Tradio #31 - Serenity: The Shepard's Tale

This week we wrap up my series celebrating Black History Month with a review of a trade that spotlights one of the most underused characters on the television series Firefly, Shepard Book.  This week we talk about Serenity: The Shepard's Tale by Joss and Zack Whedon with art by Chris Samnee and published by Dark Horse Comics.

The Shepard's Tale relates the origins of Shepard Derrial Book as he lies dying after defending the planet Haven against an Alliance attack. As his life flashes before his eyes, we get insight into Book's life and his origins.  Considering very little was explored as far as the life of Book in the Firefly television show, it is nice to see the origins of this very interesting character.  Through a series of flashbacks that go further and further back into the past, we see that Book was not always the pacifist that we saw in the television series and that from a very young age he was destined to be a very bad person and that only through a spiritual awakening did he become the redeemed man that he ended up being.  I don't want to saw too much else because it is better if you see it for yourself.

Overall, I really enjoyed the work.  It is short, but full of information that sheds light on an extremely interesting character.  The writing is tight and the art is amazing.  Chris Samnee is a great artist and he breathes a lot of life into the character and setting of the work.  You just can't go wrong with this work and it is a must read for any Firefly fan.

What's In The Box: The Unboxening!

Since people seem to get a kick out of my mail, I thought I would post some picks of a surprise box that showed up on my doorstep the other day.  I wasn't really expecting anything and this one totally surprised me...but I love it!

The reason it was a surprise was that I preordered almost a full year ago and had basically forgotten about it.  I LOVE the Gentle Giant Star Wars mini busts.  I don't collect all of them, but I like some of the more iconic characters and have a soft spot for bounty hunters and troopers.  They have started making Marvel ones and I have wanted some of them, but have stayed away since I am a Bowen mini bust kind of guy already.  But if they do a Dr. Doom then I will have to get it.  Anyway, the level of detail on ole Aurra Sing here is pretty amazing and I think she is one of my favorites.  I just really need to be very careful with her cause she looks like she could be broken pretty easily.  All in all, an amazing piece who is going to sit with my other bounty hunters proudly.

Tradio #30 - Afrodisiac

Welcome back friends!  This week's edition of Tradio we look at a work that is a little less on the heavy undertones and a little more on the fun with Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca's Afrodisiac from Adhouse Books.

Afrodisiac is a love letter to the 70's blaxsploitation comics from Marvel.  Full of fun and adventure and more pimp slang than you can shake a pimp stick at, Afrodisiac bounces from one story to another with each set up like a different kind of issue of a 1970's Marvel comic.  Between each of these tales are Rugg's take on covers and ads from the times and span many different genres of comics.  The underlying narrative of the whole thing?  Fun...well that and Afrodisiac is a bad mutha-SHUT YO MOUTH! Anyway, it is all done tongue firmly in cheek and we see the many takes on the origins of super heroes through the lens of a black man from the mean streets.






The book is really good and a lot of fun. Rugg is amazing in his versatility of artistic styles and his story telling ability is really top notch.  Maruca is great at using the time period of the work to his advantage and creating interesting situations and still honoring the source material.  Overall, everything comes together in a beautiful package that you will want to give to anyone who comes to you wanting to read something "different".  A fun read and well worth your time.

As enjoyable as riding a flaming bitch seat...

Comic book movies are such a hit or miss affair.  Sometimes you have a great movie from a character that isn't all that well known like Blade or The Crow.  Sometimes you get a complete turd of a movie from a character that is very well known like Wolverine or The Hulk.  And sometimes, you get Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance, which is somewhere closer to Punisher: War Zone.

 

Razzie Award nominee, Nicolas Cage reprises his role as Johnny Blaze; a man who made a deal with the devil and now has to ride a flaming motorcycle as the Ghost Rider.  Honestly, I have seen Cage do a worse job at acting than this and he wouldn't be too bad overall if not for the crazy laugh and the stupid, stupid facial expressions.  The plot of the movie centers around Blaze being in Eastern Europe for no good reason and having to save a boy that happens to be the spawn of Satan so that Blaze can be freed of the curse of the Ghost Rider...who happens to be a crazy angel or something.

Still there?  Yeah, I was making that face too.  The story is pretty much there just to get you from point A to point B and give Cage the opportunity to chew the scenery a lot.  There is Idris Elba (who clearly needs a better agent), Christopher Lambert (who clearly needed the money), and even Anthony Head (who clearly did a favor for someone).  The characters were all pretty standard and throw away and no one was ever really a threat...even Satan..err...I mean Roarke was a bit of a pussy. 

