Coming Soon: Snow Beast

This...looks...AWESOME! I don't know which is cooler, that it has John Schneider in it or that the Yeti is a guy in a suit.

Alpha Flight 0.1 preview pages

I don't run press releases as a rule, but I'll make an exception for Alpha Flight. Marvel sent me a preview of Alpha Flight #0.1 with the following information:

Marvel is pleased to present your first look at Alpha Flight #0.1, from New York Times bestselling writers Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente and acclaimed artist Ben Oliver! As Fear Itself approaches, the fan-favorite super hero team returns in this special POINT ONE issue, a great starting point for new readers! Meet the founding members that made Alpha Flight great! Super-powered terrorists attack as the nation goes to the polls on Election Day and the country's greatest heroes rise to stop them — but are they on the right side?

“Alpha Flight Fans rejoice! One of comics’ greatest teams is back in their own book! Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak have crafted a perfect jumping-on point for the new reader and AF loyalists alike,” said Marvel Senior Editor Mark Paniccia. “In just a few pages, the two scribes get you caught up with your favorite heroes, get them right into the action and seed a major plot point for the new maxi-series debuting in June with fan-favorite artist extraordinaire, Dale Eaglesham. Get on the horn, the message boards, communication devices of all types and tell your friends that Alpha Flight is back!”

Get in on the ground floor for one of this year’s hottest new series before they head into the fight of their lives during Fear Itself! Do you fear your country turning on you? Watch as the team gets drawn into a civil war all its own this May, only in Alpha Flight #0.1!

ALPHA FLIGHT #0.1 (MAR110629)
Written by GREG PAK & FRED VAN LENTE
Penciled by BEN OLIVER
Cover by PHIL JIMENEZ
Rated T+; $2.99
Final Order Cutoff – 4/25/11.
On Sale – 5/18/11

Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001)

The movie's ten years old, but in case you haven't seen it and think you might some day: SPOILERS BELOW.

Atlantis: The Lost Empire is an almost perfect film.Typically when I'm watching an adventure movie I spend a lot of time thinking about how I'd improve it. Even if it's one I really like. Especially if it's one I really like. "Oh, that's so good, but if he did this..." Or, "That was awesome except for the ending. What if this happened instead." Since those thoughts often turn into actual stories, I find that flawed movies are even more inspirational to me than perfect ones.

Take Atlantis, for instance. When I watch it, I enjoy it so much on almost every level: the steampunk setting, Mike Mignola's production designs, the quest for Atlantis, the eclectic team of diverse characters who are searching for it, the fantastic voice cast, the humor in the script and animation, the plot twists and how they're resolved, the giant robots... There's little that I want to change. If anything, the film kills my interest in writing a story even vaguely similar to it, because it's already been done and done so well.

If there's anything I'd want to change, it's Atlantis' being powered by a sentient crystal that protects itself in times of danger by merging with a member of the royal family. Mostly that's because sentient crystals go into the red section of my New Age Tolerance gauge. I understand that the idea of Atlantis is pretty New Agey to begin with, but it doesn't have to be and the film was doing so well when it was just focused on the conflict between questing for knowledge and searching for good, old-fashioned, non-mystical, material gain.

But while the crystal bothers me, it's wrapped into the plot so well that you really can't pull it out without unraveling a bunch of other stuff. It's a great object for the movie's villains to desire because - unlike gold and jewels - it represents Atlantis itself. The city can't survive without it. That means that the good guys and bad guys can all fight over it and that the victorious good guys can still go home with unbelievable wealth bestowed on them by a grateful city. Which is something I really like: the good guys being rewarded for their trouble. I don't want to pull at the loose thread of the crystal and risk unraveling the whole sweater. It's a really excellent sweater.

There is one other thing that I'd change if I could do it without ruining everything else: Helga's death. Or, no...what it really is is her playing sidekick to Rourke. Her death is just the natural consequence of that. When we meet Helga - all husky voice and legs in the shadows - she's in charge. And she stays in charge up to the point that Rourke appears. Even though she works for Whitmore, she's more than his right-hand, she's his field agent; his eyes, ears, mouth, hands, feet, and weapon outside the sanctuary of his large, spooky house. Once Rourke shows up, she's nothing more than a goon. Such a waste of potential.

I take back what I said about not being inspired by Atlantis: The Lost Empire. I want some stories about a tough femme fatale who works for an eccentric, rich dude who wants to go on collecting knowledge and artifacts, but is too old to leave his creepy, old mansion to go on his own adventures anymore. That's the sequel to Atlantis that I'll never get unless I end up writing it for myself.

(Speaking of sequels, by the way, have any of you seen Atlantis: Milo's Return? Is it as heart-breakingly mundane as it looks?)

Win Kill All Monsters original art!

Some lucky Kill All Monsters! fan is about to win this drawing. It's ink on bristol, measures about 8.5″ x 9″ and will be mailed to the winner.All you have to do to be eligible to win it is to go like the Kill All Monsters! Facebook page. Jason and I will draw the winner’s name later today!

