What I Read May 2016

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There is a theme this month, and that theme is Lois Lane. I was interested in the non-fiction book Investigating Lois Lane, but when I went to buy it I encountered a pair of Lois YA novels, so I snapped them up as well. And that took care of most of my book reading for the month of May. I really hope there are more of those YA books to come, they were very good.

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The Big Heat

William P McGivern

My local library had a sale, and I picked up a dilapidated copy of this, along with a half dozen other books, for about a quarter a piece. This is just a lean, muscular noir piece, turned into a well-respected movie. A police detective looks into a case despite being warned off, which gets his wife killed. He then resigns from the force and gets revenge. There isn’t anything especially unique about this story, but it is reasonably well told.

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Investigating Lois Lane

Tim Hanley

This is an insightful and illuminating look at the history of one of comics’ most prominent characters. Hanley takes us through the creation and evolution of Lois Lane, both in the comics and in other media, from the start of Action Comics up to the present day. There is a lot of good stuff in there, especially for fans of the character or even just Superman. It shows how her strengths as a character seemed to show through despite the stories she was in frequently undercutting her. I don’t want to just regurgitate the information found in the book, but it did give me plenty the think about and some stories I want to track down.

Tim Hanley writes in a clear, engaging style and while this isn’t the most intellectually rigorous subject matter he does make some thoughtful points. I did grow somewhat annoyed about how often it came back to the idea that Lois’ stories were being put on the backburner for Superman’s when these stories were taking place in a book titled Superman. Lois’ biggest problem, as displayed by this book, is that she is a supporting character. Still, there are a lot of great and plenty of terrible stories that Investigation Lois Lane can inform you about.

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Lois Lane: Fallout

Gwenda Bond

This book, and its sequel are pretty much perfect. Gwenda Bond takes Lois Lane and perfectly reimagines her as a high school student, albeit one in a world that has a touch more science fiction than our own. Lois is a 16 year old army brat whose family has relocated to Metropolis. She has a reputation for getting into trouble, usually by sticking her nose into tricky situations to help people. She quickly does the same at Metropolis while joining the Daily Planet as a correspondent for their youth blog. Also, she has an online relationship with a mysterious boy from Kansas who she met looking into this mysterious flying man her and her father saw while driving through the state. She is basically everything you could want from a teenage Lois Lane.

In this book, she gets entangled in a plot that uses at risk kids in some sort of experiment to develop a hive mind, only the hive mind isn’t being shut off and they keep recruiting new kids. They are doing this using a sort of VR video game that all the kids are playing. Lois, along with her fellow young journalists, investigate and try to get to the bottom of things, all while she tries to seem like she is following the rules to keep her dad off her back. It is amazingly fun.

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Lois Lane: Double Down

Gwenda Bond

As soon as I finished the first one I went back in for seconds. I am a huge sucker for the Superman mythos and characters, and this is one of the better takes on them I’ve encountered. This time, Lois helps out a couple of her new friends. One, Maddy, has a twin who is having some problems after she went to a mysterious research lab in order to earn a few extra bucks. The other is the son of the disgraced former mayor, who has recently been released from prison. While they investigate how the Mayor can appear in two places at once, they also look into why Maddy’s sister is having blackouts. As impossible as it seems, the two cases might be connected.

This book is a delight. Since it doesn’t need to spend the time on set up, it really gets to dig into Lois, as well as her friends and relationships. Readers get to know more about the protagonist through how she deals with her friends, her problems and her romantic issues with the mysterious SmallvilleGuy. While the weird sci-fi plot never relents, the book really lets the reader get to know its protagonists. While I am far from an expert on the genre, it is easily one of the best YA books I’ve read.

Comics

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American Barbarian

Tom Scioli

This was a belated Christmas gift (thanks Buge) that I tore into really fast. I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. On its surface, American Barbarian is the finest Kirby pastiche. It is a world where no idea is too big or too crazy to be put on the page. It reads like a half joke, but you can’t help marvel while you laugh. Meric, the titular red white and blue haired barbarian, seeks revenge on the giant evil Pharoah Two-tank Omen for the murder of his family in a post-post-apocalyptic world. Every page contains more and more amazing stuff. Tom Scioli has crafted something here unlike anything else you can find, and it is amazing. Writing about it is hard, since even thinking about it makes me as giddy as if I’d just eaten a bag of sugar.

