Flex Mentallo #1: 'Flowery Atomic Heart'

My epic series of posts on The Invisibles from last year covered Grant’s definitive work on our world, the nexus of his philosophical worldview, simultaneously the source and culmination of his ideas about our universe. But, there is another world, the superhero world, and for him, it’s a world that’s just as valid and alive as ours, if not more so. Flex Mentallo is a philosophical treatise on the superhero comic, the definitive exploration of what makes the form work and why it’s important for the world as a whole. Superhero comics are a guide to a post human world, and Flex Mentallo is our first step on that journey. It follows up and expands the themes of Doom Patrol and Animal Man, and provides inspiration for what he would do later in Seven Soldiers and All Star Superman. It’s the definitive superhero story, a synthesis of sixty years of stories that mashes up everything that came before and spits it out with a new vision for the future.

Let me start outside the book with the story of how I found Flex in the first place. The book has never been reprinted after is original single issue release, which means there’s probably something like 20,000 or 30,000 copies in the entire world. I think that’s helped to build the legend of the series, you can’t just walk into a store and buy it, you’ve got to hunt it down. Admittedly, torrents have made it easier, but I still prefer reading on paper. I bought issues 1, 3 and 4 from a comic store in 2002. I walked in, asked if they had any and got those issues. I picked up issue 2 on Ebay and had the whole series for about 30 bucks.

Will Flex ever be reprinted? I hope so, but on some level, it’s cool that it’s so valuable. There’s a forbidden mystique around the issues, you’ll probably never see a Flex Mentallo movie, it’s not going to be a mainstream hit, it just is what it is, a tripped out acid trip journey through the border of our world and the comics world.

The series begins with a big bang, a cartoon genesis. In The Invisibles, John a Dreams steps outside the game and serves a variety of roles to move the universe towards its predestined ending. The Fact is a similar figure here, he exists at different moments in time, and serves as the catalyst for both Flex and Lt. Harry’s quest. If, as the end of the series posits, our world was created as a place for superheroes to hide in, it would stand to reason that the big bang would be a cartoon bomb, which spirals off into a million pieces of cosmos.

I love how screwy scale gets in this opening zoomout, as we journey back The Fact to the cosmos to The Fact again, this time rendered in blue and white, like the kid on drugs’ view of the cosmos in issue 2, and eventually out to a diner where our hero stands tall. One of the things that jumped out to me reading this first issue after going through the whole series is the subtle change Flex’s visual presentation goes through over the course of the four issues. Here, he’s very much the uncomplicated squarejawed hero, almost a cartoon. He gradually gets ‘realer’ as the series goes on, less out of place in the universe. It ties in to the general progression of the series from Golden Age to Silver Age to Bronze Age to New Age.

I think Quitely is the greatest comics artist of all time, and this series, like everything he does, is a visual masterpiece. In terms of sheer technical skill, We3 is the best thing he’s done, but on some level, I don’t think he’s topped this series. The variety of scenes he draws, the worlds he creates, are all amazing. And, throughout, the storytelling is totally spot on. To paraphrase Coppola, this comic isn’t about an acid trip, it is an acid trip. You can read this straight and still go on a mind bending journey, right from that first panel on.

Having just read Doom Patrol, I was wondering how this series fit in to the mythology there. It would make sense that this would be Flex’s next journey after what he went through in the Pentagon, but this Wallace Sage is alive, he died in DP. It doesn’t seem to be a direct continuation, rather it’s an alternate universe take on the story we saw in Doom Patrol, expanded into its own narrative.

This series frequently causes issues for readers, it’s pretty difficult to follow because of the linking narratives. There’s a desire to know which is ‘real,’ is the Flex story just a vision of this guy who’s tripped out on acid? That would be the logical conclusion, but in the Morrison universe, it doesn’t quite hold. Each story is equally real, Wallace is alive in a world close to ours and Flex is alive in a world of his own, a world which Wallace Sage created. The act of telling a story is the act of traveling to another world that exists in your own mind, but ideas don’t come entirely from your mind. That’s what we get to later, when Wallace travels to the place where ideas come from. There is something outside ourselves that we channel into stories, and that’s the place where Flex is. Wallace gave Flex life through the comics he drew, and eventually Flex will save his creator.

Flex and Lt. Harry talk about Faculty X, an organization that’s devoted to “showing us how fragile the whole system is.” It eventually is revealed that Faculty X is the multi-dimensional form of The Fact, and what he’s doing is preparing them for the imminent return of the superheroes. That’s why we see paraphernalia from the Legion of Legions in Harry’s desk. Notably, the bombs The Fact throws aren’t real, but people still behave like they are. The idea of a bomb, the image of a bomb can make people react in the same way as a ‘real’ bomb.

This gives way to Wallace Sage reading a story about The Fact and Wax Worker. He talks about how you don’t think and analyze yourself when you’re a kid, “you just do.” The dichotomy between childhood awe and wonder and adolescent doubt is central to the series. Wally gets so wrapped up in his own issues, he loses sight of the wonder of the world around him. He can’t lose himself in those simple pleasures anymore because what once was amazing now just feels kitsch. That’s what happens to a lot of people as they grow up in our world, this layer of irony grows around you, wrapped up in your own failures and perceived inadequacies and it becomes hard to enjoy the world.

Comics are a medium that still struggle to grow beyond “Zap! Bif! Pow! Comics aren’t Just for Kids Anymore,” and so much of that becomes overcompensating. Wally may have been a geeky, lonely kid, and on some level he still is that kid, hating who he is, hating the stuff he liked. As we find out at the end of the series, it’s that adolescent self hatred that’s the real villain, the inability to love the world the way he used to.

Flex says that both he and The Fact are fictional characters created by Wallace Sage, and that Wally died in his arms. This is what happened in Doom Patrol, which could mean that Wally created an alternate fictional version of himself who also came alive in Flex’s world. I love the fact that Flex knows he is a work of fiction, but is none less real for it. He has come to life somehow, and is going to do his thing.

Each issue features a page or two discussing a specific age of comics. On pages 12 and 13, Flex reflects on the simpler times that were the Golden Age. Much like he’s doing with Batman now, Grant considers the entire history of comics as a series of events in the same lives. So, it’s not like a different Flex lived during the Golden Age, this Flex was alive in the wacky Golden Age and is left to reflect on why his world has become so much darker and more subdued. While I love some deconstructionist superhero stories, it can’t be too much fun for the heroes themselves to have their worlds torn down.

Things start to get weird when Wallace flashes between petting his cat and standing in the rain. I love the way the series manipulates time and realities. It’s hard to create any sort of liner narrative or strict definition of what’s real, it just sort of flows from moment to moment. I feel like that’s how our minds actually work. When I’m not directly engaged with doing something, I shift between the world around me, a story I’m creating, my own memories, stories that I’ve read or movies I’ve seen, all bleeding together.

So, who’s mind is this work taking place in, whose worlds are we moving through? The logical answer would be Grant’s own. Grant started to fashion himself as the rock star of comics around this time, and always played in bands, so Wallace would be a logical alter ego. I can’t say for sure, but this feels like the most autobiographical work Grant’s ever done, an attempt to integrate all kinds of experiences from his own life into a kind of coherent narrative, bleeding between real memories and the stories he’d created. So, Flex moves into the school in his story, where he sees eight year old Wally. The times blur because fiction and reality don’t exist on the same tracks, Flex exists at various moments in Wally’s life, always the same even as Wally changes. That’s how it is for superheros, the world changes around them, but the archetype at its core remains the same.

One of the things I really like about Flex is the way it explores the actual experience of reading comics, how much of an influence it can be on kids. That’s what sticks with him in the end because it’s what helped shape Wally’s view of the world. It’s simultaneously something to aspire to, and an impossible thing to match. Our world can never be as exciting as theirs, at least not until it is.

Lying in the hospital, we get a throwback to Barbelith from The Invisibles. This universe’s Barbelith is a giant green lamp hanging over his hospital bed, “an alien intelligence, watching me, conducting some kind of experiment on me.” Barbelith is typically an enlightenment experience, later on, the color green is associated with Limbo, the Third Eye hero who guides Wally to the place where ideas come from. He’s got to suffer through this experience on his journey to enlightenment later in the series.

At the school, Flex speaks to the janitor about the lack of role models for kid sidekicks today. Grant has said that the reason he writes superhero comics is because he sees the superhero as the model for future versions of humanity. So, if this model is dragged down in violence and muck, what will become of humanity? We need someone to save us, but we’ve trapped our heroes in the ‘real world,’ we’ve taken away what makes them wonderful. The Janitor says “It’s just people who need saving. The World’s fine as it is.” We can create change through individual action, we don’t need to shift some cosmic paradigm.

The issue ends with Flex stopping another bomb and narrowly missing The Fact once again. The Fact is the spark that ignited the universe, he is in many ways God. And he’s also the person Wally is speaking on the phone this whole time. So, the whole conversation that frames the story is a discussion with God, it’s Wally trying to figure out what his life means, and whether he should give up and die, or grow beyond his adolescent self and embrace who he could be. He has the crossword puzzle, he just has to find out the magic word. And, in the end, it’s his own creation who will save him, a being who emerged fully formed out of his own mind will rise up, take his hand and show him a better world. That’s what art can do, that’s what comics can do.

The work of Grant’s that comes closest to Flex Mentallo for me is All Star Superman #10. In each case, he uses the superhero as an aspirtational figure, a perfect being we try to live up to, who inspires and saves us when we’re down. All of Flex is contained in the one page where Superman stops Regan from jumping off the building. That’s the essence of this series, when things are at their worst, channel the heroes, live like them, if Superman can destroy an evil sun, surely we can get over a bad breakup, or a bout of depression.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll post my thoughts on issue two, a trippy journey through the Silver Age and more strangeness. Stay tuned!

Doom Patrol: Another World, A Better World

I finished my reread of Grant Morrison’s Doom Patrol yesterday, and my feelings about the run as a whole pretty much echo my initial impressions on the reread, there’s some moments that are absolutely amazing and among the best stuff Morrison has done, however there’s also some run of the mill storylines that just throw out weird concepts, but don’t really click emotionally. However, he ends on a superlative high note, with one of the best single issues he’s ever written, the beautiful “Empire of Chairs.”

