Comic Review – Crossed #04 and Unknown Soldier #06

 

(Jacen Burrows — there’s nothing he can’t draw. And well.)

Written by Garth Ennis

Art by Jacen Burrows

Colours by Juanmar

Published by Avatar Press

In a nutshell – Merciless like the previous issues, its small bits of humor serve as a slight relief to the opressive, claustrophobic feel of the book — the feeling that, at any given moment, someone may die — and it can be anyone. And did I mention the visuals are pretty fucking great, too?

“Don’t be making more of ‘we’ than there is”. This line, said by Cindy to Stan, perfectly portrays what I love in Ennis’ work: a subtlety that completely makes up for the brutal events he writes. It’s this kind of line that makes me interested in the characters of this book: Cindy, who stripped herself free of any emotion in order to lead the group to survival and, most of all, protecting her son (an interesting paradox, to lose all emotion in order to save someone you love). Stan, who works closely with her, an all-around nice guy who seems passive, but snaps into action whenever it’s needed. Thomas, who takes care of Kelly — a girl who went blind when a nuke went off in her field of vision.

These aren’t faceless meatbags waiting to be killed in some creatively horrible way. These are people, wanting to survive in the hope they’ll find safety, something that passes for a life, maybe even witness the start of a new world, a world without the Crossed. And it’s heartbreaking to see how unlikely this new world is, and how they still cling so bad to their lives even though death seems more and more like a better alternative, every day. And it’s this kind of narrative depth that makes Ennis a truly amazing writer and explains, partially, why I enjoy his work so much.

It’s also what makes the violence in “Crossed” an important aspect of the story: to witness the brutality of this world is vital to understand how dangerous it is, how suddenly ANYONE in the group can die. Stan, Thomas, Cindy, Cindy’s son, anyone can just die at any given moment. It makes “Crossed” a constantly intense read, but it doesn’t stop Ennis from adding a bit of his typical humor here and there — like a crossed whose weapon of choice is unusually organic.

The crossed, by the way, continue to be fascinating — not only to the reader, but to the characters as well, who are noticing their evolution into beings that don’t just kill — they find new and worse ways to kill for their own amusement, which make them even more threatening. And this varies from crossed to crossed — some act on impulse, some actually think how to do things another (horrible) way. As Cindy puts it, “You’re looking for a rulebook that isn’t there”. And this adds yet another quality to “Crossed” — unpredictability. 

Jacen Burrows’ artwork is amazing as always — drawing backgrounds with excellent details and perspective, and expressive characters that display their emotions with subtlety (Stan’s face after Cindy says the line mentioned in the first paragraph is downright perfect). Like Ennis, he does not spare the reader, and his visual narrative is always clear. Juanmar’s colours are appropriately bleak and cold.

As you can probably tell, I’m loving “Crossed”. What a surprise, me loving something written by Ennis, with art by Jacen Burrows and published by Avatar Press. 

 

(good concept, bad execution continue to plague the covers of this excellent ongoing)

Unknown Soldier #06

Written by Joshua Dysart

Art by Alberto Ponticelli

Colors by Oscar Celestini

Lettering by Clem Robins

Published by DC\Vertigo

In a nutshell: a great conclusion to a brilliant first story arc that makes “Unknown Soldier” one of the most promising ongoings of late, despite the weak artwork.

Setting a story in the middle of a real, problematic place like Uganda can be incredibly dangerous: it can be seen as a cheap attempt to give the plot some relevance, as exploiting the suffering of real people for entertainment purposes — or it can be seen as a valid attempt to draw attention to a real issue and doing it through a well thought-out, brilliant story. Fortunately, Joshua Dysart has hit the jackpot with the latter and did so practically alone, since Alberto Ponticelli’s sketchy, laughably poor artwork and Oscar Celestini’s measly attempts at colouring do not aid the narrative, which stays upright all by itself — and, it has to be said, with the help of Clem Robins’ outstanding lettering, where the veteran proves once again how important this overlooked aspect of comic production can be.

The opening scene, the camp raid, proves both Dysart’s talent and Ponticelli’s lack of it. In the middle of all the chaos, wherein Lwanga Moses runs after the bastard Ilakut, Dysart pauses the scene briefly by adding a newspaper article describing with politeness and professionalism the brutal horror of what we’re seeing — and that’s precisely where Ponticelli and Celestini fail. In a far, overhead shot of the battle, you can clearly see how off the perspective is, and even some people that look like cardboard cut-outs, and Celestini’s colouring is as basic as it gets, without any ideas of its own.

