Song of the Week: "Bodies of Water" by Ramona Falls

People who can't count hate cephalopods

[Pulp Covers]

On a personal note...

Oops. I disappeared there for a day or two.

Life is happening to me right now in a potentially good way, but it's making things hectic and creating a lot of running around. I'll get back on schedule as soon as possible.

How are you?

5 things I learned from a second look at Mirror Mirror

In honor of Mirror Mirror's DVD release today (I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it), here are five observations I made after re-watching it.


SPOILERS FOR MIRROR MIRROR BELOW

1. The movie gently subverts fairy tales through the prince. He begins the movie with sort of classic, fairy tale motivations and attitudes: he travels for no other reason than seeking adventure and he's very traditional in his attitude about the dwarves and women. It takes him longer than the other characters to let go of those ideas, but by the end he's fully comfortable with Snow White's being active in her own story. 
2. Though Julia Roberts does a lot of hamming in this movie, she's obviously having a great time doing it and it's hard to dislike her for that.
3. Someone needs to make an action movie starring Martin Klebba. Seriously. Please. And for God's sake don't make the title a pun about his size.
4. Sean Bean is wonderfully humble and awestruck as the king. Most actors would have played him as fully confident and comfortable in retaking his throne at the end of the movie, but not Bean. He's awed by his daughter and her companions and subtly, but visibly embarrassed by his involuntary role in Snow's troubles.
5. I could watch Lily Collins and the cast dance Bollywood style to "I Believe" all day long.

Artist Alley Comics post-Heroes tease

Jason and I didn't get to go to Heroes this past weekend, but reports from some of the guys who did are that it went very well. It's not my place to spill details yet, but there's already another creator - whom I'm a big fan of - who's interested in joining Artist Alley Comics. There are also some exciting things are in the works for an upcoming convention this autumn. I'll say more when I'm allowed to share, but in the meantime, please go check out some free comics if you haven't already!

Get your Kill All Monsters! Artist Alley Comics is LIVE! [UPDATED]

It's finally here! The Artist Alley Comics site is up and running and ready for sampling! You can get the color version of the sampler issue as well as the first issues of Richard Case's Annie Ammo, Craig Rousseau and Rich Woodall's Kyrra: Alien Jungle Girl, Kelly Yates' MonstHer, and of course Kill All Monsters! by me and Jason Copland. Other titles like Chris Kemple's Red Vengeance and Randy Green's Dollz will appear later. [UPDATE: I don't know what's wrong with me. Red Vengeance is up NOW.]

I forget if I've mentioned this before, but Jason and I are splitting Kill All Monsters! into issues with each chapter being a complete issue. We'll release an issue a month until the whole thing is done, which should be about a year from now. So, for those of you who've already read the webcomic version, some of this will be familiar for a while. A big difference will be that you'll get to own the comic as a PDF. but that's not the only difference. In some of the early issues, we'll be adding pages here and there to flesh out the story a bit more, so there'll be new material too. And of course, before you know it we'll be into all-new territory with never-before-seen story.

It's all very exciting and I hope you'll check it out as well as the other comics. There's some fantastic talent in this group that's absolutely humbling to be around, and the plan is to add more and more creators and awesome comics as we go. The first issues and the sampler are all free and future issues are going to be super affordable, so please go take a look.

Uko Smith draws a mean jungle team

Remember that project that Jess Hickman, Uko Smith, and I came up with after SpringCon last month? Well, Uko's been doing some thinking about it too and it inspired him to draw this. I've started making some inquiries about how to pull off what we have in mind, so stayed tuned for more info.

In the meantime, if you wanna see more of Uko's work, I can hook you up.

I don't know what's going on here, but someone hates cephalopods

We've seen a lot of cephalopod fights the last couple of weeks, so here's something a little different. [Courtesy of Never Sea Land]

The 6 Greatest Roles of Kurt Russell

This week's assignment from the League of Extraordinary Bloggers is stunningly beautiful in its simplicity:

Kurt Russell

Since the field's wide open, I'm going with a pictorial trip through the man's greatest roles. Probably not any surprises here, but my aim is to celebrate, not educate. Let me know in the comments if I missed something.

In chronological order:

1. Snake Plissken (Escape from New York, Escape from L.A.)



2. R.J. MacReady (The Thing)



3. Jack Burton (Big Trouble in Little China)



4. Wyatt Earp (Tombstone)



5. Col. Jack O'Neil (Stargate)



6. Michael Zane (3000 Miles to Graceland)



Honorable mention: The jungle boy on that one episode of Gilligan's Island.

What's your favorite Kurt Russell role?

Does Prometheus make any sense?

After I watched Prometheus I tweeted that it's a beautiful-looking film with some great performances, but that it works neither as a good sci-fi movie nor as an Alien tie-in. I want to backpedal on that a little bit by making some observations about the film's themes and the questions it raises.

MASSIVE SPOILERS BELOW

The central mystery of the movie is the motivation of the Engineers for creating human life. As the film opens, anthropologists Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) are tracking down ancient sites that point to the stars as the origin of humanity (a la Chariots of the Gods and - I guess - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull). They convince the Weyland Corporation to fund an expedition into space so that they can  meet their makers.

If I were to spend any time at all picking at the many, many plot holes, weird motivations, and stupid characters in Prometheus, it would add a gazillion words to this post, so I'm not going to do that. Not when Red Letter Media (thanks, Snell!) has already done that so very well. I'm going to stick to very big-picture stuff, because that's where the movie is worth discussing.



