15 hour Avengers Party.

The idea was simple.  For twenty American dollars plus tax apiece, Mr. So and I would partake of fifteen hours of comic book movies.  The offer stood as Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America, and finally, at midnight, the long-anticipated Avengers (in 3D), written and directed by this summer's cinema success story, Joss Whedon.

I got this swag.

When the first film (Iron Man) ends, a sweaty female attendant with a broken voice informs the theater that parking will only be validated for four hours.  A mild panic rises in the crowd when a rumor passes around that the show is going to exclude The Avengers itself. A quick check on the cell phone confirms the film is indeed playing.  Calm returns.

The crowd consists of much as you might expect: largely male population, with standard skinny bespectacled nerds, geeks that choose to wear their Captain America hoodies or thrift-store condition Avengers t-shirts (thus being the guy at the concert that's wearing the t-shirt of the band that's playing at the concert), a handful of stoner stereotypes, dorks that bred and brought their precocious children, and of course, samples of America's grossly obese, providing the sour milk fat flesh fold smell that over the course of the day sinks into the theater like scared-skunk stink.  Swag in the form of buttons and posters are passed out.

We're all sold on it.

What's not to like?

Admittedly, the only movies of the bunch that I go into the event having already seen are the Iron Man films, due in one part due to an odd affection for Jon Favreau, in another part because of an active attempt to avoid the genre of superheroes as much as humanly possible.  So often one gets burned. Ask anyone that has ever seen Spider Man 3.  In the cocaine-fueled executive rage for commercial success, many comic book adaptations could easily be viewed as escapism done wrong, a less refined, mostly immature attempt at pandering to the lowest common denominator, resulting in critical flip-floppers.

Most of all what I never enjoyed was the preening sense of inevitability concerning militarism that the Marvel franchise seems to endorse in each film it makes, while simultaneously (and only sometimes) pretending it does the opposite.

The Edward Norton version of Hulk doubles down on the concept of military run amok to the point of absurdity, blowing up a college campus with no accountability, while the Thor movie mythologizes it with a sanitized and shiny Asgard run by Anthony Hopkin's master Kenneth Branaugh (and in this you could extrapolate Thor being the brutish America proxy, Loki being the snotty British Gog, and the entire Middle East as a frosted mirror-glass land of the Frost Giants).

This uneasy feeling of being sold a toy of the military industrial complex is reinforced as we are treated to the same opening sequence of commercials six times at the event.  An ad for the Navy, an ad for the Navy-sponsored boardgame-turned-film Battleship, an ad for the same film, this time sponsored by Coke Zero, an ad for the Marines, an ad for the Hatfields vs. the McCoys on TNT (Kevin Costner in a bloodfeud), an ad for the new remake of Dallas (the words BLOOD and FEUD and BATTLEGROUND flash on the screen, almost subliminal), then a review of each preview, plus an oddly racist Ultrabook ad.  All of that, six times over.

Imagine an army of Purple Hulks.

So the twelve hours and five movies pass, with twenty minute breaks between films, and we devour the food we snuck in, sip on caffeinated beverages loaded with vitamin B and Guarna and Taurine, and I can feel myself becoming accustomed to the changing eye-patches of Nick Fury in each post-credits teaser, and I can see that the people involved are attempting to make something more than a two hour long advertisement for the military industrial complex, but at the end of the day, they're stuck in a system they never named, but were made by, much as in the Captain America movie, where after being dosed as a super-soldier, he spends the first stretch of his career spinning propaganda on the newsies.

When a true subliminal flashes after the word "compassion" at a certain point (Thor, I believe), I recall the recent Star Trek remake, where James T. Kirk's older father-proxy tries to convince him to join Star Fleet after a bar fight. I flash across the crass, commercialized, and crypto-fascist overtones of 300 and the Transformers franchise.  Michael Bay conditioning pods.  Though certain elements of Captain America call to mind the best elements of Star Wars as well as the quality of film making from the era it depicts.  Captain America is the best, most refined of the Marvel movies leading into The Avengers.

About midway through The Avengers, when the S.H.I.E.L.D Hellicarrier raises out of the ocean, I find myself compelled to join the Navy, for some reason.

I also find myself cheering with the crowd around me.

The Avengers, it should be said, calls forth all the elements of a comic book superhero team, and paces them in an order that should be just complex enough to satisfy critics and just simplistic enough to appease brohams.  It's a crowd pleaser. It will break box-office barriers.  I love comics. I know comics.  My conscious attempts at avoiding comic book movies came after a dissatisfaction borne out of constant disappointment.

The Avengers gets it right, in a big way.

[Perhaps that lengthy an exposure to such materials was never intended for public consumption. Perhaps I have overdosed.  I need to start a blood feud, right after I join the Navy.]

I'll admit, all of my resistances were worn down to some degree in the twelve hours leading up to The Avengers, but this is a first rate A+ film for being a comedy, an action movie, and a superhero movie that puts all others to shame.

The Tesseract (which sounds better than Cosmic Cube, perhaps) is our movie's objective correlative, first introduced in Captain America, a limitless power source, and a source of interest for the villain Loki and his unnamed benefactor Thanos (who we only see in the first of two post-credits scenes).

The entire film, I wanted Samuel L. Jackson, playing Nick Fury, to start screaming a litany of curse words, out of nowhere.  SHIELD Agent Phil Coulson (calling to mind Charles Colson) played by Clark Gregg, is the thread running from Iron Man through the rest of the films and on up into The Avengers, where he plays the part of Captain America's biggest fan and, later on, "the avenged".  Scarlett Johansson manages to explain why Black Widow is essential to the team dynamic by being the world's best interrogator.  Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye gets only a few spots to shine in the film, but he uses them effectively.  Bruce Banner is played for the first time by Mark Ruffalo, who does a bang-up job playing the eccentric gamma-irradiated scientist.  Better by far than any previous actor that filled the role, if you want to come down to it.  Tom Hiddleston is the core of the movie as Loki, and in the final analysis is one of the best actors in the film.  Something about Chris Hemsworth as Thor strikes me as a little too simple. Maybe that's the point. He has a good laugh for Thor, it's just that he walks with just the wrong degree of swagger to pull off "god of thunder", in my humble opinion.  Chris Evans, on the other hand, manages to sell Captain America's soldier boy appeal effortlessly, and of course, Robert Downey Jr. embodies Tony Stark to the extent that at certain points it doesn't feel like he's bothered to read the script, he's just channeling a genius billionaire philanthropist from a parallel reality.

