Song of the Week | "Myth" by Beach House

Kill All Monsters reviews at The Lottery Party

Comics blogger Richard Caldwell wrote a couple of super nice reviews of Kill All Monsters this week at his site, The Lottery Party. The first was part of a review of the entire Artist Alley Comics Sampler, in which Caldwell called KAM, "Kirby by way of manga commonalities, with a fun cast of characters to boot."

He dove deeper into Kill All Monsters later with a review dedicated just to our comic. About the writing, he says, "May nails an action-packed slugfesting of megaliths well, while inserting enough character points to really put all of this in perspective with some human level." In reference to Jason, "the artwork well portrays the intensity of both action and drama, and is as fine a statement as any that Copland is one of the most under-utilized talents working today." Caldwell also acknowledges the talent and hard work that Ed Brisson puts into the lettering, which was really cool to read.

Thanks so much, Richard!

Here I am at the Monkeybrain Comics panel in San Diego

This is a recording of the Monkeybrain Comics panel from San Diego. It's a great presentation and worth watching, but you can also see me on the front row taking notes for the CBR article I wrote on it. Very cool of Laid Back Comics to record it and of my pal and fellow Robot 6 contributor Tim O'Shea to point it out.

If you watch it, you'll know why I'm about to say:

Monkeybrain
Monkeybrain
Monkeybrain

Wonder Woman hates cephalopods (No. 84)

Artist unknown [Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool]

Recasting Night of the Demon

I haven't participated in The League of Extraordinary Bloggers much lately, not because I've lost interest, but just from lack of time. I really appreciate the ready-made topics, but they still require planning and thought that I haven't been able to give them lately. It's my loss. I'm glad I'm able to squeeze this week's assignment in though, because I'm probably going to make a regular feature out of it.

Remake one of your favorite movies with a cast of current Hollywood stars.

The reason I dig this is because I already do it all the time in my head. I watch a lot of old genre movies and some of them have really great stories. I'd love to share these movies with people, but I know that for some of my friends (and a large percentage of the general public) the dated - if not outright crappy - special effects are an obstacle. Heck, for a lot of people, just their being in black-and-white is off-putting. So I re-imagine the movies in my head with modern effects and a current cast of Hollywood's best. After this one, I'm already thinking about how to recast The Cyclops and Beast from Haunted Cave.

I've talked at length before about my love for Jacques Tourneur's 1957 classic, Night of the Demon. It's a thrilling, ambiguously supernatural mystery that deserves to be enjoyed by modern audiences. I'll describe some of the plot below, but not the ending, so minor spoiler alert. Here's how I'd recast it.

Professor Henry Harrington (John Hurt)



The first character to appear in the film is Professor Harrington, a former skeptic about the supernatural who's now afraid for his life. John Hurt has the perfect demeanor to play an English academic who's scared out of his wits.

Dr. Julian Karswell (Alan Rickman)



Harrington goes to the estate of Dr. Karswell, a self-professed warlock who presides over a cult of followers. Unfortunately, Karswell tells Harrington that his repentance is too late to stop the forces that Karswell has put into motion.

In the original film, Karswell is a portly fellow whose tissue-thin jolliness masks a deep menace. He's the key to whether or not the movie works, so we need a top-notch actor like Rickman who can alternate between charm and threat in varying degrees. We need to be afraid of him, but also like and empathize with him.

Mrs. Karswell (Judi Dench)



Karswell lives with his mother, a kindly, seemingly clueless woman who doesn't ask too many questions about where her son's wealth comes from. There's some ambiguity about how much she understands and whether she supports her son out of love or fear. Dench could do a lot with that.

Joanna Harrington (Kelly Macdonald)



After the death of Harrington, his niece returns from the United States to take care of his affairs. She knows about her uncle's investigation of Karswell's cult and suspects foul play.

I cast Macdonald mostly because I just really like her. Joanna isn't much of a character - she's mostly there to build tension by worrying out loud about the protagonist - but Macdonald has a ton of personality that could flesh Joanna out nicely.

Dr. John Holden (Don Cheadle)



Joanna shares the plane ride from the U.S. with Holden, an occult debunker on his way to London for a conference on the supernatural. There, he intends to pick up Harrington's crusade against Karswell. He and Joanna have a meet-cute where they don't get along at first, but when they re-meet in London, they join forces to bring down Karswell. Holden doesn't believe there's anything supernatural going on, but Joanna's not so sure.

Cheadle's easy to like, which is important in a leading man, but he's also great at looking irritated. That would serve him well playing Holden, who can't believe so many people are buying into Karswell's schtick.

Professor Mark O'Brien (Denis Lawson)



O'Brien is Holden's closest colleague at the conference that's investigating Karswell. He's also a skeptic, but isn't as serious or as irritated by believers as Holden. The character's mostly there as a sounding board.

