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.

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.

The paperback version I’ve got is absolutely wrecked, from years of re-reading and the crappy binding that passed for professional bookmaking about fifteen years ago. The Absolute edition suffers from the aforementioned unwanted extra, and the standalones I’ve seen have the kind of half-arsed cover work that passes for Modern Miller’s style. Sure, I’m being picky, but if I’m going to drop twenty quid on something I already have I’d rather have it in a form that a little bit of thought went into. If not, then I can live with having the last forty pages or so detached from the body of the work.

Both Marvel and DC do a good job with their collections, these days. The Absolute Sandmans (Sandmen?) are works of art in their own right, and I’ve already written about Brubaker’s Deadly Genesis not too long ago. At this point, the only monthlies I’m picking up are the Lantern issues, so I’m starting to look at which collections to be picking up next.

I like Geoff Johns’ stuff a lot, and his Action Comics work comes highly recommended, so I’m thinking I might sell the issue I have of the Last Son arc and pick it up in hardcover. The Busiek issues have long been sold- I really don’t see why so many people seem to like them, and that’s no reflection on Busiek. Of all creators, I really think he got the biggest shaft from whatever was going on at the company with regard to delays and Countdown and everything else. I suspect that a Superman run that consists of Up, Up and Away, Last Son, and Bizarro World (which I’m pretty sure I do have all the parts to) through to the Legion and Braniac stories in collected form will be pretty solid. And as for Batman, I think I’ll wait for the dust to settle from the Crisis/RIP crossovers to decide how to follow the story. And like I’ve mentioned before, I’m never picking up another fill-in on anything ever again, so no Paul Dini means no Detective for me.

Marvel-wise, now I don’t get any ongoing series it’s fair to say I’m disconnected enough not to care about Secret Invasion and all its iterations. With the X-titles being as self-contained as they have been since House of M and with Brubaker working on them, I’m quite looking forward to catching up with them. I can live without the Mike Carey stuff (which isn’t to say I don’t think he’s a good writer, it’s just that his work has never really clicked with me and I’d just rather pick up other titles first), so I think I’ll follow the Shi’ar arcs first, then maybe Whedon’s Astonishing now that it’s complete rather than forever delayed. And I still need to pick up Bendis’ last Daredevil volume (The run must be complete! The run must be complete!).

If we hop over to Dark Horse for a second (with the rant from a couple of weeks ago in mind) I notice that they’re starting to do Absolute-esque Hellboy editions. The first one includes the two initial arcs, so at some point I think I’ll flog them and pick this one up. No rush, mind, so I’ll probably do that after I pick up the later volumes, the contents of which I haven’t got round to getting yet. I’m not sure if they’ll be doing the same thing with BPRD, but I’ve already got most of them as monthlies, so I’ll plug in whatever gaps I have with paperbacks (The run must be complete!). What I’m damned sure to get is the Umbrella Academy collection. I didn’t pick them up on the first run, but I’ve read through the first couple of issues and I was pretty taken with it.

Sorry folks, I just realised that I’ve spent the whole post discussing the various elements of a shopping list. Well, at least it makes a change from the X-Files, eh?

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.

Geoff Johns on X-Men: One: Johns has a solid history with team/squad titles. Two: He’s really good at delving into a character’s backstory, and not only coming up with a different spin on things but also in streamlining and simplifying what can sometimes be pretty confusing and contradictory stuff. Three: Isn’t this exactly what the X titles need?

John Romita, Jr on Wonder Woman: One of the best, most consistant pencillers of the last twenty-five (if not more) years, yet never worked on a mainstream DC title. While he’s be an awesome fit on damn near anything, I suspect the title that would benefit the most would be Wonder Woman.

Grant Morrison on Daredevil: And everyone just starts looking at me funny. No, honestly, I’m serious. The fact that it’s not the kind of thing anyone would expect would work in its favour, because any way the coin falls would benefit the reader. Either Morrison would channel the best of his Batman work into a crime title (it’s not all sci-fi closet flying saucers; think Gothic), or he’d get odd (as it were) with Daredevil, and give us a fresh take. I mean, how much grim and gritty crime drama can the character really bear? Well, loads more. But you get my point.

Mike Mignola on Aquaman: Widening the net to outside the Big Two, and I reckon a Lovecraft-style horror spin on Arthur Curry/Orin/Whomever would be a great direction to take the character in. Not as a permanent status-quo change, but just for a year or so. Because we never really get a feeling of how cold and dark it is in the deep sea, or of all the squiddy-headed nasties that are down there. Half the time it looks like the Little Fucking Mermaid in Poseidonis. The Dweller in the Deep was practically Cthulhu in an orange shirt, after all.

James Robinson and Marcos Martin on Silver Surfer: He proved he could do cosmic stuff with Starman, and I think a long term 60-odd issue run in that kind of vein would be the perfect way to explore a great (but famously tricky) character. As for Marcos Martin, the last work of his I saw was for Marvel, on the excellent Doctor Strange: The Oath, although the first place I saw his extraordinary art was on DC’s Breach. He’d fit the Surfer book perfectly.

Matt Fraction on The Flash: Another writer who, as far as I know, hasn’t done any work for DC. As per the other posts about the Flash this month, the title should be (a) about big, crazy ideas, (b) have a lot of heart, (c) be electrifying and/or hyperkinetic, and (d) always seems to benefit from fresh perspectives and very individual writers. Fraction’s one of the few comic writers working today that ticks all those boxes.

Michael Alan Nelson on Doctor Strange: Great on BOOM! Studios’ Fall of Cthulhu, can’t imagine he’d do a bad job on the sorceror.