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Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye

Grant Morrison/Cameron Stewart

This is not actually a collection, because I don’t think a collection exists for this mini-series, but I read it as one series and it deserves to be considered. This one picks up sometime after the original Seaguy and continues that story. At the end of that story, Seaguy had his memory wiped and was given a new partner. But he keeps seeing the ghost of Chubby the Tuna and having vague memories of his previous adventures. The villainous Seadog does his best to remove the threat to his idyllic world that Seaguy poses, but Seaguy keeps coming back. I don’t really want to get deeper into it than that, that would spoil the surreal fun of this series. It is definitely worth reading, Morrison is a master and Cameron Stewart is likewise great.

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Superman: Kryptonite

Darwyn Cooke/Tim Sale

Realizing that even with a purchase earlier in the week, see the next entry, I had not encountered wide swathes of the recently departed Darwyn Cooke’s work, I picked this up in a comixology sale. This has Cooke writing, but it is drawn by Time Sale. I liked this, but it is strange. It starts off as one thing, a story as close as Superman gets to noir, before shifting into some full on sci-fi stuff by the end. It is not an elegant transition. I still really enjoyed the story, but it is not as great as I’d hoped it would be after the first two issues. The story supposedly details Superman’s first encounter with Kryptonite, but it also tells a story about a new Metropolis business upstart and an interstellar entity. Clark, Jimmy and Lois are tasked with figuring out what is up with a supposedly reformed mobster as he opens a casino and gives tons of money to charity. Meanwhile, someone is messing with some Kryptonite while showing Clark visions of the past on Krypton. While the story doesn’t quite work at the end, it is still looks great and reads fine. Definitely worth a look.

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Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter

Darwyn Cooke

I picked this up, along with the other three Parker books, just days before Cooke tragically passed away. I’ve read plenty of other things written or drawn by Darwyn Cooke, but if the other Parker books maintain this level of quality, then they might be his masterwork. His art is wonderful, distinctive and creative. His works with limited colors in this book, and what he does use is excellent. Then there is the story, which is simple and nearly perfect. Parker has a kind of seductive competence to him; he is cool enough that it is easy to forget that he is basically a monster. He is a sociopath. The only thing only slightly redeemable about him is that most of the people he deals with are just as bad as he is. Still, thanks to Cooke’s mastery, you do end up sympathizing with him for most of the book. This is good, good stuff.

Warcraft Review

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I am not going to sit here and try to tell anyone that I am a big fan of the Warcraft games. That was true many years ago, when there were only two such games and I counted Warcraft 2 among my favorite video game experiences. But with Warcraft 3 and especially WoW, the series moved away from my interests. Still, I am a big fan of fantasy movies in general, so I had some anticipation for the Warcraft movie. That proved to be misguided, as Warcraft is a turgid, self-serious and simply dull affair that does nothing to leverage the possibilities of the games into a watchable movie.

The most obvious point of contention is movie’s visual effects. They are ever present and unignorable. As far as I can tell, it is never the intent of the film’s effects to present a realistic world, instead an attempt to translate the decade old visual style of WoW into something vaguely resembling live action. The Orcs are cartoonish hulks with hands bigger than their heads. The humans, while being the live action portion of the film, are decked out in the most absurd accoutrements. The overall effect is something out of a particularly garish cartoon, with a simultaneously strong sense of style and absolutely no personality.

It accomplishes that dubious feat the same way it bungles its story; by lavishing solemnity on the most generic of fantasy tropes. It takes all of the barebones ideas of Lord of the Rings, the orcs, wizards, noble kings, etc., removes all the unique and thought provoking elements and treats it all with the utter gravity of a Shakespeare tragedy. Giving a general plot outline is almost treating this movies story with too much respect. Orcs cross a gateway into the human’s world, escaping their own dying world, and start a war with the humans. After initially being shocked at their new enemy, the humans fight back. There are infighting factions and double crosses galore before it builds to an ill-defined final battle.

