The Fractal Hall Journal

The Incredible Hulk

Much like Iron Man, I’ve got nothing to say that hasn’t been said. I thought it was fantastic, everything I wanted in a Hulk film, and with a really consistant tone to the previous cinematic Marvel U film. There’s so much potential here for an Avengers series, and I’m pretty excited about that. In comments here not too long ago, the possibility of the Hulk being the bad guy in the Avengers film was mentioned. I’m not sure that’s quite what will happen (the theme of this film was the possibility of the Hulk being a hero, after all), but the Stark cameo could suggest that they’re putting a team together and they either want the Hulk to join, or they want to take him down. If I was to make a guess, I’d say the Avengers film will have the team hunting the Hulk in Act One, only for them to need him in the climactic battle.

The other thing I wanted to mention was the shot of the cylinder holding the Super Soldier serum that shows is labelled “Weapon Plus”. I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere (but then again, I wouldn’t have because I’ve been avoiding spoilers), but wasn’t this Grant Morrison’s name for the various iterations of Weapon X, in that Wolverine was part of the Super Soldier programme’s 10th (”X”) generation? A sneaky connection to the contractually isolated mutant movies is pretty cool, but then the whole film is packed full of injokes.

Roundtable

Brian K. Vaughan has apparently sold a film script for a huge amount of dosh that deals with a resurrected Merlin trying to gather a group of modern-day knights in order to, and this is the quote from Aint It Cool News, “defend England against a magical foe.” Hmm, yes. Defend England. Of course.

I’m a big fan of Vaughan. And I’m sure the script is brilliant; it’s already being described as having a Ghostbusters style vibe. It’s a great concept, as modern-day knights are, of course, athletes and businessmen and actors, not exactly dark age warrior material.

Some of you may remember a post a little while back about my problem with adaptations of Arthurian legends (here, in fact). What it amounts to is cultural theft, willful ignorance on the part of writers and film producers regarding the Welsh origins of these myths. Look, I know it’s a dumb thing to annoyed about, really I do. In fact, I may be about the only person who does get irritated by this. But it really, down to my bones, pisses me off.

Put it this way: imagine a hugely successful series of books and films based on Native American legends (or, for that matter, African legends, or Chinese legends, or whatever), jam packed full of Native American characters, yet these characters were never once played by, or referred to as, Native Americans. In fact, every character is played by a white American, and the very tales themselves are attributed to the colonists.

Well, that would be an ignorant thing to do, wouldn’t it?

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Not every funny episode is utter shite, mind. “Arcadia”, where Mulder and Scully go undercover as husband and wife in a planned community, is genius. The humour flows from the believable way Mulder tries to piss his neighbours off in an attempt to provoke them into revealing who (or what) the monster-of-the-week is. For once, it’s a funny episode that relies on the recognisable characteristics of the leads, rather than in trying to subvert them or the series as a whole.

I was going to write a long bit on “Milagro”, the episode that has Scully oddly attracted to a writer who’s moved in next to Mulder, but it annoys me a little too much to spend time on it. Like “Never Again” a couple of seasons ago, Scully is written out of character, and I’m not sure I buy what they’re trying to say about her personality. Essentially, she finds herself falling for someone who follows her around and knows a little too much about her, in such a way that suggests Carter, Shiban and Spotnitz have never spoken to a grown woman and confuse “erotically charged” with “creepy stalker”. And to make it even more excruciating, the character voice-over explains all the amazing skills and insights writers have about everything. Put it away, gents, no one wants to see you doing that in public.

“Field Trip” is a groan-worthy pun of a title, what with Mulder and Scully getting doped by an hallucinogenic fungus and then slowly digested underground. It’s a call-back to other lost-in-the-woods episodes like “Detour” and “Darkness Falls”, complete with hospital time at the end to go along with the whole nightmarish false-awakening sequence that suggests that they may still be under the ground. Never mind the amount of people these two have shot, what the hell does their medical bill look like? I mean, not just physical hospital bed time; how many times have either of them had to consult with a shrink? Who’s paying for all of this? There’s three things I should have kept a tally of when I started watching these episodes- hospitalisations, body counts, and the amount of time Mulder cries. Seriously, he bawls his eyes out more times than he makes witty quips.

