52: 39-52

I finished reading 52 yesterday, and the last volume was at times exhilarating, at times very frustrating. It wasn’t a particularly definitive finale, but on the whole, I’m happy with the way things turned out. The book doesn’t work as a standalone story, there’s some resolution for the various plots, but it’s really more of a look at an ever evolving narrative universe. A piece is excerpted here, and from this point, it will continue to evolve.

The first few issues in this volume are easily the weakest, probably of the series as a whole. We start with the resolution of the Steel/Luthor arc, the weak point of the book for its entire run, and not particularly compelling here. One of the major problems was the fluctuating nature of the everyman powers, and the fact that Steel just wasn’t as compelling a character as the people in the other plotlines. I was glad to see this one resolve itself, but it wasn’t very compelling in and of itself.

From there, we move to the resolution for Ralph Dibny, in what is another one of the series’ worst issues. One of my major issues with the creators of the series is that they constantly go for the all is not as it appears kind of plot twist that requires an entire issue of backstory to fill in what really happened. This happened with Booster Gold and his false death, and it happens here again, where we have to get an infodump from Ralph to explain his real plan and the tricking of the faux Dr. Fate. This issue also suffers from the fact that it goes into really obscure DC material, and without knowing who Faust is, the story doesn’t do much for me emotionally.

The early issues of the book worked because they made you care about these characters, even if you had no idea who they were before reading the series. Here, the story feels like a copout and makes no sense to me. I don’t really care why Ralph should want to trap this guy in eternity, and I got basically no emotion from his death at all. It’s a lame resolution for what was a really cool plotline, and takes a character off the board in a lackluster way. I’m sure he’ll be back at some point, but this issue was just lame and bad. Reading these first couple of issues, I was hoping Grant wasn’t writing anything because I don’t want to think he could do something so misguided. Admittedly, part of the problem could be that I just wasn’t into the series, and what would have made sense coming immediately after #39 feels nonsensical after a couple of months off. But, that would just make these issues a little better, they are still deeply flawed on a structural and emotional level.

Once those first couple of issues are out of the way, things start to pick up. The stuff with Renee has consistently been one of the strongest plotlines in the series. She’s a character who feels real and relatable, and her journey to becoming the Question is well paced and emotionally believable. I love the stuff in Nanada Parbat, particularly the issue with Giuseppe Cannucoli, whose art reminds me of Ryan Sook’s work on Zatanna. I actually thought that Wonder Woman was Zatanna, and was a bit disappointed to read in the backmatter that she wasn’t.

Still, I did really like the moment later on when Diana encounters Rama Kushna and is told to go out and live with her new human failings. That’s the kind of moment where a genre element is used to create an emotion that can’t be replicated in real life. It’s this pure acceptance of humanity’s limits and potential, and I think there’s something humbling about it. Rama Kushna may be an old DC character, I don’t know, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s a universally relatable concept that anyone can understand. I think that’s the difference between a lot of the series’ good moments and it’s weaker ones. When things are working, the characters feel fresh and real, when things aren’t working, you are left to assume that this character is in there because they must have been in some cool stories in the past.

One of my favorite character reinventions in the series is the absurdly over the top Chang Tzu. He’s simultaneously a totally ridiculous figure and extremely menacing. That they could make a giant egg into a credible villain is an amazing accomplishment. The issue where the Oolong Island scientists prepare for Black Adam’s invasion is one of the best, a nice mix of humor and real menace. I also like the motivation for their villainy, that they see themselves as part of an ongoing nerds vs. superjocks battle, and want to use their intelligence to defeat the naturally gifted, athletic heroes. That’s an interesting spin on things, and fits with what Morrison did with Luthor in All Star Superman. How do you deal with the fact that no matter how smart you are, no matter what you do, you’ll never be able to match up with a superhero? That’s not the message we get from a world that is supposed to reward intelligence and hard work.

That brings us to the major throughline of these issues, Black Adam’s assault on the world. I think this is clumsily handled. The buildup is fantastic, particularly Osiris’s accidental killing of the Suicide Squad guy. Here, we get the twist that Sobek is evil, and an assault by the four horsemen on Kandhaq. I love the idea that this Death is the literal embodiment of Death, and that in fighting him, he can somehow defeat all death and save his nation.

The thing that kills the story for me is when Isis tells Black Adam that he was originally right, and should go out and destroy the humans who called the Horsemen down. In the backmatter, they hail this as a brilliant twist, I think it’s a complete betrayal, and nonsensical decision from the character, undermining everything they’ve built up about her earlier in the story. This is an ordinary woman at heart, and even if she’s been a god for a while, I don’t think she would give in to hate in this way. I suppose you could make it work, in her grief for her people and her brother, but the story just doesn’t play that way for me.

Instead, it feels like their goal was to make Black Adam go nuts, and the story justification came second. I never felt the same rage that I did in, say, the Dark Willow storyline at the end of season six. There, I disapproved of her killing Warren, but could totally understand it. Here, his reaction is so over the top that there’s no way to justify it. The conflict is removed by the fact that Isis has taken away any moral conflict. He can justify anything by saying he is doing her will, whereas if she had told him to not to take revenge, there would be great internal conflict. We basically lose all the development Black Adam went through over the course of the series once he snaps, and get no sense of remorse or uncertainty about his destruction. It’s a regression, and really doesn’t work for me.

What does work is aforementioned Oolong Island attack issue. My favorite moment is Veronica Cale’s delusional walk out to meet Adam. I love how she tells him “I made the things that killed your family, you arrogant alpha-prick.” She wants to be this badass villain, but winds herself neglected when it comes time for the action scene, and she just wanders off. There’s something so powerful in Adam just passing her by. Fiction is weird, why do certain small moments like this work, while other moments, like the hugely built up Adam conflict stuff, fail? What gives something meaning? I don’t know, I guess it depends on every individual reader. Are the best stories the ones that resonate with the most people, or are they ones that hit a few people on a deep, soul changing level?

Anyway, Will Magnus gets some pretty cool stuff in these last issues. I like his use of the little Metal Men to defeat Chang Tzu. He’s a very 60s style hero, as reflected in the fantastic Bondesque J.G. Jones cover with him firing the Metal Men bullets. Oolong started off a little confusing, but once I got to know all the people, it was consistently one of the most satisfying plotlines.

The big confrontation with Black Adam is very Miraclemanesque. It’s well done, but I can’t help the feeling that Miracleman #15 pretty much owns this kind of story. What I did love here was the glimpses of some Seven Soldiers characters, particularly the Zatanna cameo. I think it’s a testament to the power of what Grant did that characters who were in five issues can have me literally exclaiming “Bulleteer!” or “Guardian!” It doesn’t make much sense for them to be there, particularly Alix, who gave up heroing at the end of the series, but whatever. It’s great that Zatanna gets a speaking part, doing a lower scale version of her Ekirts sreidloS neveS command from 7S#1.

Another standout moment in this volume is Buddy’s return to Ellen. The goings on with the yellow aliens were a bit disappointing, we didn’t get anything new, just an echo of what happened in the original book. I suppose it’s still cool, but I would have liked to see that story integrated with the evolving DC cosmology Morrison presented in Seven Soldiers.

Regardless, the return of Buddy to Earth as a glowing sun god is fantastic. It feels totally real and yet dazzling at the same time. It’s been a long journey back home, and it’s great to see him get back. I also really like the moment where Kory finally shows up at Buddy’s house and Ellen quips, “Did Roger hire a stripper?” The subsequent moment where Cliff calls her an “E.T. with DD’s” is awful, but doesn’t kill the moment. I just hope Morrison didn’t write that line. Either way, consisting Buddy’s always been kind of the sitcom character of the DCU, it makes sense to go out on a cheesy joke before the credits. Sadly, I find myself tempted to read Countdown to Adventure to get the further adventures of Kory and Buddy back on Earth.

Things then shift tones drastically for the final issue of the series. While I like the revelations about the multiverse, I feel like they kind of come out of nowhere. There was set up early in the series, but not much in the second half, and to have what is in theory the climax of the series revolve around it is a bit odd. Still, with the background of Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis, this actually made sense to me, and it’s pretty exciting to get a miniature Crisis happen in one issue. Booster’s one of the series’ stronger characters, and the tour through the other worlds is a success.

While this technically isn’t the old multiverse, it’s pretty close, and opens up some new storytelling possibilities for the DCU. I like the craziness of the multiverse, and I think this new multiverse will avoid a lot of the problems of the old one. There is now one definitive Superman, one definitive Batman, etc. so the other Earths can be more about exploring stories that don’t fit into mainstream DC continuity. The rebirth of Uncle Sam and his crew on their own world puts them in a place that makes more storytelling sense. It doesn’t necessarily work as a dramatic resolution for 52, but as an end in itself, it’s a success.

The final pages of the series do a nice job of wrapping things up, though the final moment is a bit odd. It’s not so much an ending as a stopping point, and I’m not sure why “Are you ready” is the last thing. I guess 52 was a prelude for the DCU to come, and now we’re being asked if we’re ready for it. I would have gone for more of a stasis moment.

Ultimately, I think 52 was a big success. It made a lot of characters I was familiar with into fully realized people who I want to read more about. It deepened and expanded the universe, and made it into a more exciting place. That was the mission of the book, and along the way, it told some great stories. As a cohesive narrative, I don’t think it was a complete success, but the good outweighed the bad. It’s a shame that Countdown is apparently awful because I think a weekly book about the DCU, the backbone of the universe, would be great. You should be able to read that book and get a glimpse of what’s going on all around, while the character monthlies give more background on other stories.

Most importantly, I think 52 really benefited from being a year without the big three. Much like Seven Soldiers, the focus on lower level heroes makes for a more dramatic story. People can die, and there are legitimate struggles because these aren’t gods, they’re just people trying their best to be like those icons. I particularly like how we see the human side of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, even they can’t live up to the image of themselves. The stories that were most successful, like Renee’s and Buddy’s, were about real people in a crazy universe trying to make their lives better. It was relatable, and weren’t as dependent on previous continuity.

The biggest problem with the series was the seeming acceptance of all that’s bad about comic writing. It takes away the emotional impact of stories to have characters routinely coming back from the dead, and the frequent reliance on obscure DC continuity presented a problem. Ralph Dibny’s story was the biggest victim of that.

But, considering the scale of the undertaking, I think it was a big success, and would love to read another weekly book. I hope the Busiek/Bagley DC weekly is good because it’s a lot of fun to pick up Messiah Complex every week, and I’d imagine reading 52 every week was equally interesting. Much like a TV show, a weekly book can become a part of your life, something that makes Wednesday a little special, and maybe that’s why art exists, to bring some excitement and craziness to everyday routine. This book was certainly exciting and crazy, in the way that only comics can be. While I cracked on the book for its comic book failings, I have to hail it for doing what only a shared universe like this can do, to delve into eighty years of backstory and come out with something that feels simultaneously new and part of a long legacy is quite an accomplishment. It wasn’t always perfect, but on the whole, this was a great series, and I’m eagerly awaiting my next trip back to the DCU, Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis!

