Big Hero 6 Review

Big Hero 6 (2015)

Direct by Don Hall and Chris Williams

So after a couple of articles all about Big Hero 6, the comic, and my thoughts on the possible ways Disney could adapt it I finally got a chance to watch the finished product.

And it’s pretty fantastic.

But what did I think about it as an adaptation?

Well, despite that being the topic of all my previous posts on Big Hero 6 when I got to see the finished film it quickly became apparent that this is one of the loosest adaptations of any property ever. I kind of suspected as much once we started to get some character and plot details, and also from the total lack of any acknowledgement that this is a Marvel property but the main things the film and comic share are some names, some powers (loosely), a few design elements (even looser) and a sort of Japanese feel.

And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. None of the original characters are particular winners (well, maybe Sunfire but he’s originally an X-Men supporting character/anti-hero) and nobody’s powers had an amazing unique concept (although I do like Fred and his Kaiju monster aura). There isn’t a great definitive Big Hero 6 story that everyone loves so, yeah, as long as you keep the high concept of super-heroes but vaguely Japanese, change whatever you want.

So how is the film itself as its own beast?

(Spoilers, sort of, most of this is set-up)

Well, the film tells the story of Hiro (Ryan Potter who is Japanese/American, which is fantastic), young orphaned genius and his older brother Tadashii (Daniel Henney and FYI Tadashii is not a name. Is it so hard to ask a Japanese person if the word you’re using for a character name is a real first name of total gibberish? Well, not gibberish since it does mean right or correct but it isn’t a first name) who is similarly a genius. Hiro spends his days hustling illegal street bot fights for cash, Tadashii spends his days at University in a specialised programme for geniuses where they get to work on whatever interests them. Tadashii is dismayed at his brother’s lack of ambition and brings him to his school to see his latest project, Baymax (Scott Adsit), an inflatable medical robot that will live in people’s homes and help them with psychiatric and physical medical assistance. There Hiro also meets Tadashii’s friends who are all idiosyncratic geniuses with their own interests and personality quirks. And Fred (T. J. Miller), who is the school’s mascot.

Hiro is inspired and desperately wants to join the school but to do so he needs to demonstrate something impressive. So he starts working on some micro-bots, think a cross between nano-bots and lego. They’re finger sized magnetic robots that can be mentally controlled to re-shape and build larger structures. He shows them off at an expo and everyone is suitably impressed leading to Hiro getting his school placement. He doesn’t get to enjoy it though because a fire starts at the expo, destroying his work and killing Tadashii.

Hiro, understandably, falls into a depression after this as his brother and best friend is dead and the only thing that snaps him out of his funk is the accidental discovery of a mysterious masked figure using his micro-bots to commit crimes. Well, that and Baymax who is programmed to try and treat his depression. With the help of a modified Baymax and Tadashii’s friends Hiro sets out to catch the thief.

The main strengths of Big hero 6 are the writing and the characters. This is a Disney film that, despite all the fantastic elements, feels very real and honest emotionally. Hiro’s personal arc is both engaging and really feels like something a teenaged boy would go through, and it’s paced marvellously too. And at the heart of that arc is the relationship between Hiro and Baymax.

I said in the build up that there’s a lot of potential in “ a boy and his….” Narratives. From Old Yeller to Iron Giant to How to Train your Dragon there is something about the relationship between teenaged boys and non-human friends that is really effecting and Hiro and Baymax are another highlight in this tradition. Baymax in particular is wonderful. Equal parts hilarious, caring, warm and adorable with a smidgen of badass. He’s the big brother everyone wishes they could have. He’s also just a great comic creation and Scott Adsit’s measured delivery of every line delivers some really great deadpan humour (if you’ve seen this film, you did a fist bump and went fa la la la la la la la, do not deny it).

The animation is, of course, spectacular. The flying and chase scenes have a sense of thrill and danger to them that puts most live action films to shame and the big action sequences with the team showing off their powers and fighting the villain are everything I want in super hero movies. Bright, colourful characters using their powers in creative ways and teaming up to look cool and kick ass. Much like Incredibles before it Big Hero 6 is so confident and creative in showing off super powers that it just highlights how limited and boring the action scenes in the Marvel movies, Man of Steel or the X-Men franchise have been. There’ so much invention in the fights and they’re choreographed so clearly and fluidly that my main complaint with the action is that there isn’t nearly enough of it.

The animation really soars in the details though. San Fransokyo is a masterful creation, it feels really lived in and is full of details that make it both aesthetically interesting and are really fun for a nerdy otaku like me to spot. Fred’s room in particular is one for the super nerds. He has a statue of sleepwalker in there! He has a statue of Black Talon. Black Talon, the guy who dresses like a chicken and fought the avengers once in the 70’s. Black Talon made it into a film before Wonder Woman!

San Fransokyo was one of the elements I was most worried about mostly because in the trailer it came off as more Chinese than Japanese. However, the creators have explained that the concept is that in this reality Chinatown has expanded to encompass the whole of San Francisco, so this is an American city with very obvious Chinese and Japanese elements. That makes a lot more sense and really comes across in the design. Stuff like Hiro’s robot anime posters, the cat named mochi or Honey Lemon pronouncing “photo-photo” with a really good Japanese accent make it feel Asian in a subtle and all-encompassing way that’s more effective and markedly less offensive than the original comics. Plus it just feels cool. It’s all the really iconic and awesome parts of modern Japanese culture nicked and combined in one sleek package.

My main complaint is that the other 4 team members get very little screen time or development. This is a story of 4 characters, Hiro, Tadashii (who dies), Baymax and the antagonist (whose identity is a secret). And that’s fine, there isn’t anything wrong with telling a focused narrative with a few side characters. Indeed, the narrative is stronger for its tight focus and excellent pacing.  But the film is called Big Hero 6 not Hiro and Baymax and we have 4 other guys who get very little to do. And that wouldn’t be so bad except that I really like these other characters and want to see more of them. Wasabi no Ginger becomes Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jr), nerdy black guy (I bring it up because I’m super happy he isn’t a horrible Asian stereotype like the comics character) with OCD and laser knives. Go Go (Jamie Chung) keeps her rebellious snarky personality but trades in bouncing like an egg for skating on frictionless magnetic bike wheels. Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez) is the complete opposite of the sexually dominating flirty comics character and is a shy, slightly clumsy but very sweet and caring typical girly girl with a purse that’s also a chemical factory. Then there’s Fred, who is pure unbridled fanboy excitement in a rubber monster suit that lets him jump high and breathe fire.

Fred could so easily have been annoying but I love him. He reminds me of me.

I like these characters, a lot. They’re fun, they have clear well defined personalities and they have wonderful chemistry together. And they have cool and varied powers. My favourite moments in the film (aside from just, everything Baymax does) are their training montage and the fights where they get to show off their skills. I just wish we had more time with them in costume fighting guys. I understand that in the original concept there was more of this but it got cut to tighten the focus. Hopefully we can get a sequel or a TV series to flesh these guys out more.

So in summary Big Hero 6 is a classic family film narrative enlivened by an imaginative setting. great characters and some clever jokes. It’s not ground breaking in any way but it’s hard to find fault in it really.

It isn’t better than The Lego Movie though.

What Makes a Super Hero? Defining the Super Hero Genre

As part of a lengthy piece I’m writing about Gatchaman Crowds it became necessary to define what constitutes the Super Hero genre, and then that short paragraph spun out into an entirely new post.

Because defining what is and isn’t a Super Hero story is actually very difficult.

You wouldn’t think it would be. It is easy to look at the classic Superman as the archetypal Super Hero and go; powers, costume, secret identity, fights Super Villains that there is a Super Hero.

But it isn’t quite that easy. Powers? Batman doesn’t have them and he’s probably the 2^nd most famous Super Hero of all time. Costumes? None of the Runaways have them, Smallville didn’t have them, Hellboy doesn’t wear one but these are all Super Heroes. Secret Identity? Everyone knows Tony Stark is Iron Man. Fights Super Villains? Surely that’s set in stone? But then there aren’t many Super villains in Watchmen, in V for Vendetta, in Miracleman and I would argue all of those are Super Hero stories.

The basic problem with defining the Super Hero genre is that genres are a mix of what can broadly be termed iconographic elements and structural elements (or alternatively connotative and denotative).

Iconographic elements refer to the things in the setting that define the genre or sometimes the style with which the setting is portrayed. If you have aliens, ray guns, robots, spaceships, cyborgs, etc then you have a science fiction story. Similarly elves, dwarves, magic, monsters and wizards are all iconographic elements of the fantasy genre.

Iconographic elements are the easiest for the audience to latch onto but they’re sometimes the least useful in determining what genre a particular story is. Star Wars, for example, has space ships and ray guns but it also has magic, is it SF or Fantasy (many would argue it is a hybrid genre like science fantasy or space opera). Alien has aliens and spaceships but that’s a horror film, right? Spaceballs has space ships and aliens but that’s a comedy.

Iconographic elements are usually only signifiers of the structural elements that determine who the characters are, what the narrative beats will be and what the aim of the story is. For example, you can tell a science fiction without any of the normal SF iconography because SF is always concerned with answering the question “what if?” SF starts from a stand point of asking a question, usually about humanity and our relationship with technology, and then extrapolating out the outcomes of that question. The Man from Earth for example is undoubtedly an SF story, it asks what if there was an immortal man, but is set entirely in one room of a house and features no technology beyond modern day. The answer of “why is he immortal?” might be magic but that doesn’t make this a fantasy. That’s because fantasies, structurally, are concerned with a quest arc. Find this thing or go to this place to achieve this goal (usually defeating the baddie), and the meat of the story is the journey to get the thing or get to the place. LoTR, Narnia, His Dark Materials, Krull, the list of fantasy stories that conform to this template is endless.

Then you get the genres where the purpose of the story is the main thing defining the structure. Horror and Comedy are the clearest example, if the story aims to make you scared, it’s a Horror, if it aims to make you laugh, it’s a Comedy. Horror does have iconographic elements (ghosts, monsters, vampires, slashers) but if you can scare your audience you’ve made a horror whether or not those iconographic elements are in your story.

The thing that makes Super Hero stories hard to define as a genre is the lack of a firm structural element that is shared across them. Because most Super Hero stories appear in comics, and because comics are a serialised medium, creators are constantly having to think up new things for their characters to do.

And that’s hard. So they steal stuff.

They take inspiration from other genres and have their characters shift into that genre for a storyline. In the X-Men alone I can think of Horror stories (the one where Kitty fights a N’Gari alone at Christmas), Fantasy Epics (the Kulan Gath crossover, Inferno, the recent storyline rescuing Nightcrawler from Heaven), Space Opera (The Dark Phoenix Saga), Mythological tales (the time they all went to Asgard), Science Fiction (Days of Future Past), Comedy (loads but “Girl’s Night Out” jumps to mind) and many, many more. The X-Men switch genres with every story and so do The Avengers, The JLA and any other long running Super Hero team.

