

Related Posts
Astonishing X-Men 2/6/2005
X-Men: 94-138 (9/17/2005)
X-Men: Wrapping It Up (3/14/2006)

Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #2-3, Zatanna #2, Shining Knight #3, Klarion #2-3

Moving along with Grant Morrison's massive Seven Soldiers project I'm consistently impressed by his construction of both the individual stories and the overarching narrative driving the enterprise forward. He's using similar concepts and story elements in each of the miniseries, but they're filtered through a different generic template, appropriate to each book. So, a mystical, medieval relic in Shining Knight becomes a pirate treasure in Manhattan Guardian. Very cool.

Guardian #2 is a big action issue, covering the confrontation between the pirates AllBeard and NoBeard. This has to be a reference to the Morrison/Alan Moore feud, he poked fun at Moore similarly in the classic 'Beardhunter' issue of Doom Patrol. It's always seemed amazing to me that the two best comic book writers are both interested in these same magical concepts, complimenting each other perfectly, and have the whole opposite hair thing going on. Moore and Morrison are creating the best work of anyone right now, in any medium. No one in film or novels can match them.

Anyway, this was a pretty good issue, I like the throwback to the guilt monster from SK2 on the first page. I like the action, but so far, this has been Morrison's least serious Seven Soldiers book. I really enjoyed the finale where NoBeard and All Beard duel over the six sided god-machine. This is a recurring element throughout the books, and I'm not exactly sure of its significance yet. It could be a reference back to the quote, "God does not play dice with the cosmos" that Morrison used back in Animal Man.

The issue's final moments, as Jake escorts the shellshocked passengers out of the tunnel and attends Carla's father's funeral are the emotional highlights, and nicely undercut the spirit of adventure we saw previously. The sadness of the funeral scene, the reality of "action" contrasted with Ed's enthusiasm is wonderful, a throwback to the juxtaposition of extreme thrills with extreme sadness from Seven Soldiers 0, and it nicely segues into issue 3.

This issue seems to recall the Libertania issues of The Filth, where we saw a contained environment break into anarchy. The idea of a community that represents the entire Earth in a small space is a throwback to the basic concept of The Filth, which was all about the idea of "As above, so below," that all systems have the same properties, it's just that some are larger than others.

The juxtaposition of the emotion and action here is something I've seen done before, but it works, and underscores one of the basic points Morrison is making with both this series and Seven Soldiers #0, the idea that being a superhero is frequently an attempt to cover for personal difficulties. Jake goes out and beats up this community of robots as a way of trying to come to terms with Carla dumping him. This culminates in the fantastic two page spread of Jake in the fire. That page tells you everything you need to know about his personal life.

And even with all this perosnal drama, Morrison and Stewart manage to stock the book with crazyfantastic imagery all throughout. The robots are great, particularly the stereotypical Spanish and French ones. The finale with a giant-head baby talking about the "secret history of the original newsboy army" is just such classic Morrison, over the top weird and intriuging like only he can do.

In the context of the larger Seven Soldiers story, this, like the destruction of Camelot in Shining Knight, is used to tease the potential fate of the Earth should our soldiers fail in their mission. It's another "as above, so below" moment, with the robots standing in for the Sheeda. The Sheeda seem to be the force that pulls humanity down, preventing it from reaching its full potential by destroying civilizations at their peak. Being a Morrison work, another valid interpretation is that they create change, preventing societies from falling into complacency and keeping things moving irrevocably forward.

Zatanna #2 isn't quite the masterpiece that #1 is, but it's still a lot of fun. I love the mentor/protege dynamic between Misty and Zatanna, the pop culture references again ground this series in a very realistic millieu. As I mentioned before, I love the way things are refracted through their specific books, so Manhattan Guardian takes place in a very Batmanish world, while here we've got an even more realistic single girl in the city vibe, with the only weird thing being that she happens to do magic. To that end, we see another appearance of the "six-sided God machine," in the die that Misty used to find Zatanna.