“Empire of Chairs” synthesizes all of the series’ major themes in one issue, in which the Doom Patrol faces their most troubling enemy of all, the real world! Crazy Jane was sent to hell by the Candlemaker, and it turns out that hell is a world that’s pretty much our own. Colored in flat sepia tones, Jane is treated as she would be in real life, her multiple personalities are a problem, the adventures she thinks she had delusions.

It’s notable that this issue on the surface undermines the reality of everything Morrison’s ever done. He appears to reduce all the stories of the series to the delusions of a mentally ill woman, and deconstructs them, pointing out the similarities between the series’ villains and the simple underlying meaning of everything. He makes us realize how absurd and unbelievable everything that’s come before seems.

But, the central message of the series is that it’s okay to be different, that normality is boring and the crazy lives of the Doom Patrol are far more interesting than the lives of traditional superheroes. The Mr. Nobody arc is all about Cliff confronting this fact. Cliff clings to normality, he may be a brain in a robot body, but when Jane presents herself in the Scarlet Harlot outfit, you can sense how embarrassed he is by the attention she’s drawing to herself. However, his innate caring for Jane makes him realize that he’s more worried about her getting hurt than what people think of her.

In the ‘Magic Bus’ arc, Rebis and Jane realize that there’s nothing particularly worth protecting about the world they live in, so they’re not worried about Mr. Nobody disrupting it. Cliff decides that people should have the right to choose their own world, ignoring the fact that maybe they’d rather have Mr. Nobody’s world than the one they’re in. Cliff, at the beginning of the series, is a pretty conservative guy, he clings to authority figures, like the Chief, and longs to have a normal life. However, as the series goes on, he learns to change, and accept who he is.

As the series ends, Rebis and Dorothy float off to uncertain futures in the magical Danny the World. However, Cliff stays behind, he’s not quite ready to disconnect yet. He’s still got to decide whether or not he wants to leave the regular world behind. He’s been through so much awful stuff, but he clings to that normalcy. One of the most important issues of the series is the secret history of the Doom Patrol, as revealed by the Chief. On the one hand, it’s a really courageous story structure because Morrison reveals the villain behind the whole series, sets up this huge confrontation, then completely subverts it when the Candlemaker rips Caulder’s head off.

But, on an emotional level, it’s really significant because it tells us a lot about both the old Cliff and present day Cliff. As the chief tells us, old Cliff was not a particularly nice guy, he was someone who lived mainly for himself. There’s nothing particularly wrong with that, in a lot of ways it’s normal, but that Cliff had little of the soul that Robot Man Cliff develops over the course of the series. It’s notable that Cliff has to lose his body and virtually everything that previously defined himself to finally learn who he is. Cliff clings to the Chief because the Chief saved him, made him the body he has and let him live. But, it turns out that Cliff is a victim of abuse that’s not too dissimilar from what Jane went through. His father figure betrayed and used him, and left him a broken shell. It’s not as bad as the explicit sexual abuse Jane suffered, but both of them went through the experience of having their worlds shattered, and their minds left in disarray.

Both of them shut themselves off from the world to deal with the trauma. Jane creates the elaborate network of alternate personalities, while Cliff throws himself into his work, into preserving the Doom Patrol and saving the world. Only after plunging into the world of the nanobots and saving the world does depression really set in, does he realize that Jane is gone, as is his best hope of ever feeling more. But, there is a better world.

Much of the series centers on the Doom Patrol’s nebulous relation to order and chaos. Sometimes they’ll find themselves fighting on the side of chaos, trying to prevent things like the Pentagon horror from destroying the world, other times, they fight for order, trying to stop the Candlemaker or Mr. Nobody from disrupting everything. Through it all, the constant remains a desire to stop people from getting hurt, a desire to make lives better and end destructive conflict. The Invisibles makes a big deal of there being no sides, so it’s appropriate that the allegiance of the Doom Patrol should shift so often.

In the last issue, Jane finds herself caught up in the conflict between the need for normalcy and the room for individual expression. In the Doom Patrol world, her psychological trauma turns her into a superhero, and her battles over the course of the series help her cure herself. But, in our world, we don’t process problems that way. We see something out of the norm and try to medicate it out of existence. There’s no room for Jane’s fanciful imaginings, here they just mark her as insane.

The real tragedy of the issue is that I think that most people in our world would want to ‘cure’ Jane if they knew her. They’d want to return her to our reality and give her a functioning life. But, is that desire motivated by helping her, or is it more about making ourselves feel okay. When someone’s in a psychological delusion, it’s not necessarily them who are being hurt, it’s us, unable to deal with something so out of the norm. Now, it’s not plausible for Jane to live in our world the way she was, but as the issue makes clear, that’s not her fault, it’s the fault of the world.

We live in a world where that which is outside the norm is treated as illness, and every attempt is made to bring people to the same mental place, with the same kind of feeling. Alan Moore has talked a lot about this, particularly in From Hell, where we see that mental illness used to be considered the intrusion of gods into this world, but now we view it is an anomaly to be cured.

The issue raises a lot of questions about the nature of reality vis a vis the rest of the series. Was everything simply the delusions of Kay Challis, an attempt to deal with the sexual abuse she’d suffered? Or is it the world she’s plunged into, our world, that’s the creation, born by the Candlemaker as the ultimate hell? That’s a bold call, to make our world hell, but it works in this story. In Morrison’s cosmology, it’s the boring, uninterrogated life that’s worst of all. In his reality based works, characters generally exist in relation to pieces of fiction, King Mob and Robin dream of being like characters in the books they grew up reading, and are excited when they find out that they grew up and became those characters. One of my favorite single issues of all time is The Invisibles 2.20, in which a young Robin (aka Kay) talks about reading The Invisibles and imagining herself into the story until it all became true. Similarly, Flex Mentallo’s Wallace Sage finds himself reflecting on the shitty comics he read, imagining an alternate world where they’re what’s real and he’s what’s fake.

Ultimately, Jane’s story here echoes those other stories. In each case, the character writes themselves out of the everyday world and into a fantasy world that’s more alive. It’s about moving beyond the real/not real dichotomy and choosing to live in the world we want. People want to minimize the struggles we go through, so called ‘realistic’ works are all about not much happening, but in my own perception of my life, the trials I go through are huge. And, that’s why I think superhero stories, like Doom Patrol, are important. Morrison understands that our own depression isn’t best depicted as a guy sitting alone in a dark room while it’s raining, it’s best depicted as a giant black hole that will engulf the entire universe if we don’t stop it because that’s how it feels in our own mind. If you die, your world ends. To the world at large, it may not matter, but to you, and the people around you, it’s a huge deal. Jane’s story is insignificant to the world at large, she was just the girl at a shop, ringing you up, going about life alone, but in her mind, she was involved in these huge, world changing struggles. You never know, the person you pass on the street might just have saved the world the night before.

And, in the end, she chooses to abandon the dull, boring ‘sane’ life and embrace the craziness of life with the Doom Patrol. Does Jane kill herself at the end, is that what we’re meant to perceive happened in the real world? Perhaps that’s what happens in the ‘real world,’ but it’s not what really happens to Jane. Jane moves into Danny the World, the other world, the better world that must be out there.

It’s a really beautiful story, and a perfect conclusion for the run as a whole. I think Morrison’s a bit more consistent today, works like New X-Men or Seven Soldiers are slicker and have fewer weak arcs, but there’s very little he’s done that has the emotional impact of that issue. Back then, Morrison was an outcast, struggling to find his place in the world, a feel that runs through his work until The Invisibles Volume II, when he decided to become King Mob, at which point everything became a lot slicker and cooler. I love that hypersigil pop period of work, but it’s occasionally nice to go back and read the stories of a bunch of ordinary, but incredibly strange people. That’s what the Doom Patrol is about, recognizing that no matter how strange someone appears on the outside, we ultimately all want the same thing.

Final Crisis #1

I’ve been waiting for Final Crisis for a long time. It’s designed to be the conclusion of Morrison’s last twelve years of work in the DCU, from JLA to Seven Soldiers to 52, as well as a kind of alternate conclusion/continuation for Jack Kirby’s Fourth World saga. And, it’s a followup to Crisis on Infinite Earths and Infinite Crisis, all of which I’ve actually read, so I was eager to go into a crossover knowing what was going on. Of course, I didn’t read Countdown or any other DC stuff since 52, so perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. But, it reads perfectly fine for me, I’ve got all the major concepts, and am really liking it so far.

The tagline of the work is ‘The Day Evil Wins,’ and that feels pretty accurate so far. It’s a heavy series, filled with foreboding and darkness. Our heroes have very little agency, they’re mostly subjected to a series of troubling images and events, with the only hope lying in the past/future collision of Kamandi and Anthro. Knowing Morrison’s style, I think the forces of good will resurge and eventually win the day, wiping away the darkness and beginning a new age for the DCU. Morrison considers this his final statement in the DCU, and usually his works conclude in a pretty definitive way. I’m guessing the end of the book will work simultaneously as a new beginning and a great way for the DCU as a whole to end.

A lot of the book’s cosmology comes out of Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle. When I first read that series, I was pretty baffled, but on a second read, I loved it. The basic conceit is that the New Gods have been decimated and are hiding out as homeless people on the street, while Darkseid’s crew have entrenched themselves in positions of power in society. It’s a surreal, David Lynch-y journey that ends with Shilo bursting out of the prison universe and back into ‘reality.’ But, it seems that his prison is escaping the black hole and becoming real. Darkseid is wearing the same flesh suit he wore in that series, and the New Gods themselves are apparently dead.

I missed Death of the New Gods, but it sounds like an awful series. However, if it fits into Morrison’s Mister Miracle worldview, I’m cool with it. The basic status quo appears to be God is dead and Darkseid reigns on Earth. Now, there was a lot of speculation that this series would end with humans being elevated to the status of gods, kicking off the fifth world. That would certainly fit with what we get here.

The series opens with Metron giving Anthro fire. The opening scenes echo 2001: A Space Odyssey, which also chronicled humanity’s path towards Godhood, and is probably the closest thing to Morrison’s work we’ve ever seen on film. The gods give humanity fire, and they can use it to combat evil. That opening sequence could easily be a microcosm of this whole series, only the fire of the present is the super powers of the New Gods, the counterpoint to Darkseid’s oppression.