Once the scientists reach the world indicated by Earth's most ancient cultures, they learn that the Engineers (as Shaw calls our alien creators) decided to kill us off and start over. Why they decided that becomes the new, burning question of the film, especially for Shaw. My burning question as I was walking out of the theater, was whether or not Prometheus ever so much as tried to answer its burning question. A lot of people think, "No." But after thinking about it some more, I'm not so sure.

There are a few lines in the film that are keys to unlocking the mystery. The first one I want to point out is a conversation between Holloway and David (Michael Fassbender), the android created by Peter Weyland, current head of Weyland Corp. Holloway is devastated by the discovery that the Engineers are all dead, so David asks the scientist what he hoped to achieve on the mission, Holloway repeats the initial mystery of the film: to learn "why they even made us in the first place."

David replies, "Why do you think your people made me?"

Without giving it any real thought, Holloway answers, "We made you because we could."

David's response to that is important. "Can you imagine how disappointing it would be for you to hear the same thing from your creator?"



I imagine that Weyland had a deeper reason for creating David than just "because he could," but Holloway's attitude about the question is telling. People do create "just because they can." We doodle. We sketch. We toss our art in the garbage when we're not completely happy with it. Holloway sees no real value in David and doesn't even think his question about his own origins is even worth considering.

So, what if the Engineers felt the same way about us?

There's some Internet buzz about abandoned plans for Prometheus to suggest that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was the event that triggered the Engineer's displeasure with humanity (because Jesus was himself an emissary of the Engineers, you see). There's still an artifact of that idea in the movie when the scientists notice that the event that killed the Engineers happened 2000 years ago ("give or take"). It's possible that idea was abandoned because it makes more sense for the Engineers to not have a reason to destroy humanity. We're just an abandoned canvass that needs to be painted over to make room for something new.

As Weyland executive Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) observes at one point, "A king has his reign, and then he dies. It's inevitable." She's not talking about humanity, but the similarities between the various creators/creatures in the film are obvious. The Engineers and humanity are just like Weyland and his android. Or Weyland and his daughter. As sloppy and anticlimactic as the revelation is that Vickers is Weyland's daughter, it's important for us to know what that relationship really is. Weyland created Vickers and at some point, it's his job to get out of the way so that she can have her time.



Her comment mirrors the one that David made earlier about everyone's wanting to kill their parents. That's a horrible thing to say and I don't even think it's true, but it fits the theme that Prometheus is exploring. The creation supplants the creator.

That's why he's so nonchalant about killing Holloway. That's why Vickers is so angry about Weyland's extending his life. That's why the Engineer freaks out when he wakes up and finds humanity standing over him. Especially when humanity - like the mythological Prometheus - has stolen fire from the gods and created their own life in David. The creators, whether they're the Engineers or Weyland, aren't ready to give up their spot, so they're fighting for it. Weyland's fighting by coming on this expedition. The Engineer fights by renewing his efforts to destroy humanity (now out of survival instead of apathy).

The major themes of Prometheus do make sense and there's evidence that the film is actually thinking about them. Shaw's religious beliefs are an attempt to bring God into the creator/creature discussion, though the movie fails to do that in an interesting way. There's even a hint at the Engineer's own religious beliefs by way of a mural depicting what looks like a xenomorph in a Christ-like pose. Do the Engineers worship the xenomorphs? (I don't think that the final scene in the movie is good evidence that the events of Prometheus are responsible for creating the xenomorphs.) Do they worship death itself? It's arguable that the xenomorphs are symbols for death. It also makes sense that the Engineers respect death as much as life since each makes the other possible.



That raises another thought. If the death of humanity paves the way for a new creation, what is that creation? I spent most of the movie thinking it was the xenomorphs, but I don't think so now. The xenomorphs and other monsters in Prometheus are the agents of change. They represent the death that has to occur so that the old king can step down and the new king can take his place. We don't know what the Engineers planned as the new king, but has David spoiled their plans and stepped into that role?

There's a lot to think about and I'm interested in seeing the movie again. It still has a lot of problems that I can't overlook, but I'm curious to see if a second viewing supports my theories about the movie's themes. And if it does, will that lessen the impact of its flaws? I still don't think Prometheus is a great science fiction film, but there's enough there that I'm comfortable calling it a good one. And it does tie in well with the rest of the Alien series, not only for the symbolism of the xenomorphs as the death of humanity, but also for offering the androids as a potential replacement (which supports Ripley's deep distrust of them).

Is this racist? | Airboy hates cephalopods

I debated using this cover for an Everyone Hates Cephalopods post. My first reaction was that it's a racist caricature and that I shouldn't. Not that I never feature racist imagery on this blog, but when I do it's always in the context of trying to learn from it. The cephalopods posts are just for fun, so I don't want to just throw out an offensive image in that context without commenting on it.

The more I look at it though, the more I wonder if this is racist. The human head on the octopus is relatively realistic and doesn't have the exaggerations that usually appear in World War II depictions of Japanese people. Also, the Rising Sun symbol on the octopus' back implies that it represents an entire political entity; not a stereotyped individual. In other words, it's depicting Japan as a dangerous, frightening enemy with a long reach, but one that Airboy (and, by association, the Allies) is prevailing against.

I understand that my own race can get in the way of my interpreting these things though, so that's why I throw the question out to you. Is this a racist image, an accurate depiction of WWII events, or both?

[Image from Golden Age Comic Book Stories]