Denis Lawson is best known to geeks as Wedge Antilles from the original Star Wars trilogy, but I picked him based on his performance in the BBC's 2005 production of Bleak House. He was able to play the troubled, but caring John Jarndyce with a lot of warmth and gentle humor. He'd make a great companion for the very serious Holden.

Professor K.T. Kumar (Irrfan Khan)



Another of Holden's colleagues at the conference. Kumar is also a skeptic, but not a complete unbeliever. One of the things that I really appreciate about his character is that he's not just there to predict supernatural doom; that's more Joanna's job. Kumar is extremely intelligent; he just admits that there may be things going on that none of these scientists can explain. He's agnostic about the supernatural; not prejudiced against it.

Mr. Meeks (Rowan Atkinson)



Meeks is only in one scene, but it's an important one. He's a medium that the well-meaning Mrs. Karswell hires to communicate with Professor Harrington to learn how he died. She invites Holden and Joanna to the seance, but the results can be interpreted multiple ways depending on the prejudices of the witnesses.

Meeks seems to fully believe in his gifts, but he's a comical fellow who adopts the voices of the spirits he's channelling. Rowan Atkinson knows a thing or two about silly voices as well as earnest acting. He'd be a great choice to introduce a tiny bit of levity to the otherwise serious case.

Rand Hobart (Jamie Bell)



Hobart is a farmer and a former member of Karswell's cult. He's also the only enemy of the group who's ever managed to survive. He's been driven mad - almost catatonic - from the experience though, and that makes questioning him a challenge.

Jamie Bell has a great, rustic look to him and is a talented enough actor to pull off Hobart's craziness without going over the top. Hobart's only in one scene of the original movie, so the thing about casting Bell would be that I'd want to fill out his story a little more. Maybe through flashbacks or a prologue or something. Even in the original, the character feels a little under-used. He's the key to unlocking the mystery, so some more time building that up might be good.

Quote of Day | "The system suffers from exhaustion and burnout"

My suspicion is that both [DC and Marvel] have a hard time selling comics that aren't event comics because there aren't enough readers to maintain high numbers on standard comic books. When readers are told what to buy, you have a hit. When they are joined by people that haven't been buying many comics at all, or at least that kind of comic, you have a potential mega-hit. But for the most part the system suffers from exhaustion and burnout.

--Tom Spurgeon

I don't have a lot of commentary on this. I just want to record it somewhere so I can find it again later and since it relates to my recent post on event-fatigue and DC, this seems like a good place.

I guess I will comment long enough to observe that Tom's basically saying that the kind of comics I still like from Marvel and DC are the kind that don't sell. That's always been the case though (starting with the very first series I ever collected, Alpha Flight). What's frightening is his question about "whether or not there's a system there to be salvaged long-term, and if so, if the major players are able to make the necessary investments to make that system as vital as it can be." I hope there is, but agree with Tom that the outlook doesn't look good from here.

Pirate Latitudes | The opening salvo

I started reading Michael Crichton's last book, Pirate Latitudes last week. The title's not very romantic or inspiring, but I was extremely curious to see how the renowned science fiction writer would handle a straight-up pirate story. At least, I assume that it's a straight-up pirate story. If there's some kind of sci-fi twist at the end, don't tell me. I'll probably hate it, but I'd rather be surprised I guess.

The few things I've heard about Pirate Latitudes weren't very positive. The story goes that Crichton's assistant found it on the writer's computer after Crichton died and the book got a bad rap for maybe being not quite ready for publication yet. Since I'm not even halfway done, I don't know. And since this is the first Crichton novel I've ever read, I'm not even sure how it compares to his other stuff. All I do know is that - so far - I like it.

It opens on Sir James Almont, Governor of Jamaica with a gouty foot. It's been a while since I've read Captain Blood, but I was reminded of the gout-suffering governor that Peter Blood waited on in that book and enjoyed imagining for a while that he and Almont were the same character. But then I went and checked and Blood's governor watches over Barbados, not Jamaica. I got confused because the Errol Flynn adaptation moves the location to Jamaica, but in both versions, the governor's last name is Steed. Still: fun coincidence.

When Almont hears tell of a Spanish treasure ship sitting by itself in a bay, but guarded by the impenetrable fortress of Matanceros and its blood-thirsty commander, he commissions privateer Charles Hunter to put together a motley crew and go get it. The novel then follows Hunter and his pals with occasional cuts back to Almont and the intrigue in Port Royal as Almont's secretary attempts to undermine the king's confidence in the governor. There's also a sub-plot about a pretty, but under-aged slave of Almont who may or may not be a witch. Mostly though: pirates. And great ones.