Part of what can tell you how good a band is is how well the audience responds to their performance. By that measure, and given that the entire theater withstood fifteen hours of cinema for The Avengers, the movie is a rousing success. Big laughs from the audience.  Spontaneous applause. Bigger action.

Joss Whedon has proven something great about himself this summer.  He's the current nerd king of Hollywood, and we shall all bask in his light until the cycle of cinema degenerates again, in a new flashier more gimmicky Tour de France.

I want to give him a firm handshake for a job well done, right after I sign up for basic training.

Stormwatch and the Construction of the New DC Universe

Quick, identify the ONE character on this cover that's still alive.

Some time ago, Image Comics started a series known as Stormwatch.  It seemed, at first glance, to be an upgraded version of Rob Liefeld's Youngblood, put out by the same company, with a Jim Lee twist.  Team of superhumans works for the United Nations, as opposed to the United States, for the betterment of mankind, fighting alien invasions, superhuman terrorists, and the like.  Team swag includes orbiting satellite, a dozen plus tech-fitted members representative of countries from all around the globe, snappy banter to spare, and plots with slightly more personality than hatchet-marks.

The Stormwatch series ran through a good number of issues, with peaks and eddies, finally falling into the hands of one Warren Ellis, a relatively new comic writer at the time, who sought to take the characters in different directions than they had previously explored.  One gaseous and cybernetically enhanced model hero by the name of Fuji, for instance, confessed during Ellis' run that he had an orgasm every five minutes.

Then, in the grand tradition of writers seeking to breathe life into stale franchises, Ellis had nearly every member of the main team murdered in a WildC.A.T.s/Aliens crossover.

The remaining members, those in Stormwatch's Black Ops division, went on to form the Authority, a team of megapowered individuals including one Jenny Sparks, the living embodiment of the 20th century, and fittingly, quite British.  The Authority represented every liberal creed given the power to take over the world.  This team was given over to Mark Millar once Ellis had moved his attention in the Image Universe towards his hit-series Planetary (which will never ever ever re-emerge in the DCU, so don't ask).  Millar went on to become megastar supreme burning bright in the sky with projects like Kick Ass, Ellis went on to other projects with other companies like Avatar and Marvel, and the Authority, Stormwatch's child, in a fashion, floundered through a series of hedonistic, convoluted, bizarre and massive storylines, culminating in the near-total destruction of the planet Earth.  At one point, Grant Morrison signed on to do a limited series run, which died after two issues. Jenny Sparks, who died on December 31, 1999, was replaced by Jenny Quantum, who followed a grand tradition of ultrapowerful kid superheroes (see Franklin Richards) by hyperaging herself.  Regardless of the Authority's melodrama, the mantle of Stormwatch was taken up once again by the excellent Team Achilles, whose writer, Micah Ian Wright, apparently lied about his background and got it cancelled.  There was a cheery effort made with Doug Mahnke  and Christos Gage with another Stormwatch iteration, Post Human Division, but that lasted only about a year.   

In the background of all this, at some point, perhaps reflected in the time that the Wildstorm iteration of Earth was utterly annihilated, DC Comics bought Wildstorm.  When the New 52 revamp/reboot occurred a short time ago, many heroes and villains of the Wildstorm stable of characters were transferred into the new universe.  The first arc of Stormwatch centers on the team's mission to recruit Apollo and Midnighter, lovingly referred to at times as "the gay Superman and Batman", and stop a monster in the moon from destroying the planet.  

The story of Stormwatch never got the coverage that the Authority or even WildC.A.T.s seemed so prone to getting.  Great artists come and go, but a stable writer for "wide-screen" superheroics can make a lasting impression on an entire universe world of characters, at least until a massive revision renders it moot.  Stormwatch outstrips the Justice League in the new DCU in terms of power, potential, and personality.  We know Superman from so many angles we can likely predict his every line. Even the most DC oriented character in the new Stormwatch, the Martian Manhunter, is a far cry from the Justice League staple he once was.  The background for this title is rich for mining, so long as the people in charge of making these donuts remember that people like their donuts fresh, not day-old.  

To that end, it's nice to see Peter Milligan and Miguel Sepulveda working on the title again.  During their brief break, the "Gravity Miners" storyline, reader interest was already in danger of waning, if only for the fact that some characters weren't jelling properly, in character or overall tone.  There's a stability to this title with Milligan writing it. He knows the voices of each character and knows the plot threads for this title set a year from now.  Miguel Sepulveda's artwork seems to get better with each passing issue, and the chops he earned with cosmic characters in the Marvel stables seems to serve him well in this series.

Jenny Quantum forms a new use for her powers, Martian Manhunter mindwipes witnesses, and Jack Hawksmoor sweet-talks a city into putting itself back together. The first covert superhero team that's actually, you know, covert.

The new Stormwatch deals almost exclusively with extraterrestrial threats and near-cosmic incursions. They are based in a ship with Daemonite A.I. that orbits Earth in Hyperspace.  They are the best at what they do, and what they do is a secret that nobody, not even the other superhumans of the planet, is aware of.  This, coupled with the nostalgia one might feel for certain characters and the well-paced development of storylines, could lead to great success, in the long run.
The most recent issue of Stormwatch sees a fight with the Vitruvian Man and a Red Lantern.  The Vitruvian Man reveals he was a member of an older iteration of Stormwatch who was denied his true love when the "Shadow Lords" that run Stormwatch (far more intriguing than a U.N. subcommittee) had her murdered.  The Red Lantern Skallox, a being of few words, was recently one of several "upgraded" from mindless killing machine in issues of Red Lantern.  Stormwatch, being comprised of the best superhumans possible, delves into these two stories in the same amount of pages it takes some heroes, writers, and artists to deal with a conversation between two characters walking down the street.