And, for those of you wondering where comics will take me next, as I mentioned above, I’ve been reading Messiah Complex every week. It’s got some issues, but is pretty compelling so far. Last night, I read the first issue of the Dark Tower comic, which was just so on, I was surprised by how fucking good it was. I loved those books, and to see the world realized in visual form was frankly awesome. I’m not sure if all the issues will live up to that first one, but so far, it’s brilliant, a great addition to the book’s universe. It helps that I read the books a while ago, so the stories do exist in a sort of hazy, archetypal form, rather than some kind of definitive interpretation that should be stuck to. So, look for more about that book in the future, as well as some writing on Messiah Complex, and eventually a look at the third volume of Kirby’s Fourth World omnibus.

Gilmore Girls: The End

I stopped watching the seventh season of Gilmore Girls about two thirds of the way. The awful Lorelai marries Christopher plot was so bad, it pretty much knocked me off the show. The incredibly tight character focus that the Palladinos had over the course of the series was neglected for sensationalistic soap opera plotting. The show had drifted so far from what I liked that I didn’t have any particular desire to see the end.

But, I got a review copy of the season box, so I figured I might as well finish it up. Watching the final six episodes, I was actually pretty impressed. It was still not near what the Palladinos were doing, but it was competent enough to be a satisfying finale to the series.

The series always had two great strengths, Palladino’s writing and Lauren Graham’s performance. Even though the writing isn’t there, Lauren Graham is still amazing. Lorelai Gilmore is one of the most likable, and complex characters in the history of television. A lot of TV characters go through a litany of really awful stuff. Look at Nate on Six Feet Under, he’s a regular guy, but suffers through so much, it’s hard to relate to his troubles on an everyday level. Lorelai’s problems are the sort of things that real people face, and her constant refusal to really engage with those problems is how a lot of real people deal with the stuff they face. With the exception of the amazing drunk confession scene at Lane’s wedding, we generally watch her suffer in silence, claiming to be fine even as she feels increasingly worried about her impending loneliness.

That loneliness is magnified as she starts to realize that Rory will soon be leaving her forever. Even before Rory gets the Obama job, you can see her starting to worry about her potentially lonely future. The Christopher arc earlier in the season was a big mistake because it filled plot without allowing for real character development. It was a brash, hard to believe decision, and from the moment it happened, it was clear that it would eventually be undone. Once it’s undone, we can view Lorelai not as part of a romantic unit, but just as herself. The show usually worked best when Lorelai was isolated, her relationships with Max or Digger were low points for the show because her participation in the relationship numbs her individuality.

In the background of the season, we get her gradual reunion with Luke, but that’s not the focus, it happens naturally. Luke is the character who comes out of the last season the best. We get a better understanding of his behavior at the end of the sixth season, and can watch him and Lorelai tentatively move back together. The scene where he’s sewing together the tarps for Rory’s party in the last episode is really amazing, as is the moment where Lorelai realizes it was Luke who did everything for the party. When they actually kiss, it’s an anticlimax, it’s that moment of recognition between them that’s really powerful. I don’t think the tarp thing makes much sense on a literal level, but as a metaphor, it’s beautiful.

The other storyline that works really well is the bonding between Luke and Zach/Lane. They adopt him as a father figure, and his experience with April gives them a template for dealing with their own children. That was a great use of supporting characters for a successful plot line.

However, I still have huge issues with the Lane children storyline, and the way it’s handled doesn’t make things better. Why does she decide not to go on the road with Zach at the end? I suppose on a logical level, it makes sense, but from a character point of view, I want to see her out on the road. Now, the message seems to be, have kids and lose everything else in your life. For a show that prides itself on feminism, that seems like an awful message. The Lane of yore basically dies in this season and is replaced by a Lane who can only be a mother.

While I absolutely loved parts of these episodes, the things that always bothered me about the show were still there. The townspeople are almost always just annoying. I think Twin Peaks did the definitive wacky townsfolk, and countless other shows have presented similar one note quirky characters. The show always pulled in a number of directions, and the town direction usually didn’t work so well.

The last episodes combine the annoying townspeople with the other thing that really bothers me about the show, and that’s the overly effusive praise of Rory. I think she’s okay in her own storylines, but I hate how the characters of the show constantly praise her. It’s one thing when her grandparents do it, but I’d hope that the townspeople would have better things to do than want to go to Rory’s graduation at Yale, and I certainly don’t think they would be distraught when they find out they can’t get tickets. I suppose it’s not meant to be realistic, but it just bothers me when they do stories talking about how great Rory is.

That’s one of the reasons that the show plays better when watched in bulk than week by week. The bad town stuff just sort of blends into the background, and the stronger stories remain in the fore. I think the show would have been very different, and probably better, if there was less focus on the quirkiness of the town and things were centered more around the three generations of Gilmores. The stories about Richard and Emily almost always work well, particularly the slightly on the nose, but still successful trip to North Carolina episode.

But ultimately, it’s Lauren Graham who makes the show so good. She is the center of everything, and is able to skillfully navigate between comedy and drama, frequently using her comedy as mask for the sadness underneath. I hadn’t watched the show since reading Grant Morrison’s Zatanna miniseries, but now I see the characters as almost one. They look exactly alike, as do Rory and Misty, but beyond that, there’s the same issue at the center. Both fear getting older and being alone, but mask it in cynical jokes and smart aleck repartee. In the end of Zatanna, she finds out her father really loved her, and seems to come to terms with things. Here, Lorelai gets that same reassurance, and is able to give something back to them, when she offers to continue the Friday night dinners.

I think reading both works deepens my appreciation of them. Reading Zatanna, I implicitly assigned her much of the Lorelai backstory, and that gave me a deeper understanding than just what’s in the miniseries itself. Grant gives me the opening, and I bring that something else to it. Similarly, the grand struggle of Zatanna makes me understand Lorelai’s problems in a different way. Both are fantastic works, and I don’t think I’d have loved Zatanna in the same way if I hadn’t seen Gilmore Girls.

The show ends on a slightly predictable, but still satisfying note. This isn’t a Six Feet Under style perfect ending, or a Sopranos style controversial statement. It’s just the story resolving itself for now, the characters going on, growing and changing, but remaining at their core, the same, a family in a diner, enjoying one last meal together before the child leaves the nest. Hey, so maybe it’s the exact same ending as The Sopranos.

This last season still lacks some of the magic that Palladinos brought to the show. The camerawork is more conventional, and the characters frequently are subsumed to overarching plot machinations. But, the performances are still strong and the show goes out on a good note.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier

Halfway through reading the Black Dossier, I wrote this on Barbelith:

“I'm up to the 1898 part of the dossier and so far, I'm not really feeling it. The opening sequence is pretty fun, but after that it's just these endless text pieces that don't do much for me. Maybe it's the fact that I'm not that familiar with the British culture and literature Moore is replicating, but the entirety of this book feels like that atlas in Volume II that I've still yet to make it through.

I like the way that Moore is trying to synthesize the entirety of literature into this one continuum, a history of the immateria, but reading the history of an entirely fictional place, or a real one for that matter, gets a bit boring after a while. It feels like The Silmarillion, a book that I could respect, but is more interesting in idea than execution.

Plus, it's a bit jarring to have Mina and Alan look and behave so differently, I don't feel much of a connection to the characters from the previous volumes. And, if I hadn't heard Moore say that the characters became immortal, I'd just be baffled about why they're there.

And, after a while even the comics stuff feels more like spot the reference than a meaningful story. I don't know who a lot of the people he's referencing are, and even when I do, it's just, so Harry Lime is M, that's cool, but it's nowhere near as meaningful as the more developed characters in the previous volumes. It just becomes a bit tedious to hear about a bunch of characters I'm vaguely familiar with doing stuff from other books.

That's not to say there's not good stuff there. The Orlando segment was great, and I enjoyed his Shakespeare pastiche, but that's partially because I know other Shakespeare. I feel like Moore has written a book that only he can fully appreciate, more power to him for that, but between this and Lost Girls, Moore is rapidly becoming the Geoff Johns of Victorian literature, someone who's endlessly remaking the stories he read as a kid, and not bringing as much new to the table.”

It’s a sentiment I’d stand behind, even though I do think the book improves as it goes on, culminating in a really nice final sequence. However, it’s a really mixed bag, and the book is quite flawed on a conceptual level. Alan Moore himself said that most books like this, with background material about a universe, are boring. He claims that he found a way of doing it that would make it exciting, that’s not always true.

There’s two things going on here, a story about Mina and Alan on the run from the authorities in the 50s, and the various text pieces filling in the history of the League over the years. In the two previous Volumes, knowing the literary figures that were being referenced was a nice bonus, but not essential to the enjoyment of the story. The central five characters were all actually developed, so even if you didn’t know them from previous stories, you can still appreciate what’s going on. Even the ancillary characters are all fully realized, not just references.

This book goes way too far towards relying on our previous knowledge of the characters. It’s impossible to emotionally engage with the book when you have no clue who the vast majority of the characters are. The fact that copyright law prevents Moore from actually calling most of the characters who they’re meant to be makes it even worse. Look at the little black guy who spirits them to the blazing world, I have no clue who he is, but clearly I’m meant to. It takes you out of the story when you’re sitting there wondering who these people are. The characters who are actually developed in the book, like Orlando, Drummond, Bond and Emma Peel work well, and are easily the most satisfying aspect of the book. But, there’s way too many random cameos.

Even Alan and Mina don’t seem much like the characters from the previous volumes. It was a mistake to make Mina a blonde because even if I’m aware it’s the same character, on an emotional level, I can’t identify with her as that same person. The total change in personality doesn’t help much either. Her defining characteristic in the previous volumes was the contrast between her deep desires and Victorian morality. That’s what makes her relationship with Alan in Volume II so exciting, her transgression of societal norms. You could argue that the character growth is implicit in the new presentation of the character, but she’s changed so much, I can’t relate to her.

Another major issue is the fact that much of their dialogue falls into that cheesy reacting to what they’ve read in the dossier. It becomes too self referential to have the characters talk about what we’ve just read. That’s not the fun kind of meta, it feels more like an 80s fantasy movie where someone’s being told a story and comments on it. Having the characters do that makes them feel less like real people and more like tools through which Moore can present his endless stylistic experimentation.

It’s ironic that the characters should be stripped of their humanity in a work that’s all about the enduring power of fictions to inspire us. The characters that Moore celebrates in this work are the ones with such a strong archetypal power, they transcend a single creator and become part of the collective subconscious.