But, that oppression is on heavy here. My favorite scene was Turpin going into Club Dark Side and seeing the children who are victims of the anti-life equation. The anti-life equation is one of Kirby’s most potent concepts, and it’s exciting to see Morrison and Kirby do a kind of team up here. This Darkseid is totally menacing, a great reinvention of the concepts from Kirby’s work.

In SS: Mister Miracle, we saw Metron inspire Shilo, put him through an awful trial so he could come out stronger, come out ahead of death. When does that resurrection occur in relation to the events of the series? We see him on a billboard here, but I’d really like to see Shilo in the series, and find out how he’s been changed by his experience. Is he the equivalent of Anthro for the present, spreading the teachings of Metron and helping to elevate humanity?

Along with the SS/Fourth World stuff, there’s a bunch of other DCU goings on. I’ve never been that into the Green Lantern cosmic kind of superheroics, it’s enjoyable enough here, but not as emotionally engaging as the other stuff. Similarly, the death of Martian Manhunter is so offhand, I’m assuming he must return at some point down the line.

Libra is more interesting conceptually. What he’s trying to do is essentially flip the moral polarity of the DCU. It’s a world where good always triumphs over evil, he’s not content with the status quo and is trying to reverse that. Like a reverse Metron, he spreads a new gospel of what’s possible in the serve of darkness. Much of Morrison’s work is about moving beyond the limits of what’s deemed possible, what does it mean when someone tries to move to a place that’s worse?

So, I’m pretty happy with the first issue. Not every bit works but it feels like he’s going hit a good mix of cosmic insanity and emotional focus. And, I think it will be a fitting conclusion for all his DC work to date. JG Jones’s art isn’t as standout as Frank Quitely or JH Williams, but it works really well for straight up superheroics. My only gripe is having to wait a month for issue two.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

I’ll be curious to see how the future treats Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Coming out of The Matrix: Reloaded or Revenge of the Sith, I think most people were pretty charged and liking what they saw. However, they soon got cut down repeatedly on the internet, and the consensus narrative became these movies were bad. That’s a valid opinion, but I think it says more about peoples’ expectations than the movies themselves, and the inability to live up to an idealized original. The new Indy film isn’t perfect, but I think it has the same flaws and same strengths as the originals, and was an incredibly satisfying experience on the whole.

I loved the first half hour and the last forty-five minutes or so of the film, and felt that the middle dragged a little bit. One of the major reasons for this is that Cate Blanchett totally killed it in her role as Irina Spalko. Indy films have never been known for their villains, there’s guy with the black hat from Raiders, guy who rips out hearts in Temple, not exactly memorable characters. Irina isn’t exactly a character, she’s a presence. By that, I mean it feels like she came right out the pure essence of B movie, a villain who doesn’t have any particular emotional complexity, she wants what she wants and is going to do whatever she needs to do to get it, while at the same time, our hero is going to do whatever he can to stop her.

Watching this performance a couple of days after rewatching her work in I’m Not There makes a pretty strong case for her being the best actress of her generation. The range is astonishing, and as Lucas’s recent Star Wars prequels show, it’s not easy to do this kind of acting, to find that mix of fun craziness and some kind of emotional believability. It’s easy to act in quotations, to reduce the work to some kind of pastiche, it’s harder to play these absurd situations totally straight, and yet not overly serious. She pulls it off, and most notably, she’s just a lot of fun to watch, she owns the screen whenever she’s on, and gives this movie something that none of the others have had.

Everyone else was pretty solid as well. Harrison Ford made it believable that Indy could still do these things, it was great to see him acting in a good movie again, not the kind of schlock he’s been in recently. He’s not the world’s most versatile actor, but he does what he does better than anyone else out there, and his mix of charm, humor and action ability was on full display here.

For me, the part of the film that really lingered was the sequence inside the temple UFO at the end. If you’ve been reading for a while, you probably know of my love for scenes where characters confront universal forces, and interact with other, higher dimensions. But, I was not expecting to see one in this film. I knew aliens would be involved, but I wasn’t expecting the metaphysical experience to follow, the spinning aliens coalescing into one, or the great moment where Irina comes face to face with an alien, prompting her mind explode. It’s definitely a throwback to the classic faces melting in the ark scene from Raiders, but I think that appropriation says a lot about the film’s implicit point.

The previous movies have been about characters coming into contact with relics of major religions. People can accept the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy Grail would have this power because we’re culturally conditioned to believe in magic in the past, but not the present. Much of America believes that a man parted the red sea, that a man came back from the dead, but if you said it happened today, they would never believe. In a lot of ways, aliens became a modern mythology, not unlike gods of the past. They exist outside our world, leaving no proof of their existence, but still dominating our dreams, our cultural idea of the other.

On top of this, we’ve got the classic idea that aliens were the ones who originally brought life to Earth, that aliens were the gods the ancients worshipped. So, there’s a basis in past mythology, but really, what the end of the film does is raise a b-movie concept to the level of religious experience. The implicit message is that the religion of today is movies, it’s movies that ignite our dreams and form our view of the universe, particularly of God, of what’s beyond us. It’s made quite literal when the classic flying saucer emerges from the ashes of the temple, the gods of the past giving way to our current perception of god.

So, if we’re to view aliens as the gods of today, wouldn’t that make Indiana Jones the Odysseus of the present? He’s a cultural icon, with his own totems and symbolic representation. Lucas has talked a lot about creating his own mythology with Star Wars, and that’s what they’re exploring here, the intersection of pop mythology and religious tradition.

I really loved that, and I think it’s a surprisingly deep set of ideas to explore in a film like this. Aside from the interesting philosophical stuff with the aliens, the whole chase through the jungle sequence is fantastic. Yes, the monkey bit is goofy, but it feels right in context. I always hate reviews that say you have to just accept something what it is, but in this case, that kind of feels right. The movie exists in a world where logic is slightly removed from our own, you can either enjoy it, or nitpick it. Here, it’s not like you have to turn your brain off to enjoy the film, it just hits a different part of the brain.

I’ll sometimes get into debates with people about why I don’t enjoy “mainstream” movies, why I can’t get into an Adam Sandler comedy or something like that. The problem is most so called ‘fun’ movies aren’t fun at all, they have no intelligence or layers, and most of all, they’re not actually fun. People use dumb as a synonym for fun, the movies I find fun are like this one, intelligent enough, and expansive in their pop scope. There’s some ideas mixed in with some really well executed set pieces. I’d love it if more ‘mainstream’ movies were as good as this one. I’ve got issues with the weird, soft look of the film and some of the dragging in the film’s center, but on the whole, it’s a great success.

Showcase Superman Volume 1

I’ve read a lot of articles/interviews where people talk about the deconstruction of superheroes, how Alan Moore and Frank Miller’s seminal 80s works changed the medium and took away a lot of the fun. For a long time, the only older comics I’d read were 70s X-Men, which aren’t exemplary of what these people were talking about, with their heavy angst and emotional soapiness. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago when I started reading Showcase Presents Superman that I really got the zany craziness that people talk about when they discuss 50s comics. These comics are totally insane, as crazy, if not more so, than anything Grant Morrison’s come up with, with a total disregard for real world logic or narrative consistency.

I’d always heard the premises of these 50s Superman books, Superman has a lion’s head, Superman shoots a tiny Superman out of his hand, etc. and thought that’s a great concept, but the comic itself probably isn’t as good. Well, if Superman inexplicably has a lion’s head sounds like a great story, then buy the book. It won’t disappoint. It’s astonishing to me that this book was popular entertainment, it’s so insane, every single story full of bizarre narrative gaps and logical jumps that blow your mind. It feels like somebody on an LSD trip throwing out the craziest thing he can think of, then scrambling to get things back to normal within ten pages.

You really can’t approach these comics as any of sort of sustained narrative, like today’s books. It’s not a coherent universe, or evolving milieu, it’s basically a sitcom. Every character has one trait, Superman is ultra-powerful, but constantly scared of having his identity discovered. Jimmy Olsen is his loyal friend, aiding in his schemes. Lois Lane desperately wants to marry Superman, but is foiled at every turn by Superman’s scheming.

The stories are very formulaic. Usually some outrageous premise is thrown out that disrupts normality, like Superman losing his powers. Then, Superman struggles to maintain the illusion of normalcy, in that case through his crazy schemes with Jimmy, and ultimately everything returns to normal, with Superman winking to the audience. The reason it works is because everything is so nuts, you don’t get mad at the deus ex machinas or narrative shortcuts, you just laugh at them. The creators seem to know how wacky the stories are, they’re in on the joke, and the joy is the journey through the story, not the destination. Notably, we’ve got no cliffhangers, and very rarely is Superman in real danger. The only one who suffers emotional consequences is Lois, who always comes this close to marrying Superman, only to have her dream foiled.

Reading these comics provides a startling twist on the societal myth of the 50s as a time of boring conformity. Yes, these stories are ultimately about enforcing the status quo, but brimming under that status quo are a myriad of psychological issues and deep seated fears. Why does Superman have such a fear of people discovering his secret identity? Why does he cruelly maintain the illusion of Clark Kent, even planting a room in his Fortress of Solitude dedicated to Clark so no one will find out his secret identity after he dies.

The opening story of the collection, “The Super Key to Fort Superman” is still my favorite. In it, Superman and Batman play an elaborate game of pranks on each other, which culminates in Superman pretending his powers have been disabled and they’ll both be trapped in the Fort forever. This comes after Batman has spent days infiltrating the Fortress, apparently leaving Gotham undefended. And, the reason all this happens is because Batman was shopping for a birthday present for Superman, but couldn’t find anything. If people say Batman the TV show wasn’t like the comics, point them to this and they’ll be in for a rude awakening.

Reading this, I can see why people would feel like something major has been lost in comics. First off, these issues contained three crazy stories in one, each a complete done in one tale. If you want to know why people don’t read comics like they did in the 50s, I think it’s clearly due to the fact that they’re just not a good value at all. These issues entertain for a while, and are easily accessible, not like the bloated super epics out there today. I’d be much more likely to buy books in single format if they were like this.

And, the stories are just so imaginative, it’s hard to believe what’s going on. I would think books like this, not 60s Marvel, would be popular with the counterculture. Morrison’s All Star Superman was not exaggerating the craziness of these early days. Superman barely even fights crime, he mostly battles identity issues played out through these crazy sci-fi conceits.