The Da Vinci Coda sums it up, yeah.

In some ways, the New DC Universe feels rushed and crawling at a snail's pace at the same time.  An odd paradox, figuring that one out.  But there are hints at the unfolding universe that never seem to flesh out completely.  Marvel guru Joe Quesada recently said something to the effect that DC "burned down their house" with their new DC lineup, but it's a bit more complex than that. The DC staff took a beautiful old house that had been remodeled a few times already (Crisis on Infinite Earths, Zero Hour, 52, Final Crisis) and, after careful study, razed it, reconstructing it to be a near-match, with a few minor additions and aesthetic alterations.  But the rich and complex tapestry of years of stories, crossovers, and character interactions is still present, we can assume?  Giving the assembly of the Justice League a marker at "Five Years Ago" presents a universal timeline that confuses at the same time as it clarifies. There are a whole spectrum of rings present in the DCU, but did the events of Blackest Night and Brightest Day actually happen? Impossible, if the Martian Manhunter, who died in Final Crisis and arose at the end of Blackest Night, played anything resembling a pivotal part, as he's a secret member of Stormwatch and has been for years, in new continuity. Or are we dealing with a clean slate, of sorts? Will the gaps be filled in, the furniture of the rooms in this new house, be uncovered with deft maneuverings or simple sweeps?  How is a world of heroes such as the ultraviolent homoerotic Midnighter able to merge with the restrained vigilantism of Batman?  Only the more talented writers in the DC offices will be able to pull it off, and only careful editorial work can make it stick.   

When we all look back on this after they get in a big fight, we'll chuckle.

Teen Titan's most recent annual (the series has a lot of quirks and flaws for me, but I think it's geared more towards teens, go figure) actually seems to be indicative of the positives and negatives of the new universe we just mentioned.  Here, the Legion Lost title crosses over, and there is a lot of talk about a Culling, and new/old characters (including Fuji from the old Stormwatch team and Warblade of WildC.A.T.s)... but it seems to be centered, almost maniacally so, on the present, discarding the past.  It's this spirit that seems to inhabit the final page of Stormwatch (before we digress too wildly) where we see the thread of the Midnighter's running monologue, wherein he muses over his bloodlust and, very clearly, for the first time in any comic book ever, sees Batman with his own eyes. Whether this is a hard-light hologram or a vision, it is not a ham-fisted or puerile point being driven home. The restraints of certain characters are exchanged, echoed, or distorted among the various other characters in the multiverse. As the DC New 52 moves into the final stretch of its first year, old fans and new see crossovers popping up here and there, a new history being written on a fresh page, rather than the old page being erased and scribbled over.  It's moments of intrigue, such as those that can be found in Stormwatch, that keep readers coming back.  Everyone working at DC would do well to keep this in mind, no matter who they are or what their role is...

Second Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men

Now that the first optic blast has been fired and the first American-flag-shield-related concussion has been dealt, we can explore and critique and tweak the orientation of Marvel Comic's most recent "company-wide" crossover, Avengers vs. X-Men.

Something tells me this will end up being two pages of characters for each team.

It starts, as with any good hero vs. hero brawl, with a differing of opinions and a misunderstanding. The so-called mutant messiah Hope has manifested the Phoenix force at the same time as it seems the firebird itself is flying directly to Earth, laying waste to planet after planet along the way.  Captain America and the Avengers wish to take Hope into protective custody, and show up on the shores of mutantkind's Utopia to take her.  Cyclops does not react well to this. Cyclops sends a previously written and sternly worded email to the world via Val Cooper when everything starts to go down.

Did you know that Magneto has the ability to count millions of metal thingies in a split second? Me neither. 

The initial fight is broken up between the main event book and several other titles.  We see Magneto fighting Iron Man (not the foregone conclusion you may think, since Tony Stark's superpower is cash mixed with genius) the everlovin' Benjamin J. Grimm, the Thing, squares off against Namor (hasn't happened in years, actually).  After a magnetic fastball special with Colossus, a Red Hulk oriented fight ensues. When Wolverine and Spiderman infiltrate Utopia to nab/kill Hope, she goes all Phoenix voice on them, flash-fries Wolverine like he's a chump, and leaves, running across the water of San Francisco Bay.  Precisely 3:45 PM Eastern Standard Time.

They'll place bets on the Planet Sin until it heads their way.

Overall the series so far ranges comfortably from writer to writer. At a certain point little factoids will spring up. Some annoying, others less so, and some actually amusing. The way it plays out calls to mind a certain cross-company crossover event from my younger days reading comics.  DC vs. Marvel Comics, headed by Ron Marz and Peter David, artwork from Dan Jurgens and Claudio Castellini.

Old school like Aztecs but new in other aspects.

I'd estimate that the younger generation of writers and artists were similarly impacted by that series, which was interactive insofar as you could vote for the characters to win, similar in some respects to DC's hotline to determine whether or not the Joker kills Jason Todd, the second Robin.  As in that series, the various legends of Marvel Comics Universe, the Avengers, the X-Men, going against one another, that can be a problem, logistically.  As writers and editors on such a title, you have to play it relatively safe with the characters, they're money makers more and more, but you also don't want to treat them with kid gloves and openly pander to audiences or whatever expectations have been thrown around.  The big blockbuster movie event this summer, at this point, is going to be The Avengers. So in this concurrent series where that movie's characters are implicated in the title, who do you really think is going to win? Or is there actually going to be a winner, officially?  The answers to these questions lie in the way that the different group "money pots" are interacted with on a regular basis.  Avengers and X-related titles both hold the lion's share of titles in Marvel, especially considering how many once-solo characters are now one one or in some cases many teams.