It’s there that the work is most interesting, in synthesizing a single history out of all the fictions written over the course of human history. While it’s not always interesting to read, it’s conceptually fascinating to look at the implications of the world Moore presents to us here. The fictional world has a parallel history to ours, a mirror through which we can examine our own societal preoccupations. Sometimes we inspire it, sometimes it inspire us, but we have a symbiosis with this other world and it’s fascinating to consider.

Along with that, we get the return of a classic Moore theme, the gradual loss of magic from our reality. The blazing world is the place where concepts who are no longer ‘believable’ go. Fairies were sent there, and wizards and talking animals hang out too. They’ve all been replaced in the real world by secret agents and science heroes. The 50s world he depicts is one that’s oppressive and boring, fetishizing scientific progress and cold fact over the emotion and wonder of the early years. I was reading a conversation between Moore and Dave Sim yesterday, and Moore talks about how contemporary fiction values reality over fantastic elements. He responds by saying “Reality wears a pair of two-year-old Adidas trainers and a Toy Story T-shirt.”

So, for him, it’s a shame that characters like Bond and Emma Peel have replaced the crazier fictions of years past. But, they’re still out there, and if we got to the blazing world, the most wondrous place in the collective subconscious, we can rediscover and bring them back. Moore’s basic point seems to be that the fiction we write will come true, the cavorite will be made, so as fiction makers, we have the responsibility to sculpt a more wondrous world. Hasn’t the 1984 world come true under Bush? So, why not write us a better world.

I do love the end of the book. From the time Mina and Alan escape on the rocket on, it’s all good. Particularly the 3-D Blazing World section. The initial 3-D page wowed me, and even though wearing the glasses got a bit annoying, Moore did some really cool stuff with it, once again pushing the medium in the same way he did with Promethea.

While I loved the Blazing World stuff, I think he covered almost all the same material in a more satisfying way in Promethea. We got the same direct address to the reader, inviting us to change the world, as well as the realm of crazy fictions. Promethea is the defining work of his later period, and this revisits it a bit too closely. The ending is celebratory, but it feels a bit redundant of what’s come before. Admittedly, it’s great and very important stuff, but considering he’s only one done other major work since Promethea, it’s probably a bit too soon to go back to those themes.

Ultimately, this is a frustrating work. I had just reread and loved the first two volumes, and was ready to embrace this too, but a lot of the text pieces were tough to slog through, and seemed more about self indulgence than contributing to the narrative. Some of it worked great, but not enough to make this a totally satisfying work. It’s hugely ambitious and still better than most comics out there, but for a writer like Moore, who’s written so many masterpieces, it can’t help but be a bit of a disappointment.

The Wire: The Third Season

Each season of The Wire has taken on a different generic template. Season one approximates the form of TV cop dramas, while subverting many of those show’s conventions. Season two was a classical tragedy, with a doomed hero. Three is a form of melodrama, with simmering emotions and warring factions in constant conflict. The show has maintained its ultra realistic style and plotting, but with an increased focus on characters and large scale conflicts, it’s become something more epic.

The character who owns this season is Stringer, torn between his increasingly powerful position in the legitimate business world and his connections to the street. Before Avon gets out, everything is going smoothly, and he seems to be forgetting about drugs for the most part. He’s still got the co-op going, but he’s created a situation where he is distanced enough that he’s not at risk. He just makes money and doesn’t have to worry about coming under attack from the law.

Around episode five or so, there’s a moment of calm, where everyone seems to have gotten what they want. Stringer is overseeing a booming business and ‘Hamsterdam’ is apparently a success. The idea of ‘Hamsterdam’ is fascinating, a microcosmic society, a ghetto within a ghetto with its own societal rules. Colvin created his own city, and through these episodes, it seems to be working pretty well.

The thing I love about the treatment of ‘Hamsterdam’ is that we’re not allowed to fully embrace or dismiss it. Clearly it has helped clean up the corners and reduce crime, but at the same time, it’s created a society without any sort of encouragement to get out of drugs and lead a legitimate life. In isolating all the dealers, including kids, the police have basically given up on an entire generation. They will support themselves, but they won’t ever be anything more. The most harrowing sequence is Bubbles’ journey through ‘Hamsterdam’ at night, a decadent, run down red light district without any hope, people destroying themselves while the police just look on.

I can certainly understand what drives Herc to call the Baltimore Sun, it’s the gut reaction most people would have. The police sanctioning the sale of drugs in this awful, awful place, it should obviously be shut down. At the end of season one, we saw Herc denouncing his old run and gun tactics, but he seems like the kind of person who became a police to rough people up.

Carver is more introspective. Rather than look on in frustrated disgust at the job he’s forced to do, he starts to embrace the community that Colvin created. It may be a bad place, but he is given access to the community, and the ability to make a change in some peoples’ live.

Ultimately, the message of the season is summed up by the woman at the council meeting, talking about how she used to know the name of the cop on her street, and could just talk with him. Colvin says that’s what police should be, a part of the community, making a difference, and that’s the lesson he passes onto Carver. While the season on the whole has the same heavy darkness, seeing Carver at Dennis’s gym at the end is a wonderful moment. Even if Hamsterdam is shut down, he can still help and try to work with these kids.

Dennis’s arc is another highlight of a season that’s just totally on. He’s someone who’s been in the drug game his whole life, and as an ex con, not many options are open to him, so it would make sense that he’d backslide into drugs. It’s hard to watch him crawl back to Avon after trying to go legit, but expected. The surreal party scene reflects how overwhelmed he is. This world of decadence isn’t the disciplined place he left, the people he works with aren’t soldiers, they’re addicts too, willing to kill for any reason.

Both he and Avon have an old view of the game. Avon certainly has his problems, but he’s very disciplined. In his absence, the drug organization has fallen into decadence and sloppiness. At his homecoming party, he’s talking with state senators about the opportunity to make millions, but what catches his attention is two low level dealers who are high. He doesn’t have the same vision as Stringer. Stringer wants to be a legitimate businessman, he loves speaking with powerful people and styles himself to be a part of that world. Avon wants to rule the streets, to hold his corners and take out his rivals.

The central divide is between the soldier and the businessman. In season one, there wasn’t much competition and both Stringer and Avon could have their way. It was a perfect relationship, but now they’re pulling in opposite directions. Stringer doesn’t need the streets anymore, Avon doesn’t really want to be a legitimate businessman. He’d rather live in a bunker than in the high rise apartment Stringer bought for him.

Ultimately, they’re each holding each other back. In a really fantastic bit or writing, they betray each other, sharing one last drink before their doom. On the bonus features for the season, David Simon talks about how the Barksdale story was only supposed to last one season, but the actors were just so good that he brought them back for more, and watching the show, you can certainly feel a pull between the greatness of this story and the overall mission of the show. In season two, the point of the season was the dock story, but I always wanted to see more the Stringer stuff. Here, the Stringer and Avon stuff has less to say about the condition of the city than it does about the personal lives of these two characters.

For me, it’s the most compelling stuff the show has ever done, soaring even further over the top when Omar and Brother Mouzone team up. The attack on Stringer in his construction site was full of the sort of filmic spectacle the show usually skips over. It was like a western, with Stringer pushed to the edge and gunned down in a haze of smoke. Visually, it’s amazing, and I think it works really well, but I could see how someone feels like the show is leaving realism behind and becoming more self consciously artificial. Still, I think that keeping that omniscient point of view at all times can be a bit distancing. We care about Stringer, and want to understand how he feels when he’s dying, not just see it in a cold, detached manner.

Stringer had essentially become a legitimate businessman, but he couldn’t quite sever ties with the street, and that’s what dooms him. His most rash moment is when he seeks a hit on Clay Davis. There, the old gangster comes out. On a rational level, he knows it’s foolish, but he still does it just because that’s the only way he can think to respond to something like that. It’s from that moment on that everything starts to collapse for Stringer, we see how he’s been played and it’s a short road to police informant and death. I feel like he blames Avon for what happened on Clay Davis, his war with Marlo taking away his legitimacy as a businessman, and that’s why he sells him out to Colvin.

The very fact that Stringer goes to Colvin is evidence of the success of Hamsterdam. It created a dialogue between drug dealers and cops. By giving the dealers a fair shake, keeping their word, they do create a kind of order, evidenced by the scene where they actually turn in a murderer to the cops to protect Hamsterdam. There was a dialogue there, and now it’s all been lost for the political gain of Tommy Carcetti.

Throughout the season, Carcetti is kind of a sleazeball, but we get the sense he does care. His trip to the Western with Colvin is one of the most emotional scenes in the whole season for me, the contrast between the community meeting now and what it was at the beginning of the season. Colvin knows that his plan is working, but is aware of its impending doom. While he says he doesn’t really care what happens after he retires, doing something so radical indicates he does have a strong desire to create change, and is willing to risk his reputation on it.

Carcetti sees the success of Hamsterdam and is amazed. Even in the harrowing community itself, there’s drug testing and actual attempts to help these people on their terms. But, placing his own political gain over the interests of the community he sells it out to the media as a way to attack the mayor. One of the most devastating scenes of the entire season is Carcetti’s speech to the council, where he attacks Hamsterdam and spouts a bunch of rhetoric about wanting to make the communities safer, and do things a better way. It’s a stirring speech, worthy of the applause. The great irony is that we know Carcetti has just doomed the only policy that’s actually been working, and is now putting the Western back to business as usual. He has chosen his own political gain over the welfare of the city, and couldn’t be happier about it.

The fall of Hamsterdam is one of the saddest scenes in the series. Over the course of the season, we’ve watched the construction of an entire society, it’s not a perfect one, but it’s getting better. However, the police roll in and destroy it all in a day. The contrast between the news reports about the place and what we actually know about it is where a lot of the power comes from. The media paints things in Manichaean shades, while the reality is a lot more complex. It was a radical idea, too radical for our current social system to consider. Mayor Royce knew on some level that it was the right thing to do, but couldn’t make it work, and after he’s finished talking about it, he realizes just how ridiculous it was to try to make it work.

Part of what makes Hamsterdam seem so full of potential is how it brought some of the show’s most kind and good hearted characters to the fore. The detail does some good over the course of the show, but it always seem to be a futile battle. The Deacon is the first character we’ve seen who doesn’t have a strong self interest, is just interested in helping people. He’s the one who brings attention to the awful conditions in Hamsterdam and starts to rebuild it into a better community. His mentorship of Dennis is a really powerful arc, and I was so happy to see Dennis actually make it out of the season alive and doing good. He has the chance to influence peoples’ lives for the best, that’s one of the legacies of Hamsterdam. I hope we see him and Carver working together again in the fourth season, if anyone really understood what Colvin was trying to do, it’s Carver, who has completely reassessed what police work can be. It’s not about fighting a war, it’s about making a community better.