Treated as a fun fantasy romp, this could have been a delight. Instead, it plays it all as seriously as possible. It expects all of its viewers are intimately familiar with the minutiae of Warcraft lore, so merely saying a character’s name should tell the viewer all they need to know, but that doesn’t work for the uninitiated. It could have been saved with exciting, inventive action sequences, but those are not offered here. While indistinct CGI battles rage in the background, the movie’s heroes are more interested in talking amongst themselves on the battlefield. That stupidity reaches its apex at the film’s climax, but it is persistent throughout. Battles rage, but the heroes only have the most cursory interest in them. The best of these sorts of movies use the action scenes to cement character traits, like Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy using his rocket boots to various effects, but there is almost none of that here. Orngrimm Doomhammer does use a hammer I guess, but getting any sort of read on what that character thinks is next to impossible.

Warcraft is a movie that is garish, self-serious and inordinately stupid. Perhaps my opinion would be different if I already cared about this world and these characters, but the movie does not give a reason for the viewer to care. It treats its very existence are revelatory, as though everyone watching is waiting with baited breath to see Lothar and Durotan, as though they are not characters crafted on a completely generic fantasy template. The only thing this movie accomplishes is to impress upon the view of its sense of self-importance. That and it made me want to dig out my copy of Warcraft 2 and play that again.

*1/2

Now Playing May 2016

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Beaten

Run Saber – wrote about it here.

Magical Quest Starring Mickey Mouse – wrote about it here.

Ongoing

Super Mario RPG – I keep promising, but I keep putting this off. I don’t know why. I like the game, I like it a whole lot. AS is obvious by the emptiness of this post this month, I just haven’t had the time to play much of any game, let alone get enough time to play through an RPG on an actual TV. I will have it finished shortly this time.

Bravely Second –

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When I am finally able to finish this I will have a full write up, but this game is really good. I liked the first one enough and this one seems to have fixed almost all of the problems that game had. I can’t say for sure if it fixed the single biggest flaw of that game, having to beat it five times to get the real ending, but it has improved the rest of it. The new classes are a lot of fun so far.

Upcoming

Kirby Planet Robobot – I have a well-established record for liking Kirby games. I loved the last game on the 3DS and this one looks like more of the same in all the best ways.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE – I am pretty nervous about this game. The idea of a SMT and Fire Emblem crossover was hugely exciting, but this game seems to have taken the worst parts of both franchises. I’ m still in, but I’m not as excited for it as I was for my idea of it before I actually saw it. Still, I haven’t given up all hope that it will be worth playing.

Illusion of Gaia – I am getting on this sometime on June. I’ve just got to get my old TV working so I can play it on my real SNES.

Sparkster – After Super Mario RPG and Illusion of Gaia, this is my next SNES game.

What I Watched May 2016

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Movies

30 for 30 Fantastic Lies – Another of ESPN’s excellent 30 for 30 documentaries, this one about the Duke Lacrosse rape scandal that turned out to be not at all what the prosecutor claimed it was. It is a chilling look at what can happen when the system is abused. ****

Captain America Civil War – review here. ****

Journey to the West – A Stephen Chow directorial effort that tells the opening portion of this classic tale. Chow’s movies are frequently possessed of an almost manic energy, but that turns from an asset to a problem in this movie. It is nearly impossible to get a handle on the tone of this movie. It goes from jokey fun to gruesome violence and back forth repeatedly, making for a disconcerting viewing experience, even as it is largely enjoyable. ***

The Forbidden Kingdom – This is an obvious attempt to make a kung fu movie palatable to a wider western audience but jamming a white guy in to be a main character. The real highlight should be the combination of Jet Li an Jackie Chan, but so much time is spent with the less interesting main character. Still, when the movie lets its real stars it is highly entertaining. The fight as they meet for the first time is good fun, as is the finale. That is what this movie delivers; despite some disappointments the movie delivers a lot of fun. ***1/2

Detective Dee and The Mystery of the Phantom Flame – This is essentially a Chinese version of the recent Sherlock Holmes movies. It has an eccentric detective at the center of a big mystery, with his investigation interspersed regularly with action scenes. I didn’t take to the mystery as well in this, maybe because it is easy to miss nuance when you are reading subtitles, but I like the fights just fine and the rest of it was plenty good. It is a touch too long, clocking in at over 2 hours, but I enjoyed it throughout. ***1/2

Pleasantville – I realize that this movie’s playing with color and black and white is mostly just a cheap trick, but I still love it anyway. It isn’t a subtle movie, or one I would want to watch over and over, but for it is still really great. I like everyone’s performances and the trick with the color is a really good one. ****