But, I think the stories are missing something. Morrison is able to keep these crazy concepts, but fuse a strong emotional layer on there as well. These stories feel like the crazy childhood of Superman, All Star is his adulthood, he’s more mature and able to recognize that there’s more to this world than just protecting his own identity. All Star Superman feels much closer to this guy than the Superman seen in JLA recently. That’s probably due to the fact that these are the archetypal Superman stories, where all the elements that persist to the present were established.

It’s interesting to compare what Morrison does with All Star to the way Moore approached Superman in Miracleman. I absolutely love Miracleman, I think it’s pointless to criticize Moore for doing his deconstruction work, Watchmen and Miracleman are such great works, it’s worth having them even if it means ‘losing our innocence.’ And, I think comics are stronger having gone through that dark period, Morrison and Miller have since found a way to integrate the insanity of these old comics with the darkness of the 80s.

Frank Miller’s masterpiece, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, takes the insane concepts and willful disdain for logic of these 50s comics and applies them to a post deconstruction world. I think it’s one of the greatest superhero comics of all time, and a perfect model for what comics can be.

Things have changed and we can never return to the style of these 50s comics without playing it as pastiche. The best thing we could get is something like Moore’s “Untold Tales of Supreme,” which ape the style and form of these 50s comics, but also have a tinge of dislike for the original material. It’s pastiche, and while these guys in the 50s had a sense of humor about the work, I don’t think they would like to be reduced to a series of formal tics that Moore emulates. It’s a form of storytelling that just can’t feel uncalculated in today’s world, we’ve moved on.

But, I think there’s still a lot of great lessons to be taken from these books. The embrace of craziness is something a lot of books could benefit from. Throw out crazy ideas on every page, and don’t necessarily focus on Superman fighting someone every issue. Superman very rarely faces a major villain in these stories, and they’re more interesting because of that. His greatest villain is his own nature, and his struggle to figure out what role he should play in this world.

John From Cincinnati: The Rewatch Concludes

I finished rewatching John From Cincinnati last night. Seeing the show again reminded me just how amazing it is. Particularly in that last episode, there are moments as incredible as anything in cinema, most notably the epic pan through clouds to John and Shaun on the water that opens the episode. That is as perfect and exhilarating a moment as can be captured on film. It’s such a rush to descend from the clouds and see them again.

Most TV shows are decidedly fiction. They may exist in a realistic world, or comment on real world issues, but they don’t feel ‘real’ in the way that John From Cincinnati does. Even The Wire feels more artificial in some ways, that show depicts a world I’m not that familiar with and brings it to the attention of the viewer. John is on the surface a less realistic show, filled with its strange characters and inexplicable floating. But, I’d argue the show is more realistic because it takes place on a subconscious mental plane. It just feels so important, in the same way that The Invisibles did.

I think The Invisibles really is one of the only comparable works to JFC. Both are about conveying their creator’s philosophy within the context of a narrative. The DVD features a video of David Milch talking about the big ‘speech’ in episode six, where John lays out the series’ philosophy. The essential message of the series is that art, the representation of reality in writing or film, can be used to alter actual reality. “Cass’s Camera” is synonymous with the power of art, and it’s through her camera that the world will learn about John and what he means to reality. And, on a meta level, it’s “Cass’s Camera” that brings the whole story to us.

I said it before when the show was airing, but what really strikes me about the series is just how positive it is. It’s about people overcoming their innante prejudices, and personal hang-ups to come together and help make the world better. In the end, Mitch says that “We’re them,” which makes him worried, but in actuality is the essence of the series. It’s about erasing the borders that divide us and embracing our oneness as a single human organism. It may worry Mitch that he’s a part of Stinkweed, but it also means that Stinkweed is a part of him, and by merging with the enemy rather than fighting it, you can control it.

By the last episode, everyone is doing what they want to do, functioning in harmony as a single entity. I love a lot of the little flourishes, Cass telling off Palaka in her New York tough guy voice, she’s totally out of regular reality, channeling the power of John’s father into the world. And, the montage of the parade sequence is another burst of fun and energy, I wish it wouldn’t end. The series isn’t always consistent, but at its best, it’s a transcendent spiritual experience, never more so than when John and Shaun fall out of the sky, back to the water.

I think it’s hard for people to reconcile the spiritual elements of the series with the cursing and hard edged atmosphere. But, that’s the world we live in. Even if Butchie flips off a beach cleaner, he’s still keeping the faith. This is one of the greatest TV series of all time, filled with wonderful characters and performances, I’m hoping the world will catch up soon and realize just how good it is. In Cass's Camera, season two is starting.

Doctor Who: 'Planet of the Ood' (4x03)

It’s strange for me to think that both Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica are in the fourth season. Thanks to the many lengthy delays in its broadcast run, it feels like BSG has been on forever, while I’ve watched all of Doctor Who in the past few months and it still feels like a ‘new’ series to me. But, thankfully, both shows are at the top of their game in the fourth season.

Typically, the fourth season is a stumbling point for series, Buffy, Angel, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under all aired clunkers in their fourth year, and needed to be reinvented in the fifth year. But, both Who and BSG are ‘ending’ after this year, BSG for real, Who for its Davies tenure. And, the last season seems to liberate producers to be a bit bolder, raise the stakes and pay off more story points, knowing that they won’t have to keep things going for another year. These past few episodes of Who haven’t had that much explicitly dealing with the upcoming ending, this episode’s end of the song reference is the only notable one here, but the mood feels different, heavier, more reflective and subdued, like the Doctor’s finally having to really examine the weight of his years of travel.

Surprisingly, Donna has become the most interesting companion on the show so far. I still like Rose more, but Donna’s perspective is making every story she’s in more interesting, and forcing the Doctor to examine himself in a way he never has before. The best scene in this episode is the Doctor and Donna outside the Ood cage, when he lets her hear the song. In a moment that feels so real and sad, Donna says that she wanted to go out in the world because she thought it would be better, but now she just wants to go home. Much like with Martha, the Doctor’s companion is finding that it’s not all fun and games out there.

The Doctor can never turn off the song like Donna can. He’s always got to live with this, and much of the season so far is about the burden he’s got to carry, living as a god, forced to let people live or die according to the structure of history. As I said last week, this flows really well out of the Master arc. The Master grievously abused his power as a timelord, he remade the world in his image, and the Doctor must be thinking about whether he could do that too, only for good. But, he’s bound by the rules and can’t intercede.

The opening half hour or so of this episode was all great stuff. We’re first made to associate the Ood with slaves from the past, and are wondering how a civilization could allow this to happen. But, everything’s upended when the Doctor talks about how the Ood are the same as the third world laborers who make our clothes, and ensure that we can have the cheap consumer goods that fill our homes. The implication is every society is built by exploiting the labor of its poorest citizens, and it’s surprisingly easy to justify or ignore their presence.

This was a great looking episode. The concentration camp/meat packing plant imagery was powerful, and the snow over everything was beautiful. The chaotic Ood riot at the end wasn’t quite chaotic enough, but that’s a frequent problem with the series. A lot of the scenarios are so ambitious, you can’t help but be a bit disappointed when it feels like only ten Ood are breaking out instead of ten thousand.

The episode drags a bit on the road to its conclusion, particularly the time spent with hair losing scientist guy. We pretty much know this guy is going to get his just desserts at some point, and the time spent with this one dimensional guy isn’t as interesting as time spent with Donna and the Doctor. However, the end is effective, as the enemy becomes that which he hates most, and we get the wonderful scenes of the Ood raising their brains and linking up again.

The final scene is on the one hand pure tease for future episodes, but it also works as a way to show Donna that sometimes the tough times are worth it because there are moments where they can make a difference. It renews her faith in what the Doctor does, and deepens their partnership again. I love what they’re doing with her this season, and Catherine Tate is doing a great job of distinguishing herself from the previous companions.

It’s appropriate that Who should be airing as the summer blockbuster season revs up since this show is pretty much a great summer blockbuster every week. More than the vast majority of big movies released in the summer, the show gives me that feeling I remember from watching big, crazy action movies as a kid. It’s the mix of spectacle and emotion that I love. That’s why even though a scene like the crane chase is essentially pointless for the story, I’m glad it’s in there because it’s just crazy fun. I think it’s that joy that’s missing from a lot of blockbusters today, you get the sense that the characters are having fun and really care about what’s happening. And, ultimately, the show’s about the characters. It’s a great season so far, hopefully they’ll keep it up.

Battlestar Galactica: 'Faith' (4x06)

So far, this has season of Battlestar Galactica has been nailing every episode in a way that none before has. Season three may have started out with the four best episodes of the show’s run, but it slipped up after that. While these episodes haven’t matched the heights of the New Caprica arc, at least yet, they’ve got me much more optimistic about the future of the show. Each new story turn opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, and thankfully it seems like we’re staying focused on narrative and character development, not random standalone stories. There’s so many interesting threads in play right now, and on an intellectual level, the show is far beyond anything else currently on the air. This episode is a perfect example of what science fiction at its best can do.

As I mentioned last week, Kara has been so on for me since she went off on the Demetrius mission. They’ve finally reconciled the destiny-having, mystical believing Kara Thrace with the badass pilot fighter Kara, and she’s once again the most fascinating character on the series. Just from the way she moves her eyes, you can see the internal conflict seething within her, and her struggle to balance her need to keep the trust of everyone on the ship with her desire to realize her destiny and reach Earth.

She’s always been someone whose passion overflows, and watching her speak to the hybrid, you can sense her yearning for some kind of purpose, a direction, proof that she’s doing the right thing and isn’t just insane. Earlier than that, I love the moment when she sees the basestar suspended in the planet’s atmosphere and realizes that her picture has come true. It’s absolutely gorgeous aesthetically, and such a triumph for her, even the onslaught of meteorites afterwards can’t shake her confidence.

The sequences on the basestar are a triumph of forward planning. It feels almost like a well executed farce, with everyone who shouldn’t be meeting running into each other at the most inopportune time. There’s so much potential tension all around, a closeted cylon, a cylon playing human, and others all keep things full of tension.