After all this, I haven’t even touched on the show’s main character, McNulty. This season, the detail faded into the background, and it wasn’t a problem. The most interesting stuff with McNulty was the way he took on Kima as a kind of apprentice, showing her the tricks he’d used as a younger married guy. I love the dynamic between the two of them, even as it’s clear that he’s leading Kima down a bad path.

By the end of the season, he’s sought to change things. After getting used by Teresa, who increasingly seems like the most despicable character on the show, he decides to change things. In addition to Teresa, the scene in Stringer’s apartment is one of the most important for McNulty. He’s spent three years of his life chasing a guy who turns out to be a well read, erudite man. He might have been involved with drugs, but that wasn’t his real interest. I feel like McNulty felt Stringer was pretending to be legitimate as part of some larger scheme. Seeing the apartment, he realizes that Stringer was a smarter man than he’d ever be, and eliminating him is essentially meaningless.

So, he goes back to Beatrice Russell, a more down to earth woman, and resumes his position as a beat cop. He wants to help people in the community, and have the chance to have an actual life. He’s reached the limits of what police work can give him, as Lester says, he needs something more than the case.

Kima is on a different side of that arc, she’s immersing herself in police work and infidelity to mask the fact that she feels trapped by a baby she never really wanted, and a relationship that doesn’t do anything for her anymore. I have a lot of affection for Kima, but looking at what she’s doing from an outside perspective, it’s pretty awful, and I think things are going to start crashing down for her over the next couple of seasons.

And, amidst all this, most of the other characters get good stuff too. Bunk kind of disappears from the back half of the season, but his speech to Omar while looking for the gun is a phenomenal scene, breaking through Omar’s self mythology and point out the kind of guy that he really is. When Omar throws the guns into the river at the end of the season, it’s clear that he’s weighing the morality of his actions in a different way.

So, this was a really fantastic season. It’s ambitious and complex, and does a remarkable job of balancing the series’ huge cast. Unfortunately, it also marks the end of the show’s most consistently rewarding plotline, the Bell/Barksdale saga, and the loss of the show’s best character, Stringer. But, the cast is so deep, it shouldn’t be a huge problem. Once the fourth season comes out on DVD next week, I’ll find out.

Battlestar Galactica: Razor

Coming off the dazzling and truly strange heights of season three’s finale, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica, which has been pushed further and further back as time has passed. I want to know what’s up with the four cylons, what the deal is with Hera and what’s going to happen when they get to Earth, not to revisit a two year old plotline I never particularly enjoyed in the first place. But, some Battlestar is better than no Battlestar at all, and that’s the approach you’ve pretty much got to take with Razor. That’s not to say that it’s bad, just that it feels generally irrelevant to the overall narrative of the series.

On a scene by scene level, the film is really successful. There’s a lot of intensity throughout, and the split chronological structure works pretty well. Kendra Shaw has a pretty clear, well thought out arc, and it’s nice to check in with the old favorites. What bothers me is the fact that we never get in depth with either aspect of the plot. The “present day” stuff is basically pointless because this is in the show’s past, and if something really important happened, the characters would have mentioned it. It would have been smarter to either set that part of the movie in the show’s actual present, or just cut it out altogether.

The flashback stuff plays more like someone telling the story of what happened than experiencing the actual events. That’s a problem because the whole point of the movie is to experience what we heard about in season two. Prequels have that problem, of having to summarize events that we’ve probably heard about before, because anything really important would have been mentioned. The best prequel ever made, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, worked by creating an emotional immersion so powerful, we don’t learn anything new about the narrative, but we really feel it for the first time. That happens occasionally here, as in the intense confrontation with the civilians, but too frequently, it just feels like plot summary.

It’s funny to say that something in a fictional story doesn’t matter. Does any of it really matter? Well, the answer to that is yes. The reason for narrative continuity is to make events have an impact. If we’re watching a flashback, it should tell us something new about the world or the people in it. That’s why I feel like we didn’t really get enough time with Admiral Cane. The most interesting part of the film in theory was her relationship with the cylon Gina. This is a woman who doesn’t open up emotionally to anyone, and the one person she lets in turns out to be a cylon.

However, we see very little of the relationship, and it only exists as a fact. Yes, it changes the way we view her actions in season two, but that’s an intellectual thing when this could have been an absolutely devastating emotional moment. Plus, there’s the implication that Shaw has feelings for Cain, this could be a truly bizarre love triangle. Now, perhaps on some level I’m just thinking three hot women in lesbian love triangle, but emotionally, that’s the story of this piece, the most interesting emotional hook, and it’s just glossed over really quickly. If we have a glimpse of an idyllic relationship between Cain and Gina, it makes it easier to understand the way she behaves later in the movie.

As it is, we get some solid action sequences, particularly the scene with young Adama, but not that much of substance. The Pegasus story is dead and gone, and with Shaw’s death at the end of the film, it makes the whole exercise feel somewhat pointless. I’m glad it exists, but like most of the Babylon 5 TV movies, it doesn’t really tell me anything new.

Except for one thing. Once Shaw is left on the basestar, we’re finally at the point where something can actually be revealed. She’s not leaving, so whatever she finds out goes down with her. That’s where we get the brilliant scene with the guy in the tub and his cryptic message that “This has all happened before.” This is the sort of moment that makes me love the show, a weird experiment spouting an oracular message about the destiny of humanity. Visually it’s genius, and genuinely disconcerting.

The notion that Kara will lead humanity to their destruction raises some interesting questions. What I’m really curious about is the idea that they are in some kind of time loop, and the universe will reboot and start again. This has been mentioned before, but its prominence here would seem to guarantee it’ll be a big part of season four. I’m thinking of something like the end of the Dark Tower, but I’m really not sure what’s going to happen.

The other interesting revelation is that the original cylons did experiments on humans before arriving at the current humanoid form. Does that mean that the twelve models were once people, captives of the cylons, who were grown into the new forms? That would make sense, and possibly explain how Tigh could be a cylon, if the one that Adama knew was human, but then swapped for a cylon at some point. All four of the new models were on New Caprica, so it could have something to do with the cylon experiments there.

So, Razor wasn’t bad, but that one scene was more interesting than everything that preceded it. I would have rather seen something that explored more of the series’ post season three continuity, or perhaps this movie should have just been made before season three. As is, it’s an entertaining and well made, but essentially irrelevant movie.

Southland Tales

I’ve been looking forward to Southland Tales for literally years now, and it’s tough for any film to live up to that burden. Luckily, early buzz about the movie was awful, lowering my expectations, but not awful in a way that made me uninterested in the film. After finally seeing this movie, I can certainly see why people called it a disaster, on a lot of levels it is, but it’s also got some of the most transcendent moments I’ve seen in recent cinema, and a unique spin on reality that’s unlike anything else out there. It’s clearly a flawed movie, but any movie with this much good stuff is worthwhile.

I loved Donnie Darko, it’s one of the best debut films of all time, and a perfect fusion of sci-fi content and ideas with a strong emotional core. However, Richard Kelly’s subsequent fucking with the movie for the director’s cut did not inspire confidence for future efforts. He didn’t seem to understand what made the film work, and the more he worked with the movie, the worse it go.

Southland Tales contains a lot of Donnie Darko, but it feels more like a followup to the Kelly scripted Domino, a movie that much like Southland is overflowing with digressive narrative strands and an odd blend of sincere emotion and over the top comedy. Until I saw Southland, I focused on Domino from a directorial point of view, Tony Scott’s acid trip cinematography and editing were my initial take away, but it’s clear that the script was more than just a work for hire job.

Let me start with the bad on Southland. The movie is incredibly disjointed, and takes a long time to settle into any sort of comfortable tone and reality. Due to the constant media intrusions, it often feels like we’re watching a summary of events, not experiencing the reality of events themselves. This isn’t helped by the lengthy prologue that sums up the state of things in the film’s universe. This and the Donnie Darko: DC make it clear that Kelly doesn’t need to tell us everything about the universe. He may know a whole bunch of details about what’s going on, but virtually nothing in the voiceover narration tells us something we need to know that we can’t pick up on from what we’re seeing. The same is true of the film’s opening, all we really need to know is there was a nuclear attack and now we’re in a police state. The details distract from the emotional reality of the story, and don’t add that much.

Having a disjointed, cobbled together film isn’t necessarily a problem. 2046, a film that was also re-edited following a negative Cannes response, is quite tough to follow, jutting off in countless narrative directions. However, rather than trying to explain all the details of the future world, or the 60s stuff, Wong Kar-Wai immerses us in a central emotion. Even if we don’t understand what’s happening, we’re feeling something. Kelly eventually gets us to a place like this, but it takes a while.

I read one critic who said that the film should have been cut into a 90 minute avant garde film, something I’d actually agree with. The movie has about 90 minutes of absolute brilliance in there, but then there’s a lot of material that doesn’t go anywhere. Most of that stuff comes early on, and centers around one of the neo Marxist cells. The Cheri Oteri and Amy Poehler stuff just isn’t very good, despite the presence of Avon himself, Wood Harris. This story sets some stuff in motion, but it had the least compelling characters, and is likely what soured a lot of people on the film.

The two most compelling characters are Boxer Santaros and Krysta Now, played by two talented actors who all too rarely get material up to their caliber. The Rock is a really charismatic guy, who can do a specific type of role really well. I don’t know that this role fully takes advantage of his talents, largely because he spends much of the film timidly reacting to stuff, not actually acting.

Krysta is Sarah Michelle Gellar’s best role since Buffy, she absolutely nails the character and I found myself wanting more screentime for her. You could have done an entire movie just about that character. She’s an embodiment of the media at this moment, and it would have been interesting to get more insight into her inner emotional world. How can someone who’s perceived as a symbol exist as a person?

The movie takes a while to congeal. The opening has some strong stuff, but it’s more a collection of sketches than a coherent narrative. The frequent tonal shifts make it hard to relate to the story on an emotional level. But, around the midpoint, things start to come together. The scene at Frost’s house is where we move beyond random episodes and get a more clear narrative. Now, I don’t mean to imply that episodic storytelling can’t work, or knock this other stuff as “filler.” But, in a movie like this, you need some kind of connection between the stories to make it worth watching as more than a bunch of skits. Look at a film like Magnolia, which even before the characters meet, feels tonally and emotionally united. You have a sense of momentum and stylistic immersion.

That’s what we start to get into during the Frost house scene. The different worlds of the movie collide, and we get a bunch of jokes about cock chugging. At the same time, we get the trippy drug musical sequence set to the The Killers. I love musical sequences, and even if this one does feel a bit random, it works for me as a moment of spectacle.

But, apparently not for everyone. At this point, three of the six people in the theater walked out. I was waiting for this film for years and barely heard it was coming out. At the 9:30 PM screening on a Saturday night, there were six people in the theater. So, don’t expect big box office for this thing. I’m thinking it’ll be basically wiped out of theaters after Thanksgiving, an unfortunate fate for a movie that deserves to be seen.