Dysart proceeds to solve all the loose ends while setting up the new story arc. Lwanga Moses seems to have disappeared under his bandages, both phisically and emotionally, and we only see him instead of the Unknown Soldier for a very brief moment, when his wife talks to him.  And she continues to be portrayed as a faithful, but strong and determined woman who does what needs to be done. Jack Lee Howl is the funny kind of spook bastard who will clearly show up again in the future, and the reporter is introduced as a pacifist counterpoint to Moses’ destructive plans. The dialogue is good as usual, and even when Howl says something that is clearly an attempt by Dysart to bring another African fact to the attention of the reader, it is done with Howl’s usual charm. “It’s something I take pride in” is one of his best lines in this episode.

But… yeah. Ponticelli and Celestini. It’s like Ponticelli sketches the entire issue and before he can add details, the pages are yanked from his hands by Celestini, who colours the basic tones of the entire issue and before he can add details, the editor yanks the pages from him and gives them to Clem Robins for lettering. Robins, as usual, manages to convey feelings and intensity with his work, and his balloon placement is impeccable — although Ponticelli’s art is so poor you could place the captions right over the character’s faces for all the difference it’d make.

I look forward to the next story arc, and hope for a new visual team.

Catching Up With The Last Weeks – Apologies, Reviews and Rantings

Sorry.

See, I’m on new meds. And the scary thing is that they’re actually working. Although I’m still feeling exhausted for no reason, it no longer impacts my productivity — so in the last few weeks, I’ve been overwhelmed by an urge to create. If you’ve seen my Flickr account lately, or if you follow me on Twitter, or if you’ve been to the Whitechapel Forum, you’ll see what I mean.

So I kinda forgot the blog. No worries. I’ll make up for the lack of reviews with capsule reviews of the comics I missed, and, on a new post, actual reviews of this week’s comics. More movie reviews, flash fics and Pitch Black strips to come soon.

(I had actually written most of the comic reviews two weeks ago, but I was hit by a wall of tired and collapsed halfway through it. Upon returning, I tried to continue it but you know when it feels like you’re trying to bring a long-dead body back to life? Yeah. So. Capsule reviews.)

THE BOYS #28 – It brings the usual goods (great writing and dialogue, good characters), plus it’s a especially intense issue with an interesting cliffhanger. John Higgins’ art is not as good as in his first guest appearance, but it’s still competent — and Tony Avina and Simon Bowland (colorist and letterer), as usual, don’t disappoint.

UNKNOWN SOLDIER #5 – Same excellent writing, same shitty art, same shittier colours, same brilliant lettering. Despite being visually poor, the script makes up for it, resulting in a great book.

BACK TO BROOKLYN #4 – The brief drop-off in quality I mentioned on the last issue – and which I assumed to be mostly Jimmy Palmiotti’s fault – is absent here, and the book is back on track — this time, credit goes to all involved. Both the general story, the subtleties of it and the artwork are stellar.

NO HERO #4 – A book that seemed to be going nowhere new suddenly is. A story that seemed to lack depth suddenly has a lot of it. An artist who seemed to worried about the visuals and forgetting the narrative suddenly does amazing work in both fronts. A reviewer is suddenly very happy.

THE WALKING DEAD #59 – Tense, foreboding, well-paced, with good dialogue and great artwork. This ongoing seems to be done tripping on its own feet.

WOLVERINE #71 – The artwork is fucking amazing. The script continues to provide good use for it, with an interesting story.

Tumblr Account

My bedroom notwithstanding, I like to keep things tidy. Lately, the things that interest me have been confusing themselves with my work over here. So here’s how it’ll be:

My work, thoughts, reviews, webcomic, etc. stay here.

The videos, images, links, etc. that I find interesting, funny or that I simply like — in other words, all the stuff that ISN’T MINE — will go to my new Tumblr account, with commentary and etc.

Basically, I’m just dividing things to keep them simpler. So, if you like my work but not my links, stay here. Vice-versa, go there. If you like both, great. If you like neither, I’ve no idea why you’re reading this, you wanker.

I’ll add all the places I’m an user of in the “About” section…

MUTO

It boggles my brainmeats to imagine how long it took to make this — it’s an amazing piece of work: graffiti animation.

A Night in the Empório

Yesterday was the debut of a friend’s band. I was invited — as in, show up there but pay for everything yourself, of course — to witness the event in a small but famous place called Empório — this cozy bar that’s existed in Ipanema for decades, a “spot” for all kinds of people.

