The Fractal Hall Journal

Today’s sign of the impending apocalypse: Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy is due to be released next month.

A quick note on yesterday’s post: I’m not saying that “torture porn” in a Nightwing comic is either acceptable or unacceptable. To be honest, I have no interest in either the character or the title. But I’m still upset with DC about the Pa Kent thing. What can I say, my opinion on what constitutes a matter of importance where comics are concerned is a little skewed.

Kids’ toys: Can someone please tell me why the Transformers Classics line has so far released roughly a bajillion modern updates on Generation 1 characters, and yet appears to have no plans for an updated Wheeljack? Or why there’s no Wheeljack in Transformers: Animated? Or in the movie line? Sweet jumping Jesus, I need a new Wheeljack. I’ve only got 5 other versions of him.

You may all continue with your pointing and laughing.

Anime: As I think I’ve mentioned briefly before, I have fond memories of the Guyver animated series released in the 90s. I still find it odd that Japanese manga (a lot of it, anyway) is almost seen as a childish or girly thing to get, when back in the 80s and 90s (in Britain at least) it was seen as a wellspring of gore, horror and, ahem, “adult” situations. Anyway, there was a new updated Guyver series made a few years ago, and I can’t believe it’s taken until now for me to get round to watching it. I’ve seen the first couple of episodes that stick pretty closely to the first series, but I think it diverges pretty quickly after that as the creators get into the storylines that continued on after the previous run finished. I wish someone had the licence to release all the comics in English, because it’s really great stuff. Lots of action, lots of horror, and some of the greatest codenames ever given to giant mutated monsters.

I’m not sure whether it’s better than the original series yet, in that all the events are very compressed, to cover more ground in a shorter time. In the first series, you get more of a feel for the characters simply because you spend more time with them. On the other hand, the animation is way better this time around, and the second half of the first series was a fair bit ropier than the first half. Hopefully they did that a bit better this time round.

The first Guyver animation was actually made in the mid 80s, not long after the manga series had started, and had no connection to the series that followed later. I don’t have the link to hand, but if you check out “Guyver: Out Of Control” on YouTube, you’ll find it uploaded there. Very, very weird if you’ve never seen it before and you’re only familiar with the more recent series. Highlights include a main character with a strange doll-like face, and female Guyver with a seriously dodgy transformation scene.

SF: Given up on the second book of Kevin J. Anderson’s Saga of Seven Suns. It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just average, and I’d rather read something great than slog my way though six more books of average. I’ve still got the Rebus series to finish, and Russel T’s tome, and I think I’m better off spending my time on them.

     Feed

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.

     Feed

I notice Marvel’s got a Saxon poncing round with Excalibur in this week’s comics.

</Interminable Weekly Arthurian Snark>

In other news, modern design as applied to the humble drinks flask has brought the field of liquid containment immesurably further than it stood all those years ago when I had a plastic thing with a picture of M.A.S.K. on it. Speaking of which, stuff GI JOE, I want a motion picture event based around that 80s franchise, with Adam Baldwin as Matt Trakker, Hollywood’s All-Purpose Asian Guy John Cho as Bruce Sato and a darker, edgier T-BOB. Because I just can’t get enough of transforming vehicles.

And Spectrum’s got such sooh-per vih-hision. Muh muh muh muh, MASK.

My God, I think I may have found my life’s purpose; the pursuit of a faithful film adaptation of this lost gem, with Boulder Hill and everything.

But back to the flask. The heat retention ability of the Thermos® is nothing short of revolutionary, and it doesn’t leak. It’s what living in the 21st Century is all about, folks.

Anyway, I ended up bashing the smaller model and decide to upgrade. Only the 1L version is a hell of a lot bigger in real life than it looks in the box. Seriously, you could refuel a Boeing with the fucker. Plus, it means I’m getting through a litre of coffee a day. I’m not a hundred percent certain why I bring this whole flask thing up, except maybe to explain why posting is likely to get a little odd, then sporadic, then stop entirely when the palapatations assplode my heart.

While we’re waiting, let’s get our geek on.