There aren’t many arc episodes in the series, but the ones that do turn up are very good, and important. “Two Fathers/One Son” sees the rebel faction of aliens killing the last members of the Syndicate, leaving Cancer Man and Agent Fowley to escape. It’s obviously the production staff’s way of sweeping away all the needlessly complex crap that’s accumulated over the series’ run, in a suitably dramatic fashion. Problem is, as we’ll see next season, it all gets a bit odd again very quickly. Agent Spender is apparently killed, shot by his father in the basement office. I say apparently because we never see it happen, it isn’t mentioned at all in any of the episodes that follow (and you’d think something like that would be big news), and Mulder’s quite happy to pootle along as usual when he gets his room back. I assume this gets cleared up (along with Spender’s brains) in a later series.

“Biogenesis” is certainly a strange end-of-series episode, in that it ends with Mulder gibbering away in an asylum and Scully digging up a bible-quotation covered UFO in Africa. It makes a little bit more sense in the two episodes that kick off S7, but frankly not much. I’ll go into that next time, when the show gets crazy metaphysical.

So, to recap, the global conspiracy appears to have ended, Scully may be immortal, and the two of them could be hallucinating the rest of the series while being digested by a big mushroom. The nostalgia trip’s two-thirds over, and (as of writing) there’s six weeks until the new film’s released. Let’s get this done.

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“How The Ghosts Stole Christmas” really annoyed me first time I saw it, although I couldn’t quite recall why. Oh, it all comes flooding back now. The problem is, the opening twenty-odd minutes are brilliant, The X-Files meets The Haunting. You can almost believe we’re going to get a classic MR James Christmas ghost story. But no, instead the ghosts turn up, psychoanalyse the leads a bit, then give us a needlessly bloody/it-was-all-an-illusion climax. I don’t care if one of the ghosts was played by comic fan and rare American socialist Ed Asner. Actually, I do care, because that’s pretty awesome. As annoying a missed opportunity as the episode is, it’s redeemed a little bit by a surprisingly touching ending, where Mulder and Scully really come across as close friends; it works because the program seems to spend a lot of time in later series separating them. It’s a reminder of why we care enough about these characters to, well, watch a couple of hundred of episodes, in order, years after the programme finished.

But, as it turns out, it isn’t the worst of the comedy episodes, nor the worst episode of the season. Oh no, that award- along with award for worst episode of the entire show- goes to “The Rain King”. Fuck me backwards, I didn’t think it was possible to be more tedious than “The Field Where I Died”, or more nonsensical than “Soft Light”. This episode is an absolute bucket of shit. The investigation has something to do with a man who controls the weather, unconsciously, but the actual episode is about gently-comedic simple folk falling in love. It’s the very first time, in all of these episodes, that I wanted to switch off. Christ, it’s like an episode of- no, there’s nothing to compare it too. It’s a fucking car crash.

It also commits the sin, shared with same-series episode “Agua Mala”, of comedy based on backwards country cretin stereotypes. I’ve got a very low tolerance for classist shit at the best of times. In a show as intelligently written as this, there’s no fucking excuse. About they only thing they didn’t do was a gag about sheep-fuckin’, cos them country-folk love their sheep-fuckin’ (hellooooo Google users).

“Agua Mala” gets a partial out because it’s a fairly spooky (if comedic) monster-of-the-week that reintroduces Arthur Dales. Of course, his character goes on to get the shaft in yet another comedic episode, “The Unnatural”.

Before I get on to that, does anyone remember the issue of Peter Parker: Spider-Man that’s about how much Peter Parker loves baseball? It’s set in the past, when he was a kid and Uncle Ben took him to see whatever that team is they have in New York. I didn’t really like that issue, although I understand a lot of fans who loved it. I think it’s because I have zero interest in baseball, but also because, as far as I understood it, Parker isn’t a baseball fan. Or a fan of any sports. Isn’t he one of us?. Isn’t he the One True Nerd Hero? Don’t we get sport-worship in every other conceivable corner of our lives, whether we want it or not? Must I read about it in Spider-Man? Dear God, can nothing be pure?

Ahem.

