There was a moment in Superman III when the briefest window of potential in an otherwise dismal film irised open. When Superman was divided into two halves – one purely good, the other purely evil – viewers glimpsed the possibility of a once pristine superhero devolving into a malevolent ultra-human. Blink during the film (or sleep, which wasn’t hard to do in Supes III) and you’d miss Christopher Reeve in a dirt-encrusted Superman leotard getting drunk and generally causing mid-grade havoc.

Fortunately, the potential lost on film has been recaptured by writer Mark Waid and artist Peter Krause in Irredeemable, a new graphic novel compilation released by fledgling Boom Studios. Waid is incredibly well-known in the comics field, graduating from the ranks of DC Comics’ editors to become one of its most prominent writers. His forte, or at least so says the conventional wisdom, is writing modernized, action-oriented superhero stories that somehow manage to stay true to the traditions of the classic characters he’s assigned. Over the years, Waid has revitalized The Flash, Superman, the Fantastic Four and others. None of this work, however, can prepare you for what he has done with Irredeemable. Inscrutably, this writer of classic, traditional comics has taken the Superman tradition and twisted it straight to hell.

Imagine if Superman became totally corrupted – not by some rainbow variety of kryptonite or by some stock villain of the week, but by something far more common and insidious – the common man. Imagine having super hearing, only to always hear every snarky, sarcastic, hateful comment uttered by an otherwise “adoring” public. And imagine trying to live a normal life when the paparazzi can just never, ever get enough of you. Think Brad and Angelina have it bad? How much worse would it be if they had super powers?

None of the traditional Superman iconography is present in the book, but it doesn’t have to be. By decontextualizing the Superman character (referred to in Irredeemable as The Plutonian) readers get a clearer “take” on the man-god than could ever be accomplished within one of the Man of Steel’s actual books. In many ways, Superman’s costume and image engender so many pop culture-driven connotations there is really no way to critically examine such a character. So Waid has done the next best thing by giving readers a Superman they can deconstruct.

Most comics fans will recognize that many of the themes, techniques and characterizations in Irredeemable have been seen before, most notably in Alan Moore’s Miracleman (Moore’s take on the Captain Marvel story) and Watchmen (where Dr. Manhattan represents the loss of humanity that comes from gaining super powers). That is not to say, though, that Irredeemable is a cheap copy or stylistic cheat of some kind. Far from it. Consider it instead a kind of amalgamation: one part gee-whiz-bang-pow locomotive of an action story, another part cultural commentary, and a third part subversion of the archetypal superhero motif. Read it…trust me…and don’t even THINK about watching Superman III on cable this weekend.

Cross-posted on GuysLitWire.

DC Comics has a love affair with experimental formats and with bridging the past with the present. Some of their experiments have worked wondrously (most notably the Morrison/Rucka/Waid/Johns/Giffen weekly comics joint 52), some have failed miserably (the 52 follow-up Countdown to Final Crisis), and some have died of attrition and neglect (the seldom-remembered Action Comics Weekly, published WAY back in the 80s).

Fortunately, the powers that be at DC still hope to reignite the passion and wonder that kids and former kids used to have when seeing their favorite comics characters in print. It is that spirit of yesteryear that fuels the publication of Wednesday Comics, and the series looks to be a phenomenal success.

A throwback to simpler times in every way, DC’s Wednesday Comics is published on full-sized, 14”x20” newsprint and features weekly installments of 15 famous (and not so famous) DC characters. Each character has his/her own creative team in charge of producing one full page of story per week for the full 12 week run of the series. While this limits the amount of story that can be told each week, it broadens the horizons for the artists, who are free to create large, flashy splash pages using a variety of layout techniques. The art, in spite of the low quality paper, is spectacular and will immediately remind older readers of mornings spent poring over the exploits of such characters as Prince Valiant and Dick Tracy in the Sunday funnies.

