aka Thoughts while watching Hellboy 2: The Golden Army

Denial: Okay, so it's off to a weird start. Everything looks a little bit too bright and cute, but I mean we're just beginning. It's only been, what? Twenty, thirty minutes? Mike Mignola helped write the story, didn't he? And I love Mike Mignola! We'll get to the good stuff soon, I'm sure.

Anger: What? What is this? What am I watching? What the hell am I watching? What is happening here? Why is it all jokey? Why is Hellboy a prick? He's always been tough and impulsive but underneath all that bluster we know he's not careless with other people's lives! Why is Liz Sherman on fire every time she's mad? We get it already! She can start fires! Why is Johann Krauss nothing like his character? Why is Abe annoying? We already know these characters, we should care about them! How the hell did this happen? How the hell did this movie make me not care about anyone of these characters I love? What's going on? Why is this movie written for seven year old children? What the hell am I watching?

Bargaining: Well, the set looks great, doesn't it? And I mean, I love del Toro! He's one of my favorite directors! Cronos was great, The Devil's Backbone was great, Pan's Labyrinth was great - hell, even Blade II was ridiculous fun! He did such a great job of making the first HB movie, I couldn't think of anyone else who could do a better job, right? And Hellboy is, like, one of my most favorite comics to come out in the last ten years! And Ron Perlman is still Hellboy, right? Luke Goss is awesome as Prince Nuada. Sort of. And, uh, the creatures are really well designed! And there are so many creatures! Creatures are great! Right?

Depression: There are waaaaay too many creatures and I don't know what they are here for. There are waaaaay too many things happening and I don't care. This is Hellboy 2! I've been waiting 254378191021 years for Hellboy 2! And this is what we get. Why? Why? Why does it feel like a Hollywood trap? Why? Why is there a drunken sing-along to Barry Manilow? Why are people laughing to the drunken sing-along to Barry Manilow? Why? Why? Why?

Acceptance: You know, I think I'll just stick to reading the comics from now on.

I caught The Dark Knight last Sunday despite having planned to see the movie much, much later. I was never a big fan of the Batman - except maybe of his animated incarnation. In my head, the Batman sounds like Kevin Conroy. And the Joker sounds like Mark Hamill. I was optimistic about the movie because Nolan is a good director but I wasn't in a hurry. I figured it'd stay in theatres long enough, so I could still catch it after everyone and their mothers are no longer lining up. However, I had to get out of the house for some errands and found myself at the mall, so I decided to just go already.

Fortunately, I was able to get a good seat. Unfortunately, I was right about everyone and their mothers. And probably their cousins, first and second and thrice removed. Everyone wanted to watch The Dark Knight. There were kids everywhere you looked - which was odd, because from everything we'd seen and heard about the film, it didn't feel like something kids would really enjoy. It was a two-hour and twenty minute tragedy, which, really, is how a Batman story should be. I was worried that by the end of the first hour kids would start getting impatient and start making noise and throwing unholy tantrums that their parents wouldn't be able to get under control. Did I mention, by the way, that I don't like kids? I don't like kids.

Sure enough, just as I was chanting Anyonebutkidsohpleaseohplease in my head, in comes this family - two parents, seven children. Seven. One teenager, three tweens, two very loud young boys playing with their PSPs and one young girl. Count them. Seven. And, would you look at that, they were headed right up to my aisle. Fantastic. Thankfully, the youngest girl ends up sitting next to me, and she doesn't look like the kind who'd make too much noise (it was the two young boys I was really worried about). They all take their seats (after eight and a half years of arguing who gets to sit where and who gets to hold the goddamn popcorn) and the mom turns to the dad and says, "Pero the Joker has been in the movies before, di ba? Didn't he kill Batman's parents?"

Before he could answer, the little girl next to me says, "Only for that movie. The Joker didn't have anything to do with the murder of the Wayne's. Their killer was Joe Chill." Her brothers promptly start mimicking her, calling her a know-it-all.

You can see Jonathan Lethem's list of Top Five Depressed Superheroes on his website. It's a pretty a good list. For one thing, Black Bolt ends up taking the number one spot and, you have to admit, it is hard to argue with that. The guy can't talk. Ever. No talking. No sounds. Every night he has to go and meditate - to basically resolve all issues and shut everything out - so he doesn't go to sleep with any baggage and accidentally say something in his sleep and destroy everything around him. He can never tell his wife Medusa how much he loves her even though he loves her more than anything in his entire world.