• I’ve had a lot of good things to say about The Dark Knight, so here’s a bad thing. Comic book movies- well, movies period- aren’t really any good with their portrayal of women. The Dark Knight isn’t particularly exploitative, I don’t think, beyond Bruce Wayne’s dating habits as a cover for the Bat missions. The problem is how women are essentially an irrelevance in the film. Wayne’s mother is nothing more than an afterthought (hell, even Thomas Wayne got screen time in the first one), and Rachel Dawes is the definition of a pointless character. Or rather, a character who’s only point is to die and motivate the male characters. She’s subordinate to every man in the film, and only drives the plot by dying. They shove her right into the refridgerator, then nuke it, Spielberg-style. I know the problem’s caused mainly by faithfulness to almost 70 years worth of man-centric storytelling, but that’s just not a good enough excuse anymore.

• Battlestar Galactica, on the other hand, does far better gender-wise. A little shaky when it comes to race, maybe, but points for having a Latino lead character. Veeeeery heteronormative, though. I’ve finally started to catch up, finishing Series Two and starting on Series Three. Bloody hell, this is grim stuff. And incredibly close to the bone, what with its use of insurgents, bombings and prisoner torture. I’ll probably have more to say after I’ve watched a bit more.

• I’m just finishing the sixth Rebus novel, Mortal Causes. It looks like Ian Rankin’s comics writing debut will be happening at the new Vertigo Crime imprint rather than as a Hellblazer story, which may be for the best. After all, while I’ve got no idea whether the man can do horror fiction or not, he can write the shit out of crime stuff. I’ll probably do a round-up of the Rebus series once I’ve finished with them. As Rankin himself says in the foreword, Mortal Causes is certainly the first of the “grown-up” novels, in that there’s less of an emphasis on a good-gosh-whodunnit twist than on the lives and motives of the police officers and the criminals. Pretty grim, too.

• Incredibly, it’s been over two months since I picked up any comics, and over a month since I got the first JMS Thor hardcover (have I written about that yet? Can’t remember. Anyway, very good, very epic, fantastic art and bound to be cocked up once it stops being a self-contained series and starts getting all crossovery). I still need to plug a few single issue gaps, like the last issue of Casanova and the last couple of All-Star Supermen, but apart from that I think I’m pretty much dedicated to the waiting-for-the-trade thing. Thank you, Comics Companies, for being so crap over the past year with one thing or another and making the decision so easy.

• This post has turned all too negative. Let’s go look at pictures of M.A.S.K. toys instead.

     Feed

It turns out that Britain really is in the grip of a UFO invasion. At least, it is according to the Torygraph (via Warren Ellis). Now, I’m pretty sure the (ahem) “quality” daily isn’t owned by Murdock. Or, for that matter, Marvel. And they’re usually pretty hostile towards the BBC. So we can rule out advertising stunts for the X-Files, Secret Invasion and Doctor Who, respectively. Strange shit is indeed afoot (or aflight), although I haven’t heard of much in the way of abductions, implantations or probings. At least, no more than usual for Cardiff on a Saturday night.

The rest of the papers are getting in on the action, too. The Guardian recently featured a ghost-busting weekend in Ludlow (Ludlow?) as a recommended activity holiday. The Indie’s ran an article on ten scary tales from folklore, and if we hop back to the Telegraph for a sec, we’ve got Civil War ghosts showing up on camera.

Man, I could eat this stuff up with a spoon. I should turn the Journal into a Paranormablog.

The Independent article is particularly interesting to me because it’s written by Jennifer Westwood and Jacqueline Simpson, who authored the absolutely indispensable book The Lore of the Land, one of the most comprehensive volumes of English folklore I’ve ever seen. It was recommended by Neil Gaiman on his site a couple of years ago, and it’s one of the best suggestions I’ve ever got from the internet. Yes, even better than instructions on how to use Mentos to blow up Diet Coke. The article includes extracts from The Penguin Book Of Ghosts, so you can bet that just jumped to the top of the buy list. Sorry, hardback collection of The Rise And Fall Of The Shi’Ar Empire.