The sequences on the zeppelin are gorgeous. I love the art deco meets THX-1138 design aesthetic, and Boxer’s uncertainty about what’s going on. Movies are such a tough thing because the moments that really work have a certain alchemy that’s impossible to know. It’s not about good writing, or even good direction, it’s about everything coming together to create a mood and feeling that immerses the viewer. That’s what the zeppelin stuff did to me, I was really feeling the movie at this point

The sequence that made the movie for me was the finale, once the two Sean William Scotts meet, and Krysta comes out to dance. At this point, I don’t really understand why she’s dancing, why her hair’s changed color, or what the significance is to the narrative, and the beauty of that sequence is that none of that matters. It’s about a pure filmic moment, the mask on Krysta, her embrace with Boxer as lights swirl around them and the subsequent dance with Frost’s daughter.

The music here, and throughout the film was phenomenal. Moby’s score created such a dreamlike mood, basically any time it was playing, the film was better. Part of the avant garde film suggestion above was likely motivated by the fact that the music unified everything, and created a consistent mood that was absent during the random comedy digressions. And, the music was never better than during that dance sequence. Cutting the zeppelin action with the floating ice cream truck and the kid standing on top of it was just dazzlng. That moment makes the film worth seeing, it’s one of the purest, most transcendent cinematic moments of the decade.

The film’s apocalyptic ending raises a lot of questions, but it’s most easily understandable on an emotional level. The zeppelin, where all the old order characters are gathered, is shot down, and a new order can begin from the fusion of two souls. The fourth dimension is ripped to shreds, and a new messiah is born.

I’m a bit iffy on the inclusion of the time travel stuff. It seems to come out of nowhere at the end of the film, and Kevin Smith’s dodgy acting doesn’t help sell things. I didn’t really need an explanation for why things happened, they just did and that was enough. I suppose it’s necessary for the ending to work, but it got a bit exposition heavy there. That’s another case where Kelly would have been better served by just leaving the viewer to interpret the goings on.

Take the Taverners. The two of them meeting each other is a perfect physical representation of our internal conflicts. Earlier in the film, Boxer talks about feeling like he has a thousand selves in him, united only by memories. So, this final image would literalize those multiple selves and in their fusion pave the way for a new world. It still works that way, but the time travel background clouds things a bit.

In the end, this is a rich and challenging film that succeeds despite some issues. I like to judge films by what they are. I’d rather see a movie like this that aims incredibly high, tackles a broad range of themes and issues, and doesn’t nail everything than a movie that aims low and achieves all its goals. I’d be suspicious of a “perfect film,” if you can make something that’s perfect, it probably means you’re not aiming high enough. Again and again you’ll see critics reward small movies that are well acted and made, but don’t ignite passion, that don’t have those cinematic moments I was talking about earlier.

At this point, TV has basically taken over storytelling and character development from cinema. Virtually no movie can match something like The Wire or John From Cincinnati in terms of character development and sustained story. What movies can do that TV cannot is create a specific mood, immerse you in a world. You go into the dark theater and get lost in the images. Movies should be a drug, taking you to a place you cannot go in real life, and that’s what the end of the film does. You are in that world, experiencing everything, and it’s awe inspiring. It may be a small piece of this large film that does that, but it’s that kind of moment that I watch movies for.

The Wire: 3x01 & 3x02

I’m two episodes into season three of The Wire, a season that clearly marks a return to the conflict and milieu of the first season, which is at once a relief and a slight disappointment. So far, the show is as good as it’s ever been, but there is something of the conservatism inherent to series TV. Still, as things develop, I doubt that’ll matter much, this season is shaping up to be the best yet.

Season two featured a lot of wonderful moments, but was less of a cohesive whole than year one. The major issue was the conflict between the port storyline and the Barksdale storyline. Because we were already familiar with all the Barksdale characters, I was more interested in what was up with them. That meant that even when the port storyline was good, it didn’t grab me in the same way as the Barksdale stuff, and what was supposedly the main focus of the season felt ancillary.

The flaw of the port storyline for me was that it was more predictable than the drug stuff. Frank was not up to outwitting the police, and it was pretty clear the detail would never catch the Greek, so the season becomes a tragedy, as we wait for Frank and Ziggy to screw up and either get busted by the police or killed. Plus, I think The Greek’s indisputable villainy removed a lot of the ambiguity of the first season. He has none of the shading of Avon or Stringer. And Frank was so doomed, there wasn’t that spark of hope, as in the case of D’Angelo or Wallace, which made the ending even more tragic. What really kills someone emotionally is when the character has a moment where they could get out, could succeed, and wind up crashing and burning. I never felt like Frank could succeed.

But, this negativity is only in relation to the astonishing emotional complexity of season one, something that’s back with season three. While it may be a bit of a backslide to not immerse us into another world, the show feels much more unified as a result. We’re seeing the war on crime from the political side, the street policing side and the criminal side. But, our sympathies are perpetually shifting.

The character I consistently find most compelling is Stringer, trying to run his crew like a business, using traditional meeting rules and emphasizing the strength of the product rather than the strength of his crew. For the past two seasons, there’s been a conflict brewing between him and Avon, the businessman and the soldier. Avon explicitly rejects his application of business school principles to the drug game, he’s a soldier and wants to control territory, not just make money.

Our main window to this world is Bodie, who’s been on a steady rise through the ranks. I love the scene where he meets Herc and Carver at the movies and mocks their constant attempts to arrest him. Another great scene is where they bring in Cheese, and tip their hand about the wire, only to find out that he shot an actual dog, not a guy named Dog. This is where the drug dealers top the port storyline, they are smart and disciplined. I believe someone on the show said a police is only as good as the criminal he’s chasing, and Bodie’s going to push you a lot harder than Ziggy. It’s going to be interesting to see how the war on the streets impacts Stringer’s business philosophy.

The new focus for the season is the political side of the city. This is something that’s been developing in the background for a while, and it’s nice to see Burrell get some time in the spotlight. He’s been such a phony so far, I’d like to see more of how he feels about what’s going on. Has he given up hope of actually changing anything, or does he really believe he’s doing his best to reduce crime? One of the things the show has constantly done is turn potentially clichéd figures into nuanced people, and I’d like to see the same happen for Burrell.

One of the things that is consistently amazing about the show is just how much they fit in an episode. They fly by, and at this point I’m always disappointed when they end, just because I want more, but there’s an amazing amount of development in each. The cast is huge, but I rarely feel like anyone’s not getting their moments. Part of that is probably watching it on DVD, where a couple of episodes without any major Kima or Bunk can go by with little notice, but each episode is satisfying on its own, not just a teaser for the next week. I don’t think any other show has had a cast this big, and managed them this well. That was particularly remarkable in season two, where we had three distinct storylines moving forward.

The season premiere has McNulty saying something like we’re going back to the Barksdale case, but we’re doing it right this time, right after pulling out a box like Barksdale 2002. We are returning to the place that season one left, and that sort of retreat has bothered me on other shows. Alias died for me when they brought everyone back under Sloane, trying to return to the status quo of year one. In this case, it works better because things have evolved. The Barksdale is at a different place, and is just as likely to implode from within as fall under external forces. The focus in season one was more on the police investigation, here it seems more about the internal mechanisms of Barksdale’s crew. Of course, the police still have a role to play. But, I feel like McNulty planting the notion that D’Angelo’s death wasn’t a suicide is going to do a lot more damage than any arrests they make.

So, I’m loving where the show is at now. I don’t mean to denigrate season two, it was brilliant, but things are tighter now and I feel like all three storylines have a central focus. Ultimately, the best measure of how well the show is working is probably the fact that after an episode finishes, I’m shocked that an hour has already passed, and I want to queue up another one.

The X-Files: Season One Reflections

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been rewatching The X-Files, up through “Eve” now. The series was my favorite show when it was on, and the first TV show I really got into. However, the past two seasons really soured me on it, and obscured a lot of the good stuff that had come before. Watching it today, after seeing shows that were much more consistently successful, I think it’s a little easier to accept the show’s flaws and just appreciate it for what it is.

The show’s greatest strength, from start to finish, was the incredible chemistry between Mulder and Scully. Pretty much any episode with the two of them together has at least a couple of moments of interest. “The Jersey Devil” has a main plot that’s frankly embarrassing, but the subplot with Scully going on a date, and Mulder’s implicit jealousy, makes it worth watching. Late in the series, people might have gotten mad about their romantic entanglement, but right from the start, the show is a story of these two people who have only each other and their work. An interesting story to do would have been an alternate timeline where Mulder never met Scully and wound up either arrested or insane. Scully is his anchor, keeping him from drifting off, and Mulder helps pull her out of a narrow minded acceptance of the system into new ideas and concepts.

The series has an overarching central narrative, but that’s not in place in season one. So, the ongoing narrative arc is the strengthening of Mulder and Scully’s relationship. An episode like “Ice” tells a strong standalone story, but the scene that lingers is the moment where Scully checks Mulder for bugs. I skipped over a couple episodes that I remember as being bad, but through the episodes I watched, there is a clear progression in their relationship.

After 9/11, people said that the government conspiracy ethos of The X-Files was no longer relevant, that the government was good then. Obviously, it wasn’t, and watching the show today, trust no one is more apt than ever. I think a lot of people have issues understanding the way that genre and reality interact, particularly with sci-fi. There’s this feeling that a movie like Good Night and Good Luck can say a lot about our world, but a sci-fi show or comic can’t. For me, genre magnifies the conflicts inherent in reality, and gives us a better understanding of the stakes.

Take a look at Jack Kirby’s brilliant Glorious Godfrey story in The Forever People. That’s a powerful condemnation of the fascistic qualities of the religious right, but most people would just view it as goofy seventies comics. In the same way, I think it’s easy to dismiss the delusional military personnel and omnipresent men in black as relics of 90s paranoid culture. But, the emphasis on an ephemeral truth is perfectly analogous with what Bush has done to our world. Aliens might not be involved, but his government has covered up the truth whenever possible. Who knows what they’re doing that we haven’t heard about yet?

But, reality has shown things in a slightly different light than what the series reveals. Here, the truth is seen as something that can save people if they just find out about it. It’s a weapon that can be used against the government conspiracy. However, what reality shows is that people don’t care about the truth, we can hear about Guantanimo Bay, but we’re so powerless to do anything about it, caring about it seems almost counterproductive. Beyond that, we’ve got presidential candidates actually saying that the torture done there should be continued! That is so hard for me to believe, but Bush has shaped an us vs. them reality and created a war that can never be won. It’s a real tragedy, he has warped the truth, the very weapon that here is Mulder’s salvation.

Yes, there’s an element of quaintness when Max Fennig pops up talking about the JFK assassination. Notably, society has completely marginalized 9/11 conspiracy theory. I’m not saying that Bush attacked the towers, but I don’t think it’s so absurd to not be discussed at all, considering the attack allowed him to enact all the policy he wanted to. But, in this case, the origin of 9/11 is less important than what he did in its wake, and that’s just as evil, if not more so, as the act itself.