And this Post-Modern mixing and matching applies to the iconographic elements as well. The Avengers have had on their team Thor (from mythology), The Vision (an SF robot), Dr Strange (a Fantasy magician), Luke Cage (a Blaxploitation character of all things), Blade (a vampire hunter with his roots in Horror) and yet The Avengers is unquestionably a Super Hero team.

This Post-Modern mixing and matching of elements is actually one of the things I absolutely adore about Super Hero comics but it does make it bloody hard to say what is and isn’t a Super Hero.

So let’s go back to Superman and look at those key things we drew out of him and see what is and isn’t necessary to be a Super Hero.

The Key Things from Superman:

Super Powers

Costume

Secret Identity

Saves People

Fights Super-Villains

 

Super Powers

The presence of super powers would at first glance seem to be the biggest thing making your main character a Super Hero but it’s actually the weakest criteria of them all. There are Super powered characters in plenty of stories that would never be classed as Super Hero, indeed the leads in nearly every Fantasy story written have some kind of extra human ability. Harry Potter, for example, if he was in the Marvel Universe would put on a costume and go fight bad guys but nobody would dream of calling him a Super Hero.

And it’s just as true on the flip-side. Batman is easily the 2^nd most iconic Super Hero there is and he has no powers. And he’s not alone, Hawkeye, Black Widow, Shang Chi, all the bat family; there is a long tradition on non-powered Super Heroes.

What all of these characters can do though is something that ordinary people can’t. Batman may not have powers but he is fantastically wealthy almost to the point of being able to do whatever he likes, he has gadgets and weapons ordinary people can’t access, he is amazingly good at martial arts, he’s an acrobat and he’s the world’s greatest detective. There are plenty of reasons you can’t be Batman and it isn’t because your parents are alive.

This is probably the number 1 iconographic element of the Super Hero, off the top of my head I can only think of a single example of a Super Hero with no abilities beyond normal man and that’s Kick Ass, which is sort of a cheat. However I can name plenty of Super powered individuals in other genres so on its own, this isn’t enough.

The Costume

Of course, you think! I know what Superman and Batman have in common, they both wear capes and underpants on the outside! Surely it is all in the costume. Batman may have no powers but he and all his friends dress up in silly costumes to fight baddies, that’s what makes a Super Hero.

Certainly if you’ve designed a character with a cape, tights and underpants on the outside then without question there is a Super Hero in your story. However, what is and isn’t considered a costume swiftly gets into dodgy territory. The Hulk doesn’t wear a costume, he wears normal street clothes but he is immediately recognisable as the Hulk because he’s huge and bright green. Hellboy doesn’t have a costume but with red skin, a tail, devil horns and an enormous right hand he sure does stand out.

A better way to phrase this would be that Super Heroes have a distinctive appearance that separates them from normal people. That kind of phrase includes Superman, Batman, The Hulk and Hellboy. It even includes many non-costumed Heroes. The Runaways are probably the poster kids for Heroes without costumes but Nico’s Staff, Chase’s Fistigons and Arsenic’s purple hair and dinosaur give them a distinctive design that would stand out on the street.

The only examples of Heroes without a distinctive visual that I can think of come from media outside comics like Clark in Smallville and there is a very good reason for this that again is due to the medium. Comics require you to evoke a recognisable character over multiple panels and multiple issues and often drawn by different artists. With the limitations of printing technology back when most Super Heroes were designed you have to do this using only 4 colours and a few quite thick lines. The end result is that Superman’s face can look quite different from artist to artist and panel to panel and it becomes impossible to recognise him just based on the face. So how do you ensure your audience recognises him? You give him something iconic like his s shaped jehri curl and his costume.

In live action though the audience can recognise the actor’s face so there is no need to have these distinguishing visual characteristics. When you start thinking about other comics, comic strip and animation characters though you soon realise that the stipulation “a distinctive appearance that separates them from normal people.” Is far too broad. For starters it seems to absorb most shonen anime characters. Think about Goku in Dragonball, with his monkey tail and red gi he stands out from the background crowd but nobody would call him a Super Hero. How about Edward in Full Metal Alchemist, very distinctive with his red coat and cyborg limbs but not remotely a Super Hero. Hell you could argue that this rule applies to Charlie Brown, Homer Simpson and Tintin and none of those are Super Heroes.

Secret Identity

Ah but the key thing about the costume is that it signifies the Super Hero’s secret identity. Clark Kent puts the costume on and now he’s Superman, not Clark Kent. The world may make fun of Peter Parker but when dons his tights the world will love Spider-Man.

The Secret Identity is a great story telling device creating tension between the private life of the character and their adventures as a Super Hero. It generates a huge number of plot devices that comics have reused for decades; “I have to do an important thing but this villain is attacking the city at the same time,” “oh no, the villain has discovered my secret identity and now can threaten my loved ones,” “oh no, a villain is attacking and I’m in my secret identity, how will I escape to change into costume?”  It’s such a good device for generating plots that it’s been used for tons of stories that have nothing to do with Super Heroes. Hannah Montana for example. In fact it pre-dates the Super Hero going all the way back to at least The Scarlet Pimpernel. Now some argue that this makes The Scarlet Pimpernel the earliest Super Hero (he arguably is actually) but I would say that using this device does not make your story part of the Super Hero genre.

And vice versa, not all Super Heroes have secret identities. In fact at this point I’d wager the majority of Super Heroes do not have a secret identity. Amongst the major marvel Heroes Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Hulk, Black Widow, She-Hulk, all the X-Men,  Captain Marvel, The Guardians of the Galaxy and arguably Thor all have identities known to the public at large. It’s basically Spider-Man and some teenagers with secret identities these days.

But notice I didn’t refer to them as Steve Rogers, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, Clint Barton and Natasha Romanov. I used their codenames because they all have them. Whether or not their civilian identity is a secret or not most Super Heroes draw a distinction between a personal life and a heroic alter ego. The world may know Steve Rogers is Captain America but he’s not actually being Cap until he puts the mask on.

And notably this excludes a lot of those shonen manga Heroes. Goku, Naruto, Ichigo and Luffy are always Goku, Naruto, Ichigo and Luffy whether they’re fighting bad guys or eating food. They don’t have some normal identity they retreat to. Interestingly this doesn’t include most Magical Girl characters or Tokusetsu characters (Power Rangers, Kanen Rider, Ultraman) all of which feel inherently more Super Heroey to me. This idea of an alternate identity then seems crucial to the definition of a Super Hero.

I propose the rule then is “Super Heroes have some kind of alternate identity signified by a code name.”

Saves People

Super Heroes are Heroes, that means they save people.

Really? Have you read a Batman story in recent years? I can’t remember the last time I saw him on-panel save an innocent life. Punch thugs? Yup. Do some detective work? Yup. Catch someone falling off a bridge. I can remember something like it happening in Batman #1 3 years ago but since then, nada.

But there is a larger context to consider here. Batman might not be catching falling civilians or rescuing kids from fires but by his actions fighting villains he is saving people in another way. In the current Year Zero Arc, The Riddler has engineered a situation where electricity isn’t working in Gotham City, outside help is barred from entering and people are dying. By outsmarting the Riddler and defeating him physically Batman puts to an end that situation and stops more people dying. By punching the bad guy he saves people’s lives.

My slightly more nuanced way of putting it would be:

“By their direct actions or the consequences thereof the Super Hero acts to saves lives or improve the quality of lives for others.”

Now again, this is massively broad and encompasses nearly every Fantasy, SF, Action and Western protagonist you can name. In fact it’s more a definition of a hero than s Super Hero. But this to me is one of a two part structural component of the Super Hero genre alongside.

Fights Super Villains

To me nothing more defines a Super Hero than that they are thrown into conflict with Super Villains. What’s a Super villain you ask?  Well we can apply the same logic for the iconographic elements, if your antagonist has abilities beyond normal people, a distinctive appearance that marks them out as separate to normal people and some kind of alternate identity then you have a Super Villain.

And the conflict between hero and villain is always resolved in some kind of physical sense. This doesn’t have to mean fighting (although, yeah, 99% of the time a Super Hero story resolves in punching) but it can mean the hero making some Superhuman act of endurance, a Superhuman sacrifice, a physical exertion beyond mortal means or outwitting the villain by hacking a thingy, pressing a thingy or inventing a thingy. But the conflict should be resolved as a result of the hero’s own ability to do things normal humans cannot not just by talking nicely, getting the police involved or some kind of deus ex machina.

The great thing about Super Villains for me is that they stand in symbolically for the theme of the story. If you’re writing an X-Men story about how racism is bad you can create a Super Villain that symbolises racism and then have the X-Men punch them to symbolise racism being defeated. Is it subtle? Oh Christ on a bike no. Is it satisfying and cathartic? Oh yes!

For me though the fighting Super Villain thing goes hand in hand with the previous point. If your protagonist is punching Super Villains to get rich, score women or to complete their paid job then you’re not a Super Hero narrative.

Structurally then I’d state that the Super Hero narrative is thus:

“Utilising their abilities beyond those of a normal person and either by their direct actions or the consequences thereof the Super Hero acts to saves lives or improve the quality of lives for others in direct conflict to the intentions of a Super Villain antagonist”

That seems pretty comprehensive right, and narrow enough to only apply to Super Heroes?

Yeah…not so much. Whilst it applies to most Super Hero films I’ve seen recently it also applies to most action films I’ve seen recently, as well as a heck of a lot of Fantasy, SF and even some Westerns.

The problem with trying to define a Super Hero story structurally is that the stories go right back to the roots of western literature. Super Heroes are often described as modern myths and I believe this to be true and structurally the idea of turning the subtext into a text that is resolved via conflict goes all the way back to Gilgamesh. As such it has influenced all stories told ever since and so you find that Super Heroes are really lacking in a set of structural elements to call their own.

After much thought then I’ve defined my Super Hero genre test as follows.

Iconographic

1. Super Heroes have some kind of alternate identity, usually signified by a code name.
2. Super Heroes have a distinctive appearance that separates them from normal people.
3. Super Heroes possess the ability to do something beyond those of normal people.

Structural

4. Utilising their abilities beyond those of a normal person and either by their direct actions or the consequences thereof the Super Hero acts to saves lives or improve the quality of lives for others in direct conflict to the intentions of a Super villain antagonist.

The test works for me like this. If your character possesses quality 1 and at least one other Iconographic element then they’re a Super Hero. Possessing quality 2 and 3 except in rare occasions does not make them a Super Hero. In addition your character must have been involved in at least one narrative that conforms to the structure of 4. If not then yes they are a Super Hero but they are not involved in stories in the Super Hero genre.

So with those rules established let’s do some tests on some core Super Heroes and some marginals.