Legend of the Drunken Master – This should come as no surprise, but Jackie Chan is delightful. I’ve only experienced old Jackie Chan, but in his prime he was truly amazing. The fight scenes in this are something else. Each one is completely delightful; inventive and creative and just entertaining. The comedy bits at other times don’t work quite as well, but the rest of the movie more than makes up for it. I really, really like this movie. ****

30 for 30: One Magic Moment – This film takes a good long look at the Orlando Magic team of the mid-90s, examining how they were built and how they rose to prominence before falling just as fast. It is really interesting. The crazy events that had to happen to get a team in Orlando and then for them to get successive #1 draft picks is like a story book. It all went right up until it all fell apart. Shaq and Penny led the Magic to the NBA finals, but soon after that Shaq left for Los Angeles and Penny got hurt, returning a shell of his former self. Suddenly the team of the future was no more. It is a fascinating, yet sad story. ****

God of Cookery – Another Stephen Chow movie, this one about a corrupt celebrity chef who has his business empire taken from him and must work to be a true God of Cookery. It again combines nuttiness with some genuine darkness, but this time the weirdness easily wins out. It can be truly hilarious, but I don’t know that I like it as much as Kung Fu Hustle or Shaolin Soccer. The cooking showdown at the end is a thing of brilliance, though. ***1/2

Darkman – I can’t say I am a huge Raimi fan, if only because I detest almost everything that can be classified as horror, but I did like his Spider-Man movies. Someone recommended I watch this as well, which is some strange horror/superhero/revenge movie combination starring Liam Neeson. I didn’t hate it, but neither did it really grab me. The plot is actually really simple, a man survives an attempt to kill him and gets revenge on his would be murderer. It is just done with a lot of insanity thrown on top. In theory it sounds good, but I never managed to care even a little bit for any of the characters. ***

X-Men: Apocalypse – review here. **1/2

Five Deadly Venoms – My recent infatuation with Kung Fu movies led me to this, which was sold to me as a cult classic, but I can’t say I liked it all that much. There are a couple of good fights, but it seems like the movie spends way too much time indulging in the torture of one character and other stuff that is just inconsequential to the main storyline. I still enjoyed it more or less, but it just didn’t feel like enough. ***

TV

Poirot S11 – This show, always good if a little stilted, grabbed me more with this season than with most of the previous. I don’t know if that is more on the quality of the episodes or just mood I watched them in. It has always been a solidly produced series, but S11 was especially good by my reckoning.

Lady Dynamite – There is something aggressively weird and off putting about Maria Bamford’s Netflix sitcom. Co-created with Arrested Development’s Mitch Hurwitz, Lady Dynamite tells a story of Maria’s (TV’s Maria that may or may not have any real resemblance to the real Maria) fall and her recovery as she deals with being bi-polar. So it sets up a bunch of kooky, yet still real feeling characters and she has some crazy experiences.

X-Men Apocalypse

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The X-Men film series is an odd duck. It has survived apparent franchise killing failures, back to back in X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and turned a reboot into a very X-Men like retcon of the series history. Throughout all of this, the movies have kept a more restrained take on super heroics than something like the usual Marvel film. X-Men Apocalypse goes into full superhero mode, with mixed and confusing results.

After a brief opening in ancient Egypt that shows something of an origin for the titular villain, X-Men Apocalypse picks up some ten years after Days of Future Past, or at least ten years after the past portions. In that time, everything has changed once again. Mystique is now a famous hero who works to save mutants by herself, Xavier has restarted his school and Magneto has disappeared to Poland to live a quiet life. Those are the three characters that have driven all of the reboot movies and they continue to do so here. I don’t know, though, how much their characterization is a continuation of what has come before and much is just endlessly repeating the same thing. Xavier, Magneto and Mystique all seem to bbe all but repeated their arcs each movie. While that is true to the comics, it makes for a somewhat frustrating viewing experience.