What I mean is, it didn’t ring true to me. It looked like a writer projecting a little bit of autobiography on a character, when nothing in the character’s history suggested that kind of history. Then I realised the writer was Paul Jenkins. Paul Jenkins. The Welshman. Which, perhaps without justification, made me think that the story wasn’t even heartfelt, just a way of layering a bit of gooey American-ness in to appeal to the stars-n-stripes-n-apple-pie crowd (in much the same way, I suspect Scotsman Mark Millar’s A-Don’t-Stand-For-France thing in Ultimates wasn’t anything more than a calculated appeal to the jingoistic amongst us).

So with all that in mind, believe me when I say David Duchovny’s love letter to hitting stuff with longer stuff does absolutely nothing for me. It’s not that it’s badly written; quite the opposite. It’s sufficiently witty where it needs to be, and all the characters are likeable enough. But in fanguish terms, a lot of important things to do with the arc story are shat out here for laughs. This is the episode where we see the alien Greys interact with humans fully for the first time, and they’re in deliberately crap costumes. This is the episode where we find out they’re all shape-shifters, that the bounty hunter is in fact a Grey. This is where they decide to undermine the otherwise fantastic character of Arthur Dales by writing in that his brother (and maybe sister) has exactly the same name as him, and play the whole history of the X-Files for a laugh.

I don’t care whether it’s supposed to be in continuity, or if it “all depends on perspective”. Dropping revelations like this in a comedy episode, when the audience (i.e. me) has spent this long waiting for answers is a shitty way to go about things. And ultimately, I think this is why the audience went away. If the creators don’t take their show seriously, why should the viewers? I mean, a handful of comedy episodes is fair enough. Practically a whole series is ridiculous.

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A bit of a change in format this time around. I won’t bother breaking the post into the usual four headings. Apart from anything else, “That Was Then” is going to be irrelevant for the last three series because I’ve hardly seen any of them. I’ll still split the post into three updates because, hey, three days’ worth of content. But anyway, onwards with Series 6.

We’re in the very heart of comedy country, now, which balances out the near-nihilism of inevitable invasion in the arc stories. I remember this one as being fairly enjoyable as the Syndicate plotline- and the Syndicate themselves- are cut down to a more manageable size. My strongest memory is the comedy episodes that feature Spinal Tap’s Mike McKean being good, and the bloody ghost episode being shit.

The season kicks off with “The Beginning”, a surprisingly clumsy effort to fit Gibson Praise into the storylines generated in the movie. The initial scene is pretty gory and evocative of the film, but ultimately it’s easy to see how the big-budgetness has had to have been reduced. Thanks to the show’s move away from Vancouver to California, there’s a lot more deserty scenes as the agents head to places like Nevada.

“Triangle” is an ambitious episode, with three long apparently-continuous scenes and a split-screen finale covering Mulder facing off against Nazis in a time-shifted Bermuda Triangle. That plot isn’t quite as awesome as it sounds, and the best bit is actually Scully searching for a way of helping him in the FBI building. While that sounds a little boring, in fact it’s great to finally see how the building fits together as she heads from the various Directors’ offices down to the X-Files in the basement. Rather than having several static scenes, having things unfold in real time gives a funny kind of insight to how the character reacts in normal(ish) situation, like waiting for a lift, and is surprisingly endearing. The whole episode doesn’t quite hold together, but for once the fact that the show tried something different really raises an otherwise run-of-the-mill episode.

The “Dreamland” two-parter is just as funny as I remembered, about a middle-aged military conspirator working at Area 51 who swaps bodies with Mulder and, amongst other things, repurposes the agent’s junk-filled spare room into an amorous boudoir. McKean’s character, Morris Fletcher, will show up again more than once, including a hilarious cameo with an intoxicated Scully in the superb Lone Gunmen episode “Three Of A Kind”. The latter is a great showcase for the bit-players, almost a pilot for the later spin-off, and not only do we get closure to the earlier Gunmen episode but we also see how the characters have changed since their first meeting (Frohike in particular). Bruce Campbell also has a role in “Terms of Endearment”, an episode I remember as being a comedy one, but actually turns out to be pretty horrific (as in gory rather than crap).

“Tithonus” is an odd little episode where a man appears to be immortal because he turned his eyes from Death, so Death ignored him. It’s a nondescript story that I only note because, at the end, Scully gets shot but the immortal guy dies instead of her. Which presumably means that after this, Scully can’t die either. Weird.

