Sheriff of Babylon, Den of Thieves, Manolo, House of Z

I recently flew back from Germany, which meant a lot of movies on the plane.  Recapping what I saw:

Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards

I’ve wanted to watching this documentary about Manolo Blahnik for quite some time.  It’s not like I’m a fan of his shoes - I wouldn’t be able to pick them out of a lineup if you mixed them in with TJ Maxx’s finest.  But the fact that I’ve even heard of Manolo Blahnik at all suggests that he’s got some chops, and I love watching the best at anything do what they do.    

Blahnik’s the most adorable old man.  His easy going attitude belies the intensity with which he approaches his craft.  Even after all these years, he’s still beautifully painting shoe designs with watercolors and physically creating them in his factory.  Watching him grind the heel of a pump from a block of wood blows my mind.

I do wish the filmmakers spent more time on the shoes and what sets them apart from everyone else’s.  I can appreciate the beauty of the shoes on their own, but why are they better than any other pair out there?  

Still, I like the window into a world with which I have very little familiarity.  

Regret watching? No

Would watch again? Yes

Would buy on DVD? No

Rating: Nice

House of Z

I was intrigued by the description: “This documentary looks at the rise, fall, and comeback of charismatic fashion designer Zac Posen.”  (For someone with little to zero interest in fashion, I really enjoying watching these.) They oversold the fall part of the story. I was expecting a descent into drugs and alcohol, followed by years away in self-imposed exile.  Instead, all I got was, “he burned out, had a few bad shows, and his family quit working for him.” Not a fall so much as the way you stumbletrip when you’re walking down the stairs and think there’s an extra step when there really isn’t.

Zac Posen knows how to design a beautiful dress, that’s for sure.  The film does a nice job of showcasing them, and his talent is self-evident.  As with the Manolo movie, it’s about 10 minutes too long as it tries to wrap things up with deep, meaningful observations.  But up until the end, quality entertainment.

Regret watching? No

Would watch again? Yes

Would buy on DVD? No

Rating: Nice

Den of Thieves

The epitome of the perfect airplane movie: Fun action flick that requires zero emotional investment and only slightly more brainpower.  Gerard Butler is the doesn’t-play-by-the-rules cop who’s pitted against Pablo Schreiber’s gang of bad guys. This film is really trying to be Heat, and while it’s objectively worse on just about every level, I admit that if given a choice, I’d rather take Den of Thieves with me if stranded on a desert island.  Blasphemy, I know, but it’s just more fun.  The gunfights were far more exciting than I expected, and even more surprisingly, the writers included a sweet, intricate heist.    

Aside: The central shootout in Heat is a classic.  As is the DeNiro/Pacino scene.  But two scenes do not a rewatchable movie make.  They just make two rewatchable scenes.

Not sure if I’m going to watch this movie again, but the fact that I’m considering it at all is already far more than I expecting going into this.  

Regret watching? No

Would watch again? Yes

Would buy on DVD? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Sheriff of Babylon 1-12

I bought the first six issues because Vision was so good.  I stopped because they didn’t do very much for me.  I bought the trade collecting the final six issues because my comic shop was having a sale and I felt like I was losing value by not buying anything.  Also, I’d rethought my position on King’s Batman after quitting once, and I thought the same thing could happen here.

Nope.  Still didn’t enjoy it the second time around.  Things are just too bleak and cynical in King’s Iraq for me to like reading about it.  Even the small measure of justice that the ‘heroes’ extract at the end of the story is morally unambiguous in its wrongness.  If it were just about any other writer, I’d cut this, but I’m keeping it around because it’s Tom King and I still might come around at some point in the future.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? No

Rating: Didn’t suck

Dark Avengers, New Avengers

Dark Avengers 1-6, 9-16
Dark Avengers Annual 1

Between the Mike Deodato art and the Norman Osborne-run team, Dark Avengers is basically a sequel to Warren Ellis' run on Thunderbolts.  But even with Brian Michael Bendis at the helm, it isn't as good.  It's not as balls-out insane, and focuses too much on plot instead of character.  What made Thunderbolts fun was the insanity (literal, sometimes) of the bad-guys-masquerading-as-good, and their pure inability to maintain that facade.  Here, the missions take priority, and they involve people that even Bendis can't make interesting.  