One of my major ambitions has been to contribute to a great work of reference (stop giggling at the back, I’m being serious. You all know this site is an official nerd-haven). I’d love to tackle a book like the one above that dealt with Welsh folklore. Even though the whole lack of focus and short attention span thing may well get in the way.

The Haunting Breaks mentioned in the Guardian sound pretty cool too. Long term readers may recall a trip to Edinburgh I mentioned here last year. We actually went on one of the Edinburgh ghost tours, into one of the vaults beneath the streets. It was pretty effing scary, even for people not as easily terrified as I am.

The only problem with the tour was the vague worry that an actor would jump out on the tour group for a cheap scare. It didn’t happen, which I was glad for, because you don’t pay your money for a ghost train, you want to get creeped out by spooky stories, stone circles and dark rooms. The whole point of going is for the chance of maybe seeing a real ghost, and cheap tricks would have really soured the experience. Then I found out not long ago from a mate who lives in Edinburgh that some of the tours do have “jumpers” on them, which is seriously disappointing.

Returning to the Telegraph one more time, Archaeologists are planning on opening a long-sealed chamber beneath a Mexican pyramid. I don’t know about anyone else, but with all the weird shit above, is this a fantastic idea? I mean, I’m jumpy enough about the Large Hadron Collider as it is, but after watching The Mist, I’m somewhat concerned about the consequences of anything that may lead to tentacled insectile monstrocities roaming over the planet.

In other, lighter news, and as a palate cleanser to the end of the world as we know it, I caught Kung Fu Panda the other day. Damn, it’s a great film, way better than any of the Shreks or the Cars or the Monster Houses we’ve been plagued with recently. It may well be my favouritest CGI cartoon ever, although that may change as soon as this Friday, what with Wall-E’s arrival on these shores. And impressive CGI aside, I’d actually have rather seen the entire film done in the stylised animation form that the initial dream sequence was made with. The best thing about the movie, and I know it’s been said by many people before but it bears repeating, is that it’s a genuinely great action film, as well as being hilarious. Seriously, the bad guy’s escape from prison was absolutely riveting. Speaking of which- Lovejoy as the voice of an evil snow leopard? Who saw that one coming?

     Feed

I’m damned glad, sometimes, that I have the equivalent taste and discernment of an eleven-year-old. Steven Grant’s latest column at CBR, amongst other things, has got me thinking about, for want of a better phrase, “art” comics. I hate to frame this post in these terms, but you-know-the-kind-of-thing-I’m-talking-about.

The “indie” scene is something of a niche interest, with creators making little money, certainly in comparison to people working on “mainstream” titles (and I’m sorry for all the quotation marks, but that’s the accepted terminology even if it is all a little ridiculous). And I feel sorry for them. It can’t be much fun to put your heart and soul into something and not have it appreciated, and if I was a fan of only that kind of thing then I’d get pretty frustrated, too.

A big chunk of the comics I buy have always been super-hero stuff, although recently there’s been a lot more that fit better in the “other” column. Even these largely fall into SF/Fantasy/Horror/Crime though. There’s very little real-world based stuff. It’s not that I don’t like non-genre work, it’s just that it doesn’t tend to be my first choice. It’s the same, really, with books, TV, and films.

It’s probably not completely accurate to say it’s all based on a kind of arrested development. Sure, if it’s a Saturday morning cartoon that has giant robots in it I’m almost guaranteed to like it, but I kind of liked Raging Bull too. I suppose I’m less enclined than some to bemoan the hideous and shallow state of modern culture, which isn’t to say I wouldn’t like to see something that’s more Serpico than National Treasure once in a while. Partly it’s because while there’s an argument to be made that movies have gotten dumber (or rather, that there aren’t as many smart films out, as there have always been dumb movies), television has gotten a hell of a lot more sophisticated. The Wire is every bit as real and engaging as anything filmed for the big screen in the 70s.

Also, I can’t help but feel that things aren’t as doomy as is widely predicted, and that’s because the way people create, deliver and discover things are changing radically. Take music. I am absolutely the guy who whinges and moans about how much better pop music was in the 60s compared to today. But while in times past I was limited to what was chosen to be distributed by big labels, or by the limited reach of small-time indie (and there’s that word again) labels, now if I wanted to listen to nothing but psychedelic Spanish arse-flute Reggae, not only am I likely to be able to turn up a website devoted to it but also an enclave of artists specialising in psychedelic Spanish arse-flutery and all the rivalry, backstabbing and innovation that goes with that kind of thing.

