We Love the City

Category: Comics

  • I Kill Giants review

    You probably know the story.

    A child retreats into a fantasy world, which may or may not be real, to escape the problems she is experiencing in the real world. In the end, she learns a valuable lesson and is better able to face her fears.

    The first thing the concept of I Kill Giants reminds me of is Terry Gilliam’s Tideland, a particularly demented escape-from-reality fantasy that’s not particularly good. There’s Pan’s Labyrinth, or even My Neighbour Totoro.

    I Kill Giants has many familiar parts: A would-be friend who is initially rejected; a kind guidance counsellor who wants to help; a school bully; a big sister who’s trying to hold everything together. It definitely feels like something you’ve read or seen before.

    So all that said, you might be expecting a fairly negative review.But as it turns out, I Kill Giants is one of the best comics I’ve read in a long time.

    Why does it work? These stories are familiar because they resonate; everyone remembers being a child, and everyone has some fantasies about escaping real life for something better, happier, or more exciting. (See also Gilliam’s Brazil for one of the best examples.)

    I Kill Giants, in particular, works because it’s honest, even if it’s honest about lies and fantasies. The protagonist, Barbara, is unvarnished: She’s rude, arrogant, dismissive of people who are trying to help her, and occasionally violent.In fact, it’s easy to interpret the early chapters as the story of a girl with serious mental health issues. If you’re the sort of person who needs a likeable, easily relatable character, this may not be for you.

    But Barbara’s rough edges make the story’s eventual payoff far more rewarding: We grow to like her, even love her, because it’s not forced upon us. We learn about her gradually, and come to understand her view of the world. (For my part, I totally fell for her when she explains the origin of her hammer’s name.)

    The other key to the book is the art of JM Ken Niimura, a relative newcomer to North American comics, and his work with writer Joe Kelly. Niimura’s a bit rough around the edges – action scenes don’t always come off as clearly as they could – but it frequently works to the story’s advantage. His sketchy, manga-influenced art captures the characters perfectly, particularly Barbara: As the story and her mood shift, Niimura’s art keeps up with it.

    The mythical, monstrous, possibly imaginary giants are wonderfully realized as well: Vague and threatening, likely influenced by any number of sources without looking like any sort of monster in particular. His covers, too, are beautiful, though they aren’t reproduced in the trade.

    And Kelly, for his part, is brave enough to let Niimura tell some of the most important parts of the story himself. Because Barbara’s problems are rarely on the surface, much of the story is left to the audience’s interpretation of events, which is chiefly influenced by Niimura’s visuals. Some of the final scenes in the book are largely wordless, and have some of the greatest impact you’ll find in a graphic novel.

    I’ve stayed away from describing the plot, since I Kill Giants benefits, at least on a first reading, from the story’s ambiguity and mystery: Kelly & Niimura keep things vague enough to be mysterious, but not so obscure to be actively frustrating. (There’s one cop-out, with scratched out text in a speech balloon, but itworks quite well in the context of the story.) Truth be told, I had the impression the story was about something else entirely, given some preview art. It’s not really a mystery, and I’m not sure you could really “spoil” such a story, but it’s structured in an incredibly rewarding fashion: It works as well on subsequent reads as it did the first time around, but for different reasons.

    I Kill Giants is contradictory is many ways: It’s a tried-and-true formula and concept, but executed in an unconventional fashion. Perhaps that’s why it works so well: It’s a story we all know, but presented in a way that still gives us something new.It’s predictable in its way, but also holds as much emotional impact as any comic I’ve read in a long time. A must-read.

    (There’s an interview with Kelly and some preview art at CBR.)

  • New Bryan Talbot!

    One of my favourite artists – Alice in Sunderland is one of the most visually impressive books I’ve ever seen – has a new book coming out in the fall!

    It’s… Steampunk Anthropomorphism? I can totally dig it.


    (I actually got a print of this image when I met Talbot on his Sunderland book tour. It’s a nice looking piece.)

  • Wait, what?

    I should know better than to look at this sort of thing, but curiousity compelled me to look at DC’s look at the spectrum of lanterns.

    Immediate thoughts:

    • “Willpower” is an emotion?

    • There is probably something to be said about the fact that the Pink Lanterns – the Lanterns of Love – are exclusively women. Or that DC apparently had to deviate from their template and change the name entirely to “Star Sapphires”.

    • “Love” and “Compassion” are pretty close. You could probably make a case for “Hope”, too.