Superman – 1234

Batman – 1234

Spider-Man – 1234

Wonder Woman – 1234

Goku – 234 (not a Super Hero)

Monkey D. Luffy – 234 (not a Super Hero)

Sailor Moon – 1234 (definitely a Super Hero)

The Power Rangers – 1234 (also definitely Super Heroes)

Indiana Jones – 234 (not a Super Hero)

James Bond – 34 (so we can stop that argument)

The Scarlet Pimpernel – 1234 (so yup, earliest example of the genre I can find)

The Shadow – 1234 (although a pulp hero he also works perfectly well as a Super Hero, it’s simply an issue of tone as to which aspects of his character you wish to emphasise)

Harry Potter – 234 (and I’m only giving him 2 for the lightning bolt)

Kane from Kung Fu – 34 (a hero, not a Super Hero)

The Bride from Kill Bill 123 (lack of 4 means you could put the bride in a Super-hero story but she hasn’t been in one yet)

V from V for Vendetta 1234

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)

Guardians of the Galaxy 2014

Directed by James Gunn

Since the general consensus amongst critics seems to be that Guardians of the Galaxy is absolutely amazing (as I write this it has a 92% on rotten tomatoes) I thought I’d take the unusual approach of listing all the flaws I thought it had.

It has weak villains

This is becoming a major problem for Marvel Studios films. Although I have yet to come across a Marvel Studios film I don’t like, the lack of interesting villains is starting to become a noticeable theme. You’ve got Loki (who is amazing), various greasy arms/corporate guys in the Iron Man films and lots of big bad evil with a capital E ranting guys who want to destroy things (Malekith, Red Skull). Ronan the Accuser falls into the latter group and spends the majority of his screen time delivering overwrought dialogue that feels very super villainy but which doesn’t advance his motivation, pose an interesting ethical dilemma or even convey much personality. You can replace everything actor Lee Pace says with “I am evil” and get much the same effect.

It’s even worse in the case of Ronan since the comic’s version is a very good villain. Ronan is driven by very strong ideals of justice and obedience to the law, I’s just that the law he follows is inherently corrupt so he ends up on the side opposed to our heroes more often than not. He’s basically Javier in space with a hammer. Yet like all good villains he is the hero of his own story and like every Marvel villain ever who was written well enough he’s fallen on the side of angels a few times too.

Movie Ronan though, big evil dude with a hammer. The most character he gets is when Thanos says he’s pouty and my fiancé and I both laughed out loud because yeah, dude is really pouty.

Thanos seems awesome at this stage btw but is barely in the film. Yondu was okay but more of a side character than an antagonist and Nebula was just kind of there. The film gave her enough back story for a potentially interesting relationship with Thanos and Gamora but not enough screen time to explore it. I suspect we’ll see more of Nebula when we finally get to the Infinity Gauntlet.

Its action is underwhelming

In an action film you expect the action set pieces to be inventive, exciting and memorable. In Guardians they are largely not. They’re functional. Action happens in all the places you expect it to in the story and no action scene feels bad but equally none of them stand out for me as much as the Nightcrawler scene in X-Men 2, the battle for New York in Avengers (and the amazing shot that joins all the characters) or the Winter Soldier’s attack on the bridge. Guardians absolutely works as a comedy and the moments that stand out in the film are the gags and character beats but as an action film the action should be special too.*

Gamora is kind of dull

Gamora’s character arc happens off-screen. She goes from being a universally renowned assassin working for some of the most dangerous villains in the galaxy to a good guy trying to save it between her first appearance and her second. That’s a big swing for a character and the actual character progression she has on screen during the film, going from having a stick up her ass to having it slightly less far up her ass, is not quite as compelling.

Worse still, because of the way the character dynamics are set up in this film Gamora ends up being the member of the team that is most noble, most concerned with helping others and saving the day. She fulfils a very necessary narrative function because without her the other fuck ups that form the Guardians would not be properly motivated to engage in the plot. It’s just a shame that they gave that function to Gamora who, in the comics, is one of the colder, less emotional, less noble and more badass characters. It leaves Gamora kind of bland since everything about her comic’s version is gone and the movie doesn’t invent very much to replace it with.

Having said that, this might only be a problem for people familiar with comic Gamora. I know plenty of people who loved her character and thought she made a refreshing change from female characters in other super hero films so maybe she only comes across as white bread compared to her more robust comic counterpart.**

It was thematically weak

This sort of comes back to the villain thing. The way super hero stories deal with theme most of the time is quite ingenious, you literalise it. You turn the thing you’re talking about into a person or object that your hero can interact with. Want to say that racism is bad? Make a super-villain called racist-man, give him racist themed super powers and have the X-Men punch him. Unsubtle and not very nuanced but awesome, and that’s one of the reasons I love super-hero stories.

When you have villains who are just evil for the sake of evil though you can’t do that. That doesn’t mean you can’t have thematic weight but you’ve sort of missed the point of super hero stories as far as I’m concerned. If you’re using Ronan your story normally is about the role of authority, that was not a factor in GOTG.

What theme’s Guardians does have are shallow and clichéd. The idea of making a surrogate family out of your friends is fine but it has been done to death and better in other sci-fi fare (most notably Firefly and Farscape which GOTG is heavily influenced by). The character’s do have arcs but the arcs don’t form a cohesive theme, Quill’s arc about learning to take responsibility has nothing to do with Gamora’s arc about being less stiff or Drax;s arc about coming to terms wit the loss of his family.

The plot was bobbins

This is a flaw in basically every super-hero film except Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The plot can be a big part of the appeal of a story. Who wants what, why and how? What will happen next and where? Will our heroes live or die and what will the consequences of their actions be? You watch something like The Bourne films and the appeal is all in the plot. Same with a lot of TV, cliff-hangers, plot twists and developments in the story are exciting for the audience.

In most comic book movies though, the plot is merely a framework to get from one action set piece to another. Nobody gives two shits what Loki is doing in Avengers of why, they come for the character interaction and the fight scenes, they come for the awesome. Ditto GOTG, the story is very basic and largely devoid of much tension or enigma. However it provides a framework for great comedic and action set pieces.

That scene with Gamora and Star-Lord in space is bullshit

It is and you know it.

So wait, you ask. You didn’t like the plot, the themes or some of the characters. Does that mean you didn’t like Guardians of the Galaxy?

Guys.

I absolutely adored it. It is awesome!

I can’t recall which critic said it but their review of Avengers was basically that it defied conventional critical analysis because the plot, themes and other things critics normally talk about were irrelevant to the success of the film. Avengers was about being awesome, and it delivered the awesome. Ditto GOTG except GOTG is more focused on being funny.

Another thing Avengers and GOTG have in common? Great writing, great acting and great direction. Those three things will cover a multitude of sins. Your movie can be an empty hollow nothing with a mess of a plot that’s got holes you can fly a space ship through but if you deliver interesting characters with charisma that I like hanging out with, have them throwing out dialogue which had me crying with laughter and it put them in a setting which is inventive and imaginative then you win. Worked for GOTG, worked for Star Wars, worked for Indiana Jones, worked for Clerks, worked for James Bond for 40 years and it’ll work again.

Just as final note, Rocket and Groot are he stand out character undoubtedly but they’re also my favourite characters from the comics. What impressed me more was Drax, a fairly dull guy in the comics but hilarious on screen. Drax has been both a smart character and a dumb one in the comics over the years but the idea to make him of normal intelligence but completely literal is both hilarious and adds many layers to his character. Bautista’s performance was a revelation too, he has great comic timing and I’m hoping for big things from him in the future.

*The only action set-pieces people bring up are Yondu’s arrow and Groot smashing a row of villains both of which are really visual gags.

**on the topic of Gamora I just want to mention briefly that this film barely squeaks by the Bechdel Test since most of her interactions with Nebula revolve around the topic of Thanos or Ronan. They do have some dialogue about each other directly though so it passes. Next time I’d like to see Phyla-Vell, Moondragon or Mantis on the team to beef out the female character count a bit. Or even Star-Hawk in the both a man and woman incarnation of the character.

Talking Teen Titans Part 3: New Teen Titans Vol 1 Issue 2

Plot Synopsis

The issue starts with the rather emphatically named Deathstroke the Terminator being called before some mysterious guys in purple hoods who go by H.I.V.E. (The Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Eliminations) And as an aside right from the start can I point out that Deathstroke’s real name is Slade Wilson. This guy is seriously called Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke, the Terminator! One of those names would be sufficient for most mercenary bad asses but Slade’s sheer testicular fortitude cannot be contained by a mere one name.

Deathstroke cuts right to business asking H.I.V.E. “Who do you want me to kill?”

It turns out they want him to kill the Teen Titans. Why? *shrug* I guess when you’re called The Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Eliminations you need to kill somebody.

They turn out to be surprisingly cheap mysterious guys in purples robes though because when Slade asks for the money up front they refuse. Slade calls the deal off and tries to leave but H.I.V.E. aren’t happy with his attitude and deploy their HR department in the form of some machine guns.

Slade escapes, in the process showing off his acrobatic abilities, grenades and bad attitudes and writes the meeting off as a waste of time. However H.I.V.E. were secretly recording Slade’s actions and taking DNA samples and they think they can recreate his powers to make a Terminator of their own.

Cut to Grant Wilson (and yes he is Slade Wilson’s son but, shush, that’s the big reveal) incredible dead beat loser and jerk arguing with his girlfriend. Grant is about to go full on Lifetime special on Carol when his abuse is interrupted by Starfire blasting him onto his ass with starbolts.

Why are the Titans at Carol’s apartment? Well it turns out that after destroying her old one they felt obliged to set her up with a new one. Not sure how they managed that or why they feel they then have the right to just walk into her flat whenever they like but , hey, creep got star bolted so it’s all good.

Starfire, Wonder Girl and Kid Flash get summoned from Carol’s place to the docks where its time for a fight with hot pink robots!

This scene exists to do things. Firstly it shows off our characters powers and code names again and secondly it prompts Starfire to finally learn English. Robin chews her out over not obeying orders and then laments that she can’t actually understand him. So Starfire kisses him and demonstrates that she has the power to learn languages by kissing people.

This then prompts Changeling to continue to be a massive creep.

Look, I loved Beast Boy on the cartoon but Beast Boy was funny. Changeling all your ‘jokes’ are basically just you being a creep to women. Cut it out, right now.

So while all this has been going on Grant Wilson has donned an orange hospital gown (???) and is undergoing a procedure that will grant him 100% use of his brain!!

Sigh, oh comic book science.

In case you don’t know the little nugget that human beings only use 10% of their brain power is completely false. We use the full 100%. Now admittedly we don’t use the full 100% at any one time but that is for very good reasons. Different parts of your brain do different things and parts of it activate in sequence in order to trigger certain effects in your body or consciousness. We have a name for when these parts trigger out of sequence or when too many trigger at once. It’s called a seizure. So really Deathstroke’s real power is that he can function normally despite having seizure’s nearly constantly.

