The Fractal Hall Journal

Congratulations to Chum Rob on a new addition to his family. Not a child, oh no. No miniature monkeys. He’s also managed the elegant trick of naming his cat something that’s inordinately, fabulously geeky yet unlikely to confuse the unenlightened masses. Seriously, you wouldn’t believe the amount of conversations I’ve had that go along the lines of “No, Galactus, as in- well, have you seen the second Fantastic Four…? Look. We just call him Gali.”

I double-dare him to get another furball and name it Tegan. Or even better, a chihuahua called Adric.

OMFG, I hear you all say, pronouncing the acronym perfectly. He’s talking about the damned cats again. Yup, another slow day I’m afraid. Have another picture:

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I’m nearing the end of a sizeable piece of work at the moment, and it’s been been a pigging annoyance for weeks. But I’m tantalisingly close to finishing. I don’t know about you lot, but there’s always number of ways that let me know when I’ve reached this point.

A) Suddenly, everything in the kitchen needs a wash.

B) The small hole in the shed must be patched up immediately.

C) My faithful old acoustic guitar gets cleaned, polished and the strings changed for the first time in about two years.

Things were complicated further last weekend by Virgin 1’s Klingon-themed Star Trek episode marathon and MTV Two’s “Vintage 300″, the first time in the history of music television where 90% of the tracks were actually really good. I lost a couple of hours to the latter, and I hate the music channels. Seriously, they had Free tracks, Bad Company tracks, and lots of other tracks that didn’t feature Paul Rodgers.

This is likely of interest to the very small subsection of humanity who like Star Trek and also 70s blues rock vocalists from Middlesbrough.

I bring this up as a way of saying things are likely to be a little light here at the Journal till after the weekend, but let me attempt to distract you from your inevitable disappointment, as always, with a picture of my cats:

You love it.

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Hey, folks. A bit of a snarl-up with Wordpress’ autopostinator (I blame the Bank Holiday weekend), so apologies for being slightly later than usual.

I have to say, link site io9.com has turned into a handy stop for skiffy information, even if it can get a little too horny-fanboy when it comes to anyone in SF with two X chromosomes. And after mentioning recently the possibility of a power-scuffle between the producers and the director on the Wolverine film, lo and behold, the rumours begin. And the issue, of course, is what rating the film should be placed at in order to maximise the audience. I hate to go on about it again, but this is the system British publishers want to use for children’s books? Well, that’s just fucking genius, isn’t it?

Anyone, bollocks to the X-franchise, you know what’s awesome? Hellboy II. Way, way better than the first one, and while it’s still more Del Toro’s thing than Mignola’s, the story is far more self-consistant, and it doesn’t have any extraneous characters in it. The world of the film in incredibly well realised (the lair of the Angel of Death, and the Angel’s character design being the stand-out for me), and it’s the perfect balance of funny, creepy and Hellboy punching or shooting things.

And I’m torn over what exactly the best bit is. Drinking in the shower? The locker-room fight? Duffing up the Golden Army, or the forest spirit? Hellboy himself’s brilliant, Liz gets a whole lot more to do than most women in comic-book movies, Johan is absolutely pitch-perfect, although (as all the characters are) subtly different from the character in the comics. Which isn’t a bad thing, the more I think about it. The problem with changing things from the source material, movies in particular, is it’s done in a hamfisted way by people who don’t have the talent of the original creators (see, amongst many, many other things, From Hell). This isn’t a problem here because Del Toro is just as talented in his own field as Mignola is in his.

Actually, I do know what the best thing about the film was. Abe Sapien finally coming into his own. He was such an afterthought in the first film, getting beaten up then sidelined in a tank for the second half. He’s such an interesting character in the comic, and Del Toro handled his and Hellboy’s friendship really well in the more recent flick. Sure, I’d have prefered the more reserved, stoic figure from the BPRD books, Hellboy’s Bones McCoy, but I suppose the problem with working under all that makeup and prosthesis is that you need all the sweeping gestures and hand movements just to get any character across at all, even if it does come out a bit campy. At least Doug Jones finally got to use his own voice in the film, after being overdubbed by Laurence Fishburne in FF2 and David Hyde Pierce in the previous Hellboy. I found it a lot easier to watch without Frasier’s brother’s voice breaking the illusion.