I got there by cab, a bit early (11 pm), and luckily I knew the street number, since there is no indication the place is called Empório except from a small writing in the glass that seems like it was done with someone’s finger wiping off dust. I went in and leaned on the bar, looking around to see if my friend had arrived yet. This pretty brunette said “good evening”.

My first reaction was to be a bit surprised — are things this straightforward in Ipanema? “Good evening”, I replied with a smile. “I’m waiting for the show to start.” “Oh”, she said. “Let me see if the show room’s open yet.”

Ah. She worked there. Apparently there was no uniform — all the waitresses were wearing whatever they wanted, as long as it was tight, I guess. They were all pretty, as well. She returned and informed me that no, it wasn’t open yet. “Thank you”, I said, and found myself a table to sit at.

Having nothing else to do, I observed the people. I noticed a lot of them were American\English tourists. As the minutes passed, the place started to get more crowded and this waiter approached me.

This was The Coolest Guy In The Bar. He was this balding middle-aged guy with a pony-tail and an awesome silver beard. I guessed – correctly, as I’d later find out – he was an old-timer, probably had been working in the bar since it was created. He asked me if I was using the table — I noticed a group of people with nowhere to sit at, so I gave the table to them.

Now, small places like the Empório offer a challenge to those who stand around — where can you stay put without being in someone’s way? I decided to head for the bar and bought a Pepsi. However, the bar was quickly filling with people and even squeezed into a corner as I was, I was still obstructing. A group of girls was struggling to order drinks.

“Here, lemme get out of your way” I said, moving away from the bar.

“Oh, a gentleman!” she said — well, she MEANT to say that, but she said “cavaleiro” instead of “cavalheiro”. The latter means “gentleman”, the former means “horseman”. But well, okay. I chuckled to her and found another place that hopefully wouldn’t obstruct anyone.

I managed to drink my Pepsi in peace for… about thirty seconds, until my perypheral vision caught a woman standing about five inches from me, facing me for some reason. I pretended she wasn’t there — then she grabbed my arm. I looked at her — I think she was trying to look at me, but there was so much alcohol in her blood her eyes were focused about a foot to my left.

“Oh” she said. “I thought you was drinkin’ wine, but it’s a soda.”

It was a bubbly Pepsi in a plastic cup with ice on it, just so you have an idea how hammered she was. I smiled, hoping this was as far as conversation would go. Luckily, it was — probably because I moved about an inch and she was too drunk to assimilate my new position, so she gave up and went back to wherever she was before spawning in front of my face.

Another minute of peace and quiet and then the “horseman” girl approached me. “Here, cavaleiro, can you take a picture of us?”, she meant her and her friends. “Sure”, I said. I took the picture. “Here, let me take one with you”, she said to me. I was surprised, but okay, I guess. I must’ve become famous overnight and didn’t know it.

I resumed my drink and more of her friends arrived. She asked me to take another picture. I took it and said, “wait, lemme take another one — this one came out too dark.”

They were all black, by the way.

Luckily, they all laughed, knowing I didn’t mean anything by it. I took another picture and resumed my drink. No sign of my friend yet, the bugger.

A guy tried to move to the exit and I was on his way — I moved and he said, “no, no, you can stay there”. He was absurdly drunk — I’d later see he was with the “wine” girl, unsurprisingly.

I said, “Oh, just getting out of your way.” He looked at me for about five seconds while his brain worked out my extremely complicated sentence — then laughed, nodding, and went on his way.

Later, he and the girl would be reminded they still needed to pay the tab, since they were merrily leaving the bar without doing so.

And people ask me why I don’t drink.

I went back to observing the crowd, and I noticed a trio that was walking outside of the bar — a punk trio. Now see, this guys were trying HARD to be punk. They wanted everyone to know, “we are fucking PUNK and you can suck it”. Two men and a woman, one of the men was clearly the woman’s boyfriend — this was obvious because she was pulling him around by the spiked collar on his neck with a chain attached. The other guy, the lonely one, had a mohawk so huge it could take someone’s eye out if he turned his head too quick, and his coat had so many spikes it could be considered a weapon.

Finally, I saw my friend standing outside. We greeted each other, he introduced me to a friend of his, who turned out to be a very nice guy. We talked a lot and finally it was time for the show. I paid ten reais and gave my name, and up I went to the show room.

It was this miserably small space you couldn’t have a birthday party in. As soon as I opened the soundproof door I was attacked by wave after wave of incredibly loud music and I could literally feel every organ in my body vibrate as the drummer punished his instrument. The rock was so loud and hard it took me two minutes to figure out the lyrics were in Portuguese — and that was all I figured out, since I couldn’t make out a word.