Senator Matheson returns in “SR 819″, and although it’s a nice nod to previous episodes it’s a little ambiguous as to whether he’s gone completely over to the dark side or what. Ambiguity is usually intriguing in any series, but with so many unanswered questions the X-Files is unfortunately more likely to be frustrating than anything. That said, Krycek is back in thoroughly evil mode and it’s a great Skinner episode, showing a little of more of the man’s psychology. It’s has a real emotional punch too, after he wishes he could do more to help Mulder and Scully while he thinks he’s dying, only to be blackmailed into aiding Krycek because the rogue agent controls the nanotechnology he’s been poisoned with

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I’ve been getting through Dennis Lehane’s first four books recently, finishing the last one in time to catch the film version’s UK release this weekend (well, two weeks ago now, what with the restored post buffer).

They’re all very well-written, readable crime dramas, if not quite as good as Mystic River. Of course, he had about ten years to improve between that one and the first. In fact, it’s easy to see how the former is a culmination of all the things he learned from his previous work, as if he had to figure out what his style was before writing a whole book in that mode.

Because the Kenzie and Gennaro adventures can be summed up, in a way, like film pitches. A Drink, Before The War, with its gang storyline and shady city politics, is like The Shield set in Boston (though it predates the series by a fair bit of time). Darkness, Take My Hand is a typical serial killer whodunit, and Sacred is a Robert Mitchum-type noir. And if Gone Baby Gone is anything, it’s a Hollywood kidnapping thriller, complete with gunfights and action sequences.

Of course, it’s the only one that’s actually been adapted into a Hollywood thriller, but in such a way that it’s not a typical thriller at all.

A lot of people get shot in the book series, which isn’t unusual for the genre. What makes it a little odd is the setting. Because Lehane does a brilliant job of capturing working class life in Boston (I have no idea how accurate it is, only that it feels sufficiently realistic), it’s a bit of a jolt to get into the action sequences that are also a big part of the books. There’s one character in particular, Bubba Rogowski, a psychotic arms dealer who wires up his apartment with antipersonel mines instead of a burglar alarm, who seems completely out of place, and I wondered how they’d handle him in the film. The answer is, he’s downgraded to a minor-league drug dealer.

A lot of things get that kind of low-key downgrading in the film, whether simplifying the chaotic plot of the novel, the scope of the final conspiracy, or the shootouts. But it’s all necessary, as the tack director Ben Affleck chooses to take is more the realistic portrayal of life in Dorchester, and that’s always been the most interesting part of Lehane’s books. What he keeps in are the impossible dilemmas that face all the characters.

A key scene in the book and the film is the execution of a child molester by Kenzie. Even though the scene is described far more brutally in the book than is shown in the film, the latter is still more horrific. If anything, it’s easier to understand Kenzie’s motivation in the film without his inner monologue. We don’t really need to know why he did what he did, because we’ve seen it for ourselves. Put in the same position as him, it’s easy to see how anyone would do the same thing, regardless of whether the person gunned down was unarmed or harmless. Kenzie’s guilt, however understandable his actions were, effect his judgement for the rest of the film, facing another impossible decision of leaving the missing girl with her kidnappers and a happy, promising future, or returning her to a neighbourhood that has destroyed so many other lives.

The film benefits from not being one of a series, like the books are. It’s the first time we see Patrick Kenzie, so we don’t know all the other tragic things that have happened to him. We don’t know his history with his father, or that he’s had to kill before (I’d assume that, continuity wise, film-Kenzie doesn’t have the baggage of the books), so we find it that much easier to identify with him, although we do get hints of his uncontrollable anger when he pistol-whips a guy in a bar towards the beginning. And even though Casey Affleck’s accent is damn near impenetrable.

It’s a grown-up film for grown-ups, so it’s not necessarily and easy watch. The whole cast are great, and the setting seems really authentic. The only character who gets a little short-changed is Angie Gennaro. In the book she’s explicitly dangerous, not only tough on her own terms but also the grandaughter of an old Boston mob boss. In the film, she just kind of cries a lot, and moans at Kenzie. The whole cast is so brilliant, it’s a fucking shame that they decided to cast the second most important character in the film by essentially looking for the next moderately famous attractive young actress to wander along. In a film so non-Hollywood, it’s typical that the Hollywood mentality still had to piss on the chips, even a little bit.