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Today’s Arthurian Snark, from Wikipedia (I know, I know):

“…[H]e was a peerless warrior who functioned as the monster-hunting protector of Britain from all internal and external threats. Some of these are human threats, such as the Saxons he fights in the Historia Brittonum, but the majority are supernatural, including giant cat-monsters, destructive divine boars, dragons, dogheads, giants and witches.”

So, would you like a film about this Arthur, or the guy from the castle once again going off hunting for a carpenter’s drinking recepticle while his cock of a best mate knobs his wife? I bring this up because BBC Wales are currently filming a new series which is essentially the Adventures of Teen Arthur and Teen Merlin, i.e. SmallCamelotVille. The Welsh: We Do It To Ourselves, We Really Do.

Speaking of superhero films (and in doing so now, this post becomes the 100th entry into the Journal’s “Comics” category. Huzzah!), as we have been doing a lot recently, one I’ve not mentioned here is next year’s Billy Batson and the Legend of Shazam, in danger of not featuring on anyone’s radar. Captain Marvel is a bit of a difficult one to translate to the screen, I would imagine. On the other hand, I actually thing that the title sounds kind of right, has the correct weight of playfulness and bluster. I think it might absolutely work as an 80s kid’s adventure type film, like a mix of The Goonies and Big. What absolutely isn’t going to work is a Hollywood horror remake of Hitchcock’s The Birds. Just when you think the film industry can’t possibly get any stupider.

Battlestar spoilers ahead.

Just watched the third series episode with the strike on the fuel refinery ship. I was skeptical at first, because, you know, Americans talking about labour relations doesn’t usually bode well. Baltar, the closest the series has at the moment to Amoral Irredeemable Baddie, gets cast as the Marx figure, writing influential revolutionary pamphlets from jail, which struck me as a little less than even-handed.

However, the episode really did win me over, stressing the appalling conditions the workers had to operate in, and how intrenched the class system is becoming in the exiled fleet. I was expecting a full-on condemnation of industrial action, which was somewhat prejudicial of me, because the writers did a brilliant job of balancing up the different sides of the debate.

The heart of dilemma, of course, is the strike eventually being led by Chief Tyrol. He had to act, but he’s military personnel. More than that, he’s military personnel during events that could lead to the total annihilation of the human race. The fuel workers have to work in terrible conditions, but it isn’t for the benefit of, for example, the bank accounts of the upper class, but the survival of humanity. Yet, as the show makes clear, it’s only the working class who get the shitty jobs.

For a while, I thought they were going to do something to really screw up Admiral Adama, but the resolution was just perfect. Adama had to make it clear to the Chief that he couldn’t tolerate orders being construed as optional, while at the same time agreeing to meet the worker’s demands. Sure, he comes across as an overbearing authoritarian, but that’s in keeping with his history and his current role, and besides, the best thing about the series is how every single character has deeply disturbing flaws as well as virtues.

I notice some online chatter about how the latter half of the third season wasn’t taken very well by the fans, because in an attempt to draw in more viewers they slowed down on the overarching stories in favour of done-in-one standalones. Now, I don’t get the problem. I’ve really enjoyed the standalones, and I think they’ve been necessary for a number of reasons.

The series has been a non-stop rollercoaster since the original mini-series. There’s so much going on I think it benefitted from a little breathing room. It certainly hasn’t been any less intense, dealing with themes of religious persecution, racism, social class, murder, betrayal, and a fuck-ton more. Also, because of the unrelenting pace up until now, it’s been essential to understand who the characters are through a series of episodes that have dealt with cast members who’s characters aren’t always explored, or who’s screen time gets split up into the odd scene here and there between the action sequences. Helo, Starbuck, Apollo and Tyrol in particular have all been served well by this.

Also, actor James Callis putting on what sounded like a stereotypical Yorkshire farmer accent to represent Baltar’s unsophisticated origins was a bit of a surprise. They should shove the cast of Heartbeat on one of the ships to represent diversity, as if one of the Twelve Colonies were Planet The North. Of course, as the Ninth Doctor once said, lots of planets have a North.