Really, X-Men Apocalypse is a big mess.  It feels like three different movies mixed in a blender.  Magneto’s, Xavier’s, Mystique’s, Apocalypse’s and the new kids’ stories don’t all mesh together.  There are just a few too many plot threads for all of them to get the attention they need.  The ones who suffer the most for this are all of the new mutants.  There is some insight into Cyclop’s character, or at least his relationship with his brother, but every other character introduced in this movie is a non-entity.  They take up quite a bit of run time, but they are not developed at all.  The same could be said for Apocalypse and his horsemen. Even Magneto’s character arc doesn’t go that many places.  He processes his grief enough to decide he doesn’t want to kill absolutely everybody.

Flaws notwithstanding, X-Men Apocalypse is still fairly enjoyable. It wins some points for being a fun sort of nonsensical and silly. It aims for grandeur and misses, but it ends up in a not unenjoyable place. The young mutants seem interesting; even if they are not given the time to fully develop. And there is something to be said for the sheer level of apocalyptic destruction that goes on in this movie. At no point do Apocalypse’s methods appear to help him achieve his proposed goals, but again that is just the movie staying true to the comics. Still, for a film series that has not hesitated to stray from it inspirations, it is sad they could get this character right even for the movie. The whole film is something like that. It is all wasted potential. The only things this movie does close to right are the things it has been doing over and over since this first film. I don’t need to see the conflict between Xavier and Magneto play out again, I’ve seen it enough. Hopefully, the next film can find some new ground to explore and maybe not bungle that exploration quite so badly.

**1/2

Superhero TV Show Power Rankings

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TV is currently inundated with superhero shows and I watched them all. Okay, not all, but most. Even I have to draw the line somewhere. Still, with nearly ten superhero shows airing over the last year, there were a lot of superheroics around. So now that all of the seasons have reached their conclusions, I am going to rate them.

Agent Carter – While it has many of the problems of Agents of SHIELD, Agent Carter is pretty damn enjoyable. That is partly due to the period setting and partly due to tone. Setting it in the Post-WWII era makes it different from just about everything else on TV. Plus, it keeps a fairly upbeat tone, something I am very much in favor of. I am certainly going to miss this show. This time, Agent Carter goes to Hollywood and gets entangled with some mysterious science stuff. If I am being honest, I missed a few episodes in the middle of this season, but I loved almost every second of it I watched. A

Jessica Jones – The second Netflix effort from Marvel was even better than the first. I do have some complaints with Jessica Jones, especially with the second half of the season, but for the most part it was a great first season. Jessica is an almost broken person to start, and the show gets to the heart of her problems, as well as her strengths. It also had a pretty great villain and a great performance by David Tennant. I would argue that this would have been a stronger 10 episode season than a 13 episode one, but it is still mostly good. It is hard to get around some of the shocking twists existing just to be shocking twists, but it never dips below a certain level of quality. A-

Arrow – An improvement over S3, but this show still has plenty of problems. This season went a little too big and got messy. I really liked Darhk as a villain, but the parts of the season that haven’t already faded in my memory only stuck because they were annoying. The flashbacks were inconsequential and a lot of stories seemed to go in circles. They killed off Black Canary, but that was a character the show never really knew what to do with; she had been all over the map over the course of the show. There are some interesting developments at the end that season that could set up some good stuff next season, but I think I’ll wait and watch it on Netflix, other than the obligatory crossover episodes. C-

Daredevil – The first season of this Netflix Original was excellent, but it seems like they took some pointers from Arrow for the second one. The high production values are still there, but as the season went on nearly everything else fell apart. It starts off good, with some fine episodes about the Punisher and seeds what could have been a really good season. Then Elektra shows up and things start to go to crap. As the show gets further and further in the ninja war and the Black Sky bullshit, the worse it got. I don’t know how, but they managed to make ninja fights straight up boring. Even the good episodes bring in their fair share of stupidity, like the episode with The Punisher in prison. It is largely an excellent episode, but there is still the prison fight that seemed intent to use the show’s entire fake blood supply. The show doubled down on my problems with the first season, mistaking blood and darkness for maturity. I don’t know how eager I am for a third go round. C-

The Flash – This season did not match the incredible first season, but it was still highly entertaining. All of DC’s shows need to work on their central plots and that was very true of this season of the Flash. Outside of a couple of episodes and some neat reveals, Zoom didn’t work. It also hurt to lose the rogues after the first half of the season. Another episode with Captain Cold or Trickster would have really helped down the stretch. The ending was kind of stupid, first in a good way and then at the very end in a very off putting way. With luck Season 3 will recapture the magic of the first season and bring back a little light after what became a pretty dark second season. B