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So, the question of whether or not children’s books should carry suggested age markers has come up recently. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me that I have a little trouble with this concept.

I have a lot of trouble with the idea of censorship. I know the argument is that no-one’s asking the authors to change their work. The problem is you see something like this, and you wonder at which point that will start happening anyway. It’s easy for any regulating body to say ‘Oh, of course we’ll never use our powers for evil. Never ever.’ But sooner or later someone starts power tripping and that’s exactly what happens.

I mean, is there an epidemic of adults buying the wrong books for children? Of children utterly confused by which books they shouldn’t buy? Why is this happening now? What worries me is the motives behind something like this. I don’t like not knowing why something’s happening, particularly if it’s going to turn out ten years down the line that there’s vested interests involved. Not like that’s never happened before.

I’m just as susceptable to cranky paranoia as anyone brought up on the X-Files, but it’s not necessarily a shadowy Right-wing fundementalist conspiracy to regulate the reading habits of a generation of children. Simple economic factors may cause an action like this to effect the commercial viability of some books. Just look at the fucking disaster the film rating system is. Thanks to the burning need to maximise profit through ensuring most films get a 12A/PG-13 certificate, we don’t bother making films for grown-ups anymore.

And the film ratings system is a mess. 12A was brought into existence because the first Spider-Man film couldn’t get a PG rating. I remember reading an article from a high court judge arguing how ridiculous it was that the BBFC thought children would have trouble with fantasy violence between the hero and a guy called the Green Goblin. The real problem, of course, was that Spider-Man’s face got messed up in the last scene. Which is completely appropriate, if you ask me, because as Paul C (whom I quote here often on these matters) pointed out, I think children need to understand that there are consequences to going round pounding on peoples faces, and that if you punch someone, you will damage them and it’s going to hurt. And I think that lesson’s appropriate even if you’re under 12.

And it’s not just the lower ratings that are fucked beyond use. In the UK, as of writing, at 16 years old you can legally have sex, get married, squeeze out a sprog and buy yourself a big, fat cigar to celebrate. But the BBFC will eagerly protect you from watching, say, Doomsday. Do we really feel this is an admirable system to emulate in the book trade?

A counter-argument is that the above things are legal but not advisable, and some argue with a lot of justification that it should be changed. The thing is, there’s a reason why these things are set at 16 and not 18, and not just because of dirty hippie judges. And this point ties in with why a book rating system is next to useless.

There’s a concept in British law called Gillick competency, from a case of the same name. The specific facts aren’t important for our purposes, but the concept amounts to the idea that a children develop at different speeds, and that in any given case a child of a certain age may be competent to make decisions about their own medical treatment while another child of the same age may not. By the same token, the influence a parent has over the child isn’t completely absolute till the the very first second of their 16th birthday, when suddenly they’re cut loose on their own. Instead, gradually over time, the child grows into accepting more responsibility over themselves. Essentially, the reason it’s pointless to outlaw some things for 16-year-olds is that by the time they’ve reached that age, there’s not a whole fucking lot anyone can do to stop them.

So we come back to suggest reading age, a concept utterly without meaning. The reading ability of every human on the planet varies wildly. The idea it can be pinned down to 5-plus, 9-plus, 12-plus or whatever is nonsense. Where do we fit Jane Austen into this scale? Jules Verne? To Kill A Mockingbird deals implicitly with sexual violence, and that book should be read by damn near everyone as soon as possible. By the time I was 12 I was reading Stephen King, never mind whatever was in the teen section of the book shop. And as for films, well, you want to check how many people born around 1980 had seen Robocop or Aliens before the decade was out?

And never mind differing reading ability, how about differing parental viewpoints? Who decides what’s appropriate for an age group to be reading about? Maybe we can agree on naughty words; but then, maybe not, in that I’ve meant plenty of people who think breaking the Third Commandment is worse than calling someone a motherfucking chunk of monkey-spunk. I don’t think this is going to make it easier to choose a book for a child. I think it’s a way of removing parental responsibility for being aware of what your child is reading. No thought required, just pick up one that’s been deemed safe and give it to your loved one. I can’t wait for the first case of someone complaining that their child has read something they shouldn’t have, just because their personal standards differ to the norm.