Funny how planetary histories are often only told to narrate their fiery destruction.

The Avengers have been dominating center stage since the Civil War, the power-death knell of most mutants coming in House of M, and their overall relevance, outside of Wolverine, being downgraded.  In the movie world, the rights to the X-Men films is still being held outside of Disney, the absorbing entity, the Tron Mickey, hence the stream of movies culminating in Joss Whedon's The Avengers.  So even the movie universe, contracts and negotiations, are reflected in the focus of the comic universe.  The Avengers will win the battle.  Iron Man left Magneto in space.  Thing beat Namor down.  Colossus demanded Red Hulk smash him when he nearly lost control of his "Juggernaut persona".  The most powerful member of the Avengers, Thor, is fighting a giant bird made of fire in space. Actually, the Secret Avengers contend with not just the Phoenix but are forced to set down onto Hala, home of the Kree, and deal with a Phoenix-resurrected Captain Marvel.

Asgardian God vs. Primal Fiery Force or: "Thor, c'mon. Seriously? No way."

Unless the revelation of the Phoenix that results in the giant golden Celestial standing in San Francisco's parks district finally, after long last, doing something, we can expect that Cyclops may, shock, discover he is right and wrong, that maybe the whole world is not to be destroyed, or mutantkind saved, but perhaps the constant resurrections of characters will finally end! Remember, the Phoenix is the force of Life and Death fused.  This means someone has to die, and guess what? It's not going to be an Avenger this time. Imagine a scorched Cyclops being cradled in Wolverine's arms, replayed in flashbacks for decades to come.  Picture Hope sacrificing herself to restart the mutant gene via the Phoenix Force.  Perhaps the Celestial, guarding the Celestial egg that Earth houses, fights the Phoenix. Or maybe that's only a thing in the Earth X universe, designate 9997.

Now, all the mutants not housed in Wolverine's school (Cyclops will visit there next issue of Wolverine and the X-Men) will be facing not just the Avengers, but also SHIELD and the US Military.  Sentinels? No.  Sentinels are terrorist weapons (and the most hackneyed X-plot in existence), and the terrorists of the Marvel Universe are so often children lately it's somewhat disturbing. The all-tween Hellfire Club is but one example.

Even though the Avengers will win, the X-Men, the ultimate underdogs, must win the moral fight.  The spirit fostered in Marvel at the start was that characters should possess a certain pathos that the reader could recognize.  Now we delve deeper, but only in certain books geared towards certain readers.  Otherwise the status quo must be maintained, to a degree, and the likability of a character is informed by one's nostalgia surrounding it or one's ability to relate to it.  Pulling a strip from Spider Man's double cross back in Civil War, we can expect Wolverine to flip sides, as Storm already has. What will push him to that point?  Will Jean Grey be resurrected? Will the Phoenix Egg featured in Here Comes Tomorrow be laid on the Blue Side of the Moon?

The new weeks will pass on, and fights between these titans will reach levels of hyperbole hardly espoused since the conflicts of characters from different companies.  But this is Marvel, pitting its best teams at odds with one another. What are the long term effects, if any?  Will it end in confused cringes like Secret Invasion? Or the range of rage comic expressions that sprang up after the finish of Fear Itself?

The series seems to want to pack the most into itself as possible, which works for a reader seeking more than twenty four splash pages and some badly characterized dialogue mixed with contrivances.  The idea behind this is a bit rushed, but the actual follow-through feels like it was a fun project to work on. Each cheesy line's also an opportunity, and this series should provide some doozies.  At this point, expect one turncoat in #3, a minor twist or two in #4, and a major twist in #5.  See you next Wednesday morning. 

C2E2 Notes

Exterminate! 

Marvel spot shot. 

Stormtrooper action at the CBR BAR afterwards was predictable. 

DC display of the new Parasite for Superman to face at a panel discussion. Sweet swag  for good questions was present. Candy from strangers was taken. True Love in the Room.

Entranceway of the Dorked 

I've never met these people, nor should I. 

Marvel Panel, too much talent at one dais. Breaking into comics the Marvel Way. Always a classic for surly Q &A's.  Quesada quoted who he believed to be Mark Waid who said that there are no two ways to break into comics that are the same.  It takes you making comics of your own and linking into their social network.  How you go about that is wholly unique, because you are a creator collaborating for an alternate universe, a cathartic dimension of complex characters. 

The Dungeon Masters

All gamemasters are demiurges. 

Spoiler Reviews of Comics released April 25th, 2012

Ultimate Comics Ultimates 9:  10/10

The Marvel Universe's more movie-like parallel dimension known as the Ultimate Universe (designate 1610) has recently undergone radical shifts. Since most mutants were put in special holding camps and poor Spider Man died, you'd think the world of heroes would get a breather. Instead, things just seem to get progressively more desperate and fast paced.  First, it turns out that in Earth 1610 the American government created mutants, and Wolverine was patient zero. When a Southeast Asian republic does some superhuman tinkering of their own, superhumans known as the People arise. Housed in the Eternal City of Tian, a concept arising from Warren Ellis' run on Astonishing X-Men, these peaceable beings are ruled by Zorn and Xorn, the equivalent of humanoid black hole and sun, respectively. Meanwhile, the return of a severely twisted Reed Richards hearkens the destruction of ALL ASGARDIAN GODS BUT THOR, the creation of The City and the Children of Tomorrow.  With Captain America quitting, Iron Man's brain cancer getting worse, and Thor de-powered, things for the Ultimates do not look their best, especially since the evil Reed Richards has a thousand years of evolution on his side. The President of the United States sends The Hulk into The City to destroy it, then follows that up with every nuclear weapon in the country's arsenal.  To be fair, The City HAD absorbed most of Europe.  Issue 9 of Ultimate Comics Ultimates gives us a confrontation between the Children and the People, as well as Reed Richard's counterstrike.   Jonathan Hickman's genius storytelling and Esad Ribic's beautiful artwork are complimented by some of the industry's very best color work, courtesy of Dean White.