As you'd expect, Crichton's put a ton of research into this thing and it reads as authentic. That doesn't mean that there aren't also daring escapes, roguish romances, and the most colorful cast of pirates since ever. I've also laughed aloud several times. I don't want to read full reviews for fear of spoilers, but I wonder if the book's negative reputation is because it's so atypical of Crichton's other work. As it's own thing, it's totally working for me.

Song of the Week | "Blood for Poppies" by Garbage

Safety or Adventure?

Tarzan of the Apes

Most children tell themselves stories in which they figure as powerful figures, enjoying the pleasures not only of the adult world as they conceive it but of a world of wonders unlike dull reality. Although this sort of Mittyesque daydreaming is supposed to cease in maturity, I suggest that more adults than we suspect are bemusedly wandering about with a full Technicolor extravaganza going on in their heads. Clad in tights, rapier in hand, the daydreamers drive their Jaguars at fantastic speeds through a glittering world of adoring love objects, mingling anachronistic histories worlds with science fiction.

[...]When I was growing up, I read all twenty-three Tarzan books, as well as the ten Mars books. My own inner storytelling mechanism was vivid. At any one time, I had at least three serials going as well as a number of old faithful reruns. I used Burroughs as a source of raw material. When he went to the center of the earth a la Jules Verne (much too fancy a writer for one’s taste), I immediately worked up a thirteen-part series, with myself as lead, and various friends as guest stars. Sometimes I used the master’s material, but more often I adapted it freely to suit myself. One’s daydreams intended to be Tarzanish post-puberty (physical strength and freedom) and Martian post-puberty (exotic worlds and subtle combinaziones to be worked out). After adolescence, if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes. My last serial ran into sponsor trouble when I was in the Second World War and was never renewed.

--Gore Vidal, discussing the attraction of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

I can relate to Vidal's memories of telling stories to himself as a kid. My inspirations were more Star Wars and Universal monster movies, but I did that a lot and probably more than anything else, it's what made me want to become a writer.

I can also relate to his statement that "if one’s life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes." I don't pretend much anymore that my car is the Millennium Falcon and that the Interstate is a Death Star trench (much to the benefit of my fellow drivers, I'm sure), because I'm usually thinking about my day: a story I'm working on, a blog post, errands to run, all that stuff. My story-telling time doesn't take the form of unstructured daydreaming now. I have a time and a place for it.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

When I look at that a certain way, it seems kind of sad. How can you structure storytelling and imagination? But that's not really what's going on. Like I said, a lot of my daydreaming is about storytelling. Instead of being purely for my own pleasure though, I'm thinking about stories that I want to write down. It's just taken a different form.

But while I like to think that I've outgrown childish daydreaming and figured out a mature way to put it to work, Vidal doesn't let me off the hook so easily. He writes, "Until recently I assumed that most people were like myself: daydreaming ceases when the real world becomes interesting and reasonably manageable. Now I am not so certain. Pondering the life and success of Burroughs leads one to believe that a good many people find their lives so unsatisfactory that they go right on year after year telling themselves stories in which they are able to dominate their environment in a way that is not possible in this overorganized society."

But that's not talking about me, right? My daydreaming is work. It's part of the writing process. Except Vidal quotes Burroughs as saying, "Most of the stories I wrote were the stories I told myself just before I went to sleep." In other words, Burroughs' writing was a product of his daydreaming. For him, they were the same thing. And if I'm honest, they're the same for me too. Whether or not I eventually intend them for publication, I make up stories first for myself because I'm bored. Or dissatisfied. Uninterested in the mundane details of my life. Whatever you want to call it.

This isn't a profound revelation. I suspect that most people feel the same way. I don't even think that for most cases it's a problem in need of fixing. We make up stories (or read them, or watch them, or play them in video games) because we're dissatisfied. It's a tested coping mechanism and it works. But - I'm starting to realize only just recently - it's not the only coping mechanism. Another option is to change the part of life that's most dissatisfying to you.

Craig Ferguson: Adventurer

That's something I've been thinking about lately. As much as I love adventure stories, I've never been a risk taker. Presented with the easy way or a potentially more rewarding, but harder way, I've always taken the easier way. I can think of one time when I took a huge risk in my life and that was because there was no easy option for me to choose. It ended up being one of the most wonderful, life-changing things I ever did. And the other two - marrying Diane and having David - only happened because of it.

I'm sort of at another crossroads right now. I need to find a new day job and I can either stick with what I've been doing the last twenty years or branch out and try something new. Naturally, I've been trying to stick with the familiar. But the universe (or God or circumstances or however you like to think of it) hasn't made that easy so far. In fact, it feels very much like that other time when life made me take a gamble and it paid off so well.

This is far from decided (there are other people to consider besides myself), but I keep thinking about what Craig Ferguson wrote in American on Purpose. As he was trying to decide whether to stay in the US and make a go at a TV career or move back to Scotland where he was comfortable, he describes visiting the Nevada desert one night:

I got out and walked away from the car and looked up at the immense blackness of the night sky, and the tininess of myself against the enormity of the universe had never been more obvious, even on acid.