The music wasn’t bad, but it was so incredibly loud in such a small space that, if sound was a penis, it would be raping me in the ear. Every organ in my body was vibrating so bad I was worried my heart would start pumping to the beat. And seemingly I was the only person in the crowd of — mmm, twenty, all that fit into that room — to be bothered by it. Am I too sensitive? Or were the people in that room already so used to it they could hear half as well as I could?

After the first band had finished their efforts to bring down the fucking ceiling, my friend’s band stepped in. I was pleased by their work — just as loud as the previous band, but they had more charisma. I loved their cover of “Born to be Wild”. My friend, who was the singer, had a performance kind of like Mick Jagger, only my friend can dance properly instead of having a seizure onstage. I actually cringe watching Mick Jagger perform.

Fun night, all in all.

Movie Review – Watchmen

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0409459/

In one of the most beautiful moments of the “Watchmen” graphic novel, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons, two characters who had been lying to themselves for so long finally go back into action and feel alive for the first time in years — and they make love, wearing their costumes, which are, after all, their real skin — finally embracing who they are and what they want.

In the “Watchmen” film, this scene happens in slow motion to the sound of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and ends with a orgasm metaphorically represented by a flamethrower.

I am being serious.

I could feel my face muscles cringing and my balls atrophying. This was the moment where I finally stopped trying to overlook this film’s gaping flaws and decided to accept it wasn’t going to be a masterpiece, or even excellent. As the movie went on, this lowered to “decent”, “poor” and finally to an inexplicable wish to personally apologise to Alan Moore for — I dunno, allowing this… thing… to happen, I guess.

I’ll admit my hopes were high — however, I was prepared to accept a flawed film. “Watchmen” is, after all, an extremely complex masterpiece that would require subtlety to be adapted — and the script by Alex Tse and David Hayter was actually decent, if flawed, and a few revisions could have shaped it into an excellent blueprint for the ultimate adaptation. However, nothing could have prepared me for Zack Snyder’s tremendously innapropriate direction, which removes all the dramatic punch of the graphic novel and replaces it with light, cheap humor. A humor which, in the graphic novel, enriched the drama subtly — in the film is only a source of laughs, many of them unintentional.

You could say I’m being unfair, comparing the movie so much to the novel, but unlike the excellent “V for Vendetta” (the only good movie based on Moore’s work), “Watchmen” tries to be faithful to the source material, to the point of re-creating panels of the book. And, amazingly, it completely misses the essence of the original work. Therefore, it is subject to comparisons.

It is never explained, for example, how Rorschach and other “human” vigilantes are capable of jumping several feet, running up walls or punching people so hard they fly against walls. The graphic novel made a point of stressing the only superhero with powers in its universe was Doctor Manhattan, and the others were mere human beings — which, in fact, only made Dr. Manhattan’s growing distance to the rest of humanity even more obvious. But Snyder destroys this concept with his exaggerated action scenes that need half the scenery being destroyed by superhuman punches in order to be intense. It’s particularly bad when he feels the need to add the close-up of a face being punched in super slow-motion, which happens with the Comedian and Rorschach (“Look, the blots in his face move around when his face is punched, this is COOL!”).

Super slow-motion, in fact, is something Snyder seems to have become addicted to since “300″ — but while it worked for that film, it rarely does here. For every beautiful shot using this technique (the Comedian being thrown out a window), there’s ten others where this feels exaggerated and unecessary (the Comedian jumping from Nite Owl’s ship during the riot scene). The initial credits sequence, for example, is painfully innapropriate, since it gives “Watchmen” a light tone, showing pictures of violence and Cold War headlines in pretty colors and to the sound of Dylan’s “The Times, They Are A-Changing”.

Violence is yet another aspect Snyder fucks up in. Instead of using it brutally, he uses it in an aesthetically pleasing way, like a (super slow-motion) shot of an elbow being broken, which is comically over-the-top. Not to mention the scene a man’s arms are sawed off, where the quantity of blood splattering on the wall caused giggles in the entire movie theather. This kind of violence is simply gratuitous, it’s there just so Snyder can show a liquid being spurted. In slow-motion. Super slow-motion.