Let's review: Reed Richards has now killed all Asgardian gods AND America.

FF 17: 9.5/10

In recent issues of Fantastic Four, and the captivating spin-off, FF, we've seen a storyline that burned slow and then white hot.  In a last stand protecting a gate from the hordes of the Negative Zone, Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, was killed.  Using um, special worms, the villain Annihilus resurrected him and set him to work as a gladiator slave.  He earned the respect of the Inhuman Light Brigade and saved the planet from a Kree invasion upon his return, thanks to his brand new cosmic control rod stolen from Annihilus. Now, the day is saved. With this issue of FF, we find that he's moved in with his replacement on the Fantastic Four, none other than Peter Parker, Spider Man.  This issue is a welcome comedic relief from the vast, extensive, and compelling storylines that have been a mainstay in FF almost since the beginning of the series, originally feeling like a tangential overflow for Hickman's ideas.  The idea of Peter Parker and Johnny Storm being roommates is the first truly good thing to come about as a direct result of retconning Peter's marriage to Mary Jane out of existence.  She makes an appearance this issue, actually.  As usual, Jonathan Hickman's script is a masterpiece with each page, and Nick Dragotta's powers with a pencil give perfect expression to this comic.  Just... be careful with the last page. It'll get you.

It's official. Peter Parker getting Inhuman tongue action is a win.

Green Lantern: New Guardians 8: 8.5/10

This issue of New Guardians seems to be a meeting point for all of DC's Lantern book plotlines.  Since Sinestro and Hal Jordan recently wiped out the Yellow Lanterns in Green Lantern, and it seems as if the Guardians of the Universe are burning emotionless evil schemes at both ends by promoting Guy Gardener in Green Lantern Corps, GL:NG seems to be the side-quest that could become a forerunner for grander things.  This issue splits between Yellow Corpsman Arkillo's discovery of Sinestro's betrayal and the other Lantern's various allegiances and drives as they prepare to fight the Orange Lantern Larfleeze for a cosmic angel that stomped them all last issue.  The series shows great promise, but occasionally, with so many balls in the air, the reader might lose their way.  Fortunately, if you're bothering to read this series in the first place, you're either a Kyle Rayner fan or a big Lantern series buff already.  In either of those cases, this series will serve you well.  Tony Bedard and Tyler Kirkham make an excellent team, as ever.

Justice League Dark 8: 8/10 &  I, Vampire 8:  9/10

Personally, I felt that the starting point with Justice League Dark seemed like it would be pretty solid, in the long run.  The mystic pastiche approach of the team was offbeat and quirky, and their missions would be all the dark side of DC that can't be approached by standard heroes like the Justice League, or even the big screen ones like Stormwatch.  With the recent crossover with the less compelling (but beautifully drawn) I, Vampire, the primordial vampire Cain arises to wrest the mantle of Grand Vampire King and lay waste to humanity, starting with Gotham.  The issue falls somewhat flat, however. The side story of Shade the Changing Man potentially hints at a peek at the Doctor's Dreamtime?  It will be interesting when Justice League Dark gets back on its own track.  Peter Milligan's script and Daniel Sampere's art are still sharp, but overall the story feels less compelling and more scattered than I would have liked.  I, Vampire, concluding the story with a resurrection, feels more comfortable under Joshua Wade Fialkov's writing, and of course Andrea Sorentino's beautiful art. 

Superman 8: 7.5/10

We'll conclude these reviews with a bit of a clunker.  After DC fused with Wildstorm, villains and heroes from the Wildstorm stable emerged in the new universe, many centered around the new (to DC) race of evil aliens known as the Daemonites.  Helspont, a Daemonite villain from the old WildC.A.Ts days, fell out of a prison on Stormwatch's space station after a recent explosion.  Superman is drawn to him, and he alternates, for nearly two full issues, between talking the Man of Steel to death or crushing him under a rock.  Even the alternate dream sequence felt like a less-weird Morrison venture.  I get what it's going for, but it doesn't work for me.  The new DC Universe is still gathering steam, in some places, and this Superman title has been one of those.  Dan Jurgen's artwork seems to get stiffer by the issue, and Keith Giffen's script calls for a lot of standing around and talking.  Sure, Helspont is attempting to lure Kal to the dark side, and yes, there are fun asides where Louis Lane's sister is not getting picked up at the airport like Clark promised, and Jimmy Olson's house is being fumigated, but these all feel like very well worn territory already, with only a few glimmers of something fresh in store, down the road.  Overall, a pretty disappointing issue, but perhaps it lays the groundwork for something more engaging in the future, since Giffen has often been known to play the "long game" with some plot-threads, and as both he and Jurgens are very talented, this could simply be a temporary slump or editorial quagmire. 

The Cabin in the Woods: A Final Comment on the Horror Genre

Frickin' Rubik's Cube of the Damned, this is.

Fair warning: with this assessment of Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard's "Cabin in the Woods", there will be a certain amount of plot point divulging, meeting somewhere between a review and a summary.  It's been interesting to note the reaction of people that have seen the film, in that they do not seem to want to give away too much to those that have not seen it.  In that spirit, it's a thin line that critics must walk in order to properly examine a film who's layered approach entertains audiences best when they have less information going in, while not fully divulging too much actual content.

While we're at it, let's look at this brief reversal of standard gender roles in slasher flicks, through a one way mirror.

The initial premise is very basic.  It is, on the surface, the most trite cliche of the horror genre.  Five fresh-faced college students go to a cabin in the woods for a weekend of fun and things go horribly wrong.  Any viewer remotely familiar with this premise can guess that they are in store for a little sex and a lot of violence.  Anyone familiar with Goddard's work on the ABC series Lost or Whedon's with Buffy the Vampire Slayer can also make a safe bet going into the film that there will be a twisting convolution of the initial premise and an honest love of the horror genre, for all of its faults.