Since this is only the first issue, it remains to be seen which of the 15 serialized stories will rise above the others, but early favorites include Neil Gaiman and Mike Allred’s Metamorpho: The Element Man strip, Paul Pope’s Strange Adventures featuring pulp hero Adam Strange, and artist extraordinaire Kyle Baker’s Hawkman.

As is fitting for any DC publication, Superman and Batman each have a dedicated page (the latter nearly stealing the show with its noir-inspired artwork courtesy of Eduardo Risso), and well-known characters such as Wonder Woman, Supergirl, the Flash, the Teen Titans and Green Lantern also have their own features.

For readers who already love comics, this series is a must-read. For those who have limited exposure to comic books, Wednesday Comics’ short-burst storytelling style is the perfect way to introduce the DC pantheon of characters. DC’s Wednesday Comics pushes comics forwards by looking backwards.

Cross-posted on GuysLitWire

A week later than the rest of the western world, I finally got to see Watchmen. Every blog worth its salt from here to Antarctica has already posted comments, conundrums, cliches and controversies about the film, but I simply could not help but post my now-weeks-late thoughts, both pro and con. If you, like me, have waited a bit to see the film, or if you are waiting for the sure to be 10 hour director’s cut DVD, best skip what’s coming, as there be spoilers ahead!

The Good:
The opening credit sequence: A clever way to compress and cover many, many years and events without adding to the already-overloaded exposition. The use of tableaux was a nice choice, although the down side of this was that it further emphasized the static nature of the source medium.

The Voice of Dr. Manhattan: The CGI Manhattan was what it was. It looked close enough to the source material to not interfere with the audience’s willing suspension of disbelief. It was the character’s voice that really won me over. Billy Crudup has gained some deserved acclaim for his subtle performance, and a large part of that performance is due to the director who chose not to augment/deepen his voice to make him sound more “god-like.” Instead, the plaintive, high-pitched Manhattan seems even more of a paradox than he seemed on the printed page.

The Performances of Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earl Haley: So much has already been said about both of these performances, I don’t think I need to go into further detail here. Suffice it to say that they understood their characters and stayed intimately true to the intentions of the novel, and that Haley’s moment with the psychiatrist was one of the true high points of the film.

The Unforgettable Moment: Nat King Cole has never seemed quite so relevant or cool than when he was used as a soundtrack for this hyped-up fight sequence. I do not hold with the purists on this one. I understand that the death of the Comedian happens quickly in the book, but that has never made much sense to me, given his particular…ummm…skill set.

The Bad:

The Supporting Cast: Whether it was the horrendous acting of the prison inmates or the over-the-top performance of the reporter in the early Ozymandias sequence, it was obvious that many of the bit parts went to people with little or no experience acting. Maybe this was a way for someone, somewhere to repay a favor, but it certainly did the audience no favors. This, of course, leads to the next in my list, which is…

The Dick Nixon: Ok, so I GET the fact that this was a half-hearted, satiric stab at politics, but the makeup was horrible (when did Nixon become Pinnochio?) and the acting wasn’t much better. The frequent use of tricky Dick implied that Snyder REALLY LIKED this, which simply boggles my mind. Better to have used computer manipulated footage of the real Nixon (as in Contact) rather than this crude caricature.

The Songs: I applaud Snyder for staying true to the 80s-entrenched nature of the movie (and even including most of the songs referenced in Moore’s original), but could he have chosen a few less iconic songs for the remainder of the soundtrack? Ummm….Wagner has been used before and for better effect (and why try to reference a vastly superior movie? To reinforce the fact that Watchmen isn’t a classic?), and I just don’t think it was necessary to make Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah quite so…well…tawdry.

The Super Powers: I kinda thought one of the BIG points of Watchmen (the graphic novel) was that there was only ONE super-powered creature on Earth; why,then, are characters like the Comedian and Nite Owl taking huge chunks of wall, concrete and brick with them when their punches connect? Again, I get the larger-than-life nature of this world, but a human-to-human punch should not launch the bad guy yards away.