In terms of look and character, Misty and Zatanna remind me a lot of Rory and Lorelai on Gilmore Girls. I would love to see Lauren Graham play Zatanna if they were ever do a film of this series. I love just watching Zatanna at work battling this magical entity, particularly the finale where she shatters the mirror into hundreds of pieces. Seeing this guy spinning out on the panes of glass is another classic Morrison image.

The end of the issue reveals that she's converted her "ideal man" into a miniature bald fellow, who could be either Grant or one of the Seven Unknown Men. I could see some interesting combat happening on the micro level between this guy and the mini Sheeda scouts. And the issue closes with the return of the Phantom Stranger, who looks straight out of a 1930s pulp comic. And he's got the fantastic entrance line "Did someone use a sentence involving the word 'stranger.'" Morrison is able to create lines that just boggle the mind in their ridiculous popness, no one can write stuff that's just so overwhelmingly fun and cool, that entrance just puts a smile on your face.

Even as I'm loving Zatanna, issue 3 of Shining Knight might be my favorite thing from Seven Soldiers yet. Justin's series seems to be carrying most of the "mythology" of the series, he's the only one who's actually encountered the Sheeda, and on the whole, his struggle seems to have the most direct impact on the fate of the Earth.

I was a bit confused by the start of the issue, wondering why so much time was being spent on these two detectives. Helen Helligan was a well sketched character, but we seemed to be getting a lot of exposition. I liked how Helen was a very real character in this crazy world, hoping to cut out of work to go to her sister's wedding. It's these small touches of realism that make the project unique, we're looking at a world of superheroes from the perspective of the ordinary citizen.

But once they meet Justin, things go crazy. I loved the revelation that Gloria was actually the Sheeda queen, and her transformation is really well done. There's a lot of interesting panel layouts here, keeping the heavy dialogue visually interesting. The Queen is really interesting looking, I love the two page spread of her and her crew killing the police. This leads to the incredible page where Justin fights back, grabbing a gun and shouting "Camelot Lives!" in one of the coolest panels in the history of comics. It's such a joycore moment, and confirms Justin's reclamation of the role of hero for this new age. He's not in this issue that much, but it follows up on the development in issue 2, where Justin reclaimed the mantle of protector. He may be stranded in a new world, but he's going to do everything he can to save it.

Then I was shocked to see I, Spyder from Seven Soldiers #0 back, working for the Sheeda Queen. So, apparently she didn't kill them all, she's taken at least one of them into her service, and possibly more. I'd love to see The whip return, we shall see. There seems to be some kind of Sheeda zombification, and Helen seems to be going through that process now.

If we're to take it that the Seven Unknown Men and the Sheeda are locked in some kind of eternal war, it's appropriate that they would both try to remake people to fit their image. So, as the series begins, they remake Spyder, then the Sheeda take him and remake him again. So far, Justin is the only hero who's been explicitly remade, though you could read Ed's transformation of Jake as a similar reinvention.

For the finale of this series, it looks like we're going to see Gallahad and Justin dueling, and running into Don Vincenzo. I'm really psyched for it, this series has come together in a really interesting way towards the end.

Finally, we've got Klarion. I wasn't a big fan of the first issue, but things come together a little bit as the series progresses. Two is cool because we get to see Klarion moving into our world. I loved seeing Klarion moving through the same space that was just featured in The Manhattan Guardian, the Guardian's helmet even makes a cameo. I like the idea that there's a whole secret world underground, and between the two series, we get a pretty vivid picture of it. Plus, his enthusiasm at elements of our world is exciting. The art and dialogue combine to give you the idea that this kid is just thrilled to be moving into this new world.

