A couple of months ago, I couldn’t turn round without bumping into a new white paper of some kind. There’s been nothing like that published recently, so I figured it was time for the Journal to get in on the action.
So without further ado, click through for a three-page PDF preview of the unlikely ever to be completed Fractal Hall Journal Special Report.
Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page.
And before I forget, the fonts used in the strip are all from the indispensable Blambot.
Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page.
Edit: Hmm. Where there should be an image, there is none. Not sure what’s going on here, but the server’s been a bit funky over the past day or so. I won’t get a chance to fiddle around with it until a little later on. Summer events, eh. There’s always delays.
Later Edit: Ok, looks like it’s fixed now. Don’t have a clue what the trouble was, but hopefully it won’t reoccur tomorrow.
Summer’s here, folks, and I can tell because it’s been raining all weekend and the shed almost blew over. The Big Two have kicked off their Big Annual Crossovers, and not to be outdone, here at the Hall we’re going to start and finish our Event That Changes Everything within the span of a single week. No hype, no overpromotion, and we certainly don’t expect you to drop a couple of hundred quid for the pleasure. Although, you know, feel free to do so if you really want to.
The rest of this week’s posts will be a little different to usual, but before we get to them there’s something I wanted to mention here.
I don’t write about politics much on the Journal. The count in the column over there on the right tells me there’s 12 posts tagged under that heading, but even then they’re only broadly political and not really about any particular incident or headline. And that’s a deliberate decision on my part. Out in Meat Space you can’t shut me up about politics, certainly not after a couple of beers.
That’s reason one. I know what I get like. If the new Batman cartoon gets me all frothy about the brain, imagine what important things do to me. The Journal is meant to be an enjoyable diversion, for both myself and for you good folks out there. Losing my shit about the latest fuck-knows-what every single day would get pretty depressing pretty fast.
Reason two is that I’m acutely aware that not everything that makes it to your screens is the most thought-out, carefully-worded and insightful passage in the history of the language. Shocking, I know. Now, if I occasionally write something batshit crazy at four in the morning about toy robots, its actual influence on the rest of my life is negligable to say the least. For the moment, let’s put aside the ever-increasing likelihood of a hypothetical potential future employer googling me and then deciding that maybe the guy who gets all het up about the fate of the Tyrannosaur in Jurassic Park III isn’t the competent team-player they’re looking for. An ill-thought-out screed that you don’t really mean about a hot-button political issue, on the other hand, has the potential to seriously screw up your life. And I don’t need that pressure at four in the morning.
Does that mean I don’t think it’s important to have political views? Or to engage in political debate? Of course not. I don’t think a lot of the debate that happens online is always particularly useful, but that doesn’t mean it’s always unimportant. I just don’t really think that’s what the Journal’s for, and believe me if I thought there was something important that I just couldn’t shut up about, I’d bring it up.
Two things have seriously pissed me off recently. I’m not sure I’m able to articulate appropriately why they irritated me so much, but I don’t really want to let them slide without a remark.
The first I found out about via two posts by David Brothers over at 4thletter!, and was also covered in a post by Jonathan Bernhardt at Funnybook Babylon. I have nothing to add but a deep-felt conviction that there are times when the sheer fucking ignorance of my fellow human beings makes me long for the day when the Martians turn up and blow us all the fuck away.
And then the second was the recent rumour that Jake Gyllenhaal will soon be playing the Prince of Persia.
Wow. What great casting.
Perhaps they can black him up for the role. Perhaps he can put on a comedy Asian accent. Perhaps the production company is anticipating that there will be no kind of outcry from the country currently occupying the bit of the world historically known as Persia because they never ever fall out with the Americans, do they?
This is fucking insane. Who thinks this is a good idea? Does anyone not realise that a clue to the ethnicity of the main character is right there in the pissing title?
Bring on the Martian death rays, I say.
Ah, Batman. What’s going wrong, eh?
I’m going to stress here that I’m not one of the people who’s disappointed in Grant Morrison’s work so far. I think many of the faults in his run have nothing to do with the writing. That said, I suspect that many of the delays are down to Morrison’s commitments to other projects (several from outside of comics, I think), and the delays have absolutely crippled these stories.
Story telling this dense requires the reader to recall things- sometimes, very subtle things- from earlier issues. This isn’t easy when (a) there’s long gaps between issues, (b) the pacing is interrupted by shoddy fill-in stories or company-mandated crossovers, and (c) the artist, for whatever reason, isn’t able to convey the story properly. And these points are all interconnected of course. After all, you may have an awesome artist on a title, but he’s slow, so you have to get an artist that isn’t as good to pick up the slack, but this effects the storytelling, and so on. It’s not a good cycle to get into, and it’s really impairing people’s enjoyment.