And whilst that is going down Raven is standing on an evil rock pleading with some eyes in the sky for forgiveness. Forgiveness that the eyes will not grant!

The next day two things happen at once. First of all we go to Changeling’s mansion where…

Oh fuck you Gar!

*ahem*

Anyway Changeling is having a pool party where we get to ogle Wonder Girl in a bikini and we learn that Starfire can’t go back to see her parents ever again.

At the same time Cyborg is in his dad’s lab arguing and we learn that Cyborg’s dad is dying. Cyborg doesn’t learn this yet though as he gets attacked by Grant Wilson, newly super powered and going by Ravager.

Ravager gets his ass handed to him by Cyborg but Deathstroke interrupts the fight, rescuing Ravager and telling him that his powers are killing him and if he uses them he’s going to die. Ravager ignores this and makes his way to the pool party to kill the Titans. Deathstroke joins him too and a battle royale begins.

It’s a pretty great fight with Ravager and Deathstroke dodging and weaving between the 7 titans and both sides seem to be pretty evenly matched. That is until Ravager keels over. Yeah, turns out Deathstroke was right and Ravager’s powers have been artificially ageing him. He now looks like a mummy and is about to die. Before he does pass on though Raven plants an illusion in his mind of his greatest desire, the area strewn with the bodies of the deceased Titans. Satisfied his revenge has been sated Ravager dies with a smile on his lips.

Deathstroke though blames the Titans and as he carries his son’s body away swears revenge against them. The Titans let him go though, showing compassion for their foe.

The issues ends with the H.I.V.E. again revealing that they have been manipulating all the events, pulling strings so that they can set Deathstroke up against the Titans without paying his extortionate price.

Issue 2 sets up an awful lot of plot elements that will come back to be more relevant in the book later on. The H.I.V.E. will be recurring antagonists and despite being dead we haven’t heard the name Ravager for the last time. Most significantly though this issue introduces Deathstroke the Terminator. The X-Men have Magneto, the Fantastic Four have Doctor Doom, the Titan’s have Deathstroke.

And fittingly he’s a character whose motivation ties into their theme. Deathstroke is basically a grieving parent, one who wants to lash out at the kids that were a bad influence on his own son and lead to his ultimate demise. Unfortunately his motivations don’t make a huge amount of sense, he really should be going after the H.I.V.E. and the fact that he blames the Titans is more of a plot contrivance than anything else.

In time Deathstroke will grow to be one of the most complicated and sympathetic antagonists in D.C. comics but here his motivations and personality are sketched in at best. That said he does come across as confident and effective right from the beginning. Slade is able to take on basically the entire Titan’s team single handed, and without super powers. He’s athletic, agile and armed with swords, sticks and guns. He’s sort of an evil Batman and again, considering this team is led by Robin, that makes him a perfect foil for them.

As for our main cast? Well the issue gives each team member roughly a page to spotlight their character and remind us what their deal is. Kid  Flash doesn’t get any actual development to his angst and the only extra thing we learn about Raven is that the big threat she’s preparing the team for has eyes. In contrast we see Cyborg’s antipathy to his father first hand and it is ugly. We also learn that Cy’s father is dying and is trying to reconnect with his son and apologise before he finally passes away.

The Titan that gets the most development in this issue though is Starfire. Appropriate considering she was the least developed of the newbies in the first issue. Kory is your typical free spirit, she thinks nothing of kissing Robin, she doesn’t understand why human beings need to wear clothes and she’s also naive about humanity in general.  She’s also got a dark side though. She doesn’t understand the concept of compassion for your enemy and thinks nothing of blasting pink robots to pieces even before she knows they’re robots.

I find it hardest to get a bead on Kory as a character out of all the Titans at this stage. She’s something of a stereotypical male fantasy, the uninhibited exotic princess who is eager to learn our ways and naïve about how the world works. Basically if Starfire were Asian she would be a very problematic stereotype but as an actual alien she just about scrapes past my politically correct sensor.

On the art side of things can we start with this cover.

God damn I love that cover.

I really miss covers that had a sense of narrative to them and told you what was happening in the book you were going to buy. This cover really sells this issue. No reader can possibly think  that the entire team would be killed off in the second issue but covers didn’t really lie to the audience back then so you assumed there would be something like that scene appearing in the book. You therefore had to buy this issue to find out just what was happening! It’s a classic use of the enigma in marketing and I love it.

What I love significantly less is Ravager’s costume. Assymetric, weird ear things, little skulls on giant thigh high boots on a guy, random arm discs. Ravager is a mess of a character. This is unsurprising because George Perez, as good as he is an artist, is a terrible costume designer. How else would we have gotten HOT PINK ROBOTS!!!

I will just take a moment to briefly described the characters looks. Robin, Kid Flash, Wonder Girl and Changeling all have existing costumes. I’ve never liked Robin’s outfit and the older the character is drawn the sillier it looks. Changeling’s look is pretty bland but considering he turns into animals and has the visually interesting bright green animal thing going on it’s kind of irrelevant. Wonder Girl and Kid Flash though have brilliant costumes. For both, the colours match the hero they’re a sidekick to but with a different heirarchy, Kid flash is primarily yellow with red highlights in reverse of the Flash. His loose hair conveys youth too in a subtle way and he just looks good on the page. Wonder Girl’s outfit has similar strengths helped by the fact that Perez draws a very beautiful Donna Troy and his great body language for her which always has her standing confidently.

For our newbies I’ll discuss Starfire a bit more when we get to her back story. Raven looks great. I love how her silhouette makes a bird shape using only a hood and a cape. The temptation would be to give her a mask of some sort to create the beak but the pointed hood pulls off the effect and has the bonus of feeling more mystical than traditionally super-heroic.

Cyborg is not the greatest design being mostly a guy who looks like he’s covered in bits of metal than a guy who is integrated with the metal but I have always liked his face mask. Nothing says cyborg better than half human face, half robot face.

Then we get to Deathstroke. hoo boy Deathstroke.

Deathtroke’s design is mixed. Like Cyborg I can forgive Perez’s fetish for assymtery because Slade is missing an eye and the half mask only showing one eye is mysterious and distinctive. I also get why he’s festooned in pouches, guns, sticks and swords since he is a skilled mercenary who uses all these weapons over the course of the issue.

But chain mail…on an acrobatic character? It didn’t make sense for Captain America and it doesn’t make sense for you either. Buccaneer boots? a massive dangling bandanna knot that anyone can yank? And worst of all the orange and blue colour scheme. It doesn’t look villainous or threatening it looks like he’s advertising Irn Bru.

In terms of his storytelling the main strength for Perez at this stage continues to be his figures, in particularly their body language. I mentioned Wonder Girl already but this approach applies to other characters too. Deathstroke always seems posed like he just landed or is just about to move again, he’s never still but constantly moving, ducking and weaving and for a character whose gimmick is supposed to be quick thinking it really sells him as a threat. Starfire is exuberant in her body language flinging her arms wide and always smiling, emphasising the character’s passion and Raven seems still and posed emphasising her restraint.

Panel to panel wise Perez is using a grid but  shifts the number of panels in the grid, the layout and the proportions to best fit the needs of the scene. I particularly like the page where Ravager first attacks cyborg where the grid uses lots of different shapes and sizes as if emphasising the chaos of the attack in the layout of the page.

New Teen Titans Issue 2 is a nice follow up to the first issue. It goes over much of the same territory in re-establishing our main character’s personalities but adds a lot, 2 new villains, moves Kory’s arc along and has a nice fight scene t boot.

Big Hero 6: Trailer

It’s all coming together.

Last year I wrote a piece explaining why I thought Disney had chosen Big Hero 6 as their first Marvel property to turn into an animated film and highlighting some of the issues in adapting the comic in a racially and culturally sensitive way.

I’m pleased to see from this trailer that a lot of what I talked about has come to pass. However, Disney have opened up a whole new can of worms with some of their decisions.

Let’s start with the good. I love the tone this trailer gets across. The low key slapstick, the mixture of humour with a genuinely threatening villain and the easy going heart to it. I wish more Super-Hero stories in any medium had this tone and it certainly gives me Incredibles vibes.*

They’ve also chosen to focus on ” a boy and his robot” as their main story telling angle which I think is a good choice. Big Hero 6 is not a thematically dense concept, it basically amounts to “Hey Japan is different, lolz” so grabbing onto something in the property that shows more promise for exploration is a good idea. A boy and his (insert noun here) stories work well for animation and children’s cinema and some of the greatest animated films of the past 20 years (The Iron Giant, How to Train your Dragon) have used it as a basis.

The animation is good, as to be expected of Disney, although you can now add me to the chorus of people who are getting a little sick of how samey Disney’s character designs are getting.

Also is that Lord Deathstrike?

I mean, I know that the odds that a character named Lord Deathstrike will appear in a Disney movie are about as likely as me voicing him but he sure does look like him doesn’t he?

Where this goes wrong is San Fransokyo. Oh my, San Fransokyo.

When it was announced that this film would be set in an amalgam city of Tokyo and San Francisco I thought it could go one of two ways. Either it could be clever and cute, a good way to point out cultural differences and make some gentle jokes about them, or it could be horribly, horribly offensive combining every stereotypical Japanese thing the creators could think of.

What I did not expect is that they would get the wrong country. Because San Fransokyo looks great, it it’s meant to be San Beijing.

Seriously, those “Japanese” touches like the lanterns and the roofs that flare up at the corners. Those are Chinese. You will find them in Japan, in fact they’re not uncommon but that’s because China has had an incredible cultural impact on Japan. But in the style and colours used in this trailer they feel way more Chinese to me than Japanese. And even then they’re a touch that goes back to the pre-Meiji era and are only seen nowadays in temples and other historical buildings. There are so many icons of modern Japan you could include and other than some Katakana and Kanji Disney simply hasn’t!

What San Fransokyo really looks like is the China Town in San Francisco expanded out to encompass the whole city. And while I know a lot of Japanese people live in the San Francisco China Town, guys the clue is in the name as to which country it more closely resembles.

Here’s hoping the trailer just gives off a wrong impression and the film gets it better.

The stripping out of Japanese culture though continues onto the characters. Big Hero 6 is a team composed of 1 robot and 5 Japanese people or Japanese-Americans. Big Hero 6 in the movie? 2, maximum. That’s a big cut Disney. The premier Japanese super-hero team now has Japanese members as the minority. I know why you’ve done it, the setting demands a mix of Asian and Caucasian people to reflect the mixed up Asian and Western architecture and you don’t think an all Asian cast will fly for American audiences. In fact you’ve actually increased the team’s diversity in one way by adding a black man to the mix, which I applaud, but, I still feel like it has missed the point a little bit.

In fact let’s dig into the characters a bit more. Starting with our hero, Hiro, and his pet robot Baymax.