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The new Batman film (again! I know!) had me thinking about whether I was old enough to see Batman Returns when it came out. I think it was a 12 rating, so I may have been a little younger than that, but not by much. The first 15 rated film I saw was Schindler’s List with Dad, and I was certainly younger than that. The first 15 I’d seen in the cinema, that is, not the first ever. I think that was Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and God bless VCRs, eh? The first 18 on tape was probably the era-defining artistic masterpiece Predator 2. Which really goes to show, if you ask me, how daft the British film rating system is.

Kenneth Branagh’s Frankenstein would have been the first 15 I saw unaccompanied by a grown up, with an old school friend, who I’m pretty sure was the same buddy I went to see Event Horizon with, years later. That was an 18, and I would probably have been 17 when it came out. I’m sure we had a conversation about how surprising it was that I hadn’t gone to seen any other 18 rating films earlier, but then again I don’t suppose there were many released at that rating ten years ago, much like now. Bad for business.

Actually, I really liked both those films, despite the poor reviews. I should try and catch them again sometime.

I’ve mentioned several times before how broken I think the BBFC’s classification system is, across the board, and how I roundly dissapprove (is that something you can do roundly? Not sure, but I’m doing it anyway) of ratings on children’s books. Amongst other things, I’m not keen at all of the way it makes people think they know what constitutes a certain rating, only to get angry down the line when it turns out the Board are letting damn near anything be a 12A, as long as there’s no mention of naughty, naughty drugs. So imagine my surprise at seeing various blogs and webcomics rating themselves PG-13, R or whatever, as if that’s a good way to encapsulate exactly what their readership should be, or expect.

Thing is, I’m not having a go, and I probably sound a bit more snarky than I want to be. It’s a good way to give people an idea of what they can expect, within the accepted meaning of those ratings. It just strikes me as suffocatingly restrictive. I mean, the whole point of internet anything is the freedom you don’t get anywhere else, even if this does lead to the somewhat variable quality you get with any kind of self-publishing. Blogs avoid the requirements of printed news outlets (because here I can say fuckalucka-shitball-tits whenever I like), Penny Arcade can get away with stuff that wouldn’t be allowed anywhere else. We’d all be poorer if we didn’t have the things we do thanks to this new media.

Should I have a content warning on the Journal? I wonder about that sometimes. I’m sympathetic to those who wouldn’t want their kids reading inappropriate stuff. Parenting, after all, is difficult, and can’t be a 24/7 behaviour monitoring thing. Shouldn’t be, in fact, unless you want to unleash some seriously damaged offspring into the world. But honestly, if your kid isn’t old enough to deal with rude words, I’m inclined to think they shouldn’t be online unsupervised. And I’m not really inclined to censor myself, however lightly. And as far as adults who don’t like swears go, well, your business is your business and you’re probably better off not reading this blog. Because I’m not likely to stop scrawling profanity over this site.

That said, I don’t suppose a little self-analysis would be out of the question. What is the point of turning the internet blue?

1. It is big, and it is funny. Ok, I’m being a bit facetious, but I’m serious about the latter half of that statement. Swearing is funny, and there’s nothing wrong with humour.

2. It promotes an informal atmosphere. Which seems a little counter-intuitive maybe. Plenty of people find profanity hostile. I hope I don’t employ that type, at least not much. This whole Journal project’s meant to be fun, and irreverance is part of that.

3. Finally, and most importantly, I suppose it’s also about making a point. Not a big thing, not a freedom of speech protest, not stamping my feet and getting all righteous. It’s more something I decided on when I first started writing here.

In earlier versions of the Journal, I wrote as “Hunter McEvoy”, the name taken from a comic strip character who would have been a kind of narrator for stories I wanted to do here. The previous plans got shelved, but I still used the pseudonym for a while, probably on a vague hunch that it’s best to keep anonymous online. I may not be wrong about that, and might live to regret switching over to my actual name. I hope not.

I opted to write as myself because there’s something to be said for owning your own words. If nothing else, it keeps me honest, and makes me think twice about getting too near the knuckle in some posts. Although it doesn’t stop me from waxing poetical about the new Transformers cartoon, and it really should. In the face of the hypothetical tactical Google from a prospective employer.