As for the movie itself, I saw it in 2D and I don't think I missed anything.  For some reason, there was a lot of up close cinematography that was just too jarring and there were many times that I had no idea what was happening because of it.  Additionally, Cage does NOT need to be filmed that close up at this point in his career, especially in the age of HD.  Also, there were a lot of odd mannerisms, camera tricks, and cuts that I am sure were suppose to make Ghost Rider more scary, but it didn't.  It just looked hokey.  That said, there was some good use of CGI and I really liked the look of the bike and the way things actually looked burned.  Also, they did a good job of dealing with the fire and smoke realistically, especially in the chase scenes with the motorcycle.  There were cool touchs when he "hellified" things that he rode as well.  But sadly, no Ghost Rider sex scenes, so no hellifying of a lady...maybe in Ghost Rider 3: Highway to Hell.

So...how was it?  It was ok.  I liked it better than the original, I think, but it was nothing all that special.  His powers were really tamed down in this one, though he really didn't need much other than his chain.  The effects are worth seeing, but not much else.  Oh and there is nothing after the credits other than your wishes for a better movie.  Enjoy kids!

Let's NOT do the Timewarp Again!

OK. I love fantasy.  I love adventure.  I love science fiction.  All that said, I am not a huge fan of time travel stories.  Usually they are cheap excuses to do a big, earth-changing story that actually doesn't change anything at all.  There are exceptions where it works really well as a story where there are changes that affect things in the present which are meaningful to the overall story of the character and the world they live in, but all too often it is just a plot devise to set up a series of events that in the end, don't really matter. Don't get me wrong, they can be fun and they tend to be a lot of fun in movies where you aren't spending a huge amount of time with characters other than what you are seeing on screen and it tends to be the point of the whole affair like Back to the Future or The Terminator.  In comics though, it is starting to annoy me.  I get my comics from Discount Comic Book Service for the most part and have my titles delivered in a big chunk at the end of each month.  Being the creature of habit I am, I always read my single Marvel issues first and guess what reared it's tired self in all three of monthies I still get from Marvel.  You guessed it...time travel.  Now...this is sort of going to be a rant, so if you don't want to read it, well then, stop reading.  Additionally, I will be talking about Avengers Academy, Thunderbolts, and X-Factor, so if you don't want to be spoiled on what happened in any of those titles for the last few months, stop reading too.  Don't worry...it won't be too detailed, but you have been warned.

First up, Avengers Academy.  I started out really liking this book, but ever since the whole Fear Itself crossover, it has really been floundering in my opinion.  How do we spice things up then?  We bring in future Reptyl to fuck with stuff and try and have students killed by some dude called Hybrid that I really don't care about. The book has already used the future, older versions of the kids in a story not even a year ago and it just seems like the book is going back to that well way too soon.  Lets deal with all the new students that just joined and how they all interact before we bring back a future version of a character that is the leader and arguably the least interesting one of the lot.  At the end of the story, everyone goes back to normal, the bad guy gets captured, and no one really died, though we were led to believe Hybrid was a badass that was going to be killing people left and right.  Once again, a story that doesn't really seem to move anyone forward and doesn't change anything.  Sigh...NEXT!

Then there is Thunderbolts.  I have mixed emotions about this...really I do.  I have liked a lot of what Jeff Parker has done with this series and though the stories are somewhat interesting, they are sooooo dragging on.  There is way too much fall out from the events of Fear Itself (yeah, this one had to deal with that crap too and it took away one of my favorite members of the team in Juggernaut) that isn't being dealt with at all.  The WW II stuff was neat, the Jack the Ripper stuff was OK, I am so not caring about the medieval stuff at all...just get them back to the present.  I want to see what this different team can do in the now.  They are bouncing through history and again, nothing really seems to matter.  Again...NEXT!


Finally we have X-Factor.  I have to say, when Peter David is on it, he is on it.  He knows these characters inside and out and you do to.  The characterization is spot on and you really feel like you are back in the heydays of the Uncanny X-Men with these folks.  That said, we are again dealing with time-travel in this book.  The X-books are always dealing with time-travel and divergent realities and futures that may never come to pass.  Where Madrox currently is is any one's guess and it may not truly be the future, though it sure seems to be.  I guess at the end of the day, I miss his interaction with the rest of the team and though it has given the reintroduction of some friends from the past, his character is the backbone of the group.  Just hurry up and get him back...please.