Setting everything else aside, I really feel like Morrison is doing something really interesting and special here. It just isn’t quite working out as well as All Star Superman. That shouldn’t be much of a surprise, mind, as All Star doesn’t have any of the same tie-in requirements of the Batman series, and the All Star writing style is very deliberately episodic. Plus, Frank Quitely.
You know who isn’t Frank Quitely? The guy who drew Batman #675.
I really, really don’t like criticising things much, as it’s not really the vibe we strive for here at the Journal. Except for that past-life X-Files episode; that seriously stank. But there’s no getting round the fact that the art on one of DC’s flagship titles has to be better than this. Why isn’t Cliff Chiang on this title? Why do pointless fucking miniseries get better artists? Why is DC wasting Mark Bagley on what will quickly become an irrelevant weekly book? The Batman #675 guy doesn’t even bother drawing pupils half the time. And that’s pupils on people who aren’t wearing the scary-blank-eyed Batman cowl.
Oh, quick aside- wouldn’t it be cool if, just for a brief time in order to do a handful of stories with a specific kind of atmosphere, DC’s house style was to draw Batman without whited-out eyes? Some damn interesting artistic possibilites, there.
Plenty of people have criticised this issue, and most of the criticisms are valid. But taken beat-by-beat, there’s actually something really exciting going on here. It’s just the execution that fails. Bruce Wayne taking out bad guys brutally but stealthily? Robin and Nightwing racing to the scene? Bursting through the doors in the light of the Bat-signal? That’s some cinematic imagery, right there, badly served by the art. And I’m a little worried that may be the final judgement on Morrison’s whole run.
It’s a long Bank Holiday weekend for me now, but I don’t plan on disappearing abruptly again this time. Expect something a little different for next week.
Kick-Ass #2
Like I’ve said before, I really like the concept here and I think this series is exactly what Millar claimed it would be. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but it really doesn’t have to be. The only thing I’m a little cynical about is the speed at which it’s being made into a film. I mean, we haven’t really had a chance to see where Millar’s going with the book yet. Also, while Romita, Jr’s artwork is as brilliant as ever, already the series is running late.
In the mainstream DC/Marvel titles, delays have been fatal to my interest in a lot of titles, the most significant being the ones that have ruined Morrison’s Batman run (more on that tomorrow). And if the big guns can’t afford to have late shipping titles, then creator-owned stuff like this really can’t. It’s one more thing that I think makes monthly 22-page comics less and less viable, and makes me that much more certain I’d rather wait for something to be published in trade format. Seriously, what’s going on with artists these days? Are expectations really far too high? Or are the critics right when they claim that freelancers (either writers or artists) are spending more time on Grand Theft Auto than with the thing that gets them money?
DC Universe #0
Bit of a wet fart, to be honest. Sure, it’s cheap, but the best section was the Batman/Joker face-off that was posted for free before the issue came out. Batman aside, it’s done little more than convince me to avoid the Final Crisis hype and just get the trades. If the series really does stand on its own, then it’ll be worth getting even after all the shocks and twists have been thoroughly spoiled online. And if it doesn’t, then I’m better spending my money on other things.
Suburban Glamour by Jamie McKelvie
Art-wise, McKelvie is one of the best pros working today, his style somewhere between Dave Gibbons, Kevin Maguire and those cartoon women you always see advertising dance music nights on club flyers. In terms of writing, while this isn’t quite as strong as Phonogram, there’s enough potential here to suggest that any further volumes should let him get to grips with the characters without having to worry about all the necessary set-up and backstory.
Iron Man
Like DCU #0 above, I’m not going to say anything here that you haven’t already read loads of times everywhere else. I fucking love this film. The cast were all awesome, and they did a brilliant job of capturing all the good parts and none of the shit parts of the comic. I notice a lot of people are saying it’s overtaken Spider-Man 2 as Bestest Comic Adaptation Ever Ever Ever, which is interesting to me because I always preferred the first Spider-Man film. Sure, I would have preferred the rubber-faced Goblin to RoboWillem, and Molina was perfect as Octavius, but for reasons I don’t fancy going into right now, I was a little disappointed.
My Bestest Comic Adaptation Ever Ever Ever is Batman Begins, so I’m waiting to see The Dark Knight before deciding who’s more triumphant. To be honest, I’m leaning more towards Iron Man because while I’m glad they’ve gone dark rather than camp, the new Batman may be a little too harrowing for me. Then again, Nolan’s never set a foot wrong, so there’s everything to play for.