In all seriousness, it crossed my mind to censor myself. And I chose to dismiss that option. Because I am of the opinion that blasphemy and blue language, in and of themselves, are not bad things that should be suppressed. Sure, in context they can be harmful, even criminal, but that’s true of any words, profane or otherwise. So I write what I think, and post it with expletives included, because there’s nothing wrong with that. And to do otherwise would be dishonest, and I think that dishonesty in writing, even in fiction, even in deliberate lying, if you get my meaning, would be the worst outcome.

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I mentioned yesterday that I prefer Cyclops to Wolverine in the X-Men, although most people can’t seem to stick him. I guess I just think he’s got a cool power. His personality is a little dull, sure, but that really is the fault of the writers. Because you need that kind of dullish leader-character, the person who keeps everything together; the Nico in Runaways, the Jack in Lost. You remove that character from the team dynamic and, like a plot-vacuum, someone else steps in to the breach, and all you end up doing is watering down that character, whether it’s a neutered Logan in X-Men 3 or an edgeless Sawyer in the latter part of That Weird Island Show.

Grant Morrison, as always, handles the character best, by realising that an uncompromising idealist in the Marvel U, one that believes completely in Xavier’s dream, that believes he will trumph in any situation regardless of the odds, must have one personality characteristic above all others. He’d have to be completely fucking barmy. The “ice-cold lunacy” Wolverine refers to in the very first Morrison issue. It’s a great spin, a way of making the character compelling while retaining the idealism, and also goes someway to explaining the whole leaving the mother of his child for the woman she was cloned from plot point of the 80s, a character twist meant to make the boring character more interesting but ultimately kind of broke him.

Morrison’s take also allowed for an interesting comparison between Scott Summers and the Hairy Short Guy, examining the way their relationship could oscillate between friendship and antagonism. It led to the Assault on Weapon Plus storyline that had him and Logan team up for a mismatched buddies on a mission vibe, like a mutant Lethal Weapon. And for future reference, I would absolutely pay cold, hard cash to watch a Wolverine/Cyclops road trip flick.

Right, what else has tweaked the radar recently? Looking forward to Hellboy 2, finally landing this side of the Pond on Thursday. I know I had a bit of a go at the original film a couple of weeks ago, but this one looks like Del Toro has more of a grip on what he wants to do. I think I’m a little more used to the idea that it is Del Toro’s world rather than Mignola’s, and with that in mind I’m interested to see what kind of original take he has on it. I watched the first one last week, and while I don’t disagree with the negative things I’ve written about it (it really doesn’t quite hold together), what it gets right, it gets very right, and ultimately it’s a fun, engaging, good natured film, which bodes well. Ron Perlman was born to play the role, and John Hurt was brilliant too. And the sequence set in 1944 is absolutely brilliant, really spot on, and I hope the second film takes its cue from that.

And speaking of live action, BBC 4’s been showing a lot of the old 60s Batman series. I keep forgetting they’re on, so I haven’t managed to catch a whole one, but I caught the end of the one with the Green Hornet and Kato in it. It is beyond strange to watch Bruce Lee turn up in Batman. I’ve also watched a few YouTube clips of Kevin Smith doing his lecture series, ones where he mentioned his abortive attempts at writing screenplays for The Six Million Dollar Man and Green Hornet. The idea of Smith doing Green Hornet is really laughable, and it’s not really surprising the pitch was based in the 90s. The infamous First Wave of John Peters-driven superhero movies led to so many crazy properties being thrown round on the grounds that any of that shit would make money, regardless of whether the world really wanted a film version of the Lone Ranger’s grand-nephew.

Of course, what’s even crazier is that now were in the Second Wave, shit is still being flung just to see what sticks, and now Seth Rogen’s on writing duties. This is how insane Hollywood is. Kevin Smith writes about Superman’s sex life, so obviously he’s the man who should do Green Hornet, regardless of suitability. And when he can’t do it, they employ another funny fat guy on the grounds that, I don’t know, he also writes films with lots of naughty words in them.