The biggest threat here, I think, is that it will end up discouraging children from reading. Kids get enough crap from other kids for having less of an ability in something as it is. Do we really want to be advertising on the cover of a book that someone has a subjective reading age lower than their actual age? Should we be discouraging a nine-year-old from reading a ten-year-old’s book? Because that’s how it works. If a book says 10+ on the cover, a child will likely think there’s something wrong with them reading it.

The thing is, I suppose I have a personal bias in this because I remember being incredibly reluctant as a kid to head into the Adult section of Caerffili Library. There was a general feeling that I’d be told off for going there, even though there wasn’t much left in the kids’ section to interest me. Seriously, it was almost like as soon as you crossed the threshold you’d be surrounded by bongo mags and guns. I know I’m not the only person who thought there was something wrong with heading down to that part of the library, and as an adult I feel strongly that no part of a library should be off-limits to anyone, whatever their age, and that if any kid is smart enough to know they need to be heading over to the adult section because they’ve outgrown the little plastic chairs then they should be encouraged to do so, not patronised and sent back to flick through a sanitised piece of dross with an appropriately coloured banding on the cover.

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I was a little disappointed with the first Hellboy film. It’s not that it wasn’t good, it’s just that I don’t think it lived up to its potential. Part of the problem is the quality of the original comic, one of (if not the) best created during the 90s. Partly it’s Guillermo del Toro’s signature style.

Don’t get me wrong, I think del Toro’s great. But in the same way Tim Burton’s Batman was Tim Burton’s Batman, I thought a lot of the tone and character of Mike Mignola’s work was lost in favour of del Toro’s interpretation. And that’s only going to become more obvious with the second film, based as it is on an original storyline rather than adapted from the series. Of course, differing artistic interpretation isn’t always a problem with filmed adaptations because everyone brings something new to the table, but in this case I thought it exacerbated some of the movie’s other missteps.

Take the audience POV character, the young Agent who I don’t remember the name of and don’t really care enough about to go looking for. He was utterly superfluous to the plot, practically disappearing halfway through. He’s not in the comic, and is only there for the other characters to spout exposition to. I understand why he’s utilised. In the original Hellboy comic, you can drop freaky characters in without much explanation because that’s just how genre comics work. The creators didn’t trust that a wider audience would buy that. Maybe they’re right, but even so it’s bad form, straight off the bat, to show that you mistrust the people who just shovelled out the cash to see your picture.

Because he’s so unimportant, and because he’s so much less interesting than any other character (so much so he’s not in the sequel), it’s obvious he’s not really there to draw the audience in, as he’s too bland. He starts to look like a sop thrown (actually, is a sop something you can throw?) to the studio so the creators can pretend they tried to make it appeal to more than the nerd crowd. After that, his purpose is to look all wide-eyed and ask questions so the producers don’t have to find a more elegant (but more difficult to pull off) way of infodumping. I’m not sure if it’s even required. Surely we can figure out what’s happening mostly from the 1940s sequence? And that stuff about World War 2 carrying on after 1945 always struck me as a bit of a false note that jars with the intricate worldbuilding of the comic.

I don’t know, maybe I’m being spiteful because Dark Horse and the Hellboy titles annoyed me this morning. I got round to finishing off BPRD: 1946 (very good, by the way), and I noticed a comment in the letters page about the collected edition of Darkness Calls having a specially written epilogue touching on Roger’s demise. And this really ticked me off.

I understand the marketing drive surrounding collected editions, but I can’t help but think sometimes that when the industry finally stops releasing monthly comics there’ll be a whole load of pissing and moaning from the people who make it so easy for me to not bother with individual issues anymore. Because there’s no fucking way I’m buying the story twice; comics are a crazy fucking habit as it is, and doing that strikes me as utterly insane.

It’s one thing to put extra bits and pieces as an incentive for people to get the trade, but the extra scene above seems to me like an important plot point that I’d have liked to have read. So I’m not sitting here thinking ooh, I am so excited I shall hand over my cash once again. I feel like I’ve been ripped off by one of the few ongoing series I consider to be consistantly brilliant. Is that really a great marketing technique? I don’t know if I’ve really got a conclusion here (other than maybe I need to get a bit more fresh air because I’m staggering dangerously close to entitlement), other than I think this shows how little these companies rate the monthly pamphlet sales in comparison to trade sales.