Now when it comes to depressed superheroes, we've got a whole lot to choose from. We could try a different approach. "Valeria Richards. For potential." Phil suggests. "I mean, between the whole being controlled by Doctor Doom and child services separating them from their parents and, well , you know, actually having Reed Richards as a father. Also? We've just found out that her mother is a Skrull. A Skrull! There's just no way that kid is going to turn out alright."

The first person I always remember is Ben Reilly, the Scarlet Spider. Poor Ben Reilly. Makes me sad just thinking about it. Can you imagine what that must have been like? The Jackal created him to fight Spider-man, the man he was cloned after. He lost and was left for dead. He survived somehow and chose to wander aimlessly. No home, no family. No identity. Nothing. Even his memories were not his own - he shared Peter Parker's. Eventually he decided to come back to New York and fight crime. He was pretty good at it, too. Before long, he was fighting alongside Peter, who even asked him to watch over the city for a while he and his wife try to start a family. Poor Ben Reilly died at the hands of the Green Goblin, taking a blow that was meant for Peter. He died in Peter's arms, his body decomposing rapidly.

Man. It's not easy being a clone. As if life weren't confusing enough. Is it any wonder he designed his costume had a cut-off hoodie?

Have you got any favorites or suggestions?

And now, from Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee's Inhumans V2 #1, a truthful and heartbreaking moment in comics:



O, reyna ng mga Inhumans na yan, ha?

Scenes from my childhood: Jessica Drew a.k.a. Spider-woman, my first ever comic book love, in an old episode of the 70's animated series. This one is from episode #11, Spider-woman And The Fly.

Without blinking, I can tell you that the episode I still remember most is the episode #1, Pyramids of Terror. You can watch that here and here. One of my favorite moments is when Spider-woman, trapped and in danger of being closed in by great big brick wall, uses her spider telepathy to command the sand spiders to chew through the wall. Heehee. Another is when she was in the helicopter with her colleague Jeff and her nephew Billy and is looking for a way to "change to Spider-woman unnoticed". What does she do? Why, she jumps out of the chopper, of course. Hahahaha. Way to go unnoticed.

I also get a kick out of how many episodes ended with Jeff and Billy going, "Gosh, you should have been there, Jessica! Spider-woman saved the day!" Man. Different times.

The question at today's lunch table of geeks is Five Comic Book Characters You'd Like to Have Dinner With. Naturally, such a question needs serious consideration. Everybody promised to think on it and come back with a good list. Here's mine.

I have always been of the mind that the true test of funny is if the object at hand is able to make you spurt liquids you are otherwise consuming - coffee, juice, milk, etc. - spurt right out of your nose. Case in point: this and/or any other comic strip from David Malki's  Wondermark. Brilliant.


click to see the bigger picture

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to wipe the Pepsi of my screen.

And now, another awesome moment in comics. From Avengers Illuminati #04 by Brian Michael Bendis, Brian Reed and Jim Cheung. Love advice from the Sub-Mariner anyone?



Behold, Namor - the voice of reason.

Over at lunch, a young and terribly excited expecting couple told me about the challenges of preparing for their first child. Not the least of which includes picking out a name. They'd already been told that they're expecting a girl, which narrows down the field but, apparently, not that much.

It's tricky, the young, very pregnant mother tells me. She is so pregnant that I'm a little afraid she's going to give birth while we're eating our summer salads. I get ready to make a mad dash to the hospital, just in case. Naming is tricky because you have to come up with a balance. You want a name that's not too common but not too weird. You can think about naming the kid after someone, but you'll have to be very careful. You don't want to start a feud between family members over whose grandmother or grandfather you're naming her after. Also, you run the risk of suggesting a name that'll remind you of a paste-eating kid you knew back in preschool.

"Gwendolyn?" the young father to be suggests. "It's a nice name, isn't it?"

"No!" his wife gasps immediately. "I mean, how ominous! She got thrown off the George Washington Bridge!" Did I mention by the way, that the happy young couple were comic book geeks?

"Oh, right!" he says, reproaching himself. "But I guess that means we have to get rid of a lot of names on the list." He frowns. "Shame. I've always liked the name Barbara."

"Oh, come on." I say to him. "What are the odds the Joker will come and ruin your daughter's life? And if you're crossing off names of people who went through anything unfortunate in comics, you're better off not naming the kid after anyone in comics at all."