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Holy crap do I want to own an Alien/Predator chessboard. I have no idea where this sudden need for overpriced AVP tat is coming from, but boy is it intense.

I also notice io9 reporting an American live-action remake of Akira. Oh no oh no oh no. Is not going to work. Whinge whinge whinge.

In nicer news, getting through the latter half of Series 3 of Battlestar Galactica. It’s been awesome to see Dean Stockwell, Al Calavicci from Quantum Leap, turn up again, this time as a bad guy. Reminds me of how creepy he was as Devil-Al in that QL episode with Stephen King in it. Damn, I loved that show, and damn the show’s final episode was shitty. I really hope Galactica doesn’t screw the pooch when it comes to an end, because the rest of it’s been so very good.

With all the other superhero films doing so well, it’s going to be interesting to see how the X-Men franchise pans out in the next couple of years. It’s really the series that proved the viability of a new approach to rubber-trouser characters, in terms of faithfulness to the themes and stories of the original material, and a way of taking the best bits of what went before. Sure, Blade is technically the first of the successful comic book adaptations, but that really is in spite of the original rather than because. And I like the Tomb Of Dracula stuff.

If I were being pessimistic, I’d say I don’t have a whole lot of hope with the Magneto prequel. First of all, you’re not likely to find a young actor as good as Ian McKellan to take over the role, and someone of the calibre of, say, Hayden Christensen isn’t going to be able to handle what will inevitably be a pretty dark film. It was never going to be all bright pink flower-bunnies, but after The Dark Knight you can bet the message Hollywood will be taking from the public reaction is nightmarish, unrelenting grim is what’s required. There’s too much scope to mishandle this one.

Wolverine, on the other hand, had got Hugh Jackman going for it. The stupidest thing about X-Men 3 was the way Cyclops was killed off for essentially being a boring goody-goody leader type, only to be immediately replaced by a neutered Logan in the exact same role. A prequel means angry loner Logan, hopefully with a dollop of the sinister slaughter from X-Men 2. Also, Deadpool, and who doesn’t want to see a cinematic Deadpool? I just hope they use some of Grant Morrison’s take on the Weapon X programme; after all, there was a split-second shot of a “Weapon Plus” vial in The Incredible Hulk. Also, I don’t notice any stinkers on director Gavin Hood’s IMDB page, in the way that Brett Ratner’s previous convictions correctly indicated a screw-up.

Negatives? Well, Morrison aside I’ve never liked the Weapon X stuff. Gambit’s in it. The last X-Men film was poor and allegedly plagued with studio meddling, so is that going to play out this time too?

Wolverine’s a funny old character. First time I saw him was in Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends when I was but a lad. He used his claws to make an impromptu kebab. So I kind of missed out on the edgy killer persona that so captivated a generation. Then he turned up in a few places- a Hulk comic, Spider-Man, a few other things- and he was, frankly, a bit of a dickhead. I must have missed out on the nuance of his mysterious loner thing, but then he was a short-arse in yellow lycra with a daft haircut who was being a twat to Peter Parker. I couldn’t really see the attraction, and to make it worse he turned up in every fucking issue of every fucking comic during the 90s.

I wouldn’t say I ever really warmed to the character, but he certainly bugged me less as time went on. And thanks to Jackman’s performance in the first film, I finally understood where the character was coming from. It was properly surprising, really, but I ended up rooting for him, in particular during the aforementioned rampage in the mansion in the second film. Funny how things change, but that really goes to show how good Jackman did at grounding the character, leaving me more optimistic than not for the solo film.

Still prefer Cyclops, though.

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I’ve skimmed over Marvel’s cosmic heroes a few times here, but never really addressed them in the same way as, say, the horror stuff. I think that’s because, as much as the cosmic stuff fascinates me when it’s done well, there’s a lot that doesn’t interest me as much and that I don’t really know about. I mean, I don’t think anyone can really do a meaningful bit on Marvel space opera without an understanding of Jim Starlin’s work, and I just haven’t read a lot of that. In fact, I’m probably more familiar with his Batman stuff than anything else (quite like it, actually, though I know it tends to get some stick from some quarters). Oh, and also Mystery in Space from One Year Later, which I really enjoyed.