So, in closing...I hate, hate, hate time travel in my comics.  Please stop it before I stop caring.  Thank you.

Tradio #29 - Truth: Red, White, & Black

Welcome back!  This week I continue featuring graphic novels in honor of Black History Month and review the collected edition of Truth: Red, White, & Black written by Robert Morales with art by Kyle Baker and published by Marvel Comics.

America in the early 1940's wasn't exactly a great place to be. Though the country had started an upswing from the Great Depression of the 1930's, there was still a lot of uneasiness to be felt as most of Europe and Asia was at war with Germany and Japan and American's held their collective breathes as they waited for when we would be dragged into the conflict.  This eventually did happen in 1941 and the USA was looking for an advantage from the very start.  From this fertile point in history, we get the story told in Truth: Red, White & Black.  While the country was sending soldiers off to Europe and the Pacific, we were still dealing with the beginnings of real racial tentions here at home.  I am sure by now we all know the basic story of who Steve Rogers is and how he came into being, but Truth takes that story and examines within the racial context of the 1940's.  Would the US government really do experiments on white men, when they had "inferior" black men that they could use first?  We get a look at these men that survived the experiments and how they helped turn the tide of World War II and how they were subsequently treated by the government that they were sworn to serve.

Truth is really a good read that is fiction, but based in a lot of fact about how black soldiers were treated at the time.  It is amazing that Marvel had the balls to produce a work like this that is firmly planted in the Marvel Universe and has spawned several characters and storylines since it's publication in 2003. I initially had my concerns about the art by Kyle Baker (whose work on Plastic Man really didn't seem to jell in my mind as the best fit for this work), but he does a great job of giving emotional resonance to the characters and a kinetic force to the fights in the book. If I have a complaint about the work as a whole, it is that there could have been an issue or two more produced to tie up some loose ends a little more entertainingly as they are eventually handled.  That said, it is well worth your time to read and maybe it will help you to understand a small part as to how, though as put upon as blacks were at the time, they still loved their country and loved it as much as any man...regardless of color.

Tradio #28 - Lost Girls

Today on a very special Valentine's Day episode of Tradio we look at one of the most romantic graphic novels ever written.  Today we look at Lost Girls by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, published by Top Shelf Productions.

Ah...young love.  Full of awkwardness and promise.  Exciting and nervous.  So many conflicting feelings come to a head and it is one of the scariest things we subject ourselves to.  Lost Girls looks at all these things...by using the framework of hardcore porn.  Yeah...porn.  There is no other way around it.  Lost Girls is porn featuring the characters from beloved childrens' tales Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and The Wizard of Oz.  And not just your ordinary porn either.  Pedophilia, incest, rape...this lovely tale has it all! Basically, the book uses the framework of Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy meeting at a hotel during World War I and having lots and lots of sex with one another and others at the hotel as they tell the tales of their youth.  As it turns out, the books written about their exploits are very sanitized retellings of what really happened.  Tea parties become orgies, Capt. Hook becomes an old pedophile with a whithered hand, and the farm hands become rapists.  Over and over, the tales we know and love are twisted into depraved versions were the stories only get the story tellers and the listeners that much hotter.  Overall, the ending of the book is a nice twist, but man, what you have to go through to get there is pretty rough.

But did I like it?  Yes and no.  I liked that it takes chances and makes no bones about what it really is.  What I didn't like is that it is a very graphic good about underage literary characters that a lot of young girls look up to in very perverse situations.  I am not one who thinks that something like this should not of been made, but sometimes I feel that Moore is doing more and more things in his old age to push the envelope just because he can get away with it like no one else can.  Maybe he just wants to make sure no more of his works get made into movies.  I am not sure, but I wish he had spent more time doing something with these characters that I could share with other people or even my kids someday.  Gebbie's art is amazing, though a little stiff (I really can't believe I just typed that with a straight face).  She isn't really a comic book artist and it shows in the layouts of the book.  They aren't bad, just not very dynamic and for a bigger format book like this is, there are SO many grids at times.  All in all, it is a work of graphic fiction that exists to show just how far you can push the envelope.  I am just not sure if we really needed to take this particular journey to get there.