"And anyway, after the whole Braniac debacle, she got movement back in her toes." His wife adds, smiling hopefully."She'll walk again."

He nods thoughtfully, obviously taking this into consideration. "Would you ever name your kids after comic books characters?" he then asks me. I nod. "Of course. Phil and I have talked about it. I've agreed to name the child after Namor, if it's a boy. On the condition that we name her Barda if it's a girl."

I kind of, sort of, really, really, really, really want this poster.

I've a confession to make. I don't get Wonder Woman. At least, not really, I don't think. I've never really cared much for her character because, to me, it felt like she was no more than just that - a character. She was a figurehead; an icon, rooted in so much mythology that she was never able to come up with her own story. It didn't help that most of her stories, her personality and her relationships with so many other characters were formulated and reformulated again and again and again by so many writers, none of whom ever really made anything clear. I suspect that a lot (not all, surely, but a lot, I think) of the women I've heard say they like Wonder Woman like her not so much because of her individuality, but because of the many things she was supposed to stand for - freedom, strength, sisterhood and feminism, just to name a few. In the end, she stood for so many things that may or may not have been clearly expressed before. Or ever. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention. Or maybe I wasn't paying the right attention to the right stories. Or maybe it's the Star Panties. I mean, come on, really? What does the Star Spangled Banner have to do with Greek Myth? Anyway, yes, try as I might, Wonder Woman felt like an estranged figure to me.

But today, as I was rereading Gail Simone's run on Birds of Prey, I rediscovered something. It was a little moment, a little encounter (and really, what makes BoP for me is those meaningful little moments between characters) between Diana and Dinah, better known as Black Canary. It was amazing how, in just these few panels, how I got to know just how great Wonder Woman could be. With a little help from Black Canary (whom I have loved forever, second only to Big Barda), I saw Diana in a completely different light. Gail Simone has been writing the new Wonder Woman series for a while now, but I haven't really seen anything to top these few panels.

taken from Birds of Prey #64, by Simone, Bennett & Jose



She became, not just a great character, but someone I could understand and look up to. I understood, all of a sudden, if a little bit, all the things she is supposed to stand for and why they all still matter, and why, despite her archaic and seemingly convoluted origin, why she perseveres as a character. I understand, a little bit better now, why there are people who like her. A lot. Despite the Star Panties.

And now, another great moment in comics. This time from Omega the Unknown #5, brought to us by Jonathan Lethem and Faryl Dalrymple.



Yes, that is a severed hand. That grew feet. And killed a man. Oh, and it glows in the dark. Lethem and Dalrymple are perfectly matched for this bizarre and rewarding title.

What do you get when you remove Garfield from Garfield comic strips? Turns out, you get a bleak and humorous comic about John Arbuckle and his daily struggle with sickness, desperation, boredom and inhumanity. Bite-sized voyages into the mind of a suburban dweller who can only fight the dementia for so long. Go to Garfield Minus Garfield to watch him unravel.

Here are some of my personal favorites:









Powerful stuff. There will probably be laughter - but the mirthless, unbelieving kind.

Meet Hiro. He and his girlfriend Mayumi live in New York City, in a humble apartment in Brooklyn. They are young and deeply, sweetly, in love. Like all young lovers though, they too are trying to make it in a big world. They are trying to make a life for themselves. It doesn't have to be a perfect life. Hiro and Mayumi may be young, but they know enough of the world to know it will never be perfect out there. It just has to be a good life. One that doesn't knock them around so hard. And, more importantly, one they can live out together. They work hard everyday. They barely have any time together - by the time she comes home from the office, he has to go work his shift waiting tables - but it's okay. They know, they hope, that if they work hard enough, someday, it won't have to be so hard. So it's with this humble but noble dream that they face any and all obstacle that come their way - even the likes of food editor of Vogue magazine Jeffery Steingarten, an entire kitchen of angry, murderous, knife-wielding chefs, and, of course, Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla. Big lizard that likes to wreck cities Godzilla. He comes to New York in issue #1 of Johnny Hiro to kidnap Mayumi. It's in issue #2 that Hiro gets chased by the knife-wielding chefs who want their lobster back.