Let’s start with one of the episode’s strongest scenes, the confrontation between Six and Barolay. I got so distracted by the possibly there lesbian subtext of her admiration for Kara that I didn’t even realize we had a classic red shirt aboard, and her death had me genuinely worried because I want this cylon/human alliance to happen so much. I’ve always been partial to the cylon characters, and ever since Downloaded, this is what I’ve wanted to see. So, I was on edge when Kara returned and tried to guide them to a truce.

The real star here is Tricia Helfer, who killed it in that scene with herself. It was so well shot, perhaps by necessity using those really tight close-ups, lit so we can barely even see their faces. Throughout the episode, the lighting was really low, and I liked that. Glowing neon colors barely casting light onto the characters’ faces made for beautiful scenes. The scene is evidence of how much Natalie needs this alliance to happen. Without the humans, they are doomed, and she’s willing to sacrifice a piece of herself to make it happen. But, at the same time she indicts the humans for their bloodlust. The Six probably would have died anyway, but this way, she shows them how wrong they are to want to kill. Really powerful stuff.

Also interesting throughout the episode was Sharon’s struggles to deal with her own identity. As much as I wanted Sharon to find a place within the fleet, I think the character loses something when played as a completely loyal soldier. Here, we get more insight into what’s driving her, she has to totally commit to this side, go overboard, because if she doesn’t choose a side, she’ll fit nowhere. This is the only way to keep Hera safe, it’s the only way to be with the man she loves.

That said, I have to wonder why the Eight who dies at the end of the episode says that Athena Sharon was right. Doesn’t she lose something by totally betraying her culture? I suppose the Eight winds up dying alone, and nobody wants that. But, is actively fighting against your own people any way to be. I suppose that is a part of the character’s problem, the fact that at this point she must hate herself to be accepted, and that is made literal during the scene where she tells off the horde of Sharons seeking her out.

Also struggling with his identity on the journey is Anders. He sees the base star as the place where he can find out who he really is, and that’s why he shoots Gaeta rather than risk getting taken back to Galactica. I’m sure there will be repercussions for that, though it may get overlooked when the basestar returns. If I had to guess where things will go at this point, I think there will a split of factions within the fleet, echoing what we saw in the cylons earlier this year. The hardliners will say that it’s folly to go with the basestar towards Earth, to bring the fleet’s greatest enemy within them to what should be the sanctuary from this war. Gaeta will be one of these hardliners, as will Adama, while Roslin, Baltar and Kara side with the Cylons, who offer a way to Earth. But who knows what will really happen.

On the basestar, Anders seems to be perpetually on the edge of snapping. I love the moment where he reaches for the watery thing, a potential source of answers to who he is. The other great scene is his moment of kindness towards the Eight after Sharon rejects her. He at least won’t let her die alone.

The episode closing hybrid revelation sets up a potential path towards both Earth and the revelation of the fifth. I love the scenes with the hybrid, it’s hard to believe that it’s really a person in there, and that’s a testament to how well the actress playing her does the role. It’s crazy stuff going on, but everyone grounds it in emotional reality.

Elsewhere, we see Roslin getting ready to embrace both death and Gaius Baltar. Long time enemies, it seems like Baltar is really onto something this time if he can get Roslin over to his side. The cylon god though he may be, he offers comfort to the dying, and that’s what she needs at this moment. The episode closing scene with her and Adama is beautiful and tender, even as it hints at a possible schism between the two. Adama refers derisively to Baltar’s “horse manure,” which she’s clearly starting to believe. I’m looking forward to the next meeting between the two of them.

This was one of the best episodes of the series’ entire run to date. It’s filled with incredible images, and really emotional sequences. The basestar sequence was a perfect example of how to use the long term character development possible in a series to set up really intriguing and tense narrative situations. We’ve been with these people so long, there’s such history, it’s easy to feel how fragile the détente is, and how much ill feeling exists between these people.

And, perhaps most importantly, the episode opens up a world of fascinating story possibilities. How will the Galactica react to the arrival of the basestar? Will Baltar embrace them as religious brethren? How will the final four react? And many more, this season is fantastic so far, and looks like it’ll only get better. I only wish it wasn’t ending so soon, it took me a couple of episodes to get back into the world, and I don’t want to lose it so soon.

Battlestar Galactica: 'The Road Less Traveled' (4x05)

A lot of people seem to be frustrated by this episode, and I’ll admit I was not happy to see that ‘To Be Continued’ up on screen, but, I thought it was a fantastic piece of television, and entirely satisfying in what we got. I love the way this season is developing, the precision thematic development and overarching serial narrative in place of standalone stories. It’s by far the most consistent season of the show to date, and will hopefully get even better as it goes on.

The major thing I liked about this episode was the return of the Kara Thrace I love. The character felt a bit off in the first couple of episodes of the season, her constant screams of “We’re going the wrong way” didn’t feel like the character we’ve come to know over the course of the series, the character who sat calmly and rationally while Leoben imprisoned her, then abruptly stabbed him with a fork.

Kara’s definitely changed by whatever happened to her in the nebula, but I think the steely focus and efficiency has returned. She knows that people don’t believe her, but she doesn’t care. I love how twitchy she is throughout the episode, her eyes alone tell the story in a lot of scenes. Kara’s not one to start a fight, she’d just provoke the guy until he attacks her, but that psychological approach might not work so well as the captain of a ship. She’s lost touch with her crew, and is only able to feel connected when she’s with Leoben.

The Kara/Leoben relationship has been a source of mystery since the show’s earliest days, as we saw in ‘Maelstrom,’ he is her spiritual guide, the only one who knows about her destiny, in many ways he is to her what the Head Six is to Baltar, a voice that promises she’ll be something special if she can only actualize her destiny. But, at the same time, he abused her horribly on New Caprica. This brings us back to one of the central themes of Kara’s character arc, and the series as a whole, the thin line between pain and love. For so many of these characters, the only way to express their feelings is through violence. Because of Kara’s abuse as a child, it’s quite possible she only considers it real love if she’s being hurt. That’s why she’s so drawn to Leoben, he’s the only one who can make her feel like her mother did, and maybe if she can win his approval, it’ll be like getting the approval her mother never gave her.

And, Leoben provides a fine vessel for her to express her own physicality, she can kill him as many times as she wants, but he’ll always be back. Here, she attacks him again, it’s the only way to show she cares. Anders’ newfound cylon status has him on that same violence/love slippery slope, he attacks Leoben both to react against his own nature, and to show Kara that he still cares. But, he can never get through to her in the way that Leoben does.

The episode sets up the tantalizing prospect of a human/cylon alliance. I’m assuming this will happen in some way. It would seem to be the perfect opportunity to set up a schism in the fleet, and make Baltar an even bigger splinter group. He could take his one god crew over to the cylon ship and set out for Earth with Kara. I really like the splinter cylon plot, and I feel like a détente between cylon and human is an essential part of the series’ arc. We’ve seen again and again how similar the two groups are, it’s only language and culture that separate them. Those differences can be bridged.

One thing that bothers me about the Demetrius arc so far is that we have no insight into Sharon’s feelings on the situation. You’d think people would at least question her loyalties, she is a cylon. But, it’s not played that way, and we also get very little feel for her and Helo’s relationship. They seem like co-workers only, not a couple. Sharon was one of my favorite characters in the first couple years of the show, but they’ve given her very little to do last season and this season.

Elsewhere, we get some more good stuff with Baltar and his gang. The major new development is the cementing of the connection between the new cylons and Baltar. I love the way they shot the scene with Baltar and Tori in bed, it feels very intimate, and real in a way most TV sex scenes don’t. It didn’t feel like the staging existed only to cover up the naughty bits.

I love the questions these stories are raising, and I love the in depth character investigation we’ve been getting this season. Kara and Baltar are the two most complex and interesting to watch characters on the show, any episode that spotlights them is going to be a good one.

Doctor Who: 'Fires of Pompeii' (4x02)

“Fires of Pompeii” is one of my favorite Doctor Who historical episodes, a much stronger episode than its counterparts in the second and third season. Part of that is the fact that, as far I recall, we’ve never seen them go back this far in history yet on the series. This society feels alien in a way Victorian or even the Shakespearean era stuff didn’t. Part of that is the presence of aliens, but it’s also an aesthetic and cultural division between our world and theirs. On top of the intrinsically interesting surroundings, we get a really dramatic story that gets to the core of the Doctor’s internal conflict, and does a great job of cementing the relationship between him and Donna. It’s one of my favorite standalones of the series so far.

This season has been one of the strongest out of the gate, and strangely enough, it’s largely due to Donna. I like Rose and Martha more as characters, but Donna forces the Doctor to examine himself in a way we didn’t see earlier. Eccleston Doctor had a lot of internal conflict, but Tennant Doctor seemed fairly carefree for much of season two. After Rose is taken, we see some internal conflict, but he seems to be running from it the whole season, unable to really talk about what he went through. And, Martha is so in awe of him, she doesn’t really question it.

Even though the Master arc ended with a reset button for the world, it’s made a huge impact on the Doctor himself. I don’t think it’s so much the trauma of aging, it’s really the knowledge that he will always be alone. The only other timelord in the world turned out to be a psychotic world conqueror who violated every ethic the Doctor lives by. And, thanks to her involvement with him, Martha’s whole family spent a year kidnapped in the service of the Master. And, perhaps the greatest wound of all is the fact that, in the end, she abandoned him. He has to realize just how alone he is.

What Donna does is force him to examine himself in a way he hasn’t before. He’s adrift in the world, no longer with a fawning Rose surrogate, he’s got a grown woman who still shares his wonder at the world, but won’t just go along with whatever he tells her. She questions him in ways he doesn’t really want to be questioned. The best moment of the episode is Donna asking the Doctor why he can’t save them, why he has to play by this seemingly arbitrary set of rules. The confrontation in the Tardis was a scene with so much power, both characters pushed to the edge of their emotions. Follow that up with the gorgeous, tragic burning of Pompeii and it’s a really amazing episode ending.

I’ve said it before, but a large part of what makes the show so powerful is the sheer scope of events. 20,000 lives are at stake, and it’s the Doctor who has to pull the trigger and execute them. He triggers the volcano and has to deal with the emotional consequences of that. Yes, he is given the out that it’s either Pompeii or the world, but he still makes the choice to kill them.

And, aiding all this are the fantastic visuals. The BBC Rome sets are a good foundation, but it’s the visual effects team that takes things up a notch, first with the cool underground fire alien world, and then with the episode capping eruption sequence. I wish we hadn’t gotten that “The power of Vulcan, I shall call this…a volcano” speech, but I could ignore that since the rest of the moment worked so well.