Contrast this with the obvious importance of individual issue sales to series like Casanova or Phonogram, where extra material in the issues isn’t available in collected form. I don’t know whether this is due to economic issues or just personal preference on the creators’ behalf, although it’s worth remembering the currently accepted view that, for new properties, you need to build a monthly fanbase to make it worth collecting the issues together for a trade. Although I suspect as time goes on (paperback novel style) people will start releasing more things like Casavova in an original graphic novel form, we’re not quite there yet. But the day is coming.

Ultimately, if that’s the market where they make most of their money, then that’s that and no amount of bellyaching is going to change it. I’ve certainly learned my lesson on this one.

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For one reason or another I haven’t really been doing more than skimming over the comic news sites and blogs recently, so I can’t be sure whether or not this subject has come up yet. I’d be surprised if it hasn’t, and after all it’s early days yet, but I thought I’d bring it up here.

I’m a bit of a strict constuctionist when it comes to the constitution of the Justice League. If it isn’t Morrison’s Magnificent Seven (with an allowance for Green Arrow and the Atom), I don’t think it really counts as the JLA. The Avengers is a bit different, because (a) I quite like them, but I’m not what you’d consider an Avengers fan, and (b) the Avengers line-up has been pretty fluid since the get-go. An ever-changing roster is the status quo. Because of this, I think a possible Avengers movie has a unique opportunity that I’m worried won’t be taken.

So far, I wouldn’t bet against Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, Ant Man (or Giant Man, maybe) and Thor being on the team. Anyone notice what they all have in common?

Here’s my suggestion: No reason why, like in the Ultimates, the Falcon can’t be a SHIELD operative assigned to the Avengers. No reason why War Machine can’t turn up in Iron Man 2 and be the Armed Forces liaison. No reason why Marvel can’t hurry up with a Black Panther film, or even set part of the Avengers film in Wakanda and spin BP out of the Avengers. Fuck it, why can’t Sendhil Ramamurthy be cast as Hank Pym? He’s already familiar to millions as a driven, obsessive scientist involved with superhumans on Heroes.

And as we know the Ultimate Samuel L. version of Nick Fury will be involved, do you see what I’m saying here?

Of course, regardless of anything else, what we’ve got so far is a boy’s club, and that’s not cool. Even more than whatever the heck’s going on with a Justice League film, the recent self-defeating nonsense about female-lead action films not working has short-changed female members of the Avengers. All the other main players are getting all their exposition out first in their own films. But it’s not like a Mockinbird film’s going to happen anytime soon.

The most obvious female character to get a movie, up until recent years, would have been the Black Widow. Problem is, ice-cold assassin seductresses have kind of been played out over the past, you know. Century. I think- and don’t laugh- that a Wasp film could actually work. Not as the character currently is, maybe, but if you get someone like Grant Morrison to reimagine the concept and go crazy on it, that film could be incredible. As it is, I suppose we’ll have to be happy with whatever role, if any, she gets in Ant Man.

I assume that the next two obvious ones would be Scarlet Witch and Spider-Woman. Presumably the film rights for the former are tied up in some way with the X-Men franchise, possibly as part of the upcoming Magneto film. And I’d be surprised if Sony didn’t have some stern words to say about the latter, either because they’re tied up in some way with the Spider-Man rights, or that they may possibly have a legal argument regarding brand recognition and management. So who does that leave us with?

How about Firestar? Seriously. Even if the whole “mutant” thing is off-limits because of the X-Men franchise, she can have a different origin. Plus, you can play off the 80s nostalgia thing, what with the Amazing Friends cartoon.

Any other suggestions?

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Neil Marshall is one of the most interesting British directors currently working, though I suspect he’s sometimes dismissed because of his focus on genre work. As a horror director, there aren’t many people as original or inventive as him.

Both Dog Soldiers and The Descent are brilliant in their own ways. The former is full of snappy dialogue, a great chemistry between the characters, and is gruesomely hilarious, while there’s very little to laugh about amongst the grueling claustrophobia of the latter. In comparison to, say, Edgar Wright, another Brit with a distinctive signature style, while both make fast-paced work Wright’s tend to be more “Pop” (for want of a better word) while Marshall is darker.

As distinctive as Marshall is, his third film once again takes a different tack again to its predecessors. From a buddy-soldier flick to an out-and-out horror, to the Mad Max/Death Race/Escape From New York 80s action-dystopia of Doomsday. And that’s probably what makes the film a little less interesting than his other ones.