Issue three shows us more of Klarion's wonder at this new world, as he's manipulated by Mister Melmoth, a guy who's seeking to find the Croatoan society. I'm not sure if he's a Sheeda agent, or just a nasty guy. The issue is all about the loss of adventure and wonder that comes with moving from childhood to adulthood. Klarion is the ultimate child, someone for whom everything that we take for granted is new and exciting. It's a very Peter Pan thing, when Billy reaches sixteen, he's taken away from the gang of kids and turned into a slave for Mister Melmoth, the ultimate representation of restrictive adulthood. Melmoth says he likes the fact that "Everyone's looking very professional," and they're all dressed the same, that's what the adult world is all about, a major contrast to the varied outfits and styles of the kid gang.

Klarion seeks to walk away from his responsibility as a leader of the gang, he will not take over for Billy, only to be forced to move on when he gets older and numb to the wonder of the world. He seeks to be live only for himself, but he is soon drawn back to Croatoa. He may not like that world, but he can't allow it to be destroyed either. So, he sets off to return.

I still think this is the weakest of the four series, but it's got some good stuff, and I'm excited to see the conclusion. On the whole, I'm wondering how most of these series will end, do they all lead into Seven Soldiers #1 with a cliffhanger, or is it more that they close out their stories and then the heroes move on to the final battle in the final issue.

I'm loving this project. It's a totally unique thing in comics, and Morrison is taking advantage of his structure to do all kinds of different things. The need to do so many series is taking him out of his comfort zone and allowing him to explore some new concepts and character types. Right now, I'm wishing that all of these were ongoing series, every character has the potential to sustain a long term narrative, and perhaps Morrison will return to some of them after he finishes this series.

Related Posts
Seven Soldiers: #0 (5/17/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Part I (5/21/2006)

Upcoming Dates of Note

6/2 - Super Furry Animals at South Street Seaport
6/4 - The Sopranos Season Finale
6/9 - North at Delancey
6/10-6/11 - Promoting Division Shadow at MoCCA
6/17 - Shooting a Music Video for Victoria Rocks
7/4 - Belle and Sebastian at Battery Park
7/7 - A Scanner Darkly released
7/21 - Clerks II released
7/22 - Elysian Fields at Joe's Pub
7/28 - Miami Vice released
8/8 - Manderlay on DVD

And the biggest date of note in the near future is:

10/13 - The Fountain and Marie Antoinette released

This presents a conundrum for me, namely which film do I see first, and how long does it need to sit before I can see the next one. I'll probably do The Fountain on the Friday and Marie Antoinette on the Saturday, that's going to be one ridiculous weekend for cinema.

Nelly Furtado's 'Maneater'

It's the new Toxic! I heard this song yesterday and I've been completely loving it since. I always love synth pop, but what this does is blend a strong synth line with a more hip-pop chorus making for a really cool song. The song starts with that nasty driving synth part, and I love the way her vocals match exactly with the feel of the synth. I always like songs where the vocal is pushed down in the mix and made to feel more like an instrument. Her singing's great, but what makes it work so well is the fact that the vocal and the synth are perfectly matched.

From there, the song goes into the chorus. The chorus goes for a higher, almost cascading feel, taking you briefly out of the din of the synth driven verse. I really like the way that she stretches out the first syllable of man in maneater then speeds through the rest of the words in the chorus to catch up. And the transition between the chorus and the verse is fantastic, as that synth line rears up and is soon matched by her vocal.

I've listened to a lot of European pop stuff recently, like Goldfrapp and Rachel Stevens, and I love the smooth synth-ness of their songs. This song takes some of that feel, but makes the synth darker, a bit more hip hop, creating a whole different experience. It's a bit like the stuff off Gwen Stefani's album, but without the 80s pastiche. But just listening to this thing, it's clearly a fantastic piece of work, a perfect pop song.

Promiscuous Girl is a great song as well, so I'm really psyched to hear her whole album.