Where does this leave us? The Doctor and Donna are closer than before, but she’s also aware that it’s not all fun and games on the road, they will watch people die, unable to do anything about it. We saw Rose learn that lesson in ‘Father’s Day,’ and now Donna learns it.

This is one of my favorite ‘regular’ episodes in the whole run of the series. It’s got virtually everything that makes the show work. There’s some good comedy at the beginning, some interesting time disparity stuff and world building, and in the end, some really dramatic, emotional stuff. It doesn’t have the plot significance of a season finale, it’s just a really great standalone story that develops the characters. That’s not to say elements of the plot don’t work, but enough does that the bad stuff gets overwhelmed.

So far, the fourth season has been stronger out of the gate than any prior year. It’ll be tough to match that run of episodes that closed out season three, but if they keep up this momentum, it should be doable.

Rebuild of Evangelion 1.0: You Are (Not) Alone

Thanks to the Japanese DVD release, I was finally able to find a decent torrent of Rebuild of Evangelion, and last night I watched the film. As a side note, normally I don’t like to torrent stuff, but I made an exception in this case because it will surely take many years for the film to be released over here. With a work like this, with a clear built in audience, would it really be that tough to get it released over here within six months of the Japanese release? Who benefits from the hold up? I’d much rather see the film in the theater as intended than check it out on a bootleg video file, but if I want to see the film now, that’s the price I must pay.

Anyway, onto the film itself. When I heard about the project, I wondered why it existed. It seems weird that Anno would want to revisit his masterwork and create a slightly different version of it. After watching it, I’m not really sold on the reasoning for this project. It’s clearer than the TV series, and features some better visuals, but I don’t know that it adds anything to the universe that wasn’t already in the series. But, I feel like my perspective on this film is really hazy because I’ve only seen the series once. I remember what happened in the first few episodes, but not so clearly that I can say exactly what’s different between this film and the series.

My impression of the film is that it’s much clearer than the series. When I watched the series, I didn’t really understand a lot of what was up with the angels, and why these kids were chosen to pilot the Evas. Shinji asks what he’s doing there, and I get a much better sense of him finding it odd that he’s chosen to pilot the ship. But, maybe that was there before and I just didn’t understand the answer. The end of the show insinuates that the Evas are actually elements of their pilot’s mothers, so Shinji is the only one who can pilot Unit 01. Once you know that, it’s a lot easier to understand why things happen the way they do.

What worked undeniably well in the film was the atmosphere. It took me a little bit to get into it, but by the time Shinji runs away, we’ve got that omnipresent mental darkness back. I found Shinji much more relatable as a protagonist here than in the series, and the film felt very focused on the conflict of him dealing with his loneliness. The subtitle of the film is “You Are (Not) Alone,” and it sums up the question Shinji faces. He believes that his only worth is in piloting Eva, he gets praise and reinforcement from Misato and the others, but it feels meaningless. Would they still love him if he didn’t pilot Eva?

And, the real brilliance and tragedy of the series, is they probably would not. So, maybe he’d be more alone if he didn’t pilot the Eva, he’d never have met back up with his father for starters. However, as the alternate world sequence in the series finale shows, maybe it’s piloting Eva that screwed him up in the first place, in another time and place, he could have had a normal childhood, a normal family. It is the Eva that gives him purpose, it is the Eva that destroys the life he could have had.

I think the show, and this film’s greatest strength, is its ability to depict its protagonist’s internal life. Most films have external conflicts, a hero vs. a villain, or a hero pursuing a relationship, external goals that are achieved by the end of the narrative and seem to solve all the characters’ problems. Complexity is added by giving the protagonist some kind of problem, alcoholism or something like that, but that kind of story doesn’t really deal with the issues I face, and I’m assuming most people face. In reality, most people don’t face enemies, they face ever shifting internal difficulties, like the kind that Shinji faces.

Shinji succeeds in saving the world and killing the angel, but he feels worse than ever because in this story, the internal conflict is not telegraphed one to one onto an external foe. The show has kind of a Trojan Horse narrative, we start out thinking it’s about battling angels, but there’s no real end in sight to these battles, the real foe is out own internal doubt and distance. Shinji wants other people to love him, but we won’t open himself up to them, that’s the essence of the Hedgehog’s Dilemma, the problem that nearly all the characters in the series face.

All around him, Shinji sees people who have shut themselves off from the world, and committed themselves to doing a job. That’s Rei, the perfect soldier. He wants her to react in some way, he wants someone to relate to, but she won’t give him anything. It’s the same with his father, those two are the ones he wants to recognize him, and it kills him when he sees Rei and Gendo speaking. His father will give her affection, but not him.

The whole thing is a mess of bizarre Oedipal issues when you view it in light of the fact that Rei is at least partially a clone of Shinji’s mother, but at the same time was raised by Gendo so she’s both Shinji’s mother/sister, and yet, he’s still attracted to her. Shinji watches Rei and Gendo from afar, jealous, he wants to kill his father and fuck Rei, quite literally he would be Oedipus. And, the craziest thing is he’s watching all this inside Unit 01, which is essentially his mother’s womb.

The film makes more of an issue of Misato’s feelings towards Shinji. We spend less time at their home, but Ritsuko questions Misato’s motivations in taking Shinji in more. The whole Ritsuko/Misato past is unclear to me. I felt that Ritsuko was attracted to Misato, and that’s why she seems to hate everyone Misato gets involved with, that’s why she would be so worried that Misato is attracted to Shinji. If that’s the case, why is Ritsuko having sex with Gendo? I’d argue it’s a kind of Elektra complex, she both hates and wants to be her mother, if her mother had an affair with Gendo, she will too.

That’s an element of the story I’d actually like to see explored more. I think Rebuild might have been more interesting if it focused primarily on the adults, and their complicated relationships, basically switching the perspective so this works better as an addition to the series, not a replacement. As it is, this feels like a musician covering their own song ten years later, there’s some interest in seeing the differences, but I’d rather see a completely new story.

That’s sort of the conundrum of the project. I’m happy it exists, it looks amazing, and in many ways is what I wanted Eva to be the first time I watched it. Much of the goofy stuff is excised, there’s fewer scenes at school and at Misato’s house and everything seems to hang together better as a singular narrative. However, once you see the whole series, the purpose of those goofy scenes becomes clear. Because we’re attached to Shinji, because we’ve seen him in a more normal situation, the awful things he goes through feel more awful. I still think they could have been handled better, but all those goofy school and home scenes are worth it for that five minute sequence in the finale when we see Shinji’s alternate world. Just hearing the wacky comedy theme come back after ten episodes of absolute horror hit me so hard.

And, I think the loss of those scenes, annoying though they were, takes away some of the scope of the story. It’s the difference between TV series storytelling and film storytelling. A film inherently has to be more focused, there has to be a beginning and ending, and everything must fit into some kind of structure. Even as the first of four films, this feels like a unified narrative in a way the series never did. On the series, new angels appeared every episode, stuff happened and we got the sense of time passing and life being lived. Here, I don’t get that same sense of time passing. If I had to guess, I’d say this whole movie takes place in about two weeks, while the series felt like it took place over the course of months.

The reason for that is, when you watch a movie, the characters don’t have time to go off and do their own thing. Episodic structure makes it easier for you to believe these characters have lives off screen. You watch an episode, go off and do some other stuff, then come back and watch another. So, it’s logical to think they’d be doing other stuff while you were gone. I think that’s why it sometimes feels weird when you have a show come back from a summer cliffhanger and all the characters are in the same place. If your life has changed, why shouldn’t theirs?

This feels much more like a filmic narrative, it’s got a tighter structure, and less room for standalone scenes with the characters other than Shinji. I’m hoping that as the films go on, we do get to spend more time with Rei, and when she’s introduced, Asuka. Asuka was by far my favorite character in the series, her internal complexity was just as exciting to watch as Shinji’s, and she functions as essentially his opposite, using a lot of external personality to mask what she’s feeling inside. I remember when I was first watching the show, her entrance coalesced the characters into a kind of family, and made it a lot easier to understand Shinji as a character.

Even though I do have issues with the film, it is pretty spectacular visually. Cutting down on the number of Angels in the story makes them feel more dangerous, and raised the stakes for the battles. It took me a while to get into the world of the story again, but by the second half of the film, it just flew by. I was really surprised the film was already over when the battle with the Diamond Angel ended, it didn’t feel like an hour and a half had passed. I did love that battle, the stakes were huge, and you could really feel how much rested on Shinji’s shoulders. That’s something that wasn’t really conveyed in the TV series. And, as I mentioned before, I love the way the triumph he should feel after destroying the Angel is undercut by the knowledge that he is still alone, and desperate for someone who can share his burden.

This film sticks pretty closely to the series until the very end, when we get the early appearance of Kaworu. Kaworu made a huge impact, despite only appearing in one episode of the series. I’m guessing his appearance will start a change of events that differentiate the films from the series. As much as I like the show, if Anno’s going to go to the trouble of remaking the whole thing, he might as well experiment and do things differently. In some sense, that’s going with the spirit of the work. I found the last two episodes of the show to be a perfectly satisfying, and thematically appropriate ending for the story, however End of Eva works in its own way too. I can’t really say which one is more ‘real,’ and whatever happens in this version of the story is just another way it could have gone.

What I’m really curious to see is the ending. Both original endings felt so raw and emotional, like they were torn directly from Anno’s subconscious and put on film. I’ve only seen End of Eva once, but that last half of the film was as close to pure subconscious experience as I’ve seen on film. The stuff with Asuka and Shinji, the fourth wall breaking live action scenes, it was almost too much to take on a single viewing. How will Anno end his story this time? What will it tell us about the world and the characters? I’m curious to see. This was a strong start, an undeniably powerful film that, for all my issues with it and the project in general, I’m very glad to see in the world. Evangelion is one of the most challenging and emotionally wrenching series I’ve ever seen, and I’m glad to get a chance to return to that world for another round of stories.

The Fourth World: Omnibus Volume Four

I just finished reading the final Fourth World Omnibus. I love that DC put these books out, the issues hold up well, and are thematically extremely relevant to the world we live in today. This last volume is a downturn in quality from the earlier issues, but it concludes with a couple of great stories, the unjustly maligned “Hunger Dogs” graphic novel and its prelude are a satisfying, epic conclusion to the saga.