And if you haven't checked in on the webcomic in a while, today would also be an excellent time to do that. Things just got ugly. Literally.

Thor Hates Cephalopods

By Jonathan Case.

Read My Stuff: Panels for Primates

For those who aren't familiar with it, Panels for Primates is a charity anthology webcomic on the act-i-vate site that's meant to raise money for the Primate Rescue Center in Kentucky. It's entirely free to read, but if the ape and monkey stories move or entertain you at all, you're invited - but not obligated - to contribute.

I'm a huge fan of these animals, so I was thrilled when editor Troy Wilson invited me to contribute a short, two-page story. And even more thrilled when he told me I'd be working with the awesome Simon Roy. Between the two of us, we packed a ton of action into two pages including giant cephalopods, tiki-men, a sinister elephant, a mad tortoise, slime-monsters, werewolves, mummies, and I'm self-indulgent enough to have thrown in giant monsters, giant robots, and yes, gorillas riding dinosaurs. It also features that most famous of Kentucky primates, Daniel Baboon. Please go check it out.

Certainty is Certain

Image cheated from Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

US taxes are due at the end of this week and preparing them is competing with this blog for resources. Unsurprisingly, the government is winning. I'm going to try sneaking in a post or two where I can, but if updating continues to be light this week, that's why.

Friday: Jimmy Fallon gets it

There is nothing that cannot be made awesome.

Drive-In Goers Hate Cephalopods

[John Rozum]

Apologies for not posting much this week. It's been crazy.

Review: Camouflage, by Joe Haldeman

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know that I don't finish a lot of novels. I follow Bookgasm's Hundred-Page-Rule that states, "If a book's not good by page one-hundred, stop reading it." In fact, I've modified it into my own, even more hardcore version: "If by page one-hundred you can stop reading; do." That keeps me from debating whether or not a book is "good." The standard isn't technical quality; it's whether or not I can put it down. So on the rare occasions that I do finish a book, it's because it's really damn compelling. Camouflage is that kind of book.

I picked it up because there's an undersea angle. In prehistoric times, a spacecraft crashes into what will eventually become the Pacific Ocean and settles on the seabed. A lifeform leaves the craft and we're told that it's from a planet so volatile and forever quick-changing that the inhabitants have learned to evolve just as quickly. In effect, they've become immortal, because they can transform themselves into whatever it takes to survive whatever they encounter. This particular specimen spends its first million or so years on Earth as an undefined sea monster, eventually transforming itself into a shark and then a killer whale (basically whatever's at the top of the local ecosystem's food chain) as it discovers those species. When it encounters humans, it decides to become one of those.

Alongside this plotline is a separate one that begins in the year 2019 when scientists discover the craft and attempt to raise it and then study it. The leader of the project is a grizzled, former Navy admiral named Jack Halliburton, but the main character in these sections is Russell Sutton, the marine engineer whom Halliburton hires to oversee the project. Other characters come along as the project develops, including a NASA scientist named Jan whom I couldn't help but imagine as Helen Mirren. These sections - with their enjoyable banter and hints at a romantic triangle between the three main characters - ground the novel and gave me some likable people to relate to. Which was very important early on as the alien - Haldeman calls it "the changeling" - learns to become human in its own story.

As enjoyable as the science project plot is, the changeling's story is the fascinating one. It comes ashore in 1931, more or less human in form, but with all the moral development of a great white shark. It's tragic then, but not shocking when the changeling's first action on land is to kill a young man and take his identity. Nor is that the last heinous act the changeling will commit as it learns to assimilate into human culture.

What's utterly captivating is the skill with which Haldeman gradually endeared me to this character. He doesn't pull any of the usual, manipulative tricks. In fact, he makes his job harder for himself by refusing to give the changeling a name, consistently referring to it as "it," and continuously putting it into situations that show how inhuman it is. It endures rape dispassionately, for instance. Why wouldn't it? It can feel pain (though it's tolerance for pain is much greater than ours), but doesn't understand emotions like anger or humiliation. Not at first anyway.

Well, not ever, really. But as it continues life amongst humans, switching from one identity to another (some kept for years or decades; others for very short periods of time), it does begin to pick up concepts like compassion and wonders if it will ever understand love. But even then, Haldeman never anthropomorphizes the creature. It's not "becoming human," it's very much alien, but is simply trying to understand the culture in which it's found itself. I sort of fell in love with it, and with Haldeman's unbelievable ability to set up impossible writing challenges and then meet them with such apparent ease.

I've always enjoyed it when authors run parallel, independent stories that are going to meet up eventually. It's a lot of fun to try to anticipate how the pieces fit together and Camouflage is no exception. There's a second immortal character that I haven't mentioned yet - Haldeman calls him the chameleon - who's much more violent and bloodthirsty than the changeling and wants to find others like him only to destroy them. Unfortunately, I figured out how this character fit into the 2019 story fairly easily (although Haldeman did make me question my theory at least once), but that was only a small bit of enjoyment stolen. The final confrontation between changeling and chameleon is exciting and satisfying. 