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Gwen Stefani: Love Angel Music Baby (3/20/2006)
Goldfrapp @ Irving Plaza (5/16/2006)

Head On

Head On is a German-Turkish film that exemplifies the way that foreign and independent films deal with emotional issues in a totally different way from typical Hollywood studio product. The film's premise is a fairly conventional setup, a young woman sets up a fake marriage with an older man as a way of getting out of her parents' oppressive home, but soon they begin to develop real feelings for each other.

Stylistically, the film is incredibly pop. The events are frequently emotionally devestating, but thanks to the soundtrack and shooting style, it's always an exciting film to watch. In that respect, the film reminds me of Liilja 4Ever, though this film is a bit more upbeat than that one. My favorite moments of the film weren't particularly tied to the narrative, they were more just perfect combinations of image and music. After Sibel meets Marin, she gets a makeover and is dancing around their apartment, Cahit joins her and they both shout "Punk is not dead." It's such a fun moment and you share in the ecstascy of these characters.

From there, we proceed to a fantastic club scene, with the camera swirling around, we watch Sibel through Cahit's eyes, and as she dances, he falls in love with her and we do too. Obviously, the actress is beautiful, but a lot of the reason that she seems so attractive there is in the way she's filmed. The film is subtle enough that when Cahit runs over to have sex with a guy, we only need to see Cahit's face to know that he now has feelings for her.

The narrative of the film is rather rambling, there's a lot of territory covered and it would be easy to get lost along the way. The emotional anchors are the two lead actors. As Cahit, Birol Unel shows us an utterly broken man who gradually climbs back to life. He goes from this utterly slovenly guy to a clean cut, suave guy by the end of the film. I love the moment where he gets out of prison, wearing 70s police style glasses, and the light shines through the glasses letting us see his eyes. In that moment, we can sense his determination and see that his love for Sibel kept him from giving up. He's come out of prison in a better state than he was when he went in.

Watching the film, it's clear that Sibel goes through a lot, but it was only when I went back and looked at the trailer that it became apparent just how stunning her performance was. She goes through an incredible transformation, from timid suicidal girl to excessive clubber and ultimately she winds up as a domesticated married woman.

Her physical appearance is critical to expressing the characters' inner self. When we see her putting on black eyeshadow, it's clear that she's emulating Marin, she's completely abandoned her traditional Turkish background and is embracing the German club life. What she wants is total independence, and her emotional connection to Cahit deprives her of that. When they're about to have sex, she notes that this will make them really man and wife. From that point on, she can't indulge in the lifestyle she had, she has to drink and do drugs to excess to try to numb the pain of her loss, and ultimately she sees physical pain as a way of dulling the emotions stemming from the loss of Cahit.

I'm curious about what exactly happens between that night when she's beat up and her move to a homelife. I'm guessing that the guy took care of her and offered her shelter and she took it because she was exhausted. So, once again, she takes up with a guy she might not really love after attempting suicide. I feel like her choice to not follow Cahit is her shaking off her old life, she knows that to follow him would mean losing stability and after coming so close to death, she can't risk that again. So, she chooses stability over love. Of course, it's possible that she does love this guy, and having sex with Cahit one last time is an exorcism, ridding herself of those old feelings.

One of the things that makes the film so effective is its grittiness. Because the world feels real, the fact that Cahit falls in love with Sibel doesn't feel contrived. We've seen just how bad off this guy is, and Sibel represents an opportunity to grow up and seek out real emotion rather than wallowing in grief about the loss of his wife. Sibel saying that having sex means they're really man and wife forces him to recognize the fact that this won't just be a fuck-buddy relationship like he has with Marin, it will be a real emotional commitment. Some people could say that the sex scenes are gratuitous, but the fact that they don't have the ubiquitous Hollywood sheet covering them makes you feel like this is real, not something that's staged to avoid showing anyone's nipple.

The emotional arc of the film reminds me of Leon: The Professional, with a younger girl moving in with an older man and opening him up emotionally. Both Cahit and Leon find that the difficulty of moving beyond their loner lifestyles is justified by the emotional bond they form. And in the end, each has to sacrifice themselves so that their young charge can live a normal life.