Here’s what I wrote about Hiro and Baymax in my original piece.

Hiro and Baymax are clearly affectionate homages to a number of Japanese characters. Hiro is a super-genius kid who builds a robot protector for himself. That’s an idea that mixes bits of Getter Robo, Tetsujin 28 and even the Kenny’s from Godzilla.

And here is some info from screencrush.com

Ryan Potter portrays Hiro, a robotics prodigy who has “the mind of a genius—and the heart of a 14-year-old. His state-of-the-art battle-bots dominate the underground bot fights held in the dark corners of San Fransokyo. Fortunately, big brother Tadashi redirects Hiro’s brilliance, inspiring him to put his brain to the test in a quest to gain admission to the San Fransokyo Institute of Technology. When a tragic event changes everything, Hiro turns to a robot named Baymax, and they form an unbreakable bond—and two-sixths of a band of high-tech heroes on a very important mission.

It sounds to me like Hiro is largely unchanged from his comic incarnation of “boy genius.” I suspect that Hiro is the character that Disney saw the most potential in, making him the hero and basing the film on him. To that end he is basically the same character. Baymax however has been tweaked considerably.

Baymax (voiced by Scott Adsit) cares. That’s what he was designed to do. The plus-sized inflatable robot’s job title is technically Healthcare Companion: With a simple scan, Baymax can detect vital stats, and, given a patient’s level of pain, can treat nearly any ailment. Conceived and built by Tadashi Hamada, Baymax just might revolutionize the healthcare industry. But to the inventor’s kid brother Hiro, the nurturing, guileless bot turns out to be more than what he was built for—he’s a hero, and quite possibly Hiro’s closest friend. And after some deft reprogramming that includes a rocket fist, super strength and rocket thrusters that allow him to fly, Baymax becomes one of the Big Hero 6.

Baymax in the comics was designed and built entirely by Hiro. However, when Hiro’s Father died he used some of his Father’s brain engrams to program Baymax. That makes Baymax a combination of Hiro’s friend, his bodyguard his father and his nanny. Disney however have switched the tragic death from Father to Brother and also made Baymax a construction of Hiro’s Brother. This simplifies the relationship considerably emphasising that Baymax and Hiro are in effect brothers. It’s a bit more conventional than the comic’s version but riffs on many of the same emotions and probably works better in the limited running time of a film.

Next up is our only other remaining Asian, Go, Go Tomago, played by Jamie Chung.

 

She’s tough, athletic and loyal to the bone, but not much of a conversationalist. Popping bubble gum and delivering well-placed sarcasm are totally her speed. The daredevil adrenaline junkie is at her best on wheels, and when Go Go joins forces with Big Hero 6, she rolls like never before, using maglev discs as wheels, shields and throwing weapons.

Wild rebellious Go Go was the Wolverine of the group, the bad ass outsider who don’t take no bull. She’s been de-aged and her criminal past is gone but her personality and team function are largely the same. Also her name is still misspelt. She should be Go, Go, Tamago i.e. the Japanese word for egg. Although considering they changed her powers the egg joke doesn’t work any more anyway. I dig the new costume too, it’s both more sentai than her original sentai inspired outfit and more modern.

Fred, voiced by T.J. Miller, has been de-aged, gone from Asian to White and gone from having a Godzilla shaped ki aura to just turning into a Monster.

Other than that he’s mostly the same, a stoner in a hat with badass monster related powers. He’s the comic relief of the group and it looks like he’ll continue to be playing that role. Also, I like his new Monster design. It does feel quite Asian without specifically referencing a particular monster design I can think of. I will miss his Devil Dinosaur t-shirt though.

So that is what Honey Lemon, who will be voiced by Genesis Rodriguez which is a Super-Villain name if I ever heard one, looks like in the film. Here is what she looked like in the comics.

…..

…….

That’s, um, that’s quite the change.

Honey Lemon was a play on Cutie Honey, a popular anime character who is mainly famous for being full on naked during her magical girl transformations. Honey Lemon the comic character is consequently, sexy, confident and playful with some stuff from other anime characters (most notably Doraemon) thrown in.

From the character design alone it’s clear that Honey Lemon in the film is not going to be the same character. Other than a power-set and a name they have nothing in common. Problem being that now Honey Lemons’s power-set and name don’t make sense. She’s called Honey Lemon as a play on Cutie Honey, a character she now no longer resembles. And her power-set is grabbing things from her purse, not exactly the most subtle of satirical jabs.

That said I am not surprised they changed her. Whilst Honey Lemon was hugely inappropriate for a kid’s film the bigger problem is that she’s a parody character, not a character intended to work on her own merits and she needed something done to her to appear in this film.

Finally we get to Wasabi, formerly Wasabi no Ginger.

Here is what Wasabi no Ginger looked like in the comics.

And here is what I wrote about him.

Finally there’s Wasabi-no-Ginger which is a name that is simply unacceptable. Honey Lemon is stretching it but Wasabi-no-Ginger isn’t a clever pun so much as it is the equivalent of a Japanese comic introducing a morbidly obese character in a cowboy hat called Burger McRanchdressing. Try and count the stereotypes in this short character description guys. He’s a sushi chef (1) but also a samurai (2) who fights by using katana (3) and sushi knives (4) that he makes from his body whilst wearing wooden sandals (5) and a Hawaiian shirt (6?). Whilst the other characters are a spin on existing Japanese characters Wasabi-no-Ginger is the result of throwing everything Chris Claremont knows about Japan (sushi, samurais…Hawaiian shirts?) into a blender and calling the result a character. You know in the Super Friends how the Native American guy who grew got called Apache Chief rather than something that described his powers like Giant Man, or Gigantor. That is the level of patronising we’re dealing with here in Wasabi-no-Ginger.

I hate, Wasabi no Ginger.

Now, here is what he looks like in the film.

Wasabi (voiced by Damon Wayans Jr.) is committed to precision. He’s super smart and just a touch neurotic, but the big and burly neatnik can’t help but join the cause when Hiro needs him most. As part of “Big Hero 6,” Wasabi amplifies his martial arts skills with jaw-dropping plasma blade weaponry. Sharp doesn’t even begin to describe this guy.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

He’s not a sushi chef. He’s not a Japanese stereotype, he can’t be because he’s not Japanese. He doesn’t wear geta, he doesn’t fight using katana and he has a personality beyond “everything Chris Claremont knows about Japan.” Even his name makes more sense since both wasabi and plasma are hot. Plus, he adds further diversity to the team and avoids being a black stereotype too! It’s such a low bar to hurdle but thank you, thank you so much Disney for doing it.

So based on all this info I’m still looking forward to Big Hero 6 and cautiously optimistic that this will be another Incredibles. I’m nervous about San Fransokyo but Disney’s last 2 films have really clicked for me and I’m hoping they continue on with their mini renaissance.

 

*The Incredibles is in my top 5 favourite Super-Hero films and until Marvel got their shit together was basically number 1. It still remains the best Fantastic Four film ever made too.

 

The New Teen Titans Part 2: The Team Comes Together

The New Teen Titans Vol1 Issue 1 by Marv Wolfman and George Perez

Plot Synopsis

The issue starts with a mysterious alien princess known as Koriand’r breaking out of an alien space craft operated by what she calls slavers. Using bolts of energy from her hands she defeats her captors and escapes in a small space craft to parts unknown.

Cut to, Dick Grayson aka Robin, having bad dreams. He has visions of a team of New Titans battling a protoplasmic blob and losing. He wakes up from his nightmare to find one of the women from his visions, Raven, is standing in his room. She tells him that the visions were planted in his head by her to prepare him because a great evil is coming and a new team of Titans must form.

Raven gives Robin the phone to call Wally West, Kid Flash, who has quit the super heroing business. Before Robin can ask any more questions she disappears with instructions to find Wonder Girl.

Raven guides Robin to an abandoned building where Wonder Girl is helpfully expositing her origin for no apparent reason. It seems Changeling, another super-hero with green skin and the power to turn into any animal so long as its green, has also been guided there. Kid Flash also shows up, apparently he changed his mind when Raven told him to come.

The 4 follow Raven again as she guides them to newcomer Victor Stone aka Cyborg, who is presently showing off his cybernetic body to his sports coach who tells him that now he is a cyborg he can’t compete with normal people. Vic doesn’t take this particularly well.

He also explains that he was turned into a cyborg by his father in order to save his life.

The other heroes show up and Cyborg decides to join them since they’re all “freaks” like himself.

Raven then gets a psychic impression that the final Titan has arrived and needs rescuing so the team move off to do so and find the aliens from the prologue attacking a normal apartment building. Inside is Koriand’r, babbling in an alien language and seemingly exhausted by her flight to Earth.

The Titans fail to stop the aliens who escape through some kind of star gate with Koriand’r in tow. They also wreck the apartment of Grant Wilson and his girlfriend Carol in the process. Thanks to Raven’s teleportation powers though the Titans are able to follow and eventually free Koriand’r from her captivity, destroy the spaceship and escape back to Earth.

 

 

Of course, this isn’t the first issue of the Teen Titans at all.

Going way back to Brave and the Bold #54 in 1964 there was a team consisting of Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad and eventually Speedy and Wonder Girl. Wonder Girl was famously a continuity error. Wonder Girl was the teenaged version of Wonder Woman and not a separate character to her like Supergirl was to Superman. She was included as a separate character in Titans comics though and went on without an origin of her own for nearly 5 years until 1969’s Teen Titans #22 which established her as a non-Amazon orphan, rescued by Wonder Woman from an apartment building fire. Unable to find any parents or family, Wonder Woman brought the child to Paradise Island, where she had eventually been given Amazon powers by Paula Von Gunther’s Purple Ray.

That story was written by Marv Wolfman, writer of this issue, and it represents some of his earliest comics work.

Wolfman broke into comics at D.C. and worked there extensively during the 60’s, principally on the original Teen Titans and Blackhawks. But in 1972 he moved to Marvel and became such a Marvel guy that he eventually rose to the position of editor-in-chief, generally considered to be the highest ranking role on the creative side of the business. Wolfman oversaw some of the most important comics of the decade at Marvel including many of those influential X-Men tales. He kept his hand in writing too being the author of Tomb of Dracula one of Marvel’s biggest commercial and critical successes in the 70’s.

When he went back to D.C. in the 80’s then to write New Teen Titans he was in a unique position. He was familiar with these characters, with the rich continuity of the DCU and its history. He had even been part of shaping it as the creator of Wonder Girl’s origin. However he was a Marvel writer through and through at this point, trained in the house style at the time. This tension really informs New Teen Titans in its early years.

In terms of story this issue makes me nostalgic for the number 1s of days past. This is a very functional issue, more concerned with establishing characters than telling a great story in its own right but still giving us a beginning, middle and end with tension, some super heroic fisticuffs and some mysteries along the way.