I’m sure I’ll add to this list as I think more and more about the film. Consider this a work-in-progress for a bit.

The film version of Watchmen did fairly well over the weekend and all of the fanboys and critics have had their say.  Has the dust settled?  Not quite.  I figure it’ll be a while what with all the different incarnations of the film on DVD that lay ahead of us.  No, Watchmen (the movie) will be debated for years to come…at least until some studio decides to make the remake.

In the meantime, I’d like to send you well-wishes from a universe wherein Watchmen isn’t the seminal comic book of the 80s because it’s there that I feel the true potential for a Watchmen film lies.  Just imagine.  If there were no great reverence for this book…if fanboys didn’t gush over the blood-spattered smiley…if  Alan Moore were a poor, bomb-making lunatic in a cabin… well, then a filmmaker could make whatever Watchmen-inspired movie he or she liked.  Are you following me?  Stick close because Dr. Manhattan might *bloop* me out of existence before I finish this tale.

You see, the failings of the Watchmen film have nothing to do with the movie per se, but with Movies.  Movies aren’t novels, novels aren’t comics, and Watchmen (the movie) isn’t art.  It’s a crowbar trying to wedge the content of the comic into a very different medium.  Now, you can make movies just about any way you want.  They can be abstract or static or jarringly abrasive.  They can even contain Jar Jar Binks.  But they are not storyboarded comic book panels nor should they be.  Comics can be persued at any rate.  The speedy reader will no doubt miss things but that’s their prerogative.  Just like Bobby Brown, they can choose whether or not to linger on the giant squid panel for ten minutes or one.  Film doesn’t afford its audience this choice.  Yes, you can freeze it or slow it down or replay bits on DVD but that will not change the speed and feel of the experience the way that reading a comic at your own pace allows.

This brings me to my point.  Back in the universe where Watchmen (the comic) is a bust, I think I could make a great Watchmen movie.  It’d be titled Rorschach and it would follow that anti-hero through our story from beginning to grisly end like a freight train with no brakes.  It would contain the other Watchmen as supporting characters but the emphasis would be on the tragedy of Rorschach.  Would you pay to see that one?  Would it be marketable?  Would it be any good?  I don’t know.  But I do believe it would have a better chance of being a great movie than does a slavish adaptation of the comic.  It would be able to find its own tone and live and breathe and work as a film.  It wouldn’t have so many drooling gomers looking over its shoulder and over-analyzing it’s choices.  I didn’t notice anyone in the general public complaining that Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys didn’t live up to La Jette, the French film with nothing but still images and narration on which 12 Monkeys was based.  No one outside of film school had ever seen the damn thing so Gilliam was free to create HIS version of the story instead of a cranky retread of the original.

I know this is all speculation at this point.  Watchmen was a seminal graphic novel and, unfortunately, the images on the big screen will soon eclipse its understated grace.  Oh, but what could have been.

Much has already been said, and written about Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, opening today. So, I’ll just share a bit of what Roger Ebert had to say:

“Batman” isn’t a comic book anymore. Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” is a haunted film that leaps beyond its origins and becomes an engrossing tragedy. It creates characters we come to care about. That’s because of the performances, because of the direction, because of the writing, and because of the superlative technical quality of the entire production. This film, and to a lesser degree “Iron Man,” redefine the possibilities of the “comic-book movie.”

And later…

Something fundamental seems to be happening in the upper realms of the comic-book movie. “Spider-Man II” (2004) may have defined the high point of the traditional film based on comic-book heroes. A movie like the new “Hellboy II” allows its director free rein for his fantastical visions. But now “Iron Man” and even more so “The Dark Knight” move the genre into deeper waters. They realize, as some comic-book readers instinctively do, that these stories touch on deep fears, traumas, fantasies and hopes. And the Batman legend, with its origins in film noir, is the most fruitful one for exploration.

As always, perfectly written.  If it was possible to stoke me up any further for this movie, this review has done just that.