It's not easy to watch Cahit and Sibel torn apart, or Sibel's meltdown. Part of me was wishing the film could just continue following their happy times, going to clubs and dancing. I love the swirling camera moves when they dance together for the first time, colored lights flashing around them. However, Cahit's temper spoils things there, and ultimately ruins things permanently when he attacks Niko. I think the characters are so flawed that an easy resolution would feel false, so even though we may want them to stay together, it's just not possible. There's no other way things could end than with Cahit leaving and Sibel staying behind in her new life. To leave it all for Cahit would be reckless, she left that kind of reasoning behind when she was beaten on the street.

So, I thought this was a fantastic film. The handheld camera work, fantastic soundtrack and utterly convincing, transformative acting made it a really enveloping experience. People talk about something like Capote or Ray as an example of an actor transforming into a character, but I feel like the work here is a better example. Rather than perfecting an impersonation and sticking with it, both Sibel and Birol go through many stages of the characters' life, taking them each to completely different places than they were when the film started, but staying emotionally true to the characters' core. That's great acting. And moments like the club scene, where the music, lighting, camerawork and performance come together to illuminate the characters' emotions are great filmmaking.

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The Sopranos: 'Cold Stones' (6x11)

I loved the beginning of this season, everything through the first six episodes had a really clear direction and pushed things in unexpected ways. However, in these past few episodes, everything seems to be moving back toward the traditional status quo for the series. I couldn't help but feel that this episode was a bit of a let down, sticking with subdued gloom of the past couple of episodes when the narrative seems to be demanding some kind of major event, or at least a deeper exploration of what's happening to the characters.

One of my favorite arcs of this season was Vito's journey. In Live Free or Die and Johnny Cakes, we saw a guy breaking away from the world he came from, overcoming restrictive traditional values to embrace a new kind of life. It was unlike anything we'd seen on the show before and watching this guy struggle with his new world was riveting. Last week, it was tough to watch Vito fail at his newly chosen life, but thematically, the idea that no one can escape from the Jersey mob world makes a lot of sense.

So, the major issue I have here is the rather perfunctory nature of Vito's demise. After sketching out this wonderfully nuanced guy, we don't get any glimpse into his emotions upon his return. His attempts to reassimilate are there, but other than the phone call to Jim, there's no sense that he's emotionally conflicted. The way I interpreted it, he basically knew someone was going to kill him when he returned, so the journey home was essentially a suicide. But, is that how he felt, or did he legimitately think that he could get back in with Tony? I think we needed to know more about how he felt.

Chase always subverts audience expectations, and it frequently pays off wonderfully, witness Janice killing Richie in season two. The whole season was building to a moment when Tony's new outlook is put to a test when he has to choose whether to authorize a hit on Vito. There's a lot of drama there, and it seemed to be a major sticking point for Tony. However, this episode completely undermines that by having him decide to just go ahead with the hit, and then absolving him of his guilt by having Phil kill Vito for him.

That move doesn't make much plot sense to me. I feel like Tony needed to make the conscious decision to take out Vito, if the point of Phil killing Vito was to instigate conflict between Jersey and New York, it would have been more narratively beneficial to have Tony not authorize a hit on Vito, delay that call, then have Phil act. At this point, Jersey/New York conflicts have been teased for so long, Chase either has to decide to go ahead with some kind of all out war or back down from things. You can only raise the stakes so many times before these events become meaningless.

That said, I did love the ritualistic nature of the Vito murder. Phil's emergence from the closet, like a judging spirit, was fantastic. Phil seems to have been goaded into the murder by his wife, who's going on about how Vito's gay lifestyle is a sin, disregarding the fact that everything she has comes from illegal and morally wrong activity. The idea that these people can judge Vito for what he does, in light of their own transgressions, is absurd. The scene with Vito's wife, and the subsequent one with his kids, makes it clear that Phil was acting out of his own self interest, his attempt to get rid of this "shame" ends up hurting the very people he was supposedly helping.