Legends of Tomorrow – I think I’ve been saying this a lot, but this was a messy season. The central conflict between Vandal Savage and Hawkman/Hawkgirl was dull. And stupid. Really, after the opening few episodes, every time Savage showed up the show was a mess. Still, there is a lot to like here. About 2/3 of the cast is really good and hopefully with the block hole that was Hawkgirl gone, the show can improve. When the show clicks it is so good, but this didn’t click often enough. Still, as a humongous JSA fan I am definitely in for next season. Hopefully they have something to replace Captain Cold. C+

Supergirl – It was uneven and a little too goofy at times, but Supergirl was maybe my favorite show this season. The plotting was weak, especially at the end of the season, but the show never lost its positive outlook. It also has the absolute best episode of the year with its Flash crossover. Still, the show is a little scattered and it kept letting its plots loose immediately instead of giving them time to develop. I hope they calm it down some in season 2. The show has good characters and a good look, it just needs slightly better scripts. Still, there is a lot more good than bad here, and I can’t wait to see more of this show. B+

Agents of SHIELD & Gotham – I didn’t watch either of these shows. My interest in SHIELD is measured in negative amounts. I’m sure it is a perfectly fine show despite the fact that doesn’t connect to the Marvel movies in any meaningful way. I tuned out in the first season and haven’t looked back. Bringing in the Inhumans is not going spark my interest. Gotham also lost me in its first season, seeming to be a grittiest take on Smallville possible. If they had some consistent, logical character growth I might have stuck around, but this show exists to tease Batman villains and be comically dark. It is terrible.

Season MVPs: Captain Cold and Supergirl – Every second Wentworth Miller is on screen as Captain Cold is an absolute delight. For long stretches of Legends, he and Caity Lotz were the only reasons worth watching. His delivery of every line is amazing. Plus, he had maybe the most satisfying character arc of anyone on any of these shows this year. He journey from cynical villain to self-sacrificing hero was fun to watch and big reason that Legends ended up being worth watching. Melissa Benoist’s Supergirl was just as good, in a better show. For all of Supergirl’s, the show, faults there is never a disappointing moment with Benoist. I am so glad the show will continue, hopefully for a half dozen more seasons.

It is a little too early to have a strong read on what new stuff is coming next year, other than Powerless on NBC and Luke Cage on Netflix, but I can say which of these shows I will be watching.

  • Agent Carter – Unfortunately cancelled, so no, I will not be watching this next year
  • Agents of SHIELD – Still no.
  • Jessica Jones – When this show comes back (likely in early 2017) I will be right there to binge watch it.
  • Arrow – Other than the crossovers, I think I am out on Arrow. That could change, and might just need a bigger role for Mr. Terrific, but I think I’ve seen enough Arrow.
  • Daredevil – If and when this gets a third season, I will probably watch it. But I am not really looking forward to the prospect.
  • The Flash – Yes, I will. Season 2 was a minor disappointment, but it still provided plenty of what I want to see.
  • Gotham – God no. I’ve really grown to hate this show.
  • Legends of Tomorrow – Yes, if only because I am one of the world’s biggest JSA fans. Some tinkering over the summer could fix a lot of this show’s problems.
  • Supergirl – As long as Melissa Benoist is playing Supergirl, I’ll be watching the show. So yes, I am back for this one.

The World’s End Review

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Two of the best comedies of the last decade are Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.  Both are excellent send ups as well as excellent examples of their respective genres.  The third in this cycle of films directed by Edgar Wright and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost may lack the obvious genre ties of its predecessors, but The World’s End may be the best and most ambitious of the three. The World’s End is more specific, being a take on Invasion of the Body Snatchers rather than entire genres of film, but in addition to being a comic version of that, it is also steeped in Arthurian symbolism and an incredible depiction of addiction.

The World’s End tells the story of Gary King, a man desperate to recapture the glory of his youth so he gathers his high school friends together to try to complete a pub crawl of their home town, which they had failed years before.  Despite their very good reasons for not wanting to go with him, all four end up in Newton Haven with Gary once more.  Initially their problems are with the obsessed Gary; soon they realize that there is something more sinister going on in town.