The five characters are designed as archetypes, distinct from the usual stereotypes prevalent in every single film following this one's basic premise.  The fool, the warrior, the scholar, the virgin, and the whore. In the first five minutes of the film, however, we are introduced to two other character types that are more uncommon in horror and actually seem more suited to office comedies.  The older project head and the office joker with woman problems, Sitterson and Hadley.  These men and the project they are working on are interspersed with the plot, since it is obvious that they are the masters of ceremony for the events taking place.  They also serve as ample comic relief throughout the film, and can be interpreted as in-film proxies for the writers as well as the audience.  But more on that in a moment. Elements of The Truman Show and The Matrix bleed through almost immediately upon our exposure to the banks of computer monitors that Sitterson and Hadley are surrounded by, but these similarities are compounded when it's established that they can pump mind-altering substances in through the cabin's vents as well as the forest floor, that they run environmental controls around the cabin, that they are the ones that open the cellar door kick-starting the horror, and that every nook and cranny of the cabin and forest is lined with tiny fiber optic cameras. "Watch the master at work," indeed.

Where we, as the audience, are expected to do our part, comes in our exposure to any horror movie that has ever been written prior to this one, a partial awareness of each trope.  There are standard reactions to be expected from us, outside of chainsaw-themed dreams after the film.  We flinch, we squeal, we yell at the screen, we laugh, we curse the idiotic heroes and we cheer the villains that lay out brutal justice on horny half-wits and jerks.  We, as the audience of individuals, relate to certain characters while loathing others.  We invest ourselves in the movie's aura,  whether in the shrine of a cinema or the pale glow of a computer screen, and we react to the input with output.  Even though we suspend disbelief and dislocate reality, and in doing so buy the mythology laid out by the film-maker, we must ultimately embrace the real one.  

This movie plays with all that while maintaining a cool comic timing, but it expects more.  The question is asked, where does our fascination with horror come from?  What is the root of fear? We see certain lines blurred and expectations burned, right from the start.  Sublime terror of suburbia, Hadley at the water cooler, complaining that his wife has put child safety catches on all the drawers in their house, even though they just started fertility treatments.  Just another job, just another schlub.  The familiarity of this banter and the humorous nuance of the kids preparing to go to the cabin is set up to endear us to them, early on, in a manner that many horror movies fail to even hint at in an entire course of the film.  Laughter.  The genuine laughs throughout this film are what draw us in more than anything.  The horror genre has been bent off its axis and fused with comedy, without losing our interest. The game has officially been changed, or rather, it returns to the purpose it should serve, which is catharsis.

The distinction of course being that we are dealing with professionals here, both on-screen and off.  The operation that brought these kids to the cabin in the first place is a strong part of the social system that binds, an idea pointed out by the fool character early on.  The production company that made this film is part of a similar social system that plays itself out in all media, just as binding, but less Ancient Evil God oriented.  Or is it?

At a certain point, a Marine guard, the audience's stand-in for a fresh point-of-view in the operation cut-away, asks why the nudity of the whore is necessary.  The response could very well be a representative of the movie company, speaking for shareholders. "We're not the only ones watching here. We got to keep the customer satisfied. You know what's at stake here."  Being prepped is not being prepared.

In any event, rather than giving a simple play-by-play of the entire film, we'll continue our analysis by touching on a few major points where The Cabin in the Woods intersects with other films of its genre, while sussing out the resonance of certain lines and scenes with their "meta value", then break down the overarching impact of Lovecraftian mythos, and how, with this film, they trump all other forms of horror.

When the characters arrive at a gas station and meet the Harbinger, a throwback to the angry spirit of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, we get our first clue of titles and intents, set up in plain sight.  Soon after, this tension is diffused into comic relief when the Harbinger puts a call into Sitterson and Hadley, ranting about blood sacrifice for a while before realizing that he's been put on speaker phone.  This sort of undercut is played out with almost every tension built by the horror element of the film, working for it on first viewing, but perhaps not on successive ones.

Our textured protagonists, meanwhile, are enjoying their arrival at the cabin.  A scene is inserted to play off stereotypical gender roles from slasher flicks gone past; the scholar character removes a disturbing painting from the wall of his room to discover that he's on the transparent side of a one-way mirror. Of course, the virgin character enters the room and start primping herself in the mirror. Then undressing.  The natural conclusion is curtailed for a moralistic flip flop, where after switching rooms, the virgin sees the scholar undressing, and he is ripped.  While this is not akin to any specific film from the horror genre, it is a blatant commentary on standard stereotypes in the "slasher sub-genre",  famous for idiot starlets getting naked for a brief visceral thrill before dismemberment.  The one-way mirror scene subverts and twists that, backhandedly but uniquely.

Bypassing a silly tag line repeated throughout the film ("Let's get this party started!"), the inevitable game of Truth or Dare finishes up with the cellar door banging open, immediately reminiscent of Sam Raimi's Evil Dead, which from the first shot of the cabin soaks this film like brine soaks a pickle.  After daring the virgin to go down the stairs, the quintet discovers a collection of interesting items immediately familiar as the objective correlatives to monsters from horror movies: a conch shell, an amulet, a puzzle box, a ballerina music box, and of course, a diary from which an ancient Latin invocation is read aloud by the virgin.  This invocation summons a family of zombified pain-worshipping backwoods cannibals, whose dramatic arrival is undercut, as is standard, by Sitterson and Hadley's "monster betting pool".  This is them blowing off steam in the same way that we, the audience, laugh at the on-screen brutality.