As the "Back in Black" scene makes clear, Tony seems to have fully returned to his old self. The most interesting element of this season for me was seeing Tony's changed persona, but that seems to have been fully whittled down by living his daily life. He's given up on attempting to be morally right, once again he's only thinking of himself. The problem I have is that the show doesn't seem to address his reversion. It's present in his action, but considering the major emphasis placed on Tony not wanting Vito killed, it's odd that his decision here would be so nonchalant. The one scene where he really got called on his behavior was when he was with Melfi, but he basically ignored what she said.

What's interesting about how the Vito arc played out is the way that the events of the story basically exonerate Tony from the responsibility of standing up for Vito. When Vito returns to Jersey, he makes himself an open target, so Tony really has no reason not to kill him, and we as viewers recognize this. I think it would have been much more interesting to confront Vito in New Hampshire, in this other world where the killing of Vito would have been an aggressive act, rather than a reactive one. That would keep the theme that you can't get out, but play it out in a different way than we'd seen before. The way Vito dies now is too similar to Ralphie or Tony Blundetto, where a guy gets out of control and is put down.

Elsewhere, we've got Carmela's trip to France. I get the sense that the producers wanted to go to France, and the episode was based around this. There's not that much that specifically relies on the Paris setting here, it was certainly pretty, but I don't know if it was the best use of screentime. That said I love Carmela's dream, there's a lot of potential in having Carmela finally have to face the reality of what Tony's business is. Earlier this season, Carmela seemed to have come to terms with Tony did for a living, but her continued investigation into the Adrianna matter, as well as asking about Jackie Jr. would indicate that there's more doubts than she's voiced. The strongest scene in the Paris section is when she asks Rosalie about Jackie's disappearance, and Rosalie just won't discuss it.

I'm not sure about Meadow going to California. That seems to conflict with the way her arc was going this season, though I do love how she claims there's no problems with Finn, even though just last episode we saw her breaking into tears.

And AJ continues to be a problem. This was the strongest part of the episode for me. The way Tony sees it, AJ's failure is a direct reflection of his own inadequecies. He is now feeling guilty for not being tougher on him, it's like Tony's failure to discipline AJ has created the situation they're in now. There was a great line a few episodes ago where Tony says "Carmela's a good mother. She did her best," and I think that sums things up, he feels like listening to Carmela's judgment and not exercising his own has caused the problems that AJ is now experiencing.

The Melfi scene was one of the best in a long time, and got to the core of a lot of Tony's issues, particularly the closing stuff about Carmela being the mother that Tony wishes he had. The scene in the garage was wonderfully tense and for a bit there, I was really thinking that Tony was going to hit AJ. Instead he takes out his rage on AJ's material possession, the car. Sending AJ into construction has the potential to put him on the path towards mob life, and without a doubt, it'll toughen AJ, which is probably Tony's motivation in getting him the job. If AJ fails at this job, we could end things with Tony physically attacking AJ.

I'm really curious to see what happens in the season finale. Things have been stuck in this oppressive rut for a while. I think it's given us some great stories, but I need just a little bit more before the break, something that causes a major emotional impact on these characters.

Related Posts
The Sopranos: 'Moe and Joe' (6x10) (5/15/2006)
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Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #1-2, Zatanna #1, Manhattan Guardian #1, Klarion #1

After the stunning Zero issue, it's time to head into the first four Seven Soldiers miniseries. Each of these series represents the invention of a new superhero mythos, each drawing on previous archetypes while updating them in a way that makes them feel fresh and new.

I'm not too up on DCU history, I know these were all pre-existing characters, but I'm not sure how the worlds they inhabit fit into the DCU that alreayd exists. For example, Shining Knight starts out in some version of Camelot, where he's one of a bunch of knights battling the Sheeda. I'm not sure exactly what the Sheeda are yet, but Shining Knight 2 leads us to believe that they turn up a certain point in a civilization's development, to destroy it. In the first issue, they destroy the Camelot that Justin comes from, and he winds up falling through a time warp to the present.