The films was seriously entertaining, don’t get me wrong, but it really was a rollercoaster ride that didn’t really stick with me after I left the cinema, unlike the impression his other films have had. And that’s a problem caused by talent, really: I’d say Outpost is probably on par with Doomsday in the entertainment stakes, but it’s not like I had particularly high expectations for the Nazi Zombie Ghosts so it’s easier to be pleasantly surprised.

Doomsday takes all of its cues from other action films, and because of this doesn’t really bring anything of its own to the table. There’s a car chase from Mad Max 2, a troop carrier from Aliens, even medieval combat reminiscent of Excalibur (or, if I were being ungenerous, First Knight). That said, considering the current industry trend of watering down films like Die Hard (Die Hard, for fuck’s sake) so the kiddies can fork over their cash without seeing violence or hearing nasty words, it’s a fucking relief to see a film for grown-ups (though I use the phrase broadly) where nothing is toned down. Not toned down at all.

While I’m on the subject, I’ve got a real problem with the neutering of action movies. I know there’s an economic reason for doing it, but it even takes away the fun of getting into a film you’re too young for for an entire generation. Watching Robocop when you were ten was an essential part of growing up, and it never did me any damage. Although that may depend on how you class the kind of person who writes about it years later on the internet.

Going back to the matter at hand, I’ve seen a couple of reviews that talk about the plot-holes in the film. I didn’t catch any myself, but then I was a little too wrapped up in it to engage the critical bits of my brain too much. I can see why your attention would wander if it wasn’t your kind of thing, though. And Marshall really should get some credit for having such a strong female protagonist in a role that’s usually marked Boys Only, and on a subjective level it was nice to see [SPOILER] Darren Morfitt’s character survive after Spoon, his character in Dog Soldiers, got dispatched last time around. Albeit with just about the best exit line in movie history (to werewolf: “I hope I give you the shits“).

All in all, a fantastic action movie but not much else, with a script that doesn’t quite hold together: a bit of a shame considering the quality of the rest of the director’s work.

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You know what I don’t write about enough on the internet? Star Trek. You’d think someone would revoke my nerd card.

I caught a bit of Q Who? the other day, a.k.a. the episode where the Borg first turn up (overview from the always excellent Blog of Geekery). Next Gen’s a funny old series. Although I remember so much of it being duff, whenever I see the odd episode, even some of the crap ones, I usually enjoy it. I’d like to go back and watch it all again, but believe me after the current X-Files project I can’t see it happening any time soon, not if I want to preserve my sanity.

One thing I hope is captured in the upcoming Abrams’ film is the sense of danger, even borderline horror, that goes side by side with the wonder and mystery of exploring the Universe. Star Trek’s always had an element of that for me. Plenty of Original Series episodes are scary (well, scary when you’re a kid), and my first real memory of watching Trek is the bit with the ear-infesting brainbugs in Wrath of Khan. You see that young enough, and it’s going to have a lasting effect.

Picard’s adventures never really managed that- the exception, of course, being the Borg. Because they really are very, very creepy.

The Borg aside, the episode’s got a good example of how Next Gen never quite managed to follow through on its potential. They hint about Guinan’s secret history, of how she’s not quite what she appears, even to the extent of somehow being able to counter Q’s powers (didn’t help her species against the Borg, mind). None of this, of course, is ever mentioned again, and like the early hints of a grand sinister conspiracy in Starfleet a promising possibility is missed.

While I’m writing about this, I’ll also sneak in a dig at Voyager, just to say that while the Borg are brutal, powerful and unstoppable in this episode, after First Contact none of this really comes through in their later appearances. God, Voyager was shit in so many ways.

I’m suddenly feeling a bit, I don’t know, nostalgic for Trek. The problem is, can it ever be relevant again? Battlestar Galactica has raised the bar in terms of how SF engages with not only present day issues, but also the sophistication of the world the producers have created. And it’s worth remembering that Ronald D. Moore, the mastermind behind the new Galactica, was also responsible for many of Next Gen’s good bits, and the Borg’s most terrifying incarnation in First Contact.

How do you pull that off? How do you capture everything that’s good about the old series, while also learning all the lessons that Voyager and Enterprise never did?

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