At the end of the day, though, the humorless cosmic toxicity of H.P. Lovecraft's Ancient Evil makes its presence known in the film, and ends up subsuming all that came before it, literally.  Less blatant than the Necronomicon of Sam Raimi's day, the construct of this film, the bound-in sacrificial pit of the forest and the cabin, serves as a sacrifice of the archetypes to a sleeping Ancient One.  Since the operation our movie is involved in is global in scale, we can presume that there are multiple Ancient Ones throughout the world, accepting their yearly offerings in exchange for relative peace.  This is exemplified best in an invocation made by our goofy office-mates after the death of the whore. "This we offer in humility and fear, for the blessed peace of your eternal slumber. As it ever was."  The key line of course being the last, for in the Lovecraft mythos we find the invocation of the Old Ones as "The Old Ones are. The Old Ones were. The Old Ones will be."

After brutal deaths of all archetypes but the virgin and the fool, an elevator into the lower levels of the sacrificial forest is discovered.  Here, likely by design, we find elements of the movie Cube, as well as a hint of the anti-bureaucratic sentiment of that film.  There is a menagerie of monsters, too varied for a viewer to take in with only one sitting, set up and awaiting the activation of the appropriate objective correlative in the basement of the cabin.  The virgin finally establishes that they have been puppets all along, victims of fate, or rather, sacrifices to a vast creature of unimaginable evil.  Another exchange from earlier on in the film, between the Marine and a Chem Department scientist, gives us more of an idea of the puppetmaster the fool can only speculate on for most of the film.  The monstrous menagerie, or stable, is populated by remnants of the "old world" courtesy of "You-know-who" (pointing downward).

Lovecraft's Cthulu is often called the dreaming god, and the Ancient One addressed with sacrifice in this film is similar in scope if not location (Cthulu sleeps underwater, in R'yleh). Perhaps the concept of dormant but stirring cosmic evil controlling social norms behind a sticky curtain resonates with the core of humans more than we are likely comfortable with admitting.  It is not terribly far-fetched, the idea that society sits at the edge of chaos, binding, as it is, with laws and debts and pragmatic dismissals of pure autonomy, and it is rare enough that any horror film outside of a zombie apocalypse flick would approach this matter, let alone with such nuance as Cabin in the Woods manages.

In the final analysis, this movie is less about exploring the stereotype of Chris Hemsworth's "No matter what, we have to stay together" than it is about the less-lightly explored resonance of Sigourney Weaver's "It's our task to placate the Ancient Ones, as it is yours to be offered up to them."  In an interview regarding the film, Whedon cited John Carpenter as an influence, and likely the movie he was considering when he said that was the highly under-rated In the Mouth of Madness, perhaps the purest Lovecraftian movie to be made without being a direct translation. 

Before concluding, we'll dwell momentarily on the idea of the Ancient Ones presented by Goddard and Whedon, and  or Elder Evils, Lovecraft's take on a clearly Gnostic (and fittingly, very old) concept known as the Archons.  Imprisoned in gross matter, the souls of the world seek reunification with the Wholeness. The corrupted and complicated machinations of the Archons, rulers of this world, keep mankind from achieving spiritual fulfillment.  And as evidenced in our own world, the many must suffer for the few, and vice versa.  To this end, and along these lines, correlatives to Cabin in the Woods emerge, if you look at the content and themes touched, only slightly askance. 

We live in a world of true horror, and evil in the form of negligence and corruption and bigotry.  On grander scales, the still-mounting nuclear disaster in Fukushima, the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil horror, the forever threat of terrorism at home and abroad, and so many other things brought about by society's trends towards mankind's detriment dwarf any mythological beast we can conjure with our most fevered imaginations, but they arise as a direct response to such things.  Our need for catharsis through control is our reaction to true dread, our desire is to undercut our feeble fragility in the face of pure and pungent terror.  So it is that we express ourselves through the opiates known as television and the movie theater.  The audience seeks control, the same as the operators of the sacrificial cabin, and they serve faceless entities with all the rights to and none of the joys of humanity.  The audience is the sacrifice to those faceless entities at the same time.  The idea of control is illusory and at best temporary.  Chaos runs rampant, regardless.  Like Cthulu, the audience dreams, unwitting, on the Plateau of Leng.  

The time will come that a tremendous hand shoots out of the ground and strikes you, ending your fantasy, your brief comfort.  Same as it ever was. 

Sweet dreams.   

I don't get it.

Initial Impressions of Avengers vs. X-Men

The Phoenix got all the way to Sirius before it remembered it left its bag at our house.

This week we saw the arrival of the latest rehashing of old concepts at the House of Ideas, the much ballyhooed Avengers vs. X-Men.  The build-up for this hero vs. hero slug-fest goes back as far as House of M, which we should all remember ended with the near-eradication of the mutant species.  In the final pages of that series, Hank Pym (who was a Skrull at the time?) was discussing the most fundamental law of any universe, namely that every action has an equal or opposite reaction.  Corresponding to his closing dialogue, the final page of the series was a flashing light on the edge of Earth akin to a manifestation of the Phoenix.  Or was it just a reflection of the sun?

In The Fearless, we discover that some enchanted armors just want to watch death-ice churn. 

Fast-forward to present day, past Civil War and Secret Invasion and Dark Reign.  The first mutant to be born after M Day, a child named Hope, was given the Cable treatment, that is, raised by Cable in the distant post-apocalyptic future to become a soldier, and possibly destined to be the messiah of all mutantkind.  After the events of last summer's traumatic blockbuster Fear Itself, the Marvel Universe is reformatting quickly.  Colossus is now the Juggernaut.  Mutants in Utopia are straight kickin' it with Namor and X-Club.  Immediately after the end of Fear Itself, Red Skull's daughter Sin kicked into gear her own planet-destroying scheme in the pages of the year-long digression The Fearless, and Matt Fraction's Mighty Thor secured the thunder god's inevitable revival, with surprisingly little fanfare.  Meanwhile, the wacky remaining mutants in Utopia have had their own falling out with Schism, creating an interesting "Wolverine as Professor X/Cyclops as Magneto" dynamic.  Furthermore, the Scarlet Witch, the mentally unstable reality warper that nearly wiped out the mutant race, has returned via a Young Avengers special, with vague allusions hinting at her mental state being somehow corrupted by Dr. Doom back at the start of that mess.  Speaking of Dr. Doom, Fantastic Four saw the death of Johnny Storm, the co-opting of Spiderman into the newly designed Freedom Foundation, and eventually a collision of plotlines involving multiple Reed Richards, angry Celestial Gods, and a Franklin Richards time travel plot device that only Johnathan Hickman could pull off.  Uncanny X-Force dealt major blows to Montana with the Dark Angel Saga, and of course, rehashing a plot that tasted better the second time, Norman Osborne reinvented a team of Dark Avengers and did a little PR muck-raking against the Avengers, while at the same time making himself a Super Adaptoid.  Dumbass.