The issue is fall of crazy Morrison ideas, filtered through a Lord of the Rings vibe. I like the font and style of the narration, which gives the the story the feel of an ancient epic. With everything in chaos, Justin falls into the present. The first issue felt a bit elusive, it was tough to get used to the Camelot world, though I thought the Castle Revolving stuff was fantastic, particularly the mutation of Justin's girlfriend.

The final pages set up the basic premise of the series, a classical knight stranded in modern Los Angeles. The second issue clarifies things, and gets us deeper into Justin's head. I love the idea that he's tormented by this physical representation of his guilt, and literally just walks around with this guy. He's clinging to the old ways, and feels without purpose in this new world.

Justin encounters one of the bald men from Seven Soldiers 0. These guys seem to be some kind of extradimensional agents, who are able to reinvent heroes, update them for a new task. In this case, Justin reclaims his role as a knight, defeating these criminals on the street and finds himself updated with modern clothes and a new sense of purpose. I love the idea that this guy appears at just the right time to set Justin on his path, and I'm guessing that a bald man will appear to each of the soldiers at one point in their series.

Concurrently with this, we've got the mob boss who bought Vanguard. He encounters a sheeda riding some kind of spider. It seems like these spiders are pets for the Sheeda, they control them, and were able to use one as bait in seven soldiers 0. There's a lot of references to eight legged entitiess throughout the series.

The art on Shining Knight is incredible. Justin on the last page of issue 2 is incredible looking and throughout the oil paint look lends incredible atmosphere to the book. Grant did a great job of selecting each artist, and tailoring the story to his/her sensibility. This book looks like a lost volume from the Renaissance, and that style allows us to see our world from the perspective of an outsider like Justin.

Manhattan Guardian is the second series. This is a much more traditional superhero series, drawing on the Batman archetype of the ordinary guy with the skills to fight for good. The thing that makes Manhattan Guardian work is that the superhero story flows organically out of this guy's regular life. Traditionally, the origin story exists solely to motivate the hero to get into action, and even a book like Ultimate Spider-Man that spends a lot of time before the guy becomes a hero still feels like the plot exists solely to bring him to the point of putting on a costume. Here, it feels more like Jake is a regular guy who just happens to be a hero.

I suppose it goes back to the speech from Kill Bill about how Clark Kent is the disguise, Superman is the real guy. That's true of most heroes, but not this one. Jake is using his role as the Manhattan Guardian as a way to patch up the problems in his life.

There's a lot of great things in the issue. I love the kid from the Newsboy Army showing up and giving Jake a bike. Throughout, I feel like Morrison captures a unique voice in Jake. He's always been good at creating very unique characters in small space, and by the end of this issue, I already feel like we completely know Jake. That's the sign of a good storyteller, and makes it a lot easier to emotionally relate to him as the story proceeds.

I'm not so sure about the pirates, the basic idea is good, but I feel like pirates are a bit played out, and usually GM is on the forefront of cultural trends. I'll forgive it because it feels like a throwback to his work with Cameron Stewart on Seaguy. Stewart's art is fantastic here, he always makes fun, dynamic images that can accomodate realism and bizarre stuff.

Following this was Zatanna #1. Zatanna's the only character of the bunch that I was familiar with going in, I'd just caught her appearances in Identity Crisis. So far, hers is by far my favorite mini. The book is like a cross between Buffy and Promethea, and touches on the most classic Morrison ideas.

I think this issue does the best job of simultaneously introducing the character and telling an interesting story in its own right, which was Morrison's goal with the series. That's really helped by the framing device. Much like the Melfi scenes in the first episode of The Sopranos, Zatanna's running narrative about her past introduces us to both the facts of what happened to her in the past, and her feelings on those events. The basic events of the issue come out of stuff that happened in Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, where Zatanna, her father and John Constantine teamed up to repel some ultimate evil force.