Garth Ennis makes no excuses for the level of vulgarity in his work. I respect that, even if I more than often find his particular brand of writing less than interesting.  That said, I still decided to give his and artist Darrick Robertson’s latest creation, The Boys, a chance. After the first issue, I swore off the series (no pun intended) because it seemed just a bit too desperate, but I gave it yet another try just a few weeks ago, catching up on all of the back issues I missed. After reading approximately three story arcs, I think I’m in a better position to make some sort of judgment about the series as a whole, and to relate it more effectively to its relation to Alan Moore’s Watchmen.

In The Boys, Ennis is working with the same premise Moore starts off with in Watchmen – namely, that superheroes are just hyper-exaggerated, hyper-powered versions of our own frail, faulty, eminently immoral selves.  Thus, we have heroes who essentially take on many of the attributes seen in our own world’s taboid superstars – vanity, excessive egos, drug addiction (heck, addiction of EVERY kind), and hunger for love and acceptance.  Where Moore takes these ideas and turns them into thought-provoking, enlightened literature, Ennis turns them into what at best could be considered the comic book version of a snuff film.  There is sly satire to be found in The Boys, but it’s hidden behind WAY too much scatological, bottom-basement, caveman humor, to the point where the series seems an exercise in how far the writer/artist will go next, rather than an exercise in good comic book storytelling.

And therein lies the major problem with the series, a problem provocative artists have always had to address. I just don’t see how much further Ennis and Robertson can take it. I mean, once you cross every line and every standard of good taste, where else is there to go?  

A: When you wear it every freakin’ day of the week!

Confessions of a Superhero, out now on DVD, is director Matt Ogens’ attempt to understand and explain to the rest of us why people Like Christopher Dennis (Superman) dress up in superhero drag and stand outside of Mann’s Chinese Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard day in and day out begging for tips. The subject is handled deftly and makes for an interesting, funny, and often disturbing documentary about the lost souls of Hollywood.

If you’ve ever visited the Chinese theatre, you’ve been assaulted by the presence of the hoard of wannabes in poorly made costumes who are panhandling. That’s right. They basically present themselves as if they are working for the theatre (despite signage to the contrary), but when a tourist wants a pic with them they’re quick to remind the photog (in none too subtle ways) that they ACCEPT tips. The laws in Hollywood are such that these “street performers” can work for tips so long as they never state an amount and never make a fuss when they aren’t tipped. That is the nature of tipping, right? Despite the fact that there are pressures on patrons to tip certain professions in certain situations, you really aren’t required by law to offer the tip unless you want to. Of course, Emily Post never had sweaty Superman or fanny-pack Spiderman in mind when she wrote her tomes on tipping either.

I work a few blocks from the theatre where these folks congregate and the most amazing thing about them is that they’re always there. The tourist season begins in May and ends in September, so those are the prime months when their costume-clad numbers swell, but their ilk always has representation on the street. Why? Well the initial answer is simple. They make money. Sometimes LOTS of it. The answer Ogens reveals is a little more complex.

All four of the central figures in the documentary are failed actors. All four also have major dysfunction in their lives and their relationships as well. Now you might argue that ALL actors have major dysfunction in their lives – that’s why they’re actors – and I wouldn’t disagree, but these folks seem to be especially cracked albeit in drastically different ways.

The real standouts of this documentary are the still photo montages that pepper the film. It’s obvious that Ogens came from a photography background as these images are fabulous. The addition of Greg Keuhn’s music and it’s melancholy tone really makes the images resonate. The montages alone merit a rental.

Overall, it’s an interesting show. My only concern is that the general public might confuse these bums with the folks who are into costuming for fun and charity. Sure, some of the comic con types are just as cracked, but at least they don’t expect to get paid for it.

Well, let me tell ya what I’m reading…Better yet, let me rundown the comic mags I know of and how they stack up to each other.

First, there’s Wizard Magazine. The most well-known, the most colorful, and so on.