If there’s a central theme to The Fourth World, it’s the idea that darkness will always fail to control the world, and in the end, the forces of good will find a way to win. The reason for that is that the order Darkseid seeks to impose is inherently fragile. It’s a lot easier to shine a light than to blot out the sun. We see this played out in the final issue of The Forever People, where Infinity Man finds his way out of a cosmic prison to go back and battle Darkseid. The issue ends with Darkseid banishing the Forever People to another dimension, something they’re cool with. What he calls a punishment, they see as an opportunity to build a new home for themselves.

Mister Miracle is about escape, he is the incarnation of chaos, a man who cannot be held by any prison. Apokolips is a prison planet, so he is the ultimate affront to that world. He can escape from any prison they cook up for him, and even when the series drifts away from its Fourth World roots, the core theme remains present.

Most of this book is Mister Miracle issues, and he was always my least favorite of the Fourth World books. These issues aren’t bad, but they are a bit formulaic. The joy is in watching the developing relationships between the various characters. We get to watch the formation of the Mister Miracle Escape Troupe, the creation of a surrogate family for various characters. Scott and Barda are the central relationship here, and it’s great watching them get closer and finally get married at the end of the series.

Also introduced is Shilo Norman, a kid who will grow up to play a central role in Grant Morrison’s Mister Miracle series. He’s not too notable here, though I do like the way Kirby creates an inter-racial family with Scott’s adoption of Shilo. Kirby is extremely politically progressive, and his youthful energy serves as a rebuke to the traditional image of generational conflict in the 60s. Reading this series, it’s clear he’s philosophically right with the 60s counterculture, and Jimmy Olsen and The Forever People read as extended tributes to those ideas.

Kirby sounds like an incredible guy, it’s crazy to think of all the stuff he must have done in his life, making all these stories, fighting in World War II, and more. He came face to face with the Earth incarnation of Darkseid and Apokolips, and I’m sure much of the series is informed by what he saw there. It bothers me when people equate patriotism with this conservative ideal of the whitebread nuclear family. Kirby came out of that generation, but he’s making these trippy, progressive comics that are as groundbreaking as anything else that came out of the counterculture. You know if he were around today, he’d hate what Bush did to this country, and would be writing comics about people who fought back.

Morrison’s Mister Miracle will likely make a lot more sense if I read it now, after reading all the original stuff. I like the idea that Shilo wanders away from the wedding in issue #18 unsure of whether anything he just saw was real, and it’s those memories that come back to him when he plunges into the black hole in the series. Seven Soldiers owes a major debt to what the Fourth World books did.

After a bunch of random standalone issues, the Fourth World concepts and characters return in issue #18, the wedding of Scott and Barda. It’s great to see them back, many classic Mister Miracle foes return and we get a final confrontation between the forces of freedom and the forces of control. Highfather shows them all up, and everyone escapes to New Genesis. Darkseid is left behind to reflect on the fact that “Life at best is bittersweet.” Situated a panel away from a caption saying “The Mister Miracle series will not be continued…” that feels all too appropriate.

However, the saga is not over. The other titles fade to the back, and the Orion/Darkseid conflict surges to the fore for Hunger Dogs. These stories have a pretty bad reputation, but I really liked them. I suppose it could be a bit underwhelming if you’d waited fifteen years for the conclusion, but read in succession with the issues, it works well.

“Even Gods Must Die” is primarily a visual spectacle, Kirby’s art feels rawer and crazier than the old stuff, and his layouts are more experimental. Every page seems to be half covered in crazy Kirby gizmos, and filled to the brim with faces and bodies in motion.

The big conflict here is between Darkseid’s attempt to impose total order on Apokolips, and the spark of chaos that Orion brings. Darkseid has turned to machines, “The Micro-Mark” in particular, which is apparently an artifical version of the anti-life equation. He is using this to subdue the masses and turn them into mindless drones who believe only in Darkseid.

Again, there’s huge relevance to what we’re seeing happening in politics today. There’s a lot of talk about why movies about Iraq fail, and primarily I think it’s because it’s hard to express the anger that a lot of people feel without coming off as preachy and over the top. I think people have a hard time accepting their own culpability in what happened, so we wind up with movies that explicitly claim to have no political agenda. But, this is a time when we need people to speak out, and sometimes it’s easier to that through genre. What the Fourth World books do is tap into a conflict so eternal and fundamental to humanity, they remain forever relevant. The original concept came out of Vietnam, but Darkseid’s agenda feels like exactly the kind of thing we’ve seen Bush and his crew do.

Much emphasis is placed on the mechanation of Apokolips. They no longer need foot soldiers to kill and keep control. When we’ve got politicians speaking about unmanned drones to protect our borders, and an army where you can bomb people from remote, it’s clear how relevant this is. And, I think it’s only by viewing the conflict in this kind of archetypal genre narrative that we can recognize how dire our own situation is. Real life villains don’t have faces of stone, they wear suits and speak like they care about you. Is anyone supporting Darkseid when they read this story? No, and if that’s the case, why are people still supporting his counterpart on our world?

That’s why I like the fact that Kirby recognizes one man can’t save the world, he can only hope to ignite a change in the masses. Before reading it, I wondered why the book was called “The Hunger Dogs,” and it turns out that the dogs are the people of Apokolips. We’ve been following the conflict of gods, and never understood what it did to the people on the ground level. They want to throw off the control of Darkseid, but they don’t know how to. That’s where Orion comes in.

Orion is the spark of chaos, born in the darkness of Apokolips, he has seen the light and now returns to spread that light and tear through Darkseid’s control. In the prelude, we see him eventually reach Darkseid, and in an awesome turn of events, get abruptly gunned down. But, Darkseid doesn’t seem to even care. He’s going through the motions at this point, seemingly in an extistential crisis. His imminent victory feels meaningless. I particularly like the scenes where he revives people who’ve died during the series, only to find that they are little more than flesh puppets, their existence only reminding him more of what he lost.

“The Hunger Dogs” is ostensibly about the final confrontation between Darkseid and Orion, but the real action takes place away from that, on New Genesis. Throughout the entire series, we’ve seen New Genesis and Apokolips pitted against each other in this eternal struggle of freedom and control. Darkseid beings an assault on New Genesis, but High Father winds up totally subverting the paradigm. Darkseid thinks that destroying their world will destroy the people, but in the end, the destruction of New Genesis liberates them to go searching the galaxy for a new way of life.

Much like with the Forever People, Darkseid believes that upending the order of things will cripple his foe, only to find out that he’s given them an opportunity to find something better. Darkseid is ultimately about the status quo, keeping people locked in specific patterns of behavior. High Father is much more malleable, they have a satellite ready, and are perfectly willing to go searching the stars for a new world. Nobody knows what they’ll find out there, but they’ve got hope.

So, Darkseid first loses his cosmic foe, and next uses his personal foe, Orion. Rather than embarking on another duel to the death with Darkseid, Orion decides to take the people he cares about and run away. I’m guessing one of the big issues people have with the book is that they see this ending as a cop out. We’re deprived of the epic final confrontation between father and son. But, I feel like we get that in “Gods Must Die,” we’ve seen that you can’t defeat Darkseid through force. “Hunger Dogs” is all about destroying the idea of Darkseid, the Manichean ideal that he so stringently represents.

By running away, Orion deprives Darkseid of an enemy, and without an enemy, his life is meaningless. He doesn’t care about controlling the people anymore, they’re running over his machines and causing chaos in the society. At this point, he only cared about Orion and Tigra, and now they’re running away, never to be seen again. Orion chooses a life of adventure, of new discoveries, instead of continuing this tired old paradigm of good vs. evil.

That’s ultimately the greatest escape of all. The book begins with a war, and it ends with the close of that war. Evil is not defeated, it’s the idea of war itself that’s abandoned. The chaos Orion inspires in Apokolips will eventually bring down the civilization, in a way that acts of destruction never can. People can only be ruled by fascist governments if they believe that’s the only way things can be. Bush can install the Patriot Act because he says we’re in imminent danger and this is the only way to protect ourselves. But, once you realize that’s a lie, that the whole world is built on a lie, the people will revolt against the current order. Orion has shown the Hunger Dogs that Darkseid need not be feared, and they are ultimately the ones who will win the war. It is their human passion that will destroy the machines Darkseid barely even cares about.

I love the final couple of pages in the book, particularly High Father’s speech about the new nature of their existence. The people he’s speaking with fear that they might find a foe greater than Darkseid. But, where they fear the unknown, he relishes it, hoping that they will find a better world. It is a gamble to choose the unknown, but perhaps they can find hope out there. “The world we seek must find us. We are the ones who are lost!”

And the whole world closes out with one final appearance of Metron, towing a young planet behind him, the planet that will presumably one day become the new hope of High Father and the residents of New Genesis. Metron is essentially another fiction suit for John a Dreams, a person who’s outside the game, above the conflict, and moving to ensure that certain things happen as they need to. There are a lot of similarities between the Fourth World and The Invisibles, most notably the destruction of a Manichaean paradigm at the end. Evil is not defeated, it’s exposed as pathetic and lacking next to the overwhelming light of forward progress.

In the end, it’s disappointing that Kirby couldn’t finish the story as he’d hoped to. I’d have loved to see everyone come back for the finale, get the Forever People, Scott and Barda, Dave Lincoln and Claudia Shane, and even Jimmy and the newsboy gang back to help defeat Darkseid. But, I think it’s a total misjudgment to say that this ending is somehow a failure or disappointing. I think it’s as pop and exciting as any of the comics that preceded it. After reading these books, it’s easy to see why Kirby is revered as a god of the medium.

DC Universe #0

DC Universe #0, the prelude/teaser for Final Crisis and a variety of other DC books dropped yesterday. It was pitched as a primer for new readers, giving them the info they needed to follow DC’s upcoming stories. I don’t consider myself a new reader, I’ve read 52, Infinite Crisis, Crisis on Infinite Earths, all of The Fourth World, Grant’s JLA and more, but I found myself very confused, and not really knowing what was going on for the vast majority of the book. So, I think the book would be absolutely impenetrable to totally new readers. That said, I am pretty intrigued by the stories, so perhaps the book did its job.