Paging through the issues and talking about things as they come up:

I'm a fan of Victoria Hand.  She's taken on the uneviable task of executing Norman Osborne's vision, and somehow manages to not come across as a bad person. She genuinely treats the job as an opportunity to do good in the world, and performs it professionally and ably.  It's a view that Steve Rogers shares, and he rewards her patriotism with a job at the reinstated SHIELD at the end of the book.  

After Norman puts together his team, Bendis spends three issues having them fight Morgana Le Fay.  It's pretty much a snoozefest.  A bunch of beating up monsters and flashy spells, but nothing more.  Then some random stuff with Namor, who has yet to be an exciting character in any storyline ever.  

There's a nice issue with Ares and his son Alexander, but it's really an installment of Secret Warriors in disguise, telling a story from that title from a different POV.

I don't know why Bendis has such a fractured sense of continuity with Dark Avengers.  Examples: Lindy blows off Sentry's head in issue nine, and doesn't continue the scene for another three issues.  Noh-Varr runs away from the team in issue five, and then there's no follow up for over half a year.  It's a disjointed way to tell a story, and it feels like bad editing to me.  

The rest of the trade is a race to see whether Norman falls apart before the Sentry.  The Sentry continues to be one of the most boring Marvel characters in existence.  I don't care about his struggle with the Void, I don't care about his relationship with his wife, and I don't understand what Norman's master plan with him was.  He's a Superman-level guy, and like his inspiration, can only be stopped by the imagination of the writer.  He's too powerful.  
  
Bendis isn't up to the task.  Under his pen, Bob Reynolds goes crazy, then gets talked down by Norman.  Goes crazy as the Void, then gets talked down.  I don't how many times this happens, but it feels like four or five times, and it's tedious each time.  Not at all the thing to hang the crux of your title on to.  

The final issue is a nice coda to the Siege event.  We see what happens to each of the remaining Dark Avengers, and Bendis excels at these little character beats.  (Particularly the aforementioned conversation between Steve Rogers and Hand.)  

On the art side, Deodato does his usual stellar work.  Rain Beredo hands in some truly beautiful coloring jobs.  Check out what he does when Bullseye murders Lindy.  (Which Bendis fails to infuse with any tension or tragedy.)  

On the other hand, there is a systemic failure of page layouts throughout the entire run.  I don't know if I should blame Bendis or Deodato, but there are numerous instances where the reading flow for double-page spreads are horribly unclear:

When presented in a comic format across two pages, the natural inclination is to read the eight panels on the left side, then the eight on the right.  There are no hints that the reader needs to break with tradition and read all four panels across the top.  It creates a terrible break in the reading experience as the reader needs to pause and figure out which order to tackle the panels.  

The word balloons help a little bit here, as they carry over from panel two to three and six to seven, but it's far too subtle to really be of any use.  And this happens all the time in Dark Avengers.

This cover reminds me of the classic Fall of the Mutants ad:

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

New Avengers 38-54
Secret Invasion: Dark Reign

The whole House of M/Civil War/Secret Invasion/Siege run of Marvel events really messed with the flow of New Avengers.  No where is it more evident than in this trade.  Is there any sense of continuity from issue to issue?  Let's take a look:

38: It's an issue of Bendis/Gaydos Alias, as Luke and Jessica deal with her signing on the side of Tony Stark in order to provide a measure of safety for her daughter.

39: Maya prevents the Skrulls from replacing her in this issue of Bendis/Mack Daredevil.

Mack painting Echo again!

40: Jim Cheung illustrates Veranke's rise to power in the Skrull empire.

41: In an appendix entry to Secret Invasion, the readers learn more about SHIELD's vibranium raid in the Savage Land.  

42: We return to Veranke and discover how she replaced Jessica Drew.  Apparently David Finch's shot of Spider-Woman in the first New Avengers arc is worth drawing a second time.  (To be fair, it was remarkable enough for me to remark on it the first time around.)

43: Back to the Savage Land, and the Skrull Captain America's backstory is revealed right before he dies.  

44: This issue was really cool.  In order to figure out a way to avoid detection on Earth, the Skrulls clone Reed Richards and fool him into developing a solution.  And then they blow his head off.  It's a sweet idea, and well executed by Bendis and Billy Tan.  (Though Tan is really outclassed by Gaydos, Maleev, Bachalo, and Cheung in this trade.)

45: Flashback to the House of M Era, and how the subsequent "No more mutants" aided the Skrulls in achieving their invasion plans.  

46: The Hood and his minions discover the presence of Skrulls on Earth. 