This is the magazine that’s prettiest to look at. Tons of colorful pictures which plenty of original art. If you need a fanboy comic magazine, this one’s the one to get.

However….here’s my problem with it. Yes, I read it on a semi-regular basis, BUT…most news articles are things I’ve already read about online. Sure, this isn’t Wizard’s fault. But old news still doesn’t make it interesting just because it’s prettied up in a shiny magazine. Also…way too many articles on movies. I know, most are comic-related movies. But this is a comic mag, not a movie mag. There’s so much potential that this magazine doesn’t provide. How about histories of different characters? Or in depth interviews with creators (most are brief interviews). Or how about reviews of titles that are truthful, not just hyping them up? I understand this is a magazine meant to promote books. But I need a little more unbiased opinions in my mags.

Overall, I enjoy Wizard as a fun read. But I won’t learn much.

Next is Comics Buyers Guide (CBG). Man, what a great mag! Sure, it’s not as pretty as Wizard, but it’s for true comic lovers. It features reviews of comics and trades, in depth looks at silver-age stories, new comics news, and even a great letter’s page that’s actually interesting to read.  This is definitely a mag to pick up if you want more out of your average comic mag.

And last but not least…Alter-Ego and Back Issue. Both mags are through Twomorrows Publishing and are excellent. Roy Thomas’ Alter-Ego deals, in large part, with golden age heroes and creators. Back Issue is more of a tribute to comics in the 70’s and 80’s. Both have extremely well written interviews with creators who discuss ideas behind the comics they were creating, along with a rich history of the comic and era at the time. I can’t get enough of these two mags.

So there you have it. A brief breakdown of the comic mags I read. Any other mags out there, let us know about’em!

Here’s a book to check out. It’s called The End League, written by Rick Remender and drawn by Matt Broome. And it’s a good one. Based on Marvel and DC characters, this isn’t just another superhero team book. Astonishman, the book’s “Superman”, accidentally sets off a bomb that wipes out a large part of the world. The radiation mutates one in every thousand people with super powers. No one but Astonishman knows of the destruction he caused. Years later, his team of very recognizable characters have formed to rid the world of evil…and to find Thor’s hammer. Yep, there’s a Thor in this universe, too.

The funny thing is that a few readers have claimed that the heroes are unoriginal! Ummm…that’s the point. This gives Remender the chance to write his favorite characters of the Big Two his own way. And boy does he.

After only two issues, it’s too early to tell how this ongoing book will stand up. But at this moment, it’s a keeper for me. With all the Watchmen and Authority rip-offs out there, it’s nice to see a different take on heroes. It’s also nice to see a Superman-type character make a huge mistake that impacts the entire world around him.

Makes me want to check out Remember’s Fear Agent now.

Amazon.com’s Books Blog recently featured an article about journalist Bill Baker’s book series interviewing famous comic book creators (read the full post here.)  While I applaud the attempt to publish some worthwhile interviews in the hopes of further studying what makes great comics great, there are just a few problems:

1.  The books are absurdly expensive. 
Just take a look at any of these items on Amazon and you’ll be appalled.  $30 for a 100-page book?  NO thanks.

2.  The covers look like something sold through Scholastic’s Weekly Reader.  Seriously, do I really want to read an in-depth interview with Alan Moore in a book that looks like the latest tween hit? “Don’t judge a book by its cover” only goes so far, you know?

3.  The choice of subjects is, er…um….kinda good, I guess. 
Look, I won’t argue that Gaiman, Moore and Perez deserve this kind of treatment. They have all made substantial contributions to comics, and have changed the medium forever.  But Michael Oeming?  I don’t get it.  Sure, his art was a tremendous boon to the Powers series, but was it as significant as ANYTHING the other three have done?  And as for his writing, somehow I don’t think his run on Thor or Omega Flight are anything to applaud.

If anyone out there has purchased and read these, I’d love to hear what you have to say.  Leave me some comments below.