While I usually prefer writers to tackle original material, this mini is a great example of the benefits of a shared universe. It's crazy that this character from an Alan Moore story written twenty years ago can now pick up and grow. Morrison has talked about the fact that Superman is more real now than his creators, and I think a large part of the impetus for the project was the idea that he could create new characters and concepts that would impact the DCU for many years after he's gone. It's the same thing he tried to do with his run on X-Men, but Marvel has effectively gone through and erased most of his innovations.

Anyway, Zatanna's journey through the magic world is incredible. I love the bottom left panel on the first page of this journey, where she's wide eyed, just in total awe of this world. Her interactions with Terry the skeptic are a lot of fun as well. The double paged spreads where they bounce around recall Promethea, though the idea that "space has an edge," as represented by a panel border is classic Morrison. The red God they encounter on the next page seems to be a throwback to the beings who attacked the team in SS0.

This leads them to a place that recalls the library of unwritten books in Sandman. I love the final image of the face on the tree, really creepy. The emotional core of the issue is Zatanna's guilt about bringing back the "man of her dreams." This is exactly the kind of mistake that someone with these powers would make, even if she was responsible most of the time, she's going to slip when it gets tough, and that's going to put the whole world in danger. The emotion on her face is perfectly conveyed on the bottom of that page, the text could be played light, even a bit funny, but with the facial expressions we can tell that she's actually consumed by guilt about what's happened.

The most interesting thing about her therapy group is the presence of Gimmix from SS0. It's tough watching her here in light of what happens to her down the line. Grant's mission with this book was really ambitious, but these little touches of connection make it feel more like one large story. And the whole therapy group thing is another great peek into what the life of ordinary superheroes would be like, they see Zatanna as a poor little rich girl, because she's got to experience life with the JLA and they haven't.

The art on this book is fantastic. I love the redesign of Zatanna's costume, her classic look was good, but this makes it a bit more fresh, and a bit less just kinky magician. Misty also has very cool clothes, and her appearance tells us everything we need to know about the character. But, the thing I love most about Sook's art is the emotion the characters are feeling, I got really wrapped up in this issue and a lot of that is the way he drew things. I think this was a fantastic piece of work, different from what Morrison's done in the past, just really exciting to read. I'm looking forward to issue 2.

The other mini is the only one I'm not so sure about. I probably need to give it a reread, but Klarion was a bit underwhelming. The basic idea is cool, this kid who comes from a Puritan society longs to escape and rebel. That's classic Morrison territory, following up on Kill Your Boyfriend. The whole thing has a very Tim Burton feel, and I do think the art is fantastic. I guess the problem with the issue is that it sets up his rebellion, but ends right as things are about to get interesting. So, I'm excited to see where it goes in the next issue.

The thing I did like was the individuality vs. conformism theme. Like Shining Knight, this seems to be a dying civilization, they're waiting for the Sheeda to come and destroy their civilization, lift them of their burden. They summon the Sheeda and then one shows up at the end of the issue.

This Sheeda seems to be the same create as we saw in Shining Knight, but refracted through a different cultural lens. So, here it's a demonic, blue object, while it looked like a more traditional spider out in the Wild West. There's a lot of style in the world of Klarion, and I'm hopeful that Morrison can pick things up a bit with the next issue.

On the whole, I'm loving the project. Zatanna in particular, but the whole thing is great, and looking for the overall connections is a lot of fun. It's a work that demands much from the reader, but I'm up for the challenge. It's almost mindblowing having this much new Morrison content available at one time.

Related Posts
Seven Soldiers #0 (5/17/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Manhattan Guardian #2-3, Zatanna #2, Klarion #2, Shining Knight #3 (6/1/2006)
Seven Soldiers: Shining Knight #4, Zatanna #3 (6/3/2006)