I always loved the government conspiracy stuff more than anything else on the series, and it’s those episodes that still resonate. The Litchfield Experiment in “Eve” is fascinating, and believable. “Fallen Angel” is another strong episode, a prototype for the larger mythology episodes to come. I really want to get to those classic mytharc two parters, but for now, I’m just enjoying the standalone stories. The show could have been so much more if guided by someone like Joss Whedon or David Simon, but as is, it’s still consistently enjoyable and frequently thought provoking. At its best, the series is as good as anything that ever aired on TV. But, it was rarely at its best, and certainly wasn’t there in these early season one episodes.

X-Men: Messiah Complex: Chapter Two (Uncanny X-Men 492)

Chapter two spends a disconcerting amount of time recapping the storyline from part one. I suppose the point of the news report stuff is to show the extent of the devastation in Alaska, but we already saw that last week, so there’s no particular need for it. I would argue that this issue and the prelude could have been combined into one 30 page issue to speed the story along. But, I suppose it’s a 13-part crossover, so it’s going to take a while to maneuver everything into place.

What’s most interesting about this issue for me isn’t the story itself, as I mentioned, basically nothing happened, it’s looking at the way that Morrison’s run and other previous X-Men stuff has been synthesized to build the current status quo. X-Men itself is an evolving concept, a title that has been through many permutations, each new one taking elements of what’s come before and combining them into something new. I actually really like where the series is now. Despite the awfulness of House of M, the shortage of mutants has given the characters a new focus and gives an urgency to this storyline.

But, this status quo is ultimately counter productive to the thematic agenda of the series as a whole. Morrison redefined the characters and concepts in a way that was more dynamic and real than they’d ever been before. His run was all about examining the way that evolved humans would be perceived in the real world. They would certainly be hated by some, but would likely be at the center of culture, and that’s what he did to them. His X-Men were cool, an aspirational model for humanity. It was a more relatable model than the dying race we’ve got here.

But, I’m hoping this storyline will eventually bring us to the rebirth of mutant culture, it’s one of the rare cases where a giant reset button would be appreciated. Does Layla Miller have a superhero name yet? If so, I hope it’s Deus ex machina, but in this case, maybe her and Forge can make something to bring the powers back.

As for the story itself, our primary focus is the conflict between Scott and Xavier. Scott has grown up and taken control of the team, something that makes Xavier feel superfluous. I think this is an effective storyline because it takes advantage of Scott’s relationship with Emma Frost. She is his go to telepath now, and is willing to do things that Xavier isn’t. I love that Scott and Emma are still together, though neither are written as well as they were by Claremont or Morrison.

So, this issue isn’t exactly great, but it’s got enough interesting stuff to keep me reading. I’m eager to get to Sinister himself, and figure out what’s going on with him and his crew.

The Wire: 2x03-2x09

The Wire’s first season is pretty close to a perfect season, telling its story and ending in a satisfying way. However, either imprisoning or killing most of the street characters, and splitting the detail up left them with some work to do to get things rolling again in season two. The second season is quite ambitious, and still immensely satisfying, but also runs into some issues that weren’t present in season one.

The major issue for me is simply the divided focus. I think it was smart to expand the focus and not just retread the cops vs. drug dealers storyline of the first season. If you keep Avon around, we’ve got the same basic conflict and not much room for the story to grow. However, this brings us to a catch 22. I loved the characters in the street storyline, so even though I think the focus needs to change for the series’ overall health, in changing the focus, we lose touch with much of what made the series successful in the first place. Particularly with all the major police characters splintered apart, I found myself wanting to spend more time with Stringer, Bodie and the other characters from that storyline.

Instead, we spend a lot of time with the dock workers. Those characters have grown on me a bit, but still don’t feel as fully realized as the characters on the street in season one. Part of it is that I find the milieu, the heavy drinking blue collar lifestyle, less interesting than the disciplined business world of the street characters. Avon and Stringer were a worthy foe, and you got the sense that they could outwit the police. Frank Sobotka is a tragic character because he’s merely a pawn in a much larger criminal enterprise.

Now, you could argue that’s true of the drug dealers too, something made explicit in D’Angelo’s speech over the chess board. But, it’s tough to watch the inevitable oncoming tragedy for Sobotka. Even if he beats the cops, the port is on the way out, his lifestyle is on the way out, and that’s driving Nick into drug dealing in the same way that the project kids get pushed there. Thematically, the storyline expands the series’ scope considerably. We get the absurdity of these struggling people paying thousands of dollars to politicians to try to preserve their jobs. Watching this series makes you astonished that anything good happens in American politics because the entire system seems to be motivated by people paying politicians off to pursue their own interests. Sobotka is driven to illegal activity because he needs to pay off the politicians to save his job. Shouldn’t they just be looking out for him in the first place?

I actually like Frank and Nick, but the other characters are annoying. Ziggy’s unhinged self bothers me, though I did enjoy his duck plot. The other characters aren’t as well realized as the minor street characters, they seem to exist more in the service of the plot than just exist because they’re there.

But, my issues with the port plot are primarily because the other plots are so much more interesting. On another show, this port stuff would be the best thing, but it pales next to the riveting drama surrounding Avon’s crew. Placed in more of a leadership role, Stringer has become my favorite character on the series. The switch from strip club to funeral home for his headquarters is appropriate because, as he says, he’s not a soldier like Avon, he’s a businessman. He’s clearly got an aptitude for economics, and I love when he applies what he learns in class to his drug business.

Stringer’s conflict in guiding his organization is between being a soldier and being a businessman. Is it more important to have the towers but no product, or to deal with Proposition Joe and lose some of his territory? Avon is stubborn and won’t concede their need to ally with Joe. Stringer is more of a pragmatist. There’s a lot of conflict brewing between Avon and Stringer, with Brianna in the middle. They’ve already set up a way for Avon to get out of prison, and I’m guessing that next season will deal with Stringer struggling to give up power after Avon’s return. Can Avon run things better than he is? Probably not, but can he shut Avon out of the organization that he started?

One of the most shocking developments for me was D’Angelo’s death. Arguably the main character on the drug side of things, I was wondering how they’d get out of the corner they’d written him into. When he started to get choked, I was shocked, and as time passed, I realized he wasn’t going to get out of it. It does make sense from a storytelling perspective, but it’s cold. D was our best hope among those characters, and now, he’s gone. Now he’ll never know the difference between Ultimate Spider-Man and regular.

Over with the police, we finally reunite the detail. A lot of shows, like The X-Files and Friday Night Lights, like to mess with the status quo at the end of season one, leading to the inevitable slide back to what things before. It makes a lot more sense to have the detail together, and thankfully they’ve made it permanent so we won’t have to deal with the split. What I loved about the first season was watching the team work together, watching everyone find what they could contribute to the whole. They’re not quite running at full strength yet, but the brothel sting was a really fun mission. There’s actually a lot more humor this season, and it’s all the funnier because of the show’s usual seriousness.

So, the series is still going strong. The economy of the storytelling is dazzling and the writing still humbling. In Russell, we’ve got another fully realized, compelling character. My only major issue now is that the port storyline isn’t as interesting as the drug stuff. I’m guessing that will be a season two only thing, so it shouldn’t be a problem for too much longer.

House of M

I just finished reading Brian Bendis’s House of M, a storyline that had a major impact on the universe of the X-Men, but also managed to be one of the most poorly structured, logically unsound and outright boring crossovers in comics history. This I so misguided on many levels, it’s hard to even consider.

My major issue with the story is that it’s inherently pointless, because we know that the world is going to get reset by the end of it. Now, it’s true that the characters remember what happened, and there’s a couple of major lasting consequences, but really, the whole crossover winds up being about one moment. There’s six issues of messing around, then about ten pages of stuff that’s actually interesting, with Wanda and Pietro, then the story just ends.

Bendis must be a pagan because we’ve got so many gods in the machine in the story. The biggest, and most interesting, is Wanda. I think they could have done a fantastic story about Wanda’s reality warping powers going out of whack, forcing the heroes to question what they’re doing. The best scene in the book is the opening, where Wanda invents fictional children for herself and Xavier has to remind her they’re not real. In the beginning, she seems totally on the verge of losing it, and there’s a lot of potential in exploring how you deal with someone who’s so incredibly powerful, and completely out of control.

That’s what we get in the first issue, and that stuff’s not bad. However, it quickly is replaced by yet another alternate reality. Claremont’s original Days of Future Past was brilliant, but it’s opened a lot of awful doors for later writers. At this point, ten years after Age of Apocalypse, did we really need another extended trip to an alternate reality? I don’t think so, certainly not one as boring as this. While it’s admirable that we don’t have yet another fascist dystopia that ends with all our heroes dying, making a relatively ordinary world doesn’t produce the most interesting stories. We basically spend five issues following Wolverine around as central deus ex machina Layla resets peoples’ memories. The problem with this is I have no reason to care that people are being reset, I know what’s ‘real’ to them, and after seeing one person reset, we don’t gain anything from the rest of those scenes.

The big issue for me with the story as is is the fact that Wolverine so vehemently shoots down the idea that maybe they should leave things as they are. What’s so wrong with a world where everyone has what they want? In most stories like this, we get the implication that to continue to live this way would be a lie, a betrayal of some innate idea of reality. However, if Wanda can give everyone the world that they want, wouldn’t be it a betrayal to deprive them of that? A mutant powerful enough could make everyone happy, wouldn’t that be enough?

Of course, that would mean no more interesting stories. However, you could make a pretty interesting story if there was a real conflict between people who wanted to preserve the House of M world versus those who need to get back to reality.

As it is, the story is so devoid of moral or thematic complexity, it’s hard to believe. The most interesting character, the focus of the entire thing, is Wanda. She’s got a lot of issues to deal with, how does she live in this perfect world she’s created, the only one, other than Pietro, who’s aware that it’s a lie? It would be more interesting to have her knowledge of reality conflict with everyone else’s happiness, that she could make the perfect world for everyone else, but never herself.

That’s not what we get. Instead, Wanda doesn’t appear in the House of M world until issue 7, and we get very little insight into her motivations or psychosis. I think the most interesting story you could spin out of this would be to make the House of M universe a completely irrational, unsteady universe. I’m not clear on how her powers work, but is she mentally supporting the entire rewritten universe. I think it’d be more interesting if her changes were eroding, and the heroes found themselves struggling to save the universe from imploding on itself.

Of course, this crossover isn’t particularly interested in that sort of cosmic stuff. Great crossovers have been made out of character stuff, Mutant Massacre for one. However, if you want to explore characters, rewriting the entire universe to remove the central issue of the crossover isn’t the best way to do it. I guess the point was to show people what they could have been, but that’s only dealt with in Spiderman’s story. And, maybe it’s just a bias of my own reading, but it’s very weird to have Spiderman hanging out with the X-Men. I think the X-Men make a lot more sense in a world without other superheroes, it’s not good to have the other corners of the Marvel Universe intrude on them.