Large media conglomerates, whether they’re DC, Paramount, EMI or whatever, will always be engaged in nothing more than wealth accumulation, and homogenisation of popular culture is simply the best way for them to do this. But with the advent of networking resources of the 21st Century, added to how easy technology makes home production of damn near anything these days, we are no longer limited to what is distributed by these corporations. It is a climate where niche interests thrive- just look at the success of the Penny Arcade webcomic, something the majority of the Western world have never, ever heard of, but has generated well over a million dollars in charitable contributions from a previously untapped fanbase. It wouldn’t surprise me if their actual non-charitable earnings haven’t surpassed the same level.

By exploiting the subdivisions that aren’t worth the notice of big companies, it is possible to pursue these niche interests. Millions may not flock to low budget art-house anything, but there is an audience out there, one that can be reached through non-conventional media. We may not be quite at the point where the delivery system is completely accessible to the audience yet, but we’re getting there. But there’s no point moaning about how these niches can’t compete with a big company. The simple fact is you can’t compete with them. So you’re only real option is to take yourself out of the game and find a better way.

     Feed

Watching people shit in their pants while debating the new tack The Brave and The Bold cartoon is taking is fun, and by ‘fun’ I mean ‘like jabbing broken glass into my eyes’. The more this kind of nerd rage goes on, the more I think it has to be manufactured. Like the Alex Ross Citizen Steel JSA Cover (Knobgate, if you would). It was such an obvious thing for fanboys to do their raving nana in about I couldn’t quite believe it was genuine. Why would you want to spring such an obvious trap on yourself?

Same goes for the cartoon thing. Any critic trying to prove that comic fans suffer from severely stunted emotional development now has plenty of evidence to the fact in one handy package or, indeed, message board thread, as people lose it over a children’s cartoon aimed at children. Just seems like such an obvious trap.

I like the look of the new designs, myself. I don’t like them as much as the 90s cartoon design, or The Batman stuff, but I think it makes a nice change. If anything, I’m jealous of the cartoons kids get. As a child of the 80s I’ve got a Transformers fixation, but I’m under no illusion that the cartoon was any good. And I’ve always felt a little sorry for kids who grew up in the 90s, when it seemed that, Paul Dini stuff aside, cartoons seemed to be about kids in playgrounds living normal lives. Christ, that would have bored me to tears. Give me giant alien robots shooting each other any day.

But look at today’s cartoon list: Spectacular Spider-Man, the new Transformers, The Batman, the Legion stuff, Teen Titans, almost everything on Cartoon Network. And it’s all brilliant, way better than animation has ever been before. Sure, some of it skews young; isn’t that the point? It’s just sheer luck that I have the same taste in entertainment as a ten year old. I get to enjoy it too.

It doesn’t matter that the new Batman team-up is aimed at kid: the only important thing is that it’s sophisticated enough for the audience (and bear in mind that ’sophisticated’ is not synonymous with ‘has lots of severed heads in it’). Kids’ cartoons are smart, because kids are smart. In fact, you can do a lot worse than the current Spider-Man, actually. If it carries on the same vein as the first few episodes, it may well being just as definitive a portrayal of the character as the 90s Batman.

Oh, and just to tag on the end and in light of comments I’ve made recently about Super Friends: I notice DC’s revived the brand as a children’s title. Which is great, obviously. What’s most interesting about this, going from the house ad, is that it’s aimed very young, younger than I’ve seen any company aim for outside of British comic lines marketed towards toddlers and the first couple of years of school. Damned interesting to see if it picks up any momentum, or if it’s popular enough for DC to generate some similar titles.

     Feed

Didn’t realise until today, but this week marks six months of consistant blogging. So I’m celebrating. Thinking about it, as the comics industry thinks 25 issues are noteworthy I might start partying every three months.