    • I’m possibly repeating myself, but: “Death” is an emotion?

    I understand that DC is trying for a theme here, but they really could have put a bit more thought into it.

  • That’s what I call ENTERTAINMENT

    (Background info at The Beat.)

  • There are no attempted puns about philately in this post

    Stamp collecting is probably one of the most boring and generally lamest hobbies one can find. (One might think there’d be problems with someone who spends most of his time writing about comic books pointing that out, but I have no regrets. To be fair, collecting stamps is much cooler than collecting spoons.)

    Until now:

    “Mythical creatures” is a pretty nifty theme unto itself, but having them illustrated by Dave McKean? Totally awesome.

    The Royal Mail rocks.

    Canada Post continues to rock quite a bit less.

    A beaver playing hockey. Outrageous! Truly, Canada Post is the Andy Warhol of stamp design.

  • Someone find Wildstorm a dictionary so they can look up the meaning of the word “quit”

    It’s probably not too harsh to call Wildstorm’s revamp of a couple years ago a failure that should best be forgotten. It’s not that the books were bad or didn’t sell, but that the really important ones didn’t show up at all. The two flagships of the line, Wildcats by Grant Morrison and Jim Lee, and The Authority by Morrison and Gene Ha, managed a combined 3 issues before disappearing into the publishing ether. First they were just late, then they were really late, then people stopped asking about them. It took even longer for Wildstorm to get around to telling anyone they probably weren’t going to come out at all.

    It was either atrocious planning, or another sign that Wildstorm is right near the bottom of DC’s priority list, since both Lee and Morrison abandoned their books to work on other, DCU-oriented projects. Morrison has since announced he has no interest in continuing Authority – something that strikes me as grossly unprofessional – Gene Ha has moved on to other work, and apparently Lee will come back to finish Wildcats, now planned as a graphic novel, whenever All-Star Batman takes a break.

    But now, two years after the second and apparently final issue of Authority, Wildstorm has decided to finish the story. But instead of Morrison, Keith Giffen will now be writing it. And while an artist has not been announced, I’ll be surprised if it’s Gene Ha.

    I don’t have any real problem with Giffen – he’s a solid writer, and will always have my affection for JLI and the various Superbuddies stories. But you just can’t go from Morrison to Giffen. Regardless of your personal evaluation of their talent – and I’ve been losing interest in Morrison’s work over the last year or so – they’re not at all the same sort of writer.

    And if there’s one lesson Wildstorm should have learned by now, it’s that very few people really care about their characters. Authority didn’t set the sales charts ablaze two years ago, so will anyone be lining up for the new book now, without the two marquee creators attached?

    Wildstorm seems to have achieved some level of stability now, or at least figured out a system whereby they manage to publish the books they say they’re going to publish. The Authority/Wildcats relaunch was an embarrassing mess, and I can’t imagine reminding people about it is going to do anyone any good.

  • In Defence of the Comic Shop

    Apparently feeling we haven’t had a real good comic-blog-controversy lately, Augie De Blieck tells us why we should stop going to the comic store and buying monthly comics.

    The underlying point of the essay is hardly controversial: Too many people buy too many comics out of habit, not because they particularly enjoy them. I can get behind that.

    But the financial aspect is slightly out of whack. Trade paperbacks are cheaper than monthlies because the monthlies pay for most of the content. Stop publishing the monthlies, and trades won’t remain so cheap; either they’ll become more expensive, or the monthlies will be replaced with hardcovers.

    Shopping entirely online isn’t necessarily a great option. For one thing, it means lots of money for giant corporations with little customer service or any sort of investment in the community, something I dislike on general principle. I order from Amazon sometimes, but I certainly wouldn’t want it to be my only option.

    Online ordering also cuts down on the great art of browsing. Buying online can be quick and easy, but it’s best for times when you know exactly what you want. Only an actual, physical store can provide the great discovery of finding a book on the shelf or rack that looks really cool. Or even thinking “That book sounds kind of interesting, but I’d like to take a look at it before I buy.”

    De Blieck acknowledges this point to some extent:

    Go to your local comic shop and see if those two books are currently in stock. I’d say you have a pretty good chance of the X-Men title being on a shelf somewhere. I wouldn’t lay any bets on a random “Asterix” volume haunting the same bookshelves. And even if your retailer stocked “Asterix,” would that particular one be on the shelf?

    There’s one awesome store in Toronto that would almost certainly have those books, and another pretty good store that might.