The reason I’d call this the worst of the major X events is primarily because it’s boring. Say what you will about X-Tinction Agenda or X-Cutioner’s Song, they were brimming with ideas, characters and craziness. You’re overwhelmed with characters and storylines, it may be hard to follow, but it’s trying for something big. Here, everything happens in a linear way, and there’s no real conflict anywhere in the story. There’s no particular urgency either, because if you could remake the world once, you can remake it again. Is it a better story than some of those early 90s crossovers? Yes, but it’s less entertaining.

And, I’m confused about why everyone thinks Magneto made this reality. They just assumed, but I always figured it was Wanda herself. The major twist seems to be that Pietro was the one who told her to, but I just kind of assumed he did, in light of what we saw in issue one. Admittedly, I knew about no more mutants before hand, but your story shouldn’t have just one twist. Really, this entire book was about that one page.

As for “No more mutants,” I think it’s pretty foolish to do this story as a result of an alternate reality. With each alternate reality, the credibility of your characters declines, and having such a major plot point come out of this one raises the question of why you couldn’t just alter reality again to change things back. Alternate realities remove characters’ agency, in this story, no one makes any choices, they just go along doing stuff. And, the no more mutants thing is undermined by the fact that so many of the characters we know still have their powers. That was an appalling plot point, and I need discuss it no further.

I did enjoy a couple of things. Dr. Strange was pretty awesome, and I’d love to read some more stories with him. The scenes with him and Wanda are easily the best part of the book. However, it really bothers me that Wanda’s entire arc is motivated by desire to have children, a bit cliché for a female character.

Bendis, how much did Marvel pay for your soul? I hope it was worth it. His work on Jinx and Goldfish was amazing, his early Marvel work was pretty good, but why are you jobbing to Joe Quesada’s editorial whims? Do some creator owned work again, and stay away from big crossovers like this. This isn’t the worst X-Men story out there, but it’s bad in a different way than most.

Compared to its DC counterpart, Infinite Crisis, there’s no contest. Crisis was full of crazy ideas, fun concepts and real world changing stuff. This, just another pointless alternate reality exercise in the service of an editorial mandate.

X-Men: Messiah Complex

So, despite my better instincts, I decided to pick up X-Men: Messiah Complex yesterday, and perhaps embark upon a thirteen issue crossover. What are my reasons? One is I have a bunch of money coming in, and pass a comics store everyday, so it would be pretty easy to follow. The other is that I do have a lot of investment in the characters, and am curious to see what’s going on in their world. While this isn’t the world’s best comic, it’s pretty solid, and is probably going to get me to the second issue of the tale.

This week, I’ve been reading the first hardcover collection of Mike Carey’s X-Men run. While no Claremont or Morrison, it’s a thoroughly entertaining look at the characters, stripping away a lot of the convoluted backstory to tell a fairly straightahead story. The big event driving these characters is M-Day, a really dumb plot twist, but one that makes more sense once it became clear that they would undo M-Day sometime in the near future. The basic deal with M-Day is that after a lengthy alternate reality storyline, the Scarlet Witch rewrote reality to remove most mutants’ powers. Conveniently, most of the X-Men were unaffected, but it has given them a new focus, fighting to protect the mutants that are out there, and searching for a cure for others.

The issue with M-Day for me is that if you change things in an alternate reality, it undermines the reality of the story you’re telling. If something so drastic can be altered, why doesn’t someone just go back and unalter it? Opening that door makes it hard for anything to have consequences. If you really wanted to go this route, why not just have mutants spontaneously start losing their powers, until there’s only a few left. That would raise a lot of key questions within the concept, like, do most of the people want to go back to being mutants, or are they happy to be ‘normal’?

My bigger issue is that the M-Day thing removes most of the story’s real world relevance. Morrison made mutants more like real life minorities, hated at times, but also central to popular culture. He simultaneously addressed human evolution and social evolution in what I’d consider a suitable finale to the series as a whole. Nothing is needed beyond Here Comes Tomorrow, to some extent everything after, from Joss’s run to this, feels like fanfiction.

Still, it’s cool to see a lot of the Morrison stuff still in place. We’ve got Cerebra, cat Beast, Cyclops and Emma together, etc. I love the Cyclops/Emma relationship because Emma has all the power, her cutting cynicism always able to put Scott down. That said, Scott’s outfit is awful looking, like a giant condom. Why couldn’t they just stick with the Morrison jackets? Those were fantastic.

That said, most of the people in Carey’s crew look pretty cool. I really like Rogue’s hooded outfit, and Chris Bachalo makes all the villains look stylish. I didn’t particularly like Bachalo’s work on “Assault on Weapon Plus,” but I’m digging it here. I really miss him when the fill in artists come in. He’s not the best storyteller, but he’s got a fantastic sense of style.

Ultimately, the best thing I can say about Carey’s X-Men is that it feels like it’s moving forward, not just servicing a trademark. I want to see what happens with these characters, and the glimpses of larger goings on, with Exodus and Sinister, are great. I’m a huge Mister Sinister fan, for no apparent reason. I had the action figure when I was younger and I’ve always loved the design of the character. The character is really theatrical and over the top, but he’s a great villain, and looks fantastic in the Simone Bianchi drawn pinup in the back of Messiah Complex.

As for the Messiah Complex issue itself, it’s pretty strong, though clearly just a prelude, not anything in itself. We get the real sense that something’s going down, something important. The art is nice, and our brief glimpse of the Marauders is cool. However, it’s going to take a couple of issues to see what the series is really about.

I’ve been reading a ton of superhero comics lately, primarily because reading one invariably leads to another story and then to another. Seven Soldiers led to Morrison’s JLA, 52, Crisis on Infinite Earths, Infinite Crisis and I’m sure more soon. This book is going to lead to lot more, as well as an effort to catch up on some previous X-Men stuff. It’s nice to check in with the characters every once in a while, and at least here they’re competently written. I don’t know if I’ll make it through the whole crossover, but I’ll at least give it a chance.

Joss Whedon's Dollhouse

Great news came out of nowhere today with the news that Joss Whedon’s going to be doing a new show, Dollhouse with Eliza Dushku. I’d hoped that he’d go back to TV at some point, but wasn’t expecting it to happen so soon, so this was an out of nowhere great surprise.

As for the show itself, it’s definitely got potential. It sounds at first like it’ll be a bit standalone heavy, but the beauty of a Joss show is the evolution of it. Watching the first season of Angel, I wasn’t thrilled with things, but as it went along, it really picked up. My big fear is that the show will get screwed like countless other Fox shows and not get a chance to develop. It would be pretty tough to take a cancellation after seven episodes, or a summer burnoff for the series. At this point, Joss has a pretty big fanbase, hopefully it will be enough to get the series up and running. If nothing else, there’ll be a lot of chatter about it online.

Joss seems to have acknowledged that he pretty much failed to make a go of it in the movies. There’s a different sort of storytelling in film, and I don’t think his talents are particularly suited to it. While he clearly can do really powerful, visual storytelling, as in Restless of OMWF, I don’t think that’s his default mode. For Serenity, he went with a fairly straightforward visual style and straightforward story. It’s a good movie, but it’s not much better than any given episode of the Firefly series. From that point of view, why should we want two hours of Joss every couple of years when we could twenty hours every year?

Ultimately, TV in its current incarnation is just a much better medium for storytelling than movies. When done properly, which admittedly it isn’t most of the time, it can allow for a vast canvas of stories that don’t require the three act structure and obvious character arcs of most Hollywood movies. In The Wire, you have no idea who’s going to die or be successful, there’s just so many people in there, anyone is expendable.

For me, movies today should move more towards Wong Kar-Wai or Malick style storytelling, the sort of atmospheric style immersions that aren’t possible on a TV schedule. That’s a reason I’d consider The New World and Miami Vice the best films of recent years, they weren’t so much about story as about going to a place and lingering there. If The Wire was a movie, I’d enjoy it, but not in the same way as the series.

Next year looks like it’s going to be an incredible year for TV. We’ve got the last season of The Wire and the debut of Alan Ball’s True Blood and Joss’s show. A lot of really great shows have ended over the past couple of years, and now it looks like we’re finally getting the replacements in.

And speaking of good news, it’s also great to hear that Terence Malick has a new film in the works. Not much is known, but the title, Tree of Life, certainly sounds intriguing. Malick is one of the most distinctive, visually skilled filmmakers ever. He uses the medium like no one else, and is coming off his best movie. Obviously, it’s a long way from starting, but I really hope this movie happens in the near future.

Infinite Crisis

A while back, I read Infinite Crisis, the followup to DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, and another series that is full of odd, convoluted storytelling, put over the top by the sheer epicness of everything that happens. It’s not a great story, but it’s got enough good stuff to carry it along. Most importantly, it’s something that’s uniquely comics, relying on a huge amount of past continuity and fan familiarity with the concepts to make it work.

It’s a pretty direct sequel to the original Crisis, plucking four other Earth characters out of the ‘heaven’ they went to at the end of the first book and returning them to current continuity. This is done primarily as a way to engage in a bunch of meta commentary on the state of superhero comics. The DCU has moved in an increasingly dark direction, so we bring in the Earth 2 Superman to point out just how far the heroes have fallen. On one level, it’s a pretty clear knock on contemporary comics, ironically housed in a book about conflicted, fallen heroes and some of the most over the top violence seen in a mainstream superhero book.

However, the reading that made the book work for me was to think of Superboy Prime and Kal-L Superman as representatives of the Bush government. They are people who think the world has fallen into decadence and moral uncertainty, and seek to use their power to restore moral order to the world, no matter how much violence in takes. Superboy Prime in particular is reminiscent of Bush’s temper tantrum my way or no way at all behavior. The big setpiece for him is the rush through the Titans, tearing limbs off b list characters, all the while chastising them for their immoral behavior. That irony is the key to Bush’s misguided worldview, everything he does is right because it’s in the service of something good, everything we do is wrong.

That would make Alex Luthor the Dick Cheney of the piece, secretly trying to reshape the world behind the scenes, and Earth 2 Superman the entire older generation, who’s been duped by Bush’s war mongering. For me, that reading takes the book beyond an echo chamber look at comics and gives it some overall relevance for the world. Was it intentional? I’m not positive, but it fits so well, it doesn’t really matter.

Of course, we’ve also got a clear tie back to Miracleman. The extreme violence made it jump out for me, but Superboy Prime is basically Kid Miracleman. Things never reach the operatic heights of the definitive superhero fight, Miracleman 15, but pretty much no series since has, so that’s not something you can knock it for.