As remarkable as any other part of the book is the end. I wouldn't dream of spoiling it, because you absolutely need to read it, but Haldeman finishes the story exactly where he needs to and not one second later. It's abrupt, but as I thought about possible ways to make it less so, I realized that it's also perfect. Like the rest of the novel.

The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972)

I don’t remember who told me about the White Elephant Blogathon, but if you’re not familiar with it, it’s based on the concept of the White Elephant gift exchange where everyone brings a (usually crappy) gift and hijinks ensue as people open them and fight over who goes home with what. The Blogathon does the same thing, but for movies. You submit a movie to be reviewed, and then write about another blogger’s submission. The movie I drew was The Legend of Boggy Creek.

I was actually kind of excited about this one because it’s all about a bigfoot-like creature that lives in the swamps of southern Arkansas. How bad could it be? And since I’ve got a Bigfoot story coming out in the Mondo Sasquatch anthology next month, it’s a timely movie for me to be watching and talking about.

I admit that my heart fell though when I opened the Netflix envelope and read on the sleeve that The Legend of Boggy Creek: A True Story is a documentary with interviews and reenactments of encounters with the shaggy swamp creature. I had a flashback to this other documentary my dad and brothers and I saw in the late ‘70s that was marketed to look like a sci-fi adventure film, obviously piggy-backing on the popularity of Star Wars. (That tragic disappointment may have been Are We Alone in the Universe?, but I remember the title’s being catchier than that. [Edited to add: My brother reminds me that it was The Outer Space Connection.]) If Boggy Creek was anything like that, I was going to be upset. But it wasn’t. It was oh so much more.

Though the production is crap and the direction amateurish, The Legend of Boggy Creek is incredibly watchable. Like Catfish, whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter. In fact, it’s best to think of it as completely fictional; a precursor to The Blair Witch Project, only way more imaginative. Boggy Creek combines several genres – investigative documentary, nature film, slice-of-life, horror, and musical – in an utterly fascinating way.

It takes about twenty minutes though before the movie gets good. There’s an interminably long pre-title sequence that shows nothing but shots of swampland and wildlife to the sounds of animal cries. That might’ve been okay had the production values been decent, but the film quality is miserable and the camera’s as likely to focus on twigs or the base of a tree trunk as it is on a beaver or a flying crane. After that, there’s another endless bit with a kid running through a field, frightened by noises he’s heard in the woods. He eventually makes it to a general store to tell the old timers there about the shaggy man in the woods, but they of course laugh it off.

The kid turns out to be the narrator as a young boy and from there it’s a lot of him talking about the small town of Fouke, Arkansas and the many sightings of the swamp creature by Fouke’s residents. There’s scene after scene of this farmer or that housewife seeing something hairy lurking out in the trees and just as I’m starting to despair that this is the entire movie...

Musical Interlude [starts around 1:30]:



That, my friends, is fantastic.

That’s not the only one either. There’s another number a little later that’s all about this one kid and how he enjoys going out hunting in the woods and visiting the hermits who live there. Absolutely, thrillingly meaningless.

The musical numbers clued me in though that something awesome is working in Boggy Creek. After those, I was suddenly less bored by the ceaseless shots of the swamp and the town. Instead, I began to be lulled into this lazy, Southern mood and found myself dreaming wistfully of some of the small, rural communities I grew up around. That carried me through the next half-hour of the film, which is where the horror movie kicks in and something like a plot begins to take shape.

There’s little warning of what’s about to happen. Up until now the film’s been nothing but a montage of people talking about their sightings, hunting the creature to no effect, and – in one very long sequence – never having seen the monster at all. But the incidents have been building in intensity with the creature’s now killing some animals and getting awfully close to houses and trailers.

When the narrator introduces a pair of young couples who have moved to the area with their kids, it sounds at first like he’s just setting up the latest in the series of “reenactments.” But something’s different about this one. Maybe it’s because the characters are young; maybe it’s because they’re all sharing one house in the middle of the woods, but I immediately thought that this sounded like the set up to a potentially interesting horror movie. And indeed, that’s where Boggy Creek goes with it.

The husbands work nights on a local ranch, leaving the wives and the kids alone in the cabin when the creature appears. This time though, he’s coming up on the porch and trying the doorknob, something he’s never done before. I won’t blow the ending, but it plays out in a legitimately suspenseful way and is downright frightening at times. What the hell does this thing want?

The narrator has been relentlessly reminding us the entire film that no one knows what’s going on in the creature’s brain. But he just as insistently persists in using variations of the word “lonesome” to describe the beast and its calls. Though it’s never revealed exactly what the creature wants in the cabin, the ultimate implication is that loneliness may be driving it mad.

Which, now that I think about it, is something approaching a theme. The whole movie is full of long, lonely shots. The characters in the film interact with the narrator as they tell their stories, but never with each other. It’s a portrait of isolation.

The Netflix sleeve also describes The Legend of Boggy Creek as a cult film and I can see why. I can’t think of a single person I know who would enjoy it or appreciate it as much as I did, but I’m already thinking about watching it again.