Comic Review: Superman #650

Well, that's a fresh start.

Superman picks up "One Year Later" with an intriguing opening chapter. Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns open "Up, Up, and Away!" with a number of quiet moments, as well as one or two bangs, and introduce us to a new status quo that is both fresh and familiar.

Superman has been gone for a year, and the people of Metropolis seem to be doing ok. Clark and Lois continue their regular lives, while Luthor's trial concludes and an old villain is new again.

I was honestly a little surprised about how well this went, given that the "one year later" set up is a little contrived. Busiek and Johns handle the absence of Superman with a light touch, eschewing overwrought melodrama for a rather quiet, positive tone for the book's opening scenes.

The shift to action, along with a guest star filling in for Supes, is handled with aplomb, without hinting at the revelation from the final pages. The reinvented villain was a nice nod to the past, as well, as I don't recall that character, not mentioned here to avoid too many spoilers, appearing much, if at all, post-crisis.

Also worth mentioning is Pete Woods strong art on the issue. He manages to blend a crisp line with a deft sense of expressiveness, a combination many artists struggle with. It leaves things with an organic feeling for the characters, but charged with a blend of realism and fantasy that works well in a "sense of wonder" title like Superman.

The final pages packs a bit of a punch, literally, as we're given a new question about why Clark hasn't been Superman for the last year. Whatever the reason, we'll hopefully learn soon. Busiek and Johns have given us a fine opening chapter into a story that looks like it will provide a breath of fresh air into the Superman franchise.

Unpleasant History

The Plot Against America: A Novel by Philip Roth
Quick Review

I'm torn on this book. It's strange because it's a novel that manages to be interesting on two almost fundamentally different levels, but the tension between the levels leaves you, as a reader, in an awkward predicament.

Roth's alternate history deals with a world where Lindbergh runs for President in 1940 and wins, keeping the US out of World War II and launching a slow, frightening lurch towards fascism...

The novel does a fine job on the micro level narrative focused on, predictably, "Philip Roth", the novel's narrator looking back on his childhood through the prism of these trying times. Where much of the tension comes in is Roth's jumping from personal narrative to historical narrative. For long sections the book will jump to breathless accounts by the narrator of the alternate history, then back and forth through the surrounding personal history of the narrator's family.

As a reader, this means there is almost always something interesting in the forefront. Roth, however, pushes this to a point where there is palpable suspense in both narratives due to the dual narrative structure. We'll jump away from the Roth family for 20 pages to learn history, then back to the family for 50 more. The structure isn't rigid, so you're never sure how much more trauma, on a societal scale, may suddenly fall down upon the Roths and their ersatz America.

For the most part, this works, but it does play a bit on a reader's patience and expectation. Overall I'd view it as a positive, but there were more than a few moments where I felt a bit stranded by Roth's decisions.

On a final note, this is a fairly chilling novel. Roth's alternate 1940's narrative plays on many contemporary issues facing our reaction to threats in the world today. I'll probably do a post on the strengths and weaknesses inherent in the books critique of American culture over on Morsecode in the near future...

When gods really don't like their kids...

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
Quick Review

After decent outings in his first two longform prose efforts, Neil Gaiman finally hits it out of the park on Anansi Boys.

A light mix of contemporary fantasy, comedy, and a little horror, Anansi Boys is a quasi-sequel to his successful American Gods novel. Unlike that book, Anansi Boys is much smaller in scope, eschewing the slow epic lurch of it's predecessor for a deft, focused narrative that's a compulsive read.

Without spoiling too much, the story revolves around "Fat Charlie" Nancy, a man who discovers at his father's funeral that his father was, in fact, the famed Anansi. Soon he meets his forgotten brother, Spider, and some very funny low key hijinx follow.

The book has a strong focus for the most part, something which Gaiman struggled with in American Gods, a book cluttered by fascinating tangents. It makes it his most compelling novel to date, and stands up with the best of his other works.

Review of Lost 2.08

YAWN.

Okay, I have to admit that I had the episode of Survivor: Guatemala, that I missed due to Turkey day commitments, queed up for download at the time. This episode made that download seem to take even longer than it did.
Ana Lucia has been fairly unpopular with the fans, and I don't feel like last week's episode helped give us anything more to make us like her. The writers said we'd understand her more, and we do. But understanding why you dislike someone is not the same as coming around and actually liking them. To like them, we have to like what they do. Speaking of which, when is the last time we saw something likeable out of poor Said? What made his torturing of Sawyer so difficult was that he was so likable around camp. Further, what made us hate Sawyer from the start was that he started a fight with Said, who was so likable. Stop putting Said through the wringer all the time and let us see him act like a normal human being. Must he always be either doing something supremely devilish or supremely saintly?
In terms of what made this show alluring in season one, I'm starting to fear that it has lost the thread a bit. Please, more parts of the show like the golf bit, less people shooting people and then have them flash back to shooting other other people.