    Of course, many stores aren’t very good at all. If my choice was between online shopping and a physical store that only sold Marvel and DC books, I’d probably go online, too. But that’s an argument in favour of more good comic stores, or at least one opposed to crappy stores.

    There’s absolutely no better place to buy comics than a good comic book store.

  • Do you need another Watchmen review?

    In his defence, Zack Snyder really loves Watchmen. This film is a labour of love, a dedication to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, an immaculate recreation of a great book.

    Unfortunately, sometimes love is not enough. Or, perhaps more accurately in this case, love is too much. Zack Snyder adapting Watchmen to film is a lot like someone falling madly and devotedly in love with you on a first date: Barring some pretty exceptional circumstances, it’s just going to end up feeling creepy and awkward.

    Alan Moore once said that Watchmen was unfilmable. For the sake of argument, we can say that he’s cranky on general principle, but his opinion gains some credibility when Terry Gilliam agrees with him. One of the biggest problems – beside Watchmen being rooted in superhero tradition and the very form of sequential art – is that there’s so much going on. Many characters, many storylines, all criss-crossing one another and frequently jumping about chronologically. It’s a lot to fit in to one movie, requiring someone to decide what’s important and what isn’t.

    Snyder decided that almost all of it is important and had to be on the screen, which has the unfortunate effect of making none of it important. At 163 minutes, Watchmen is full of plot and happenings, barely taking any time to breathe or relax – and this is the short version, with an “Extended Edition” DVD expecting to take up most of a long weekend. It still feels harshly edited, with characters disappearing for long stretches – the Comedian is absent for most of the middle third, making Laurie’s revelation on Mars seem jarring. Snyder’s kept many of the cameos and callbacks of the book, but they lack meaning because the context has been stripped out; the film, like the book, ends on the New Frontiersmen office, but it’s the very first appearance of the extreme right-wing magazine and likely meaningless for anyone who hasn’t read the book.

    The reality is that something had to give for Watchmen to function as a film. Perhaps the Minutemen, perhaps Laurie’s relationship with the Comedian. Probably at least a few of the Nixon scenes, laden as they are with bad impersonations and excessive prosthetic noses. Snyder probably could have cut about 15 minutes off the running time by eliminating all the slow-motion action shots.

    Watchmen also runs into some of the problems Sin City had with excessive faithfulness: Dialogue and narration that works on the page doesn’t always work when spoken aloud. Rorschach’s journal doesn’t work nearly as well when heard, and Jackie Earle Haley’s growly Christian-Bale-Batman voice doesn’t help. And just on general principle, narration tends to be more intrusive in a film than on the page; comics tell a story through a series of moments, and occasionally require narration to fill in the gaps, while film is more immersive. “It was dark when the murderer returned” is entirely superfluous when it’s plain to see that it’s dark.

    Snyder’s occasional bouts of independence don’t add a whole lot to the film, either. The violence is cranked up about a dozen notches, and to little dramatic impact; if anything, showing Silk Spectre and Nite Owl to be just as vicious and violent as Rorschach erases the differences between the characters. The explicit sex scene adds nothing, in addition to being excruciatingly awkward and not the least bit erotic.

    Snyder often sets up battles between faithfulness and innovation. The costumes are generally upgraded from spandex to the more cinematic leather/body armour, which is a perfectly reasonable change. But when Ozymandias appears to be wearing body armour, catching a bullet doesn’t seem nearly as significant. The setup goes MIA as well, resulting in a scene that looks a lot like the book but holds little of the impact. In fact, much of the finale lacks the oomph it has in the book, perhaps because Snyder’s rushed through so much of the story to get here.

    This all sounds terribly negative, but I didn’t hate the film by any means. The set designs and costumes are excellent, and it certainly looks like Watchmen. The actors are generally good; not exceptional, but the rushed nature of the film leaves little time for nuance. The opening credits sequence, almost entirely of Snyder’s own creation, is a beautiful thing, though the emphasis on the Minutemen is lost shortly thereafter.

    Watchmen is rather frustrating, because at times it comes so close to really getting it, and you can tell Snyder really does want to make a great movie out of a great book. But his devotion to the source material hamstrings his effort: The book was innovative and experimental, and a successful adaptation – not mere translation – demands more than just a scene-for-scene recreation. It needed a director unafraid to put his own stamp on the material, someone who wasn’t afraid of cutting that scene or enraging a particular segment of fandom.