47: Another issue of Alias, as Luke tells his daughter about when he fell in love with Jessica.  These Gaydos issues really should be reprinted in Alias, not here.

Secret Invasion: Dark Reign: Norman Osborne forms his version of the Illuminati.  He sounds exactly like the Hood, who even calls him out on it.  

In a rare complete fail by Alex Maleev, Namor looks like Leisure Suit Larry.  

Or Manu Ginobli.  

Norman kills Swordsman, in a scene that really belongs in Dark Avengers 1.

48, 49: In the first multi-issue story of the trade, Luke and Jessica retrieve their kidnapped daughter, tying up a thread from the end of Secret Invasion.

And seriously, what is it with drawing full-length Spider-Women on the left half of the left page of issues?

50: The Avengers try to lure the Dark Avengers into a fight, but Osborne sics the Hood's gang on them instead.  Big fight.  Billy Tan puts Spider-Woman in some weird ass poses.

How is that kicking leg attached to her body?

I'm just saying that maybe Manara wasn't the first person to draw Spider-Woman like this.

David Aja's guest page shows why he was so perfect for Iron Fist.

I'm so in love with the flow of his action.

51-54: With all the events finally over, Bendis devotes a full four issues to Brother Voodoo, the new Sorcerer Supreme.  Was this Bachalo's audition for Doctor Strange seven years later?  

I give Billy Tan shit, but this fight sequence was pretty sweet:

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Scene of the Crime

Scene of the Crime 1-4

I believe this is the first of Ed Brubaker’s long (and ongoing) run of comic noir stories.  (Is comic noir a phrase?) (Hey, I just noticed that he signed my issue one!) It’s got all the elements, with a private detective, mysterious client, a murdered sister, getting beat up by thuggish henchmen, tension with the local cops, and big dramatic reveals.  

Like any number of TV procedurals (Castle, Bones, Elementary (now you have a little view into a small slice of my viewing habits)), the characters really need to be more interesting than the crime and solution.  In this, Brubaker is partially successful. Jack Herriman is a stereotypical private eye, complete with self-destructive streak, an ex-flame who can’t stay angry with him, and a determination to see the case through.  His supporting cast is a little more interesting, particularly his crime photographer uncle, Knut, and his girlfriend Molly.

Brubaker’s future work, particularly on Gotham Central, is far stronger.  But this is entertaining enough, and he displays a knack for cliffhanger one-liners.

Michael Lark is perfect for the art, and he’ll go on to work with Brubaker on Gotham Central.  Calling out how he draws a little physical tick with Maggie in the first issue.  It’s an attention to detail and consistency that I love.

 

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

Royals

I’m in Cologne, Germany for work, and the hours are crazy, so I’m not getting much writing done.  

Royals 1-6

I mentioned in my Light Brigade review that I wasn’t all that keen with writers mixing WWII with other genres.  Something about the potential of disrespecting those who have risked and sacrificed their lives.  

Clearly I was full of myself, because I was all in on Royals from the get go:  European royal blood grants the monarchs and their children super powers.  Insert them into WWII. Let’s see what happens. It’s gloriously mad, and I love it.  So much crazy fun.

Writer Rob Williams makes the wise decision to focus on the interpersonal relationships of the British royal family.  Those people are seriously messed up, and watching them fail spectacularly at their own lives while trying to fight a war (and mostly mucking things up there as well) makes for some good reading.  The ending’s far too rushed (much like Storming Paradise, another alternative take on WWII), but up until then, I was really having a blast.

Simon Coleby’s pencils and JD Mettler’s colors really look like Jae Lee’s work, and that’s not a bad style to draw comparisons to.  

Lee.

Coleby

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Pretty good

It’s the end of Vertigo Box 2!  

Box Summary:

Time spent reading: 21 hours, 28 minutes

Issues read: 176

Issues cut: 29

Highlights (Good or better): Punk Rock Jesus 1-6

Project Summary:

Time spent reading: 10 days, 5 hours, 18 minutes

Issues read: 1990

Issues cut: 260

Punk Rock Jesus

Punk Rock Jesus 1-6

I went into this re-read thinking, “I don’t remember anything about this miniseries at all, I’m predicting a cut at the end of this.”

How completely wrong I was.  This Sean Murphy work is a ton of fun.  A nice high concept: A megacorp clones Jesus with blood from the Shroud of Turin.  The child’s life is then broadcast Truman Show-style to the world.  The characters populating this drama all bring value to the story:

Gwen Fairling, the 18-year old virgin selected to be the artificially inseminated mother of the cloned savior.  She soon realizes the nightmare she’s gotten herself into, and struggles for the rest of her life to do the right thing for her son.  