Review of Lost 2.07

I have to confess this, though I don't know why: last night was the first time I've seen "Lost" as it aired on tv (Thank you Netflix and ITunes!)

I actually enjoyed last night's episode very much. It was nice to set up the other side of the plane as constantly under attack. The view of the island this group has is not going to jive with the other group's view. The "tailies" have had no golf course, no supplies, no spiritual growth where people find peace and conquer fear, regret and addiciton. They have just plain been on the run. If Jack is the reluctant and caring leader, the politically popular choice to lead, Ana Lucia is a general. The front of the plane got on the plane and crashed into mystery; the tailies crashed into a warzone.

All in all, a satisfying viewing experience, though I still get the feeling that someone noticed the ratings were sky high and decided to release clues about the island more slowly to give the show a longer season to season run time.

Review of Lost 2.06

So, raise your hand if you have not shot someone... NOT SO FAST EVERYONE ON LOST! I mean, really, is this really the best way to create dramatic tension? It seems like everyone is now at least partially responsible the death of someone else. I find the show to be fascinating, but isn't it posible to develop a little more SUBTLE points of conflict??
After the first two or three episodes, season two has really started to sputter for me. This Wednesday's show will be an interesting departure, but honestly, as we've filled in the backstories on a lot of these people, its becoming clear that they haven't really developed a lot of good sustainable relationships between people in the present tense of the show. The island is the interesting tease of the show, but one expects it will be quite some time before that mystery gets rolled out with any more significance.
Back to this particular episode, it didn't really do anything for me. The death seems utterly contrived, the story lines that one really cares about are somewhat pointlessly tabled, and the show's general pacing problems (ie: Clair gets kidnapped, three episodes later people remember that Claire has been kidnapped) continue onward. That being said, I am still TOTALLY fascinated by the island, I think the show has some great characters and I am hopeful that they'll give us some more stories with a little more meat on the bones in the future.

An Overbite Problem...

A Review of Blade: Trinity

So I saw Blade: Trinity, the third and presumably final Blade film on Wednesday night. It's not particularly good, but it's an interesting kind of bad film. It's a strange mix of influences and genres, and of good moments with nothing in between. It's a disappointing directorial effort for a good screen writer who, paradoxically, manages to let himself down with his writing more than his direction.

David Goyer, who wrote both the original Blade and it's sequel, Blade 2, returns for this film and also sits in the director's chair. The story, unfortunately, feels like a reworking of notes that didn't get used for the first two Blade films, with ideas being revisited (Vampire run "blood banks"), and not much real narrative drive. Things keep happening to the characters, but it all seems remote and by the numbers.

Goyer's direction may be slightly better than his script this time out, but it's still spotty. Several scenes just have an awkward rhythm to them, including a few action scenes. One scene introduces a character by having him appear through a broken window after throwing a vampire through the window. The timing and composition of the shots in the scene just feel off, and a sight gag which should be quite funny feels forced by the extreme closeup used to sell it. Another action sequence, with Blade pursuing one of the villains of the piece, Drake, in a chase through buildings and rooftops, feels like an attempt at homage to the gritty films of the seventies like The French Connection. It doesn't work, however, because the tempo of the edits and the specific shots just don't flow with the organic structure that a Friedkin or Frankenheimer tended to impart.

Also not helping the film is the continuing cartoon-ification of Wesley Snipes' Blade, who is just a little too unreal to ground the films in real drama, or even real melodrama. Both Stephen Norrington and Guillermo DelToro worked with that pretty well in their films, but there isn't much of a dramatic arc that Blade goes through in this film. There is one theoretically, but it doesn't really show up much on screen because Snipes treats everything with the subtlety of a jackhammer.

Some of the supporting cast fare better. Jessica Biel manages herself well in the film, keeping a serious tone throughout the over the top vampire killing. Ryan Reynolds, as Hannibal King, manages to basically steal the movie as a former vampire who just can't stop talking. Even if the film tanks he's probably managed to expand his career with this film as he sets himself up well to get offered LOTS of action comedy roles. Former indie-queen Parker Posey brings some quirk to her role as a Vampire ringleader, playing an emotionally stunted nerd who self consciously struts...A lot.

More problematic is Dominic Purcell, TV's John Doe, as "Drake". I feel kind of bad for the guy, because he reminds me of the worst of William Shatner, in that every line he delivers feels like it was written. He seems incapable of making dialogue sound natural and spontaneous, whether here or on John Doe.

Overall, Blade Trinity is a disappointment, but it's entertaining enough that it's worth a rental in the future for horror or comic-book fans. The film, appropriately enough, feels like an ongoing comic that's just run out of steam and needs to be cancelled, with a few good ideas surrounded by too much filler.

Technical Difficulties

Computer problems, along with being a little under the weather, prevented me from posting the last few days. Regular posting should resume tonight and should go daily starting next weekend. I should have some thoughts on Maus and the Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban film.