The main thing this issue needs to do is establish the characters, establish the set-up for the team and plant the seeds for a few future plots. It does it very effectively hitting all the necessary story beats with aplomb whilst still throwing in some excitement for the story itself.

Every character gets a moment to shine here and show off their powers. Raven drives the plot popping in and out and teleporting the team to safety. Robin gets to lead the team and give orders. Changeling gets to turn into a mouse and fix some circuitry and Cyborg also gets to play with computers. Starfire gets to blast things, Wonder Girl gets to be strong and Kid Flash races halfway across the country in an instant. Personalities and origins are sketched in but present and we quickly get a sense of who these people are.

In particular Wolfman chooses to start with the characters that have already appeared in comics previously, Robin, Kid Flash, Changeling and Wonder Girl. He doesn’t bother to establish an origin for these characters, trusting that readers will know it already, except for Wonder Girl who is the least well known of these. What he does do though is establish that these four have a prior relationship immediately drawing on the history of the team.

What Wolfman does take the time to do, and this is quite Claremontian, is show off every character’s angst in the first issue. The problem they’re currently wresting with in life. Wonder Girl is angsting about her origin and not knowing who her parents are.  Kid Flash angsts about whether he wants to be a hero and there is also the mystery of his connection to Raven and why he changed his mind when she told him to. Robin angsts about being in Batman’s shadow and we get something you don’t see anymore these days, Smoking Jacket and Cravat Batman.

Man he used to wear a smoking jacket non-stop back in the day. I haven’t seen that thing in years.

Raven and Starfire’s deal is less clear although Starfire clearly has escaped slavery and Raven is trying to prevent some kind of coming doom. Cyborg gets the most screen time of the three newbies but unfortunately his portrayal in this issue is as the cliche angry black man. Cyborg has a good reason to be angry, his father has turned him into a freak and whilst he may have gained super-powers and would have died if his father had not intervened he has seemingly lost everything he cares for in life.

The only angst free character is Changeling who provides absolutely cringe worthy comic relief and hits on Wonder Girl.

If you want me to hate you Changeling then you’re onto a really good start.

One thing that connects all these characters is that their angst stems from their relationship with their parental figures. Wonder Girl is an orphan and seeking to find her identity because she didn’t have normal parental figures. Cyborg is angry with his father for his treatment of him and seeming abandonment. Robin feels stifled by his father figure and wants to forge his own identity separate from Batman. Kid Flash has a great and healthy relationship with his parents and worries about jeopardising it by becoming a hero.

Teen Titans then is a book with a central theme to it, the stories are all about being a teenager and the relationship between teenagers and their parents. in this way TT is also very similar to the X-Men. Unlike books like The Avengers of JLA, TT and X-Men have a central idea at the heart of the book that drives what kind of stories get told. For the X-Men its the metaphor of Mutants as outsiders from normal society, hated and feared. It’s a very flexible metaphor being able to stand in for race, sexuality, disability or even the disenfranchisement felt by teenagers and that’s partly the reason X-Men resonates to well with a readership of teenaged nerds.

The Teen Titans theme is less flexible, it is explicitly about the issues facing teenagers but whilst more limited than the mutant allegory it does provide plenty of fertile ground to inspire different stories all reflecting back on the themes of being a teenager and how they relate to the world and their parents. Also TT isn’t restricted to the Titans being seen as outsiders. Being a teenager can be wholly positive and good, as we see in Kid Flash’s relationship with his family.

As well as establishing characters and themes we also get some plot threads established that will pay off down the line. Chief amongst these is the threat Raven formed the team to stop. At this stage we know nothing about it other than that it requires these particular people to defeat it. We’ve also got Grant Wilson asking some mysterious shadowy figure to destroy the titans, Kid Flash’s weird change of face and the mystery of Koriand’r.

The New Teen Titans Issue 1 is never going to be held up as a masterpiece of the comic medium but it accomplishes all the goals it sets out to do and leaves the reader interested in these characters and wanting to read more. As such, it fulfils the brief for a first issue.

Artist George Perez is of course one of the most respected and influential artists in the medium and was so even back in 1980. Perez is usually praised for his detail. He draws backgrounds and figures with far more detail than most artists and he thinks about the realism of objects more so than most so that his anatomy, machinery and architecture feel far more realistic than many of his contemporaries. A great example of Perez’s strengths as an artist is how he’ll draw characters with very different body types but all with quite realistic anatomy. Kid Flash is svelte but with powerful calves and thighs that represent that he’s a runner.

He’s also famous for his layouts which use non-conventional grids that pack in tonnes of panels and details in a single image. He isn’t without weaknesses as an artist. Perez’s panel to panel story telling is good but never particularly inventive. He’s a great artist to look at, to stop reading and admire the artwork but not the best storyteller. He is also a dreadful costume designer and regularly creates characters which look okay when he draws them but that other artists can’t replicate due to the detail in their appearance. And he has a fondness for assymetric designs I’ve never understood.

Perez was already a superstar when he started New Teen Titans but he isn’t half the talent he’ll become by the end of his tenure and one thing I am looking forward to with this project is seeing him grow as an artist.

This is good stuff, even in this issue though. I particularly like this page.

The top 4 panels use a grid but Perez has them getting gradually larger with one panel being part of the next one. It gives the impression of the reader zooming through the skylight and into the apartment. It’s not earth shattering and it’s subtle enough that you normally wouldn’t notice the effect but it just demonstrates that Perez takes so much time and care in his art.

Then you get a double page splash like this one that really shows off what Perez can do.

 

Mummyboon’s Longbox: The New Teen Titans

 Part 1: Introduction 

Superhero fans usually cluster around a few key characters that form their thing. You’re a Spider-Man guy, or a Batman guy, an Avengers fan or a Justice League fan.  Sure every character is somebody’s favourite and I’m sure that somebody had a Maggott Geocities page back in the day but there are a few A-list titles that have been perennially published and which sort of carve out their own corner of the universe, with spin-offs, villains and recurring characters all their own.

For me, I’m an X-Men guy. That doesn’t mean I don’t read other comics or that I uncritically appreciate every X-Men book without questioning its flaws. It means that my primary interest in super-heroes is the X-Men. I have a love for them that goes far and above how I feel about Spider-Man, Superman or Batman even though I’ve read great stories with all of those characters. It means that I get as much Batman as I want to read from one title but I currently subscribe to about 8 X-books.

And for people of my generation being an X-guy is pretty common. From the early 80’s through until the mid-90’s Uncanny X-Men was hands down the most popular and best selling comic on the stands and it was able to support a line of successful spin-offs, New-Mutants/X-Force, X-Factor, Wolverine and Alpha Flight. X-Men #1 from 1991 remains the biggest selling single issue of a comic of all time. The X-Men were a juggernaut that the industry had never seen before and probably never will again.

And the effect of the X-Men’s success was that many books morphed into X-Men clones. Chris Claremont along with stellar collaborators like Chris Cockrum, John Byrne and Paul Smith established a storytelling language and conventions for super-hero teams that would be imitated by basically every other super-hero team to follow right up until the early 2000’s and the development of “decompressed” storytelling, The impact was comparable to Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four. That had brought forward the ides of inter-team conflict, of filling a book with strong distinct personalities that clashed. Claremont extended this to turn team books into soap operas that treated characters as real people with stuff going on in their lives other than fighting bad guys. He would dedicate issues at a time to characters hanging out with each other adancing sub-plots and character development but conaining no big super villain of the month beat downs. Plot threads would build over years before coming to a conclusion. And angst, so much angst. Nearly every X character had some tragic flaw they could angst about. Not only could they all have a big whine about being mutants and being discriminated against but Wolverine had amnesia, Cyclops had a dead lover, Colossus loved a girl too young for him, Storm had lost her connection to the earth, Nightcrawler is an outcast even amongst outcasts, Rogue “cahn’t touch yuh remy.”

Stop, right there. Why are you talking so much about the X-Men in a review of Teen Titans?

Well, because I want to establish some context. I’m an X-Men guy, most people who got into comics from the 80’s and early 90’s are X-Men guys. But the other big group, they were the Teen Titans guys.

The Titans are D.C.’s equivalent of the X-Men. They were never as popular but when they launched din the early 80’s they became D.C.’s number 1 book. They wouldn’t stay at that position forever but they captured as much excitement in the D.C. audience as X-Men did for the Marvel zombies. Titans is not a rip-off of X-Men in any way shape or form. It builds on D.C. continuity very effectively and has its own stories to tell but in terms of tone, content, it’s use of continuity, storytelling style and place in the overall universe TT was clearly D.C.’s answer to The X-Men, a comparison Marv Wolfman has never denied and which is patently obvious when you consider the Teen Titans/X-Men crossover book jointly published by Marvel and D.C.

So in theory I should like TT, since I like the X-Men and they have similar styles. However, I’m not a Titans guy, or a D.C. guy. I know very little about the team and don’t have the strong emotional connection to them that many fans do. I have read Teen Titans volume 3 (the 2003 – 2011 series) which I mostly enjoyed and I tried to read the New 52 version before I gave up but I haven’t read any of these stories before. My main knowledge for Titans history is the Teen Titans cartoon that aired in the early 00’s and the recent Young Justice cartoon.

I’m therefore going to be looking at them from a different lens to your typical fan. My intention with this project is to ultimately review every issue of The New Teen Titans Volumes 1 and 2 and probably the New Titans as well. This is the first time I’ve read any of these issues and whilst I might know a few things (Terra isn’t going to be much of a twist for me for example) almost everything here will be brand new to me.

 

 

DC Comics has a Diversity Problem

D.C. has a diversity problem. 

I’m no fan of D.C.’s current editorial direction. I was all in favour of the New 52 reboot back when it was announced. It was exciting, a chance to do something huge and new. To start again without making the same mistakes. To free comics from the problems of 30+ years of continuity.

 

What were those problems? Honestly the issues with Big 2 comics as a business are too numerous to go into here but I can highlight a few that are relevant to my point. Continuity was the biggest issue, new readers perceive comics as having storylines going back to the 30’s and whilst this may be technically true, in practise usually only the last decade of comics featuring a character matter to the stories being told with them today. Even so having a big sign that says “you are jumping into this story a decade in progress” is a turn off to the Netflix generation who are used to starting at the beginning of a story and working their way through. Big new number 1’s, characters appearing for the first time, reinventions of problematic characters, changing characters to be more in line with how the wider public perceive of them in media like the JLU cartoon or Nolan’s Batman films. These were all good ideas to get new readers in. D.C. managed to botch nearly all of these ideas in less than a year but that’s a topic for another time.

 

And bring in new readers they did. Sales were through the roof delivering the highest figures D.C. had seen in a decade. The stunt nature of the reboot, the excellent marketing around it and a general up tick in interest in the public’s interest in comics combined to turn the New 52 into a monster hit.