Namor is a straight up pimp. But he don't mess with no ginger strange.

Moving right along, we've seen great attempts at consolidation of continuity in Marvel within the past year, perhaps partially in response to DC's big universal shake-up.  Venom teamed up with Red Hulk, X-23 and the admittedly regrettable female Ghost Rider to undo a ravaging hellscape sprouting out of Las Vegas.  Wolverine, while on at least 3 different teams, has settled down in his morning shift as Headmaster of the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, his mid-day shift as floating Avenger, and his night shift as de facto leader of X-Force. Recent issues of Uncanny X-Men (above and below) have had Cyclops' team of militant bent mutants playing clean up with Tabla Rasa and S.W.O.R.D. prison disintegration.
  

Unit (insert Beavis heh heh) doses Namor and Emma with pheromones. Atlantean Kings prefer blondes. And taken women.

You can almost hear the soundtrack here. Cap's all got the DUN DUN DUNNN going after that.

Magneto, take note: don't threaten to disassemble Vision when he's within arm's reach.

Moving even closer towards the approaching storm of Avengers vs. X-Men, we see an interestingly violent exchange occur between Magneto and the Vision, and a stern line from Captain America to Cyclops on where his priorities lay.  Abigail Brand makes the lovely move of having Unit (heh) stored with the X-Men, whereupon Unit's keeper, Danger, is ordered to bring Hope to him for a brief Power Point presentation on the Phoenix Force.

This is where S.W.O.R.D. fails and succeeds. Brand's a sneaky broad.

Oh, and Unit puts Danger in her place. Like a cold bastard.

This is where Unit (heh heh heh) totally pulls an "oh snap" on Danger. It's all "OH NO HE DI'INT!"

So it may be about that time where you're wondering if Avengers vs. X-Men, being so grandiose and all, will have a zero issue?  Sure.  And to start things off, we have Scarlet Witch's inauguration back into the ranks of the angels with a conflict against one pissed off M.O.D.O.K. Since Wanda, as we mentioned, is in part responsible for kicking this whole thing off, and is a semi-Avenger as well as Magneto's daughter, we can imagine that her role in upcoming issues of AvX will be important, or at the very least dramatic.

Scarlet Witch's comeback, starring a chatty M.O.D.O.K. 

The first issue of Avengers vs. X-Men starts with the crash-landing of Nova, former New Warrior and the current possessor of the Xandarian Worldmind, into the Chrysler Building.  After he passes out with a cryptic "It's coming..." Iron Man does a scan of the energy signature on his suit.  Sure enough, Nova's coated with Phoenix energies. Conveniently, while presenting this to the President of the United States, Hope's getting kicked in the ribs during a training session with Cyclops. She manifests a Phoenix blast. This sets off Iron Man's sensors. The rest is a matter of course.

Seems like these guys never were that close to Jean Grey, were they?

In a brief moment before Cap arrives, Cyclops mulls over the implications of the Phoenix's potential approach, of Hope's fulfillment of her forced role as mutant messiah, and of course, the power that may be used to get the world a new resurgence of mutie scum.

Big flashing neon signs over Cyclops saying "HE'S THE NEW MAGNETO" couldn't be more obvious.

That's really the $64,000 question,  isn't it? Probably milk and cookies. Lots of 'em, for everyone.

Of course, Captain America is chilling on the shoreline of Utopia with a cloaked Avengers Battlecruiser at the ready.  He wants to take Hope into protective custody pending the arrival of the Phoenix (since his heavy hitter team in space is likely not going to stop the approaching cosmic force).   He has a few tense words with Cyclops, who reacts predictably.

The first shot has been fired.  The tagline has been said. It can only get more brutal from here on out.

The initial face-off roster seems a tad lopsided. Note that Wolverine and Beast are on the thin red line.

So, what's next?  Only Joe Quesada knows.  There are certain decisions that have been made by Marvel to build this event up, potentially out of proportion with what is feasible or in good taste.  Professor Charles Xavier has been quiet and almost entirely out of the loop of mutant books, outside of a brief appearance in the first issue of Wolverine and the X-Men.  If he does not emerge in the course of AvX all fanboys should call shenanigans, unless Onslaught, throwback fusion entity from the Heroes Reborn days, has something to do with it.  The compulsive militant extremism of Cyclops has reached a peak. The priggish self-righteous do-goodery of Captain America has become creepy.  Who's right? Who's wrong?  Is there any such thing in the Marvel Universe any longer?  Will mutant and human relations become even more strained? Will S.W.O.R.D. be able to do its job for once, when the Phoenix inevitably arrives on Earth?  Will the intriguing Unit play any further role in the shaping of events? And when the Phoenix Force finally arrives, what will it do? Cease the endless flow of Resurrection within Marvel continuity? Bring back the mutant genome? Bring back a pissed off and confused Jean Grey? Kill Cyclops? Kill anyone?

Whatever the case may be, expect multiple variant covers, e-readable issues, and tons of spoilers on blogs such as this one in the months to come.  The teetering tight-rope act that Marvel sometimes plays with its legitimately interesting cast of characters has reached a crucial point.  Whether it's a needlessly convoluted let-down as with Secret Invasion, or a trope-shattering flat-tire ending as with Civil War, we can be certain of only one thing, and one thing alone.

Uncle Ben is still dead.