Two things about the Stark flick: Firstly, it’s a bit cheeky how it wants to have its cake and eat it in political terms. Plenty of evil Ay-Rabs and a Capitalist Scienti-Hero for the Right-wing, but also the evil Capitalist Scienti-Villain, a repentant arms-manufacturer and a self-sacrificing Muslim scientist (and a cameo from Tom Morello, of all people) for the Left-wing.
Secondly, the film is a huge example of why I think Marvel’s made a mistake with their current portrayal of Tony Stark. I don’t want to read about the Doctor Doom version. I want to read about the Robert Downey, Jr. version. But beyond the Favreau/Granov miniseries (which I won’t be getting until it’s good and finished), even though there’s two monthly Iron Man titles (both written by writers I like, one of which is the proverbial great jumping on point) neither of them deal with a hero who isn’t, essentially, and unlikeable super-villain. So by my reckoning, Marvel fail. I bet they’re weeping in response to my lack of interest.
Bonus Preview: The New X-Files Comic
I’ve mentioned the previous Topps comic before as being perhaps the best comic series ever based on a TV property (not saying much, I know), and I’ll be returning to it in greater detail as part of the Hall’s massive X-Files geekfest. But I just heard about DC’s new tie-in, and that it’s being written by Frank Spotnitz, one of the X-Files’ key staff writers. So I’m damned excited about this.
The Unicorn and the Wasp
The weakest episode of the current Who so far, but that isn’t to say that there wasn’t anything to enjoy in it. The Doctor’s detox scene should have been naff, but I thought Tennant overplayed it just right to make it pretty funny. Well, I laughed, anyway. The good news is that the next two episodes are written by the brilliant Steven Moffat. The bad news is we’re going to have to wait two weeks for it because of the bloody Eurovision Song Contest.
And as we’re talking about BBC Wales’ finest, I’ve been thinking about the end of the last series, and some of the criticism levelled at it. And the more I think about it, the more I like it. Thing is, I like all of the mythic, mysterious, alien qualities they give the Doctor sometimes, in particular the events that highlight not only how inhuman he is, but also suggest that he’s a power in the universe even beyond his status as a Time Lord, renegade, Last-Of or otherwise.
The Sylvester McCoy years were jammed full of this (take Curse of Fenric: a chess game with an ancient evil, with pieces carved from dried desert bone), but that kind of spin isn’t difficult to see in earlier incarnations. The Master’s speech, for example, fits this perfectly. And there’s something epic about the concept of Martha Jones travelling a conquered Earth, giving people hope by telling them tales of the Doctor, and then ensuring their faith is amplified through the Master’s psychic network and you know what, writing it out like that does make it sound kind of silly. But no more or less absurd than the pseudoscience of the rest of the series, or most of SF for that matter.
Gravity/Bloodstream by Tess Gerritsen
Gerritsen was a hugely popular crime writer while I was at Waterstones, although I never got round to reading her stuff at the time. But I’m willing to give her books a try at the bargain price of three quid for a two-book omnibus in Tesco.
Gravity is more of a Michael Crichton-type thriller, about the release of a deadly (aren’t they always?) infection on the International Space Station. And it is actually pretty thrilling. And foul, in a squishy-fleshy-autopsy kind of way. And like Crichton’s work, it’s very much science fiction, but it wouldn’t sell as many copies if that’s what it was marketed as. So it isn’t. Most gruesome bit: after a moving scene between an infected woman who knows she’s going to die and her lover, she starts to have a fit, chomping down on his hand and forcing him to, essentially, cave her face in to get his hand loose. And hello there those of you joining us from questionable Google searches. Like I said, squishy-fleshy-autopsy.
The most interesting parts involve the medical science. Gerritsen has a medical background which adds to the authenticity of those scenes, but also highlights the lack of technical detail of spaceflight. Then again, it’s not exactly her home ground. And besides, too much detail would slow the book’s brisk pace, and believe me it’s a very brisk, easy read.
I’m about halfway through Bloodstream, the second book in the omnibus. This one’s a more straightforward crime/medical drama, and is a little more pedestrian because of it. The characters seem more wooden and a lot less interesting, and some of the events that paint a few of the antagonists as pompous arrogant evildoers strain belief a little, which has to be clumsy considering I was just saying how easily I bought the whole Doctor Who psychic satellite thing.
The Doctor drops a sprog, and the internet shits itself.
Spoilers, by the way. Not directed at the shitting oneself comment.
This episode really showed up one of the problems that internet-users experience as opposed to people who just follow shows week to week. The whole online-interaction thing changes the nature of entertainment, after all.
