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?

     Feed

You know, I was staring at the front page of the Journal this morning and I couldn’t figure out what was missing. Turns out it was the post below. So apologies for the slight Slight Technical Problem that caused the delay, by which I mean inability to post-date.

A couple of things prompted this post. Firstly, J. Michael Straczynski coming to DC has prompted speculation as to what he’ll be working on. The Flash has been a big topic round here recently, and JMS has mentioned his preference for the Barry Allen version, so that’s got be a possibility. There’s Aquaman: a big name is about the only thing that will save the character at the moment, and if you think the New Avengers turnaround was big, imagine the craziness of an Aqua-title selling over 100,000. How about JLA? Is Dwayne McDuffie a permanent addition, or there for just 12 months? Is James Robinson going to be on Superman for the forseeable future, or just as long as he was on the Bat titles?

Secondly, I mentioned in comments not long ago that I’d like to see an Ed Brubaker Green Arrow title. Which has led to this question: given the chance, who should switch companies and work on a different title?

Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Yu on Blue Beetle: Nope, not Batman. I’m not sure why Bendis seems to be a lot of fans’ choice to take on Gotham based stories. I can kind of see Miller’s 80s Daredevil being a good fit for 80s Batman, but not Bendis’ take. Good grief, can you imagine what the dialogue would be like? But he wrote the book on 00s era teen superheroes with Ultimate Spider-Man, and this kind of star power on the title would save what is probably my favourite current DCU ongoing. Even if it meant the main character inexplicably swearing in Hebrew. Second choice: Joss Whedon and Michael Ryan. Would be choice #1, but it would never ever come out.

John Rogers and Rafael Albuquerque on Runaways: Whedon’s run has been brilliant, of course, but oh so very delayed. His run was always meant to be short, so why not replace him with the team behind the other awesome teen-hero title? Just a damn shame Rogers is likely to be tied up with TV work for the foreseeable future (and also a damn shame he won’t be getting a crack at the Flash. He may very well be the perfect match for the title with his science background).

Brian K. Vaughan and Mark Bagley on Batman: I really like the current writing team on both Batman titles. It’s just a shame about all the bloody fill-ins. So the only guy I’d like to see take over would be Vaughan, who’s probably my choice for best current comic writer behind Morrison. And I know that Bagley’s already at DC for the new weekly; I’d just rather not have awesome and consistant on a Bat-title (something that they currently have a little trouble with) than burned out on Trinity.

Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch on Superman: Oh, come on, they’ve been begging to have a crack at it for years. Let’s see what they’ve got. Millar’s not going to screw up the chance by Ultimatising Superman. Sure, his last Superman run was uninspiring (way back during Loeb’s tenure on Superman, Millar either plotted or dialogued one of the other titles- Adventures?) but he was hardly left off the leash to do his thing. Besides: (a) his Swamp Thing run was brilliant, (b) Aztek and the Flash with Morrison were also brilliant, and (c) he’s already proven he knows what makes Superman tick by deconstructing then reconstructing the character’s conceits so brilliantly in Red Son.

This is fun. I’ve got something queued up already for tomorrow, but I think I’ll carry on with this on Friday.

     Feed

Excluding Daredevil, there are three Marvel titles on top of my reading list every month. They aren’t ones that I would have expected to enjoy, but they’re some of the most consistently well-written comics on the stands.

Runaways

I didn’t pick up any of the original first run. On the surface, it wasn’t the kind of thing I’d pick up – I can take or leave teen soap opera, or super-teams. But good word of mouth, cheap manga-sized reprints and a growing respect for writer Brian K. Vaughan got me to hop on, and I haven’t regretted it. It’s got a great hook (the runaway children of super-villains) and consistently great art from co-creator Adrian Alphona and fill-in artists like Takeshi Miyazawa. The characters are memorable, well-rounded and mostly female. The latter is rare and welcome, not least because they aren’t sexualised.

Joss Whedon’s recent run has been brilliant, and I wish he and artist Michael Ryan weren’t leaving after six issues. I’d even put up with continual delays, because it really is a book that’s worth the wait. I’m a little worried about the next creative team: Terry Moore is a good writer, but I’m not a hige fan of Humberto Ramos. It would be a real shame to cock up what’s probably the longest continually awesome run of a Marvel title ever.

Iron Man

Speaking of consistently good runs, I don’t think Iron Man’s title has ever been this good, not least considering the backround to which it’s been taking place.

If we include Joe Casey’s Iron Man: The Inevitable miniseries, which practically was the monthly series during Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s much delayed run, and hell, I’ll chuck in Adam Warren’s Hypervelocity mini because I actually enjoyed that more than I thought I would, then we’ve got 35 really good issues over the past few years.

I love Iron Man. He was probably my favourite Marvel character as a young ‘un. But Christ, I’ve read some awful stories featuring him. Every time it’s looked like his title was picking up, it got shit again. The early 90s isn’t worth thinking about, Heroes Reborn was awful, Heroes Return started well but got crap, don’t start me on Mike Grell… Since I’ve been old enough to collect comics, the quality on the one title I really, really wanted to get was too poor to consider wasting my money on.

What makes this recent run even more of a triumph is the Civil War background it had to run against. Warren Ellis did a brilliant job of breaking the character down to the essentials, shoving out the ridiculous crap of recent years. The Knaufs’ writing has been intriguing and interesting in the way it ran with Ellis’ new status quo. In the meantime, New Avengers and Civil War ran off with the current questionable take on the character, leaving the main title essentially irrelevant, while still having to deal with the fallout of starring a character who is for all intents and purposes the Marvel Universe’s main super-villain.

Like I said, it’s a testament to the skill of these writers that they’ve made something so good out of something I dislike so much.

Iron Fist

I have zero interest in this character. I don’t care about Marvel’s 70s kung-fu cash-ins. I have no emotional connection to Danny Rand, Luke Cage, and whoever those Heroes for Hire women are. If anything, I’m inclined to dislike these characters and the way they’ve been shoe-horned into importance by the writers who did grow up with them.

Despite all that, I love this title. The art is gorgeous, the story has the perfect balance of backstory, momentum and action scenes. I have no prior knowledge of anything to do with Iron Fist, but I have no problem following along. Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker are easily Marvel’s most valuable assets at the moment.

     Feed