An inexplicable bolt of terror shot through my system. Then I remembered what Rock and Roll Susie had said, that fear might be God's way of saying, "Pay attention, this could be fun," and I said aloud to whoever was out there, even if it was only me:

"Between safety and adventure, I choose adventure."

Captain Nemo hates cephalopods (No. 243)

By Carson Ellis. [Hark! A Vagrant]

Dumping DC

The title of this post isn't technically correct. I don't plan to boycott DC anymore than I've boycotted Marvel. But the Marvel Universe as a whole hasn't held my interest for a few years now and DC (as a collective line of comics) is about to follow it off my radar.

DC and Marvel get their bread and butter from enormous, line-wide events. They survive by telling their dedicated fans over and over again that "this is the story that you need to read; this changes everything; this is important." And for fans of those universes, they're not lying. I want to make it really clear that I'm not down on anyone who's a fan of those universes and still buys those events. I'm kind of down on you if you're doing it without getting any enjoyment out of it, but if you like big DC and Marvel events, that's excellent. Not that you need my permission to enjoy what you enjoy.

For me, I stopped enjoying them in 2008 (Final Crisis and Secret Invasion were the last scoops of dirt on the grave) and stopped buying them. The rest of this post is going to reflect that, so if you're a fan of that kind of storytelling and think you might be offended by my picking at it, please don't read any further. It's not my goal to make you angry; I just want to record some thoughts as I'm having them.

I grew up with Marvel and DC characters, but never had the money to read as much about them as I wanted. I'd get to a part in the comic where Spider-Man references some fight he had with Electro three issues back and there'd be that infuriating little editor's note: "See issue # whatever." As a kid, I dreamed of a time when I'd actually be able to go "see issue # whatever;" when I'd be able to afford as many comics as I wanted and finally get The Complete Story. For many years as an adult, I enthusiastically bought series after series and event after event - whether or not I was enjoying them on a story level - because I was finally getting The Complete Story. I was following every major thing that was happening in these two universes.

That's the lie though, right? There's no Complete Story. There may be Universe-Changing Events, but the very nature of corporate-owned comics means that they're making this up as they go along. There's no master plan. When I was a kid, I imagined that Marvel and DC had a guy whose sole job it was to make sure that continuity was adhered to and that everything fit together with everything else.

Once I realized that no one's on top of that stuff, the more Marvel and DC tried to maintain that deception, the more frustrated I got. It's like I'd discovered the man behind the curtain, but instead of coming clean about it, he kept pulling the curtain closed and insisting that the Wizard is real.

After 2008, I threw up my hands and quit. No Dark Reign for me; no Blackest Night. I didn't quit reading everything by Marvel and DC though; just the big events.  I still had a few titles that were mostly managing to stay out of all that. For Marvel, that was X-Men Legacy, but not much else. Alpha Flight when they rebooted that. Agents of Atlas of course. There'd be a tie-in or reference to whatever event was currently going on, but I didn't let those hook me. I just stuck with what I liked. I was done following the Marvel Universe.

It was the same with DC for three years until they came up with the New 52. Honestly though, it may have been even worse for DC. I can't tell you which - if any - DC comics I was buying from 2009 to 2011. What I loved about the New 52 wasn't that everything was fresh and sparkling again. (Actually, everything wasn't fresh and sparkling again, because they wanted to eat their cake and still have it by declaring a fresh start while also haphazardly incorporating popular stories from the past into the new continuity.) What I loved about the New 52 was the absence of crossovers and line-wide events. Since everyone was focused entirely on setting up their series, I could pick up any DC book and not have to follow it to another one. The whole DCU was an open playground and I could try out anything I wanted. So I tried a lot and got interested in way more DC series than I had been in years. For the past year, DC's been getting a lot more of my money than Marvel, but they're gearing up to kill that now.

We've already seen it starting in the Batman-related books with the "Night of the Owls" storyline. And there was an odd issue of Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE that tied-into a major crossover between Animal Man and Swamp Thing. Earth 2 #1 led directly into World's Finest #1, Frankenstein's joining Justice League Dark, and now there's word that another line-wide crossover is being planned for late next year. The DCU is becoming more interconnected.

It's no coincidence that this is starting to happen just as sales on DC comics are leveling out to where they were before the New 52. With the new car smell fading away, DC has to do something to generate excitement, so they're going back to familiar methods.

Unfortunately for me, the more DC ties its comics together, the less interested I am. To the extent that they still have books I'm interested in that don't require me to buy books I'm not, I'll keep buying their product. It's just that I'm no longer part of their faithful target audience. And I don't say that with any anger or even sadness, but with relief. That's that many worthwhile creator-owned series I can support instead.