Transformers fandom is the source of a lot of bewilderment among even the nerdiest adherents of comic shop culture. Part of it is a generational thing (in that if you didn’t grow up with the toys your stunted emotional development is likely focused elsewhere and I’m looking at you, sports fans), part of it is that robots don’t float everybody’s boat. Which is fair enough. I mean, I don’t have the first clue why superhero comics folk go nuts over monkeys, and I’m finding the announcement of Congorilla as a member of a new Justice League team somewhat underwhelming.

Speaking of which, at the Wizard World LA DCU panel writer James Robinson announced that “People are going to love this character by the time I’m done with him”. LXG aside, I rate Robinson highly as a writer, but he’ll have to pull off something pretty fucking special to make an Imperial era Kiplingesque white supremacist appealing to me.

Enough apes. I’m certain that the continuing popularity of the Transformers is due to Simon Furman’s writing. He’s an under-rated creator, and it’s difficult to impart how mind-blowing it was to read his stuff at a fairly early age. Because no one gave a crap about a toy licence, he was given huge scope to write whatever the hell he wanted. Sure, the toys were popular without him, but it was the epic, grand-scale vision he brought to the title that were used as the foundation of all subsequent iterations. A hell of a lot of his concepts have been used in not only the cartoons of the 90s and 00s, but the film itself. The hugely popular film, which wouldn’t have been made if it wasn’t for the unanticipated success of the Dreamwave revival, greatly influenced and bought in droves by fans of Furman (FoFs? Someone should make a badge. And a fanclub newsletter).

I think the reason for their popularity outside of Furman’s influence is their nature as not only both a toy vehicle and action figure (a two for one deal), but also a kind of puzzle. A way of rearranging and altering elements from one pattern into another that appeals to a mindset of construction and applied reasoning that I’d argue is related to the popularity of jigsaws, Lego and Nintendo Brain Training. Just look at the movie designs; graphic aesthetics were not the first box that needed to be ticked.

Michael Bay’s robots weren’t designed to be simplified or even elegant (compare to the more organic and trimmed down look of Transformers Animated, or even The Spectacular Spider-Man). They were designed from an engineer’s perspective, the emphasis being put on figuring out how one element can be splintered then moved and rotated into a different configuration. The robots are all huge puzzle boxes, and although the busy designs have been rightfully criticised as over-complex and confusing the intricacy of their creation nevertheless impresses.

And that concludes today’s earnest analysis of extra-long product advertisements.

     Feed

Expect very little coherence today, as it’s time for something the WuhWuhWuh was designed for that isn’t cat pictures or nekkidness; a List.

• Thanks to the folks over at the BOOM! Studios blog for linking to the other week’s review of Fall of Cthulhu (their link is linked here for added intertron recursiveness). My recommendation may be undermined by surrounding posts that include similar enthusiastic scrawls in favour of, for example, Predator 2.

• I’ve noticed some excitement around the place for a revival of a takeoff of the Ninja Turtles, this time starring Hamsters. What the fucking fuck is that all about?

• Although speaking of TMNT, I really really enjoyed the CGI movie that came out last year. The Leo/Raphael rooftop fight was awesome. Someone tell Pixar that they need more weaponry in their movies.

• You know what makes me a little uncomfortable in some comic shops that I otherwise quite like? When the Japanese porno-action figures get plonked in a line all along the sales desk. I’m not saying they should be banned or banished to a faraway shelf, I’m not making any judgement whatsoever about them, and frankly if that’s where a shopkeeper wants to keep them then by God, he (and I do mean he) can knock himself out. I’m saying that in simple consumer marketing terms it doesn’t matter how much of a free-speechin’ non-prudish liberal any given individual may be, I suspect that most people would be just a little put off by the comic shop equivalent of having a copy of “Great Big Wobbly Jugs” waved in their faces while they’re trying to pay at the tills in Tesco.

• When I was a kid, I always wanted the Iron Man armour. Obsessed, even. More than a Green Lantern ring. So much, in fact, that it’s scaring me just a little bit as I think back. But that’s beside the point. My point is, I wonder who was the first person to come up with robotic armour? Not mythologically powered magic super-armour, but a metal and circuitry robo-suit? I assume it’s one of the Golden Age SF writers.