Wright deftly juggles numerous concepts and plot threads, giving us a layered movie that delights on several levels.  What stands out most is its take on the Arthurian Cycle, with each of the protagonists serving a medieval role.  Those roles are spelled out in their surnames: King, Prince, Knightly, Page and Chamberlain.  Gary King is the leader, Andy Knightley is loyal retainer, Chamberlain keeps them on track, etc.  The quickly told story of their first attempt at the golden mile is echoed and expanded on their second attempt. The cycle repeats, only this time they finish.

While the movie is immensely funny, what puts it over the top is how it affects real emotion.  The characters feel like real people with real problems.  I would have loved this movie without its big twist, that the entire town has been replaced by aliens who are essentially colonizing the Earth, and it had just been five friends hashing out a couple of decades of problems.  As with all of these movies, the central relationship is between Pegg’s and Frost’s characters.  Frost’s Andy is a guy who has done everything right, and still his life is falling apart on him.  He is struggling to move forward.  Pegg’s Gary has screwed everything up and is desperate for his young glory.  To, the golden mile represents the lost promise of his youth.  That was supposed to be the prelude to his life, not its apex.  For the lead in what is ostensibly a comedy, Gary King is a deeply sad character.  It is actually a chilling look as the life of an addict.  

That the World’s End manages to include that, along with rousing action scenes and big sci-fi concepts and have every part reinforce the other parts instead of distract from them is what makes it a great movie.  For example, in one of the big fight scenes, Gary, despite being the second most able fighter after Andy, spends the bulk of his time trying to keep from spilling is drink.  There is chaos all around him, but he cares more for alcohol than anything else going. It results in some very fun physical comedy, but also in a sadly funny character moment for him.  The action serves to reinforce the character moments.

The World’s End is a great film, as are Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. My opinion as to which of the three is the most entertaining may be fickle, but I tend to point to The World’s End most often.  It has layers and depth that the other two movies can’t quite match.

25 Years, 25 Games #9: Run Saber

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Okay, I know I’ve been promising Super Mario RPG for at least two months, but this entry on my celebration of the SNES is Run Saber, another fairly short action game. A pretty great action game, as well. I mean, its Strider. While it isn’t quite a 1 to 1 copy of that game, it is definitely more than just reminiscent of that Capcom’s classic. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Run Saber is a copy of a pretty dang good game.

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The story of the game is some generic sci-fi stuff. The Sabers are some sort of cyborg super soldiers, dispatched to deal with a mad scientist bent on conquering the earth, as well as a rogue saber. The player gets to choose between Allen, the male Saber with lightning powers, and Sheena, the female Saber with ice powers, or both if playing two players. It controls well, with the player given a decent array of moves. You can jump and attack, as well as use a screen clearing super attack. The player character is very mobile, able to climb walls and ceiling as well as perform a Mega Man like slide. It is a solid set up for a game.

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It all plays out about the same way as Strider, with fast paced over the top action. The game has five fairly sprawling levels. The levels are more elaborate affairs than just going left or right, taking good advantage of the acrobatic skills to move the levels up and down and back and forth. The regular enemies aren’t particularly varied or numerous, but they are enough to keep the player busy. There are quite a few bosses, most of which look nice. I never really learned them, opting instead to cheese through with an emulator, but they provide new and interesting challenges. The boss of the first level takes place on top of a flying jet, with the player character hanging on for dear life as the plane flips and rolls.

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The game looks good as well. Good, not great. The player’s sprites a big and colorful, but they seem to be lacking some animation. The animations they do have look good, but there are times when it seems like there should be more there than there is. The big one I am thinking of is the running animations, because there aren’t any. Double tapping one direction will set the player running that direction, but while the character goes faster the moving animation stays the same. It is disorienting.

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In all, Run Saber is a lot of fun. It is clearly derivative, but it still possesses its own charm. It is also apparently the only output by its developer Horisoft, which is sad since this is a very solid first effort. I don’t really know where they could have taken Run Saber from here, other than to make it bigger and prettier, but gameplaywise this is about at the pinnacle of 2D action.

What I Read April 2016

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April was not a banner month for me, with me only managing to finish two books. I did read a handful of comic TPBs, but that is not really the same thing. I expect to get back on track in May.