Rick Slate, the manipulative marketing asshole who came up with the idea, willing to do anything for ratings.  The easy to root against villain.

Jesus Christ (Chris), the most famous person in the world.  He’s able to look beyond the media drivel that Slate feeds him and break out of the cage that his mother could never escape.  

Thomas McKael, the reformed IRA terrorist looking for redemption, tasked with protecting Chris and Gwen.  Drawn and written like the Punisher. It was impossible for me to not see Frank Castle the whole time, down to the heart of gold.  

Sarah Epstein, the geneticist who’s technology enables this whole affair.  She’s in it to gain funding for her climate-change solutions, and she proves to be one of Chris and Gwen’s strongest allies.

The inner workings of the J2 Project, combined with Murphy’s vision of the public’s reaction (lots of Christian fundamentalists both for and against the whole thing), create a story that I didn’t want to put down.  I would have been happy with an ongoing series detailing just the period of time leading up to Chris’ apostasy. (Which takes the first three and a half issues here.) Gwen’s mental breakdown over that span is predictable, but her innocence and likability going into the project make it all the more tragic.  I choose to believe that she didn’t go into it for the glory. She wanted to help her family. (And it’s crushing when she discovers that things didn’t work out in that department either.)

McKael is set up as Chris’ mirror image, someone who’s belief system was set up on an unstable foundation.  Like Chris, he has to discover his own personal truth after clearing away all the crap that’s been fed to him since he was a child.  At the end, they both discover what’s important to them, and it’s pretty satisfying. (The ending’s not as strong as the beginning, and doesn’t have the attention to detail that made the first half so fun, but it wraps things up well enough.)

No way this is getting cut, and I need to remember to go back to it in the future.  

And there’s a genetically domesticated polar bear!

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Good

Pride of Baghdad, Avengers: Infinity War

Avengers: Infinity War

This came out on DVD this week, so my wife finally got the chance to watch it.  (She hates watching movies in theatres.) She was pretty excited about it, especially after I told her how much I enjoyed it.  I thought that she’d be a fan of the humor, and already warned her about the things I thought she’d hate (the Loki/Heimdall deaths, Starlord being stupid.)  

Turns out I vastly overestimated her tolerance for stupidity.  

I’m prefacing this by saying that I see the merits of all her complaints.  There are a ton of things that don’t make sense in this movie. But if I’m having enough fun during the viewing (as I do with this film), I’m a lot more lenient with them.  

Things that ticked her off:

If Gamora knows that she’s the only way for Thanos to find the Soul Gem, why in the world did she join the other Guardians in confronting him?  If she’s not in a position to be captured, there’s no need to ask Starlord to kill her.

The movie has a general tendency to opt for the easy one-liner to diffuse the tension of a situation instead of mining it for something more meaningful.  Not to say that they aren’t funny, but they’re missed opportunities.

Captain America’s insistence that the Avengers not trade Vision’s life for the lives of half the universe has a certain heroic morality, right up until he sacrifices the Wakandan army to Thanos’ hordes.  It’s far less noble to say, “We don’t trade lives as long as it’s something that I’m close to. Screw the faceless Wakandan redshirts.”

Where’s all the Wakandan tech in that battle?  There’s not a single plane to provide air support?  Did the concept of artillery never penetrate the Wakandan war doctrine?

We didn’t make it through the movie.  The idiocy of the Avengers proved to be too much for her.  She’s not even a little sad that Thanos won. He deserved it way more than the ‘good guy.’  That should make the Russo brothers happy - They made no effort to hide that this story was Thanos’ hero quest.  

Here’s to hoping that Ant-Man and the Wasp is more to her liking.

Pride of Baghdad

Well, one way for Brian K Vaughan to get me to read a complete story by him is to make it a graphic novel.  There no next issue for me to not buy. I bought this because it came in a pretty package, and I wasn’t wise to his schemes back then.

This is a gorgeous book.  Niko Henrichon deserves far more work than his wikipedia indicates.  His creatures clearly look like animals, but still have an anthropomorphic quality that keeps them from feeling inhuman.  