Now that D.C. had the eyes on them they needed to keep that attention. And to do that they had to fix one of the other big problems with big 2 comics. Lack of diversity.

Let me clarify here. I’m using diversity very broadly. I don’t mean simply that D.C. added more characters of colour, although they did, but to mean that characters were of different races, ages, body types, sexualities, religions, genders, countries, etc. And as well as having characters that were all very different the stories and settings which those characters featured in were also varied and diverse. At some level super-heroes played into everything which is less than ideal but somewhat expected for a superhero publisher, but even within that confine we had cosmic stories, westerns, war stories, spy stories, magic, horror, romance, mythological narratives and whatever the hell Voodoo thought it was doing.

Looking at the initial new 52 line-up it is the most diverse offering from a big 2 publisher, probably ever. You’ve got 8 titles with female leads (not counting team books) which is far from ideal but on par with western pop-culture generally and much better than Marvel which at the time had 0 non-team books with female leads. There are 9 non-team books with a lead of an ethnicity other than white which is pretty fantastic by any standards (although again, much less than the perfect ideal). D.C. publishes its first ever book with a homosexual lead character (Batwoman). We’ve got a range of ages and lifestyles presented including a whole line of teenaged super-heroes and a married Animal Man. Books featuring adult single, male, white leads clock in at 20, less than half the total. I’d prefer closer to a quarter but that’s still a good number.

Now compare it to D.C.’s current line-up.

Justice League

Justice League 3000

Justice League United

Aquaman

Aquaman and the Others

The Flash

Green Arrow

Wonder Woman

Earth 2

World’s Finest

Secret Origins

Batgirl

Batwing (although cancellation has been announced)

Batwoman

Birds of Prey (also about to be cancelled)

Catwoman

Red Hood and the Outlaws

Harley Quinn

3 Batman books and 1 he co-shares with Superman + Batman Eternal + 2 more that have recently been announced

Grayson

3 Superman books +1 with Batman and 1 with Wonder Woman

Superboy (also about to be cancelled)

Supergirl

Green Lantern

Green Lantern Corps

New Guardians

Red Lanterns

Sinestro

All Star Western

Infinity Man and the Forever People

Suicide Squad

Star Spangled War Stories

Justice League Dark

Swamp Thing

Phantom Stranger

Pandora

Constantine

New 52: Futures End

 

I count 24 books head up by young single straight white guys out of 44 total. More than half the line taken up by young, white males. And it’s about to get worse. Of the two books with a black lead character (I’m counting John Stewart as the lead of Green Lantern Corps) one is about to be cancelled. Of the three books with teenage characters one is about to be cancelled and frankly I don’t think Infinity Man is long for this world either.

Compare that to the starting line-up or some of the second wave titles and the books that show some diversity are overwhelmingly the books that have been cancelled. The only books D.C. have published since the New 52 with a young woman of any ethnicity in the lead are Voodoo and Katana, which lasted 12 issues and 10 respectively. Male ethnic leads? Vibe, gone. Firestorm, gone. Mister Terrific, gone. OMAC, gone. Blue Beetle, gone and on and on. Books with prominent disabled lead characters (The Movement and Demon Knights) gone.

What about Teenagers? Teenagers have always done well in comics, we’ve had teenaged super-heroes  holding down their own books since the 40’s. Well books led by teenagers have been devastated in the New 52. That whole line of teenager led books called “Young Justice,” Not one single title from that line still remains. The only teenager led books are Supergirl, Superboy and Infinity Man and I suspect the last two are not long for this world.

So how did D.C. screw the pooch?

Oh, gosh, in lots of ways some of which are their fault and some of which are issues in the industry that nobody has been able to sort out.

The first and biggest mistake they made was that most of the New 52 comics were garbage. They represent the nadir of comics published by D.C. in the better part of a decade. Some stuff was good (Demon Knights, OMAC, Batman, Animal Man, Swamp Thing) but a lot of it was worse than similar work creators were doing before the new 52 (Blue Beetle’s New 52 series was worse than his pre-52 series, ditto Firestorm, Green Lantern, Stormwatch, etc) or just downright dreck (Suicide Squad, Batman: The Dark Knight, Voodoo). Of the initial wave of casualties with the exception of OMAC all the comics that got cancelled were bad, and unfortunately many of these bad comics were also the ones where D.C. tried something new.

But as always happens in comics, some good comics got cancelled too. Demon Knights was a fantasy-superhero comic with disabled characters, characters of different ethnicities, a trans-character and it was great. It’s first arc was probably its worst, sadly, but once it hit its stride Demon Knights swiftly became my favourite comic D.C. were publishing. It was fun, smart and unique in comics at the time and it was cancelled due to low sales. And only that, low sales. D.C. actually fought hard to keep this book on the stands, giving it second and third chances when other titles had got the chop. I’m not suggesting for a moment that D.C. cancels comics for any reason other than that these books have low sales.

The sad truth, however, is that nearly every title with a lead that isn’t a young, single, straight, white male has tanked hard in the sales charts.

But I don’t think that’s because they’re minorities.

I think it’s because they’re relatively new concepts.

My evidence for this is twofold. Firstly it isn’t just the books with diverse characters in them that have been cancelled. We’ve also seen plenty of young, white single dudes get the chop. Grifter, Deathstroke, even Talon. Talon was a Batman character spinning off a big event., short of launching it with a super star writer like Geoff Johns you can’t ask for a better push in this marketplace than Talon got, and it still failed.

Secondly, if you look at the titles with diverse characters that have stuck around then you’ll notice a trend. Batwing, Batwoman, Supergirl, Green Lantern Corps. They are all spin-offs of more popular characters with large, established fan bases.

And when D.C. have had to cancel books for low sales they have doubled down on these popular core characters. Every time a Voodoo or a Mister Terrific gets cancelled we get a new Batman or Superman book.

I don’t begrudge D.C. that as a creative or a business decision. They need to maintain a certain level of sales to keep operating and if that means publishing 1 Superman title to recoup the same sales as 3 lesser known properties then they need to do that.

 

The problem is D.C. knows these books will sell at a certain number regardless of the creative content. Flash, Green Lantern, Batman, Superman, Green Arrow; some variation of these titles will always be published at D.C. and will always top the 40,000 sales mark even when the stories have been actively terrible. D.C. knows this, and used to have a rough policy that if these books sold regardless, let’s make these books the place to put more diverse characters. Now I’m not saying Superman should turn into a black guy but not everybody needs to be a young, straight, white, single dude. Superman used to be married. Flash used to be married with mixed-race kids that he went on adventures with. Green Arrow was old enough to have an adult son. Green Lantern used to be Korean. Batgirl used to be in a wheelchair and was the most prominent disabled super-hero outside of Prof X or Daredevil. The Justice Society now is fairly diverse with a gay lead, a mixed race Hawkgirl, a mentally ill mixed race Dr Fate and a black superman analogue but it used to be massively more diverse with a cast drawn from all over the world and octogenarian leads.

 

All that diversity meant more diverse stories. You could tell a story with Wally West, super-hero dad that could be told by no other character in the DCU. Green Arrow used to be defined by his regret, his infidelity and his hypocrisy as much as his liberal politics but without the long history you get from a character pushing 50 those stories all disappear. Oracle used to serve such a useful narrative function that she would make as many guest appearances as Batman but now she’s just another bat vigilante character.

The net result of the New 52, a project which aimed in part to increase the diversity of the DCU, has been to reduce it. In only 3 years we’re back to a level of homogeneity that D.C. comics hasn’t possessed since the 70’s.

And that is the clue to the real problem.

Because this problem actually started before the New 52. Really the problem starts with Green Lantern Rebirth. That storyline brought Hal Jordan back as Green Lantern, replacing a young Korean-American artist with another young white single dude. And it sold. Buckets. Green Lantern Rebirth turned Green Lantern from a 40,000 a month book to a 70,000 a month book and one that routinely topped 100K when timed with events. It turned it from an also ran to the spine of the DCU.

The reasons Green Lantern Rebirth worked are complicated and hard to replicate but not mysterious or magical. D.C. did it right. They promoted the book as an event with house ads and plenty of promotion in the comics media. They started with a mini-series and then a brand new number one for a character with a book whose issue numbers had been in the hundreds, always a good way to draw attention. They put a high profile artist and a superstar writer with a proven track record of hits on the title. And the superstar writer seemed like the first guy in years who was passionate about the character and wanted to write Green Lantern specifically. Even better, he had some genuinely new and exciting ideas for the book and the character and these caught on with the audience. It’s all these factors that made Green Lantern rebirth a success.

The lesson D.C. took away from Green Lantern rebirth though was, make everything like it was in the Silver Age.

You see the real reasons GLR worked are hard to replicate. Good artists, promotion and press cost money and writers who are both talented and passionate about your IP are rare. And you never know if what they want to write will click with the readers.  But the surface reason it seemed to work is easy. GLR was all about brining Hal Jordan back right? Well let’s just bring back all the Silver Age guys. And so in the years to follow we got the Silver Age versions of the Flash, the Legion of Super Heroes, Supergirl and many more back, each time replacing the more modern versions which had been careful to add more diversity.

Then comes the New 52 and gives D.C. the excuse to de-age Green Arrow, divorce Superman, un-cripple Barbara Gordon and every other backwards looking decision they’ve made since. Why not make Amanda Waller skinny or The Justice Society young?

So now we have a problem.

The diversity that D.C. had prior to the New 52 was the result of approximately 30 years of slow growth and acceptance, small changes to improve the line that built upon each other gradually to bring the core DCU books more in line with the real world. With the New 52 D.C. undid all of that growth in one fell swoop and gave us the Silver Age plus a load of new concepts, none of which stuck. Now D.C. is in a situation where it’s core group of reliable sellers all feature straight, white, unmarried dudes in their 20’s + Wonder Woman, Batwoman, Catwoman and a few Justice League books. Any new concepts and books they launch seem doomed to fail because this economy is hostile to new ideas from the Big 2.

So D.C.’s choices going forward are;

1. Burn it down and start again.

Which they won’t do. Doing so would be a tacit admission that the New 52 failed. It did fail of course, it increased sales in the short term but it has added no diversity, brought it no new audiences and launched few new concepts. The only long term successes are to give Batman a shot in the arm, add Cyborg to the Justice League, launch Batwoman, boost Wonder Woman’s sales and maybe Justice League Dark. The only one of those that required the reboot explicitly was adding Cyborg to the Justice League and really that’s only important when and if a Justice League movie gets made. Nonetheless they can’t reboot again in such a short time frame. The audience would call shenanigans and the massive sales boost they got from the last time they tried it would undoubtedly not reoccur.