I think one of the great myths of recent comics discussion is the idea that readers need done in one stories and clear jump on points if they’re going to enjoy a book. Ultimate Spider-Man was specifically designed to have standalone arcs, so you can pick up any TPB or arc starting issue and enjoy it. Warren Ellis has talked a lot about this, and done series like Global Frequency that are modular and designed to be easy for new readers to pick up. I don’t think this is a bad idea, but if you read people talking about why they got into comics, very few of them say they picked up the first issue of a book, or a new storyline and got hooked from there.

More frequently, you’ll hear people talk about how they picked up a random issue of Claremont X-Men, or something like that, and didn’t know what was going on, but wanted to know more. For me, I picked up some X-Men comics, and was baffled, but I was interested in knowing more, so I picked up Essential X-Men 1, and went from there. So, technically it was reading a jump on point that got me into comics, but I would never have been interested if I hadn’t gotten a glimpse of the crazy universe and its many stories from the current issues. Hearing about stories like Mutant Massacre and Inferno, I wanted to find out what they were, and discover the characters’ backstory. If there was a downside to actually finishing the Claremont run, it’s that all these stories were nailed down into something concrete, rather than existing as this hazy apocryphal narrative.

So, in that sense, this book works. It presents cryptic glimpses of various storylines, and has me intrigued for a number of them. I wouldn’t normally read a Wonder Woman comic, but this teaser wasn’t bad, and reminded me of the Gail Simone issue I had gotten free at New York Comicon. I won’t be buying this new storyline in singles, but I might grab a TPB of Simone’s first arc when it comes out.

The stuff with Green Lantern was totally incomprehensible, as was whatever was going on with Superman at the start of the book. The book in general felt a bit too divided in focus. By jumping around to all these stories, we don’t get a real feel for them. It would have probably been better to make a choice and go for either something that’s straight up ad, or go for more of a coherent story.

That said, I do really like the scene with Libra at the end of the issue. The tagline for Final Crisis is ‘The Day Evil Won,’ and the series seems to be dealing explicitly with the dark power of Darkseid. Having just finished the last Fourth World omnibus, I’m curious to see how Morrison deals with Darkseid. I like the religious angle, which feels very contemporary. I could imagine Dick Cheney leading a similar meeting of his business associates, asking them to join him and invade Iraq.

The end of The Invisibles posited a world on the threshold of a new age, ready to burst into glorious chaotic life. In Volume III, the old order was already destroyed, and their defeat was a formality. However, our world hasn’t gone that way, and it’s appropriate that this crossover deal with a resurgent force of evil in the world. Darkseid is the pure incarnation of control, and by believing in him, this ragtag crew of villains could become united for a single cause.

So, that was me intrigued, and bodes well for what’s going on in FC. However, the ‘big revelation’ out of this issue was the return of Bart Allan, the original Flash. Now, the only reason I have to believe that happened is the various media articles about it. Reading the issue itself, I had no idea that that happened. Yes, there’s the giant Flash sign on the last page, but that means he’s returned from the dead? My interpretation would more be that he’s merged with the DCU itself, and perhaps that is the take, but it doesn’t seem to gibe with what the media’s reporting. Is that the Flash falling through time, and glowing with power, or Darkseid? I don’t even know.

And, I think that’s a big problem with the issue. I think it errs a bit too much towards the cryptic, if I can’t tell what’s going on, someone who’s read many, many current and older DC comics, then you’ve got a very narrow audience for the book. I don’t necessarily mind not being able to follow everything, but if this Flash story is something internal to this book, it should be at least somewhat comprehensible.

Still, I don’t think Morrison’s responsible for most of the content in the book. It’s got a lot of stories to tease, and not much space to do it in. It succeeds in intriguing me, but it’s not the kind of thing that’s going to hook, or even make any sense at all, to a casual fan. Now, for some people that might not be a problem, getting a glimpse into this crazy universe could get them on the path to buying some more books. But, a low priced book going out the week of Free Comic Book Day should at least have some internal logic.

Torchwood: 1x01 - 1x04

As I was saying before, watching Torchwood made much clearer what it is that makes Doctor Who works. His joy and energy makes even a run of the mill episode enjoyable, and watching his life spirit come in conflict with vast darkness is what ignites the major conflicts in the series. Torchwood doesn’t have this same life spirit, the characters are all a bit darker, and the external world is treated more as a menace than something exciting to be discovered. The show has its moments, but after four episodes, I don’t think it’s quite found its voice.

The basic structure of the first episode is pretty similar to Doctor Who’s ‘Rose,’ however ‘Rose’ worked better for me because I was totally new to the universe, like the character was. Here, I know who Jack is, I’m aware that there’s weird stuff going on, so it feels like we’re one step ahead of the character. Gwen is a solid protagonist, I like the pull between her regular life and the more lonely, workaholic lives of the Torchwood gang, I’m guessing she’ll eventually dump the boyfriend and commit full time to Torchwood.

My central issue with the series so far is the portrayal of Captain Jack. This was a character who was so charismatic he got this spinoff made after only a few episodes on Doctor Who. The central appeal of the character was his reckless sense of adventure, his enthusiasm to go anywhere and do anything. He’s the character we know, and in theory, he should be our point of view character, not Gwen. So, I’m not sure why they chose to change him from a friendly, energetic guy into a brooding mysterious guy. It kills the appeal of the character, and makes the show into much more of a typical broody, dark sci-fi show.

The show has a lot in common with Angel, and like the first season of Angel, it struggles to find its voice. I think all the episodes are watchable, and have their moments, but none of them really click. The strongest is probably ‘Day One,’ which puts Gwen in some tough situations, and contrasts her naivete with the world weariness of the rest of the gang. But, like early Angel, they frequently try to make the series too dark and humorless, as a contrast to its goofier parent show.

Now, I love dark stories, the darker episodes of Who are my favorites, but those dark episodes still feature fun and awe. Look at the Master episodes, it’s his ecstatic dance as the six billion orbs descend that makes it work, there’s no need for brooding. The Doctor goes through dark times, but he keeps high spirits. The fact that he can be happy makes his sadness even worse. Other than Gwen, I don’t have a sense of who these characters are outside of work yet, and that makes it tough to care for them.

That’s where the series’ biggest misfire so far comes from. ‘Cyberwoman’ has a bunch of things going against it, that really goofy outfit on the woman notably, but the real flaw of the episode is that it wants us to care deeply about Ianto, a character we’ve barely seen, and the actor just doesn’t pull it off. It feels melodramatic and over the top when it should be emotional. It’s the kind of episode that sounds good on paper, but just doesn’t work in practice.

But, it’s still early in the series. I’ll stick with it and see how things go. The premise has a lot of potential, and Gwen and Jack have some good chemistry when they let him actually play something other than brooding mysteriousness. It makes no sense to me that his work crew should be unclear whether he’s straight or gay, the guy we saw on Doctor Who would have tried to have them all already, so they should know he’ll go for whatever, as long as it’s beautiful. It’s odd that they’d so completely miss what makes the character work when building a show around him. Jumping from the Jack we saw in the last episodes of season three to the Jack of Torchwood is an odd experience. It really feels like the same actor playing two totally different rules. I don’t blame Barrowman, it’s more the writing that fails him.

Doctor Who: 'Partners in Crime' (4x01)

This weekend I watched the first episode of Doctor Who’s fourth season, as well as the first four episodes of Torchwood. Watching Torchwood makes clear what the strengths of Doctor Who are, it’s that infectious joy the Doctor has at discovering the unknown. While I love the huge, dark two parters that lose out each season, the essence of the series is going to new places, seeing new things and experiencing something that takes you away from dreary everyday existence. Torchwood focuses more on that dreary existence, and consequently is a less engaging series. It’s not bad, but hasn’t done anything to really hook me so far.

I’ll start with the Doctor Who episode. As they usually do early in the season, things start off on a lighter note, with ten minutes of goofy comedy missed connections. It’s not the kind of thing I usually go for, but I really enjoyed it here, the heads bobbing out of cubicles, just barely missing each other every time. This all culminated in the really funny window to window discussion that finally brought our two main characters together.

But before that, we get a good idea of what Donna’s home life is like. Donna isn’t like Rose or Martha, she doesn’t have a whole life ahead of her, she’s lived and has realized that nothing she’s going to do is going to match what she had with the Doctor. Thematically, it’s similar to what they did with Sarah Jane in ‘School Reunion.’ It’s interesting because it makes the Doctor simultaneously the best thing in these peoples’ lives and the worst because he makes it impossible for them to go back to regular life. One of my favorite scenes in the whole series is Rose, Mickey and her mother at a restaurant in ‘Parting of the Ways,’ where she says that she cannot live like she used to anymore, she’s seen too much.

But, like Sarah Jane, Donna has gone into action in the Doctor’s absence, carrying on his mission. One of my favorite scenes in the episode is Donna’s conversation with her grandfather. The show is at its core about the joy we get from discovering the universe, and it’s really touching to see someone who’s looking to the stars instead of just staying trapped on the ground. The ending moment, when Donna waves to him from the Tardis, is the kind of thing that could play as cheesy on another series, but this show has such irony free love of human possibility, it works wonderfully. It’s the kind of moment you only see on this show.

Along with this we get some more fun comedy adventure stuff. Donna’s brassier attitude is a nice contrast to the awed demeanor of the previous two companions. She’s not going to be shocked to travel to the past or future, and I’m thinking she’ll help the Doctor to examine himself a bit. Here, we already can see how he’s thought about what happened to Martha, the pain she suffers weighs heavy on his consequences. He has to wonder, would everyone he takes on the Tardis have been better off if they’d never met him? Ultimately, the show leans toward the idea that the bad stuff is worth it if it means getting a chance to see the wonderful things that are out there.

But, I don’t think most people were thinking about all that at the end of the episode, instead it was one brief cameo that lingered, and that’s the surprise reappearance of Billie Piper as Rose. My reading of the scene is that she’s somehow able to project out of the parallel universe, into ours, that she’s working to come back to the Doctor, but isn’t quite able to pull it off yet. I’m eager to see her return, and it’s nice that we get some hints early in the year, it just doesn’t come out of the blue later in the series.

So, that’s it for the Who season premiere. Coming up next, my thoughts on Torchwood.