As for the book outside that, much like the original Crisis, it’s epic and thrilling most of the time, even if the end loses a bit of the momentum. It’s interesting that people condemn the book for being so continuity reliant when if this was a literary work, people would be hailing it for the complexity. Well, maybe not exactly, but nobody cracks of James Joyce for taking a lot of effort to decipher. There’s something cool about having sixty years of story behind a single narrative. Morrison’s talked about the DCU becoming sentient, and in this case, the sheer amount of backstory involved means the narrative takes on a life of its own, commenting back on the previous stories that have been told.

The series benefits from some fantastic Phil Jiminez artwork. Unfortunately, like his run on The Invisibles, the perfect polish and style of the opening slips a bit by the end as we get fill in artists and messy inkers. But, it still looks really good, and even though I’m sure JG Jones will be great, I’d love to see Phil work with Morrison on Final Crisis.

And Final Crisis is the main reason I read this book. When Morrison’s miniseries comes out next year, I want to be fully acquainted with the backstory and ready to tackle whatever he comes up with. Having gotten caught up in the DCU recently, I’m really excited about that series and finding out what Morrison’s going to do for his final statement in the DCU, at least for now. IC is already full of characters from Seven Soldiers, I spotted everyone in there at some point, always putting a smile on my face. Hopefully he’ll bring some of those guys back and nail that series. If anyone can write something that’s truly forward thinking with the DCU, it’s Grant.

Batman and Son

Grant Morrison and Batman aren’t an obvious match. He wrote a fantastic version of the character for his run on JLA, but that was as part of a larger, crazier world than Batman usually encounters in his solo title. Reading the first trade of his run, it’s pretty clear this is a minor Morrison work, engaging in very little of his typical philosophical exploration. It’s the weakest thing he’s wrote in a while, or at least the least ambitious, but he did manage to bring a freshness and excitement to the Batman mythos. It’s a rollicking, very funny book, and does represent a kind of growth for Grant.

The thematic center of the series is Batman rediscovering Bruce Wayne, which takes the form of a performance. One of the central themes of superhero comics is the notion that putting on the costume allows the real person to come out. Batman Returns, the definitive superhero film, gives us Selina Kyle, mild mannered secretary, constantly struggling to please her boss. However, after she transforms into Catwoman, she becomes a hedonist pleasure seeker, feeding her own appetite for destruction and power. Wearing the costume allows her to engage in a part of herself that society doesn’t permit.

The interesting thing here is the reversal of that trope. Bruce has become so enmeshed in his Batman persona, he’s forgotten that Bruce Wayne can be a fun guy too. So, we get the emergence of this ultra-smooth playboy version of Bruce, dazzling the ladies at a party. It’s fun to watch as people fall for what we know to be a performance. Bruce has put on a new fiction suit, discarding grim and gritty Bruce Wayne for a Bond like character. That’s the thematic area where the series meshes most closely with Morrison’s previous work, the taking on and discarding of identities, this personal reinvention paralleling the evolution of the character over decades of comics.

Fittingly, the new foe menacing this Bruce Wayne is his illegitimate son, Damian. Damian is the breakout character from this book. Before he appeared, I was liking the series, but it hadn’t really hooked me. He kicked things up a notch, moving the series into a bizarre comic world. I love his ridiculously violent attempts to find a place in Bruce’s life, killing Robin and delivering the head of a villain being two of the most grievous. It’s so ridiculous, this little kid going around killing people, but it works as absurdist comedy and just straightforward drama. Is he an annoying character? Yes, but that’s the whole point. In Damian, Bruce sees a reflection of himself, and the old grim and gritty Batman is made into a parody.

The stuff with Bruce, Damian and Talia is all top notch. I really like the over the top selfishness of Talia, and her shameless attempts to use Bruce. However, the series slips a bit when dealing with other stories. The police Batman story is alright, but not that impressive, however I’m thinking that the three Batmen will play a crucial part in the series’ mythology moving forward. The apocalyptic Damian in the future story is reminiscent of “Here Comes Tomorrow,” an entertaining, but not quite cohesive dystopia.

The oddest story here is the Joker prose story. Morrison’s prose is very tactile and imagistic, but the cheesy computer illustrations let him down. I would have much rather seen Dave McKean come in to illustrate this. The story once again brings the notion of self reinvention to the fore, and it’s a quite entertaining vignette, but ultimately feels removed from the rest of the series.

My major problem with the run is the lack of substance next to Morrison’s other work. It’s not that he can’t do thematically substantial stuff on a mainstream title. His New X-Men is full of important themes and ideas, but that’s a series that’s a perfect vehicle for him. Evolution is at the center of Morrison’s worldview, but how do you fit that into a Batman comic? I think he does a great job of making a fresh, fun comic, but it’s clearly a minor work.

Even though I’m a bit frustrated that he’s spending his time on this book instead of something more substantial, I do admire the attempt to move beyond his usual concerns and write a new kind of book. He’s never done something this funny before, and the street level work is different from his usual cosmic focus. I’m eager to read more, particularly the JH Williams arc, but I wouldn’t be disappointed if this run ends at 20 issues and he moves on to creator owned stuff.

The Wire: Season One and The Start of Two

Earlier today, I finished the first season of The Wire, and have since watched the first two episodes of the second season. It’s been a lot of Wire this weekend, viewing that was encouraged by the serial nature of the plotlines. I’ve frequently heard the show referred to as novelistic, and the ending of season one certainly confirms that, wrapping everything up in a pretty satisfying way. At that point, there’s not necessarily a need for more, contrary to what a lot of Sopranos viewers will tell you, life goes on is a perfect acceptable ending.

I absolutely loved season one. The show’s greatest achievement was its blurring of emotional lines due to the multiple perspectives of the narrative. I wanted the police to make their case, to get people to flip and testify, but at the same time, any time people even went near them, I was worried, knowing that it couldn’t end well. Wallace is a perfect example of someone who is struggling with things, goes to the cops, and winds up getting killed when they forget about him.

Of course, Wallace is a prime example of one of the show’s central themes, that systems exist to trap people in specific roles and never enable to change. The end of the season sees new people rising to fill the roles vacated by our main characters, with Herc and Poot repeating the speeches given to them by their mentors earlier in the season. The ‘kids’ have grown up and enthusiastically started running things while the older characters are all disillusioned, paying for what they’ve done over the course of the season.

McNulty is sent out to the marine patrol unit, while D’Angelo is sent to prison. The D’Angelo scenes in the final episode are great because they show how hard it is to get out of the system. He wants to leave, but everything he knows is pushing him towards drug trafficking. His family is drugs, he can’t get out of the game without leaving everything he’s known.

This is the same sort of thing that was central to final seasons of The Sopranos. I would argue that The Sopranos represents a more evolved form of gang life, one where your life isn’t in jeopardy every day. There, Tony can sit down and have a meal with the feds, you wouldn’t get that with the crew on the streets. The reason for that is Tony comes from a fundamentally different social world. He has a choice about the life he’s leading, the people on the streets don’t. Tony has psychological conflict precisely because he has everything he could want and still isn’t happy. People like Bodie or Wallace are just struggling to survive, they’re worlds away from him.

Where the shows are similar is in the depiction of criminal life as an all consuming force. Without the belief in and total devotion to a cause, the entire thing would fall apart. In working on the other side of the law, people are drawn together and they’re all willing to adhere to a code that can mean taking jail time. Unlike the characters on The Sopranos, these guys are all willing to take the years. It’s a big difference leaving the projects for jail instead of leaving a comfortable middle class existence for jail. Part of the resentment Phil has for Tony in the final season is precisely that Tony never had to deal with real hardship. The next generation of Barksdales will be more like Tony, growing up with everything they could want, but still trapped in the life.

Over with the police, the dramatic high point of the season is Kima’s shooting and the subsequent reaction. The series spends most of its time on the mechanics of investigating, there’s a lot of drama and conflict, but very rarely do things escalate to that level. Watching all the police around the crime scene, the scope just shoots up. The genius of the show is that even as I want the police to go get revenge on the people who shot her, I’m hoping that Stringer can get his crew together and avoid getting charged for it.

Stringer is one of the most interesting characters, fleshed out in small, but telling details. The scene where McNulty follows him to community college tells us so much about him. He sees this as a business, and wants to make as much money off the copy store as he does off the drugs. Avon has an attraction to the drug game, but I could see Stringer pushing to move the family out of drugs and towards more legitimate operations. Looking at the end of the season, it seems like Stringer used Avon as a front, taking the heat of the investigation while he walks away.

The show sometimes hits that same us against the world vibe that I loved on The X-Files. McNulty is like Mulder, the spark that sets off a far reaching investigation that throws everyone into question. He comes up against the same kind of conspiracy that controls everything, only this one’s out in the open. The show is a startling indictment of government bureaucracy, from the internal push for something to show off at the expense of real results, to the way that our electoral system inevitably ties the government to special interests, in this case, criminal interests. As we see with Daniels, it’s near impossible to break these cases because the people involved are going to do anything they can to maintain their position.

Watching the start of season two was a bit tough. After getting used to the crew and all the characters, we’re dropped into the world of the ports. While our regulars are still around, it’s frustrating to spend time with these new characters and not catch up with the others for a while. It reminds me a bit of Buffy’s “Anne,” which left me just wanting to get her back with the crew. It’s hard because even as I rag on shows that limp back to the status quo whenever possible, I kind of want the team back together.

But, after watching two episodes, I’m getting more used to the new status quo. Ziggy is really annoying, but other than that, the new people look like they should be interesting enough. And, with Carver and Prez’s involvement in that storyline, it’s becoming clearer how everything could eventually piece together. My guess is Stringer will eventually have to run drugs through the ports, connecting the two stories a bit. But, there’s not a need for that connection. The show is a portrait of a city, and it is possible to just have a bunch of stories happening without any direct connection. It would get a bit overwhelming if a whole new crew is added each season, but for now, it could work.

Ultimately, I have to give a lot of respect to the show. Season one was a virtually flawless piece of television. It was so far removed from convention and the easy narrative shortcuts most shows use that the few moments that felt like normal TV really jumped out. It’s ridiculous that a good, but not great, movie like The Departed wins best picture, but The Wire can’t even cop an Emmy nomination. The show is just so far beyond virtually everything else out there, there’s no way a two hour movie can compete with this.

There are things you can do in a two hour movie that a show like this can’t do, mainly stylistic things. Malick or Wong Kar-Wai are doing work that is tailored for the feature, but if you’re just telling a story, it’s hard to go on when a work like this, or The Sopranos or Mad Men, is out there. The Wire is just another example of what TV has done recently, give us windows into worlds, not just tell stories. It’s something totally new and exciting, and it’s made it hard for me to enjoy even good movies.

I’m sure I’ll have more to say as I watch more, at this rate, I’ll catch up to season four before it even comes out on DVD.