Knowing that Who fans can be particularly, what’s the right phrase? Prone to shitting themselves, makes it even more hilarious that the show’s been resurrected by Russell T. Davies, a man with very little regard for screaming internet nutjobs. While the BBC have been quite switched-on with regard to using internet tools as part of New Who (fake websites, games, you know the drill), they’ve been very careful to ensure that the series can be followed by damn near anyone and that you don’t need the extra bits to enjoy the show. In fact, I’m starting to think that just following it week to week is the best way to go about it.
The identity of the Doctor’s daughter has, apparently, been the subject of a lot of discussion amongst fans, many of whom see the ‘cloning’ explanation for her existence, revealed even before the credits of the episode ran, was a bit of a cheat. The problem is, by now there isn’t going to be an explanation that doesn’t disappoint. If you’ve been kicking around all the different possibilities for months, all the possible angles will have been covered and you’re just not going to enjoy it. Take Lost. Even if the final explanation is a pure gobbet of God-exuded genius, you can bet hordes of people will descend on the message boards to bitch about it.
I liked the episode, myself. I liked the science-fictioneyness of the setting, and the twist about how long the conflict had been taking place. I thought the fish-faced aliens were awesome. And Jenny Who wasn’t so annoying that I wanted to jab glass into my face. This makes the episode a hit for me. Even though I wouldn’t point to any of the new series’ episodes as being better than the best of previous years, I’m certain they’ve been the most consistantly good. There isn’t one that I’d consider to be a New Earth level duffer, and I’ve found at least one thing in every episode to raise it above the mediocre.
I’d heard about the Doctor’s daughter thing ages ago, but didn’t give much thought to it beyond, I don’t know, wondering if she’d turn out to be Susan’s mother. But I kind of guessed not. Of course, if you ignored all internet chatter and just watched the programme, you’d have only learned about it in the teaser at the end of the previous episode, and it would have been just intriguing enough for you to tune in the following week. Which is kind of the point, really.
Short review: Just enjoy the ride.
Sorry about the abrupt loss of inspiration last week, folks. But don’t worry, we’re back in the room.
A while ago, back when I worked at the bookshop, I read Lehane’s Mystic River. I don’t recall why I chose that particular one. I don’t think it was because I knew it was being made into a film, but not long after I finished it I heard about Clint Eastwood having a crack at directing it.
It’s a brilliant book, but I thought the film was shite. It seemed like everything I’d taken from the book was de-emphasised in the film, and I don’t know if that’s further evidence of how people can have completely different takes on something, or if I got completely the wrong end of the stick when I read it. I do know that my mates weren’t keen on the film either.
Sean Penn was really good, don’t get me wrong (and by good, I mean overacted in just the right melodramatic way to be considered Good Acting), but the film was so completely grounded in his all-encompasing grief at the murder of his daughter that everything else was secondary. The other two key characters (Kevin Bacon and Tim Robbins) were hardly in it, Bacon’s role in particular not much more than a cameo. That really struck me as a mistake, because my understanding of the book was about how these three characters lives were intertwined since they were children, and changed completely after Robbins was kidnapped and abused while the other two escaped. It was broadly about a copper versus a criminal, but at the same time a whole lot more: why people end up being who they are, the inevitability of character, about all the uncontrollable things that can drag us down, and lead us to our fates.
In short, the book was structured around Penn and Bacon’s characters being two sides of the same coin, almost like two forces in inevitable opposition. The film is nothing like that, Bacon’s character coming across as a wet bit-part rather than the main protagonist. This, of course, has nothing to do with the book I’m actually meant to be reviewing here.
A Drink, Before The War was Lehane’s debut novel and the first appearance of Kenzie and Genarro, his reoccuring PI characters. I started reading it after Mystic River, but didn’t finish it. It’s not as good a book, which isn’t really a surprise. It treads a lot of the same ground as a lot of other gritty detective stories, and there’s not much subtlety to be found.
Even so, where it differs from other books is the uncompromising way Lehane deals with working class life in Boston, and the racism and violence ingrained in all the organisations of the City, from criminal gangs to state politicians. It’s strikingly similar to the themes found in The Wire, a programme that Lehane himself ended up writing for. It’s this undercurrent that’s most interesting in the book, and that raises it about the usual grim crime story.
Anyway, the reason I brought up the Eastwood film is that it’s Ben Affleck’s turn to adapt one of Lehane’s books. Gone, Baby, Gone was out in the US last year, but is only landing this side of the Pond next month. It’s got a couple of good write-ups, but if I’d seen Mystic River the film first, I wouldn’t have bothered with the book. So I need to read the book first, but it’s the fourth in the series, and thanks to nerd obsessiveness I need to get through the other ones first. They’re on order from the library, and Darkness, Take My Hand is up next.