Tradio #27 - Stuck Rubber Baby

Well, after a very long and drawn out hiatus, I am finally back with a new graphic novel review.  Most all of the graphic novels that I talk about this month will be in honor of Black History Month (with maybe a slight veer away from that on a certain holiday).  This week we look at a very complex tale that not only puts racial tension and civil rights in the 60's to the forefront, but also addresses how homosexuals in that day and age also dealt with the prejudices of others.  This week we review Stuck Rubber Baby by Howard Cruse as published under DC's Vertigo banner.

Stuck Rubber Baby revolves around the fictitious life of Toland Polk in the fictitious town of Clayfield which is in the all too real southern United States in the 1960's.  The story is told by a older Toland relating the events of his early manhood in a very divided southern town.  Through his steady narrative, Toland gives us a glimpse of the people around him during this time in his life and how he struggled with the feelings and thoughts that he had as he tried to discover his place in the world.  The framing story of Toland telling his tales of youth, help to establish how far he has come since those days and shed light on where he is now in his journey of self-discovery.  Through a "cracker's eyes" we see how African Americans struggled in this small southern town and also how the homosexual community rallied around them and ultimately became targets themselves by association.  Toland is confused about his own feelings of love and belonging and only through great tragedy is he able to come to grips with who he truly is.

Though the work is fictional, there are many, many aspects of the story that ring true to both the times and to the author.  Largely based on stories related to him from others and his own experiences, Howard Cruse produces a rich story full of interesting and yet flawed individuals that are almost uncomfortably relatible at times.  Blacks and gays alike are draw as imperfect people trying their best just to be who they are without giving the bigots and racists more fuel to use against them.  Even Toland, who should be the sterling "hero" of the story, has faults like us all and his keen ability to often say the wrong thing at the wrong time hits very close to home.  You can identify with him which is both empowering and scary at times.

It took Howard Cruse four years to complete this over 200 page masterpiece and it shows on every page.  The loving detail that he puts into every drawing and his use of language make for an easy read about very hard subjects.  If the book as a whole has a flaw, it is the ending that uses some powerful imagery, but doesn't really wrap up anything as much as I would have liked.  All in all though, it is a powerful piece of graphic storytelling that sheds light on two aspects of our culture that are not represented as much as they should be in the medium.  It will either make you very happy in the end or very uncomfortable and if it does make you uncomfortable, I hope you take time to figure out just why that is and take steps to do some changes in the way that you see the world. I highly recommend it.

Oh...and the name of the book.  It never gets explained, but if you pay attention, you will figure it out.  Enjoy!

iScrewed uP

Hi all.  I know I may not posted anything in awhile. You may have missed me, you may have not, but truth be told, I couldn't post due to a nasty virus.  Influenza? Chlamydia? No, no...nothing that much fun. A nasty COMPUTER virus that had my computer out of commission for about a month.  Through into that both an ill mother-in-law and a mother with a broke femur and here we are over a month later and this is my first post back.  Things are a little crazy still but I will get back in the swing of things with posting here and even have a side blog gig that I am VERY excited about.  Anyway, I thought that I would impart on to you all who are still subscribed to this what I learned from my time with an infected computer.

The most important thing I was faced with as be sure to back up important files on your computer often.  I ended up losing everything on my computer.  Every program, picture, video, and song.  I have a big ole external hard drive that I can plug in and back up everything on my computer, but did I do it?  Well, from time to time I did with videos and pictures, which was great but the last time I back up iTunes was September of 2010.  Seriously...it was bad.  Music that I had bought from iTunes wasn't that big of a deal, but I get stuff from Amazon a lot too and any cds that I had added were gone...so very gone.  But the bright side?  I got it all back.  See I use one of the 80 gigabyte classic iPods cause I don't like having to be troubled too much with picking and choosing what I listen to...I just have it all with me, no matter what.  This ended up saving my butt with my complete loss of everything on my computer.  See, normally when you sync your iPod to your computer, whatever is in your iTunes overrules whatever is on your iPod.  So if I had reinstalled iTunes and then synced my iPod, I would have lost everything on it.  But, what does your computer do when you don't have iTunes on your computer?  Well it treats it like any other storage device.  So, without iTunes on my newly wiped computer, I was able to plus in my iPod, transfer the files into a new music folder and then reload iTunes and connect that program with the music that I downloaded.  I did have to go folder by folder and manually add it to my iTunes program, but after that, it was just reconnected my iPod and letting the magic happen.  I got it all back.  Every song, video, and movie was back...though I have had to play some with my podcasts.  Anyway, I hope this kind of situation never happens to you, but if you do, there is hope. 

Hope that helps someone someday.  Talk to you soon about more exciting stuff.