In true nerd fashion, I’ve always been one for the space ships. Despite Lucas’ best efforts, Star Wars will always be the Holy Trilogy, and I sincerely hope the new Trek will capture at least some of the majesty, scope and horror of the original series and the single-digit even-numbered films. I’d say I’m hoping the Curse has switched away from the odd-numbered ones, but I’d just rather any possible follow-ups be good instead of having to sit through an Insurrection equivalent again.

So yes, be it Babylon 5, Dune, Foundation or new Galactica I’m in deep. I only wish that comic-based Ship Skiffy lived up to its potential. That should be past-tense, actually, because with Marvel’s Annihilation and Planet Hulk sagas, they’ve been hitting the target more often than not.

Let’s look back a bit before we go there. It goes without saying that when Kirby was on, he was untouchable. But I honestly think that he and Stan Lee needed each other to do their best work. I know how well-beloved Krazy Kirby is to so many people, but the short version is chrome covered space martyr on a surfboard = good, Death on Skis = daft. The Silver Surfer shouldn’t work, but it does. But I’ve always felt the New Gods veered to much to the stupid.

I can go round and round on the question of Bestest Bad Guy, and almost always come up with a different answer depending on the day and what the last thing I read was. But in terms of a balance between fascination and design, it’s Galactus. Hence the name of the cat (which has lead to an interesting observation regarding those not familiar with the Fantastic Four, actually. Most people, including the vet, seem to think he’s called “Galacticus”, as if he were named after a Roman.) And it wasn’t even a comic or storyline that did it, either. First time I saw Galactus was on a Top Trumps card in the 80s, and needless to say his stats had him at fuckty-foot tall and unbeatable. That’s how you generate mystique for the Transformers generation.

The strength of the Kirby stuff has been in the fantastic. And that’s the weakness, too. As Paul C remarks from time to time, DC heroes are great for their gimmicks, like only an hour of power, or running really fast, or being a commie Robin Hood. A whole lot of Marvel stuff, from Thor onwards, uses an unspecified power set that usually involves firing blobby ENERGY at people. And this tendency comes to the fore most obviously with the Novas and Captain Marvels and Quasars.

Annihilation is shockingly good, and manages to sidestep the above problem either through the use of characters without blobby energy powers (like Starlord, or Drax) or making the blobby energy characters different enough to distinguish between them (the new Quasar is way more distinct to Nova than the original, for example). The series isn’t perfect; the Silver Surfer part of the first saga dragged, and Wraith is a bit of a damp squib in the second. Overall though, the stories have an epic quality that I didn’t really feel in Civil War, say. In fact, Nova returning to Earth to find out an essentially petty squabble had kept the heroes out of a war that almost destroyed the universe really reflected badly on the Biggest Summer Event Ever N’Ever N’Ever.

The biggest revelation for me, though, has been Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s writing. I’ve read some of their 2000AD and DCU stuff in the past and it left me a little cold, plus I still harbour a grudge over Abnett’s negative SFX review of Morrison’s JLA that meant that not only did I miss out on the first ten issues or so, but I advised Brother Trigg not to get it either. That’s a lot of baggage, right there. Regardless, their work on Nova and Annihilation has been great.

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M.A.S.K., M.A.S.K., nothing but M.A.S.K.

According to Matt-Trakker.com, it looks like there’s never going to be another M.A.S.K. series due to copyright problems surrounding the name, and Hasbro’s view that the large vehicle toys are hard to sell. Considering how fast new Transformers stuff gets piranhad off the shelves, I am somewhat skeptical about the latter. As for copyrights, there’s loads of workarounds. Mobile Armoured Strike Kommand is a daft name, anyway. Call it Trakker (maybe dropping the letter C in instead, though. Someone should tell these people K doesn’t bear up to repetition as much as funky cool letters like X), or Spectrum, or Strike Command. How cool would the live action round-table mask-charging be? Answer: very.

EXT. B.O.U.L.D.E.R HILL

Come on, Hasbro. Let me pitch it at least. I promise to find a use for the guy with the ‘Streamer’ mask that fired sticky glue at people, too.

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