The story itself, though, is very meh.  Or to be more accurate, it’s very depressing, which makes it meh for me.  Vaughan gives us a quartet of characters who really have no place in this world.  They don’t belong as captives in a zoo. They’re too used to soft living to really roam free.  They’re either too old or young to effectively hunt, and even if they could, there’s not enough in the bombed out city to survive.  And finally, they’re no match for the guns of man.

By the end of the book, their deaths are purely tragic, but I’m left to wonder if their survival wouldn’t have been even more so.  It’s not something that I usually look for in a comic. But credit to the creative team for putting out a beautiful piece of art.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

Northlanders, Other Side, Pride and Joy

Northlanders 1-2

Here’s another Brian Wood title that I didn’t follow to the end.  He’s a lot like Brian K Vaughan. I’ll start most of their titles on the strength of a good premise, but almost never make it to the end.  What is it about Wood’s work?

Northlanders has strong art by Davide Gianfelice, a strong villain who’s easy to root against, and a prodigal son returning to his home.  Mix in a hermit archer who takes pot shots at our hero and a childhood friend who’s “all grown up,” and you’ve got all the ingredients for a rollicking good time.  So what relegates this to “borrow it from the library” status instead of “buy on sight”?

My first hypothesis is that I don’t care whether the protagonist succeeds or fails.  Sven comes back to his childhood home not to regain the mantle of leadership he inherited from his dead father, but to claim the associated gold that comes with it.  It’s not the most inspiring of motivations, so while I’m interested in finding out how Sven’s story ends, I have no investment in the outcome.

This theory pans out for DMZ, another Brian Wood series that I stopped buying before the end.  It’s something that I’ll keep in mind when evaluating other comics.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice

The Other Side 1-5

This early work by Jason Aaron reads like an older, darker version of The Nam.  Not that The Nam didn’t smartly deal with the ambiguity and horrors of the Vietnam War.  But there’s an extra tinge of madness to this story that sets it apart.

I can’t say that I liked seeing the mental unraveling of Private Everette.  The ghosts and the talking rifle felt a little too obvious. I thought that his inopportune call for a ceasefire for the sake of a butterfly was a far more effective way of demonstrating the mental strain he’s been under.  The gradual discoloration of his eyes was also creepily effective.

That rim of red is such a nice touch.

Vo Binh Dai’s parallel story on the Vietnamese side is even more tragic.  He spends most of the five issues just getting from his village in the north to the fighting in the south, marching for months and enduring malaria and countless hardships.  All of this only to die moments into his first battle.

I prefer more fighting and fewer nightmare fever dreams in my war comics, so The Other Side fails to make it on my list of favorite war comics.  But it’s still a finely executed comic that effectively illustrates why war sucks and the incredible sacrifice that those who fight in them are forced to make.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice  

Pride and Joy 1-4

One of the first Garth Ennis stories that I remember reading.  I loved it when it first came out, then was bitterly disappointed when a friend of mine savaged what she considered a horribly cheesy ending.  Revisiting it twenty years later, I’m still entertained. The seemingly omnipresent menace of Stein is still creepy, especially at the end of the first issue.  Ennis’ knack of having his characters tell spellbinding stories is in full display.

The conflict between Jimmy and Patrick, is a lot more problematic.  The conflict makes sense - The blue collar, macho dad can’t connect with his bookish, emotionally sensitive son.  I can sympathize with both characters But both go out of their way to come across as annoying when displaying their differences.  Jimmy is almost cruelly dismissive of his son’s softer personality. But Patrick doesn’t help matters by crying at the drop of a pin.  And what kind of idiot kid takes the time to berate his father while being chased by a psychopathic killer?

Patrick’s final exchange with his dying father (“You’re crying.”  “You’re not.”) suggests that Ennis feels that Jimmy’s “my son needs to toughen up” philosophy is the one that he agrees with.  In this particular instance, I’m in his corner. Patrick’s whiny attitude was in serious need of correction. But as a general outlook on life, I’m disappointed that that’s the message Ennis chooses to espouse.  

Regarding the final line of the story, I concede that it’s pretty cheesy.  But that’s not why its emotional impact has lessened from the first time I read it.  It’s that Patrick never appreciated anything his father did until Stein killed him. Even while Jimmy was trying to save his family, Patrick focused on the sins of his past, berating his father right up to the moment he got shot.  (A ton of sentence construction errors in that last sentence, forgive me.) Patrick’s outburst of pride at the end doesn’t feel earned. Jimmy may have deserved that honor, but Patrick didn’t.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? Yes

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Nice