But his greatest fuck-up, his major mistake was to turn the most beautiful moments of the graphic novel into awkward jokes — and I’m not sure this was his intention. If it was, he’s insane. If it wasn’t, he’s a poor story-teller. In the scene a character fails to get aroused during sex with another, for example, Snyder keeps the camera on them — which makes the scene funny and light. Hell, even on the graphic novel Alan Moore had the common sense of turning his “camera” away, much like Martin Scorsese did in his famous camera movement in “Taxi Driver”, when Travis Bickle had a painfully awkward conversation via phone. And when these two characters finally manage to make love — after going back into action, as aforementioned — “Hallelujah” starts playing. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had doggystyle sex to the sound of “That’s The Way (Uh-huh uh-huh) I like it”, then Rorschach appearing and joining the fun, later with a lesbian scene between Laurie and her mother… okay, I’m digressing.

Snyder also removes other moments from the novel which were brief but meant more than an entire hour of dialogue could convey — that would be the unforgettable moment in which Sally Jupiter kisses a portrait. In the movie, it’s replaced… by dialogue. And what happens to Hollis Mason, who disappears from the film?

And I haven’t even got to the ending yet, but hold on, there’s more complaints.

As you probably already noticed, the musical selection of the film is HORRENDOUS. I don’t remember seeing a movie so utterly mistaken in that aspect for a long time. The Comedian being buried to “The Sounds of Silence” couldn’t have been more pretentious and ridiculous, and I fail to see why “All Along The Watchtower” played in the scene Rorschach and Nite Owl travel to a fortress in Antartida. “Ride of the Valkryes” was a ridiculously obvious choice for the Vietnam scene and yanks us out of the movie by making us remember “Apocalypse Now”. And the one truly good selection, “Pruit Igoe & Prophecies” by Philip Glass, doesn’t play for long enough and isn’t explored to its full potential. But okay, okay, “I’m Your Boogeyman” fit well into the riot scene, in a satiric sort of way, I’ll admit.

And the ending — ah, wait, there’s something else. Snyder completely fails to immerse you in the film — not only the aforementioned “Ride of the Valkryes” and other musical selections remove us from it, so do some horribly timed dialogue, like the moment that, in the film’s climax, a character says “I’m not a comic book villain”. And in the prison rescue scene, when Rorschach catches a criminal in the bathroom, Snyder uses the bathroom door to comic effect much like the kitchen door in “The Party”, with Peter Sellers — and once again, not only we’re reminded of another film, but yet another scene from the original graphic novel is adapted lightly.

Finally, yes, the ending. In order to remove some subplots from the graphic novel, like the character Max Shea, they changed the ending to something they felt made the same point as the original work did. Only it doesn’t. The ending feels far-fetched, expositional and – guess what – light, which is exactly the opposite of the graphic novel, which built up to it from the very beggining. There’s also a hideous plothole in that new ending, but this is a spoiler-free review, so here’s a great article by my friend Ted Roland on that obvious flaw nobody seemed to notice. Ah, yes, a character yells “NOOOOOOOOOO!!”, too. Just to make things worse. Oh wait, they get even worse than THAT:

The film ends with a My Chemical Romance song.

Okay? Are you crying yet? No?

The film ends with a My Chemical Romance song, for fuck’s sake.

Did Tyler Bates even compose anything for this movie? What’s he doing in the credits? In a movie that badly needed a strong original score, where the hell was he?

There are, however, things “Watchmen” gets right. Technically, the film is almost flawless. The cinematography, art direction, special effects and costumes are magnificent, with the exception of Rorschach’s trenchcoat, which doesn’t have the blood stain — yes, another important thing Snyder got wrong. Ironically, though, one of the best scenes of this film is when Rorschach becomes Rorschach, even if it’s pointlessly different from the graphic novel. 

The casting is mostly right. Unknown actors were a good call from Snyder (something that led me to believe he knew what he was doing, before I saw the film), since their relative lack of star power allows their characters to stand out. Jackie Earle Haley is an excellent Rorschach, shame he isn’t in a better film. Patrick Wilson does well as Dreiberg, but Snyder shits all over the character throughout the movie. Carla Gugino is more of a “deluxe cameo” than anything, but Jeffrey Dean Morgan is a good Comedian. Matthew Goode is, like Patrick Wilson, prevented from doing well because of Snyder’s fuck-ups, but Billy Crudup creates an interesting Dr. Manhattan. Finally, Malin Akerman is horribly inexpressive as Laurie Juspeczyk, standing out as the only truly bad performance.

This is a clear case of a potentially great film being destroyed by an overconfident director who believes his particular style of directing – and his musical tastes – are adequate to any film, even to the adaptation of one of the greatest graphic novels of all time. The “unfilmable” comic book is filmable, but not by Zack Snyder. He can create pretty imagery (in slow motion (SUPER slow motion)), but he can’t make it work in a narrative.

And people say Alan Moore is a prick for demanding his name be taken off the credits.