    It’s ultimately rather pointless. It’s not great, it’s not bad, it’s just there. It doesn’t stand up to book at all well, nor does it stand on its own with any strength. It’s interesting to watch, but perhaps not for two and a half hours. An ambitious failure would have been far more interesting than the safe and predictable homage Snyder produced.

  • Why Watchmen Worries Me

    I’m not opposed to adaptations on general principle. I’m not even one of those people who insists that a film remain absolutely faithful to its source material: High Fidelity is just as brilliant a movie as it is a book despite entirely Americanizing the setting and characters, and Sin City was a pretty bad movie largely because it attempted to copy the panel to the screen almost verbatim. A good adaptation requires compromise, but it also requires a faithfulness to the spirit of the source material.

    So I’m a pretty open-minded guy. But when it comes to Watchmen, I’m pretty skeptical.

    For one thing, there’s Zack Snyder. I enjoyed 300, but it wasn’t a particularly deep or complex movie. Most of the dialogue consisted of grunting and shouting, and about 90% of the visuals were directly translated from the book. The one element Snyder added to the screenplay – the reprehensible Queen Gorgo’s “fucking for my country” subplot – was nothing to write home about.

    I haven’t seen Dawn of the Dead, though I wouldn’t mind, but again – it’s a remake of a zombie movie, and not the sort of thing that qualifies one for the work of Alan Moore. For all this, I’m not sure why the trailers proclaim Snyder as a “visionary”, considering that his two big hits have been a remake and an adaptation.

    And Watchmen demands a lot. It demands a lot of the reader, and is not prone to giving things away or providing easy explanations. It is, as many readers discover, not about plot; many complain of nothing “happening”, of it moving slowly and (apparently) without real direction. The plot is almost beside the point: It’s about characters and setting and detail. (And, if you want to get into that sort of thing, superhero deconstruction) It’s true that many readers come away with “Rorschach is Badass” as the overriding theme of the book, but the considerably less sexy Black Freighter and the text pieces are every bit as essential.

    There’s also the matter of the trailer. Now, don’t get me wrong: I understand that the point of any movie trailer is to make the film as appealing as possible to the largest potential audience, and it’s not necessarily representative of the final product. I initially avoided Fight Club because the trailers made it look terribly generic, but when I finally gave in it became one of my favourite movies.

    But the Watchmen trailer just feels too shiny. Everything looks cool and exciting. Slow-motion shots proliferate to the extent that Malin Ackerman looks like she’s auditioning for the next Charlie’s Angels sequel. And people keep saying “Watchmen” as though it’s meaningful in terms of the characters’ relations with each other.

    Ackerman also gives this interview, in which she describes her character as “a strong, powerful woman who fights like a man and loves being who she is,” which halfway backs up my Charlie’s Angels reference. Laurie absolutely doesn’t love who she is, resenting her mother pushing her into the superhero business and feeling conflicted about her relationship with Dr. Manhattan. She’s much the same as Nite Owl: She probably does want to be a superhero on the whole, but isn’t guilt-free about it. Turning the Silk Spectre into a butt-kicking hot babe is exactly the sort of thing that threatens to turn Watchmen into just another generic superhero movie.

    Maybe it won’t be. Maybe Snyder really gets it, maybe he really has the talent to pull it all off. Maybe I’m wrong?

    Just to prove I’m not all gloom and doom, I’ve got to say that the Official Doctor Manhattan condoms are a brilliant bit of marketing. (Although a digitally enhanced penis is a whole troubling area I’m not even going to touch.) We can only hope the eventual Watchmen video game will be this good.

  • The Longer Scott Pilgrim 5 Review

    Scott Pilgrim vol 5 - RamonaThere’s a scene at the beginning of Scott Pilgrim vol. 4 where Ramona Flowers tells Scott Pilgrim that he’s the nicest guy she’s ever dated. Scott’s response is that this is kind of sad.

    Scott is, on this rare occasion, quite right. He may be the hero of our story, but Scott Pilgrim is kind of a dick.

    When we first met him in volume one, he was dating Knives Chau. A cute, sweet, non-threatening high school girl who in no way reminded him of his last disastrous relationship.

    Then he cheated on her, so he could be with Ramona Flowers. Who he didn’t tell about Knives, so he was cheating on Ramona, too. His first big act of personal heroism is when he finally breaks up with one of the women he was dating. It takes him until halfway through the second volume

    (more…)