Sound silly? Or absurd? Sure. You bet. There's plenty of absurdity and silliness going around in Johnny Hiro. But there's also a lot of insight. There's a lot of fun and action in the city, pop-culture references and all around outlandishness, but that never takes away from the heart behind it all. In Johnny Hiro, Fred Chao has managed to mix the element of newness and surprise in each story with a cohesive tone that allows the reader to love them as a series. His art is lovely and minimalistic, and his narration is sharp and grounded - something that helps, strangely, when telling even the most absurd details of Hiro's story. When I picked up Johnny Hiro, I was expecting a fun, lighthearted read. It was that and a lot more.

The characters of the stories, Hiro, Mayumi, Hiro's parents, and even Mr. Masago, the big, booming man who runs the little restaurant Hiro works in, are all delightfully rendered. They are real and lovable. I was more than interested - I was involved. So when Hiro went running after Godzilla to save the girl he loves, I  cheered loudly for him. I certainly knew I couldn't stop him. He was blind to the danger, even the impossibility of the situation. He had to get her. He will go get her every time. He loves her, after all, deeply and sweetly, and he couldn't imagine life without her. That's what's going to give him (and his story) real strength - that's what's going to take him (and his readers) all the way.

I love ghost stories. I do. And really, who doesn't? There's just a great amount of fun to be had in a good ghost story. The problem, of course, with ghost stories is that they all tend to sound the same after a while. Ghost in the bathroom, ghosts in the field, ghost of a girl who hung herself, ghost of murdered victims, ghosts in the mirrors...and so on and so on. The venue and the little details might change every once in a while, but essentially, when you've heard one, you've heard them all. That, and the stories are almost always told in what I like to call the fifth person perspective: "I heard from this guy who was my brother's friend's classmate..." or something.

But that's what so great about Hosui Yamazaki's manga, Mail. Never mind that the stories sound a little bit too familiar. Yamazaki has perfected his craft so well that he can dish out a great scare every single time with his dead-on suspenseful pacing and brilliantly focused art. Each chapter is a short episodic story with just the perfect timing and ability to deliver the scare. There is very little blood or gore here and neither are they necessary. Like a true, well-told ghost story should, each chapter leads you in slowly, from page to page, taking you into the dark and the cold until the moment of true terror strikes.

Luckily, we have Reiji Akiba. He just like your typical oddball detective with Columbo-esque quirks, except he specializes in dealing with the dead. He's a regular ghostbuster - minus the proton pack and trap. Instead, he's armed with the Kagatsuchi (spirit gun) and his years of experience and he sets out to lay the unquiet ghosts to their rest. His clients, however, usually have the same kind of attitude. They know something is horribly wrong and they're terrified - but they just won't admit that it could be something supernatural. But that's just another great thing about this manga. The people act so realistically that the dialogue and all the events come so naturally.




Hosui Yamazaki's art - which works so well in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service - works even better here in Mail. His visual style is the key to building up the reader's fear. He has perfected the use of the full page and two-page spread - you see just how much in the second story of the first volume. And like all good storytellers, Yamazaki knows when to start and when to end a story. Mail is only a full three volumes. Because of the episodic nature of the stories, this might be the best way to go. However, he has promised his readers that they will see more Reiji Akiba. And we do see him in the fourth volume of Kurosagi (which is also pretty brilliant, by the way. It was informative, imaginative and terrifying as hell). That's another thing, too. Reading Mail, I realized just how much contribution Yamazaki has in Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service, a manga he co-writes with Eiji Ohtsuka.

You know the kind of book that makes you wish you had a copy for everyone you know? Yes. I think the Mail series is one of them. If you like ghost stories as much as I do, this is definitely something you should look into.

Hey! Is it July 2008 yet?

o1

Dear Judd Winnick,

So ~ Green Arrow / Black Canary 1. Gargh. Honestly, I don't even know how to begin. Maybe I'll start by asking why Zatanna's best advice to Black Canary is to get her "behind on the beach, get drunk and stay there" a mere month after her husband supposedly died on their wedding night. Then maybe I'll ask why you're writing everyone on the Justice League as if they were the world's most enormous dumbasses.



Okay. I'm gonna go gouge my eyes out now.

Thanks, but no thanks,
Lizzy


o2

Dear Jonathan Lethem,

Omega the Unknown is awesome. And we've only had one issue so far. I know you're a very busy man, but could you possibly write more comics? It's obvious now that you need to be writing a story about the Inhumans or Vision.

Lots of love and chocolate pudding,
Lizzy