• From the It Shouldn’t Surprise Me But It Does folder: Considering even ten years ago you could easily place most music to the era, sometimes even the year, it was released in, it’s amazing how few of those barriers exist today. Used to be you’d have the piss taken out of you for liking something from whatever the non-cool era was in any given week, how on earth are The Kids going to manage that in the iPod Epoch? Take Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Could have been released on iTunes yesterday by any number of current bands.

     Feed

The Transformers cartoons have never been very good. The 80s version is the kind of thing that really isn’t worth revisiting, a classic case of something that I remember being better than it is (that said, the worst offender is Gerry Anderson’s Terrahawks, which I remember as being crazy awesome, but is actually an incredibly dire piece of shit, far below the quality of Thunderbirds, or Captain Scarlet.)

Transformers fandom remembers Beast Wars fondly, but I never really got into it myself. And the more recent Armada/Energon/Cybertron series are incomprehensible, although some of the latter series’ toys are great.

Oh crap, I’m writing about toys on the internet again, aren’t I? I’m one Google search away from never getting decent employment ever again.

Well, let’s compound the error and talk about a cartoon aimed squarely at the under-10s. The plot is the latest rehash of the various Transformers franchises, a mix of themes from the movie and the animation style of the recent Teen Titans series. It’s more obviously aimed at children than, say, Justice League Unlimited, but that’s really not a bad thing.

It’s got a few interesting twists on the classic story- Optimus Prime is a kind of minor Autobot work-crew leader rather than a war vet, there’s obviously other Primes knocking around the Universe, and the supreme commander’s Ultra Magnus. There’s a lot of stuff here that originated with Simon Furman, which again makes me wonder whether Hasbro appreciates how much he’s brought to their table. But the best things about the series are the new character designs and animation. It’s very stylised, a bubbly anime kind of cartoon. It’s a fresh approach, and it’s pulled off incredibly well, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the toys are like.

I’m not likely to watch it religiously, but it’s a lot of fun. And also, at some point Soundwave will turn up, apparently with a Lazerbeak figure that transforms into a robot-sized electric guitar, a concept so pure in its awesomeness that I could weep.

Ok, I think two full days of positivity is enough. Join us tomorrow for a whole load of grouch.

     Feed

A few bits and pieces that aren’t big enough to survive on their own. Here they huddle together for warmth, fighting against the cold, unforgiving winter nights.

The Brown M&Ms

Here’s a more detailed explanation of the Van Halen post from a few weeks ago.

Fractal Films: Ratatoille (2007)

Pixar films have kind of got a bit stale for me. I liked the first two Toy Storys (Toy Stories?), thought A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc. were alright, found The Incredibles to be a bit pedestrian, and really disliked Finding Nemo. Didn’t bother with Cars. So I was pleasantly surprised by this one. Very funny and very well animated (pixels have never been so expressive), the film works mainly through a surprisingly strong plot.

In terms of atmosphere, it’s the most Disneylike of all of John Lasseter’s stuff, and while not as good as director Brad Bird’s The Iron Giant it has some exceptionally good design work going on. Paris looks like Paris, and there are some very effective visual interpretations of how flavour works, conceived (I think) by Canadian cartoonist, comic creator and animator Michel Gagné. I dare you to watch this film and not get hungry. The end credits, while not the usual fake outtakes, are still worth watching for what looks like exceptionally pretty traditional animation.

But the best bit isn’t the actual feature, but the animated short that precedes it: a dialogue-free sequence where a trainee alien abductor tries to get a sleeping man out of his house. Easily the funniest thing I’ve seen this year.

Fractal Furlough: Bill Bailey – Tinselworm, Cardiff International Arena, 21.11.07.

I lied, this is the funniest thing I’ve seen this year. What impresses isn’t just how good a comedian he is, but the breadth of his musical talent. In terms of pure entertainment, you can’t do any better. Worth the ticket price just for his Emo track about a self-harmer in Starbucks:

The only way/The only way that you will see me/Is if I cut myself/And bleed on your panini.

     Feed