2.  Admit defeat and go back to the pre-52 universe.

This seems to be all negatives. Doing this would have all the bad press of admitting the New 52 failed without the benefit of a deck clearing exercise or a sales stunt. Plus there is no guarantee that the more diverse elements of the old universe would return or would be successful if they did. Asian Batgirl, family man Flash and Octogenarian Justice Society were all already cancelled once, there is no guarantee that bringing them back would do anything other than see them get cancelled and replaced with young straight single white people again.

3. Make a big push for new concepts and give them a buy until they build a readership.

I’m not an economist nor am I privy to the inner workings of D.C.’s finances but my feeling as an outsider is that if this worked then they’d have done it already. Look at any sales chart and you’ll see that even the most critically acclaimed titles with the most popular characters still generally lose sales month on month. The mechanism behind this isn’t arcane either. Readers have a limited ability to buy titles and new titles are always coming out. As you read a comic you may decide that you no longer enjoy reading and drop it. You can now put that money into a new title. Now you could put that money into issue 7 of Captain Marvel since you’ve heard it’s good but you’ve missed the first 6 issues of story already, and oh this issue is part way through an arc too. Maybe I’ll try that new Marvel Number 1 instead.

People almost never start reading a series after issue 1 anymore. If they hear it’s good but its already part way through the run they might buy a trade but that won’t impact on the month to month sales and that’s still the cornerstone of the big 2’s business. Critically acclaimed books with low sales can sometime stick around when the economics dictate that similar books would be cancelled if the trade sales are big enough (see, everything Vertigo publishes for evidence) but generally your best bet if you have a critical hit with low sales is to cancel it and then relaunch it with the same creative team. Marvel does this trick a lot and it works for them to varying degrees of success.

With the New 52 Future’s End seemingly being based entirely around some of D.C.’s better received cancelled concepts I suspect this approach is coming. At the end of Future’s End I would not be surprised if we got new Mister Terrific, Frankenstein, Grifter and Firestorm books. The thinking being that the audience gets to know these characters in a big event and then is interested to buy them when their new series launches.

4. Fuck it, cancel everything and just sell Justice League,  Batman and Superman.

This is inevitable if D.C. doesn’t try to do something. On the plus side whilst total sales might decrease I’m sure their average dollar share will shoot through the roof.

5. Slowly grow the DCU’s diversity back through supporting characters and gradual changes,

This, in combination with number 3, is what D.C. is doing to try to fix its diversity problem. that’s why we’re getting a new black Wally West as a supporting character in Flash.

This approach has the massive advantage that it is going to work. We know because it did previously. It also has the big disadvantage that last time around it took the better part of 30 years.

Let’s hope it’s a little quicker this time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thor 2 : The Dark World

The first Thor film was my second favourite of the Marvel Phase One films (my favourite obviously being Avengers). It was a really solid character based story with almost Shakespearean themes of jealousy, flawed heroes, redemption and falls from grace. It had a superb cast with not one dud performer in the entire ensemble and it was beautifully directed by Kenneth Branagh.

But mostly it was funny. Hysterically, pants-wettingly, quote it to your friends for weeks afterwards funny. “This drink is delicious,” *smash* “ANOTHER!” will be in my personal lexicon of jokes forever.

It wasn’t without flaws though. For a comic book movie it was severely deficient in action. Our hero is without his powers for most of the film and when he finally gets them the climax is perfunctory and disappointing. It also introduced a ton of awesome and interesting characters, Sif, The Warriors Three, Heimdall (The most awesome thing Idris Elba has ever done) but due to time constraints didn’t really do a lot with them.

Why am I talking so much about the first Thor in a review of the sequel? Well because I am pleased to report that this new film fixes those two problems from the first one. There are a lot more action scenes and they’re much better done. The climactic battle which takes place in multiple universes all at once is particularly inventive.

Also we get more Warriors Three this time and a LOT more Heimdall.

It’s just a shame that they forgot to include all the stuff that made the first film great.

Brilliant humour? Eh, there are a few gags I liked but they’re less frequent than the first film and less hilarious this time around.

Superb cast? Well everyone returns but, Stellan Skarsgard is reduced to doing some frankly embarrassing physical comedy and Anthony Hopkins clearly showed up on set for like half a day blitzed off his face. He could not care less about this and you can almost smell the apathy coming off him. I’ve never heard a worse reading of the word “hah” before in all my life.

And poor Christopher Eccleston has nothing to do as evil villain Malekith. Nothing. At all. His motivation is, he existed in a time before there was stuff and now he is mad that stuff exists. That’s kind of neat in a broad cosmic sense but it makes for a really dull villain. I am mad at everything is not psychologically compelling and even a thesp of Eccleston’s character struggles to do anything interesting with this character. It doesn’t help that he has maybe 4 scenes in the entire film as well.

But the biggest thing missing is the Shakespearean character drama. Thor had a great arc for the lead character. He’s an arrogant jock who learns humility and is redeemed. Toss in the conflict with his brother and you have some really meaty character stuff to hang the punching and hammer throwing on.

This time around though, they just forgot to give Thor an arc. He starts the film as a pretty decent guy, a hero in Asgard and the other nine realms and he ends the film as a pretty decent guy and a hero in all nine realms. He doesn’t have a dip, he doesn’t look like he’s lost and has to return from disaster he just travels the story in a straight line. There are some gestures at a love triangle with Thor, Sif and Jane but they amount to nothing. And there’s a speech between Thor and Odin at the end where it’s implied that Thor has learned a lesson about being the king and recants his responsibility preferring to be a hero. But we never see anything prior to this scene related to those themes at all. It’s as if the film is full of shadows from an earlier draft that got edited out so we could get more Loki.

Which brings me to Loki.

Who is delightful.

Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is the absolute highlight of this film. Every second he’s on screen just elevates it utterly. He’s like the jam in some otherwise bland rice pudding. He’s funny, charming, complicated and unlike Thor he actually has a character arc and changes and grows over the film.

Unfortunately he’s only on screen for maybe thirty or forty minutes and he isn’t the main villain this time. Which is fine, he just doesn’t have a natural role in the story and whilst he’s the best thing in it it isn’t his story. But you can tell that the feedback at every stage of production was “needs more Loki” and they’ve forced so much of him in here that it’s been detrimental to the arcs for other main characters like Thor and Malekith.

Whilst this has been a pretty negative review I don’t want you to think that I hated Thor. I didn’t, it was fine. I was perfectly happy whilst watching it, the action was good, it had decent jokes, Loki was excellent, it wasn’t terrible. But it just felt a little thin, like a stew that’s too watery and needs more meat and vegetables.

Which is two culinary metaphors in one review. I must be hungry.

Mummyboon’s Longbox: X-Force/X-Statix Part 4 #123 ‘Nuff Said

Issue 123 “Tick Tock”

Okay this one requires some back story.

In 2002 Bill Jemas, Marvel’s Publisher at the time, launched an initiative called ‘Nuff Said, a common phrase from Stan Lee’s old soapbox column. The idea was this; Jemas had been having an argument with a television producer about the power of comic book storytelling and specifically how comics can tell a story without using any words since the reader can pace the action at their own desire.

To prove this, and also to test the Marvel creators mettle, he came up with Nuff’ Said, an entire month of comics featuring no words at all, only pictures. The challenge was simple, you’re the best creators in comics, prove it by telling a story using only comic images, no words.

It was a dismal failure.

Most writers just submitted the same script they would have anyway and reading it without words left the entire thing a jumbled mess. Without exposition you can tell what a character is doing  and sometimes how but not why. Uncanny X-Men for example, started a storyline where long time X-Men member Banshee became a pseudo-villain but whilst we could tell he was doing villainous things it was incredibly frustrating to realise we didn’t know why. And many pages featured scenes of conversations between character we were not privy to, so you’re just looking at two guys looking at each other and trying to guess what on earth they’re doing.

Chris Claremont in X-Treme X-Men introduced an entirely new character which is a horrible idea because when you introduce a new character you need to know their name, powers, motivation, personality etc and you can’t do that without any words.

The only person who tried to tell a normal story and succeed was J. Michael Stracszynski who basically did a day in the life of Spider-Man. So it was boring but it was comprehensible.

Many writers instead avoiding trying to tell any real narrative and just did a series of surreal imagery intended to work as a character piece. Exiles, for example, did an issue of the character’s dreaming that worked to symbolically tell us about each character’s desire and dreams. N=W X-M=N did a psychedelic, psychic rescue mission into Professor Xavier’s head which was basically a showcase for Frank Quietly to show off with some trippy imagery.

Basically the event proved the exact opposite of what it was supposed to. It showed how necessary dialogue is to comics because without it you limit the stories you can tell to things that can be inferred symbolically and nothing else.

Milligan decided to go the symbolic dream sequence route and offers us a story where the plot is this.

Doop has a pimple, he pops it, and this causes the members of X-Force to be sucked into the hole in his head. Doop climbs in afterword and rescues them from a series of symbolic nightmares. When they escape nobody remembers a thing except Doop.

So it’s crap fluff but hey it can do two things at least. Firstly it lets us see Mike Allred draw some really inventive and strange things and secondly we might get a little bit of character insight.

We don’t get all that much though.

Edie, Guy and Tike don’t really get much character work done here.  Edie gets her tongue ripped out which tells us that, Edie likes to talk? That she fears losing her voice? That her tongue is her identity? I think we all know that Edie puts on a sarcastic front so this doesn’t really reveal much about her.

Guy is a head….I do not know why.

Tike is in a dessert and sweats a lot and then his acid sweat becomes the sea because…Tike is scared of sweating? Honestly I got nothing.

The Spike probably get the worst treatment since he doesn’t really appear, he’s not even on the cover. Instead there’s a magazine of him wearing women’s clothes. I don’t know if this is because Spike secretly wants to be a woman, or to wear womens’ clothes, or fears it. Spike doesn’t really have a personality anyway, he’s a plot device to discuss Tike’s character and they accomplished that in the previous issue.

Vivisector and Phat get the best sequences. Phat is in a ghetto, being chased by thugs and Doop has to save him. I think we all know by now that Phat isn’t really a gangsta and it’s all an act but it’s nice to see how scared Phat is of the ghetto really. As much as he plays this role he doesn’t want to be a wigga and is genuinely scared of being found out.

Vivisector is the only character we learn something new about. He has a sequence where he is chased by a spectre of his father as a giant covered in incomprehensible writing. The animosity between Miles and his father has been hinted at before but we didn’t realise he feared him, and even more he appears to consider himself intellectually inferior to him since he can’t read the books in his monster father’s library or understand the writing on him.

We also get a lot of Doop stuff including the first suggestion at just how weird Doop is. Doop can climb inside his own head, change size, suck up people, swim through acid, etc. He has pimples that cause dimensional portals and can travel in time. The Doop is incredibly powerful and secretly really weird joke is one Milligan will constantly return to (even bringing it into X-Men at one point) but this is the first time it appears and it’s kind of shocking and strange.

So X-Force 123. It’s crap but it’s the best they could do under the limitations placed upon them.