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Console Wars

Blake J Harris

This book purports to be the story of Sega and Nintendo and the 16-bit console wars. It really isn’t. It is the story of Sega and the 16-bit console wars, with a chapter about Nintendo’s rise and one about them buying the Mariners. That isn’t to say it’s not good, the story of Sega’s rise and fall is one worth reading, but Nintendo is only a small part of this book. I am sure the writer had much greater access to former Sega employees than Nintendo ones, which results in getting the story from their perspective.

Judging it for what it is and not what it isn’t, Console Wars is a fascinating read. The events that lead to Sega making such a splash with the Genesis and then failing utterly to capitalize on that success is a good one. It does spend a little too much time lionizing the Sega of America crew, seeming to suggest that if Kalinske and crew had been allowed to set their own course then Sega would have never fallen, but I am not sure that is the case. Still, the way they took it too Nintendo for the first handful of years the Genesis was on the market was kind of amazing.

One thing that really did drive me nuts about this book is how wrong it got some stuff about games. I know it was written from the perspective of the guys at Sega, but to suggest that Buster Douglas Knockout Boxing is even in the same league as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! is ludicrous.

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The Glass House

Ashley Gardner

This is the third of these Captain Lacey detective novels I’ve read and the series isn’t quite clicking for me. It is mired with characters that might be interesting, but they don’t interact with each other, only Lacey and often seem to be clogging up the mystery. That is honestly a nitpicky problem, but it is just one that comes to mind that keep me from fully enjoying these books.

In The Glass House, Captain Lacey finds a young woman who was fished out of the Thames and tries to find out how she got there. He finds a lot of people with motives, but his investigation also leads him closer to people he would rather avoid. The mystery is solid, with each revelation leading to a completely new line of questioning. If only the series character stuff moved with the same life as the mystery. That stuff just kind of trudges along. Still, it’s not a bad book.

Collected Comics Reading

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Angela: Asgard’s Assassin Vol 1: Priceless

Kieron Gillen, Marguerite Bennet, Phil Jiminez, Stephane Hans

I like all the creators involved in this comic, and they do a good job. However, this book mostly just left me cold. I don’t care about the character Angela and this book did nothing to change that. The whole story requires every character to act like a dick for no good reason to work, with each and every one of them coming off looking stupid. The art is good, at least. Honestly, I am being too harsh on this book because it really isn’t bad, it is just a (sorta) superhero comic about a hero that I find actively disinteresting.

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Silk Vol 0: The Life and Times of Cindy Moon

Robbie Thompson, Stacey Lee

A lot of my complaints about Angela could be repeated here. I picked up the books during a sale, willing to try them out, but neither really moved the needle for me. I liked this one a little more than Angela, if only because Silk’s goals are at least understandable. Angela is kind of an inscrutable character, which does not make her the most engaging protagonist. Silk is mostly just a female Spider-Man. I don’t know whose idea it was to shoehorn her into Spidey’s origin, but it almost works. The book has a peppy tone and some really engaging art, but this is not a character whose continued adventures I am especially interested in reading about. Especially since it ends with a lead in to a reality altering crossover. Spider-Man fans would likely get a kick out of this, but I am not a member of that group.

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Jem and the Holograms Vol 1

Kelly Thompson, Sophie Campbell

I am not the biggest fan of Jem and the Holograms the 80’s cartoon. It is just a little too old for me and I never saw it as a kid. But I heard enough good things about this comic that when I saw it on sale on comixology I went ahead and snatched it up. It is great, especially Campbell’s art. The book looks excellent, with distinct and expressive characters and just an overall great look. The story occasionally seems like its treading a little water, but it does a good job of introducing all the characters and providing some compelling conflicts for those characters to face. I realize I am being vague about this, but while there really isn’t anything too shocking or surprising with the story, readers should experience it for themselves. A great book.

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Wonder Woman Earth One

Grant Morrison, Yannick Paquette

I’ve got a big post about this coming soon, but in the meantime I will say that I liked it very much. It is conflicted and strange at times, but it is one of the most thoughtful Wonder Woman comics I’ve read in a long time. Morrison really does take things back to the characters roots, for good and ill. Wonder Woman is a strange character, so any one actually trying to engage with her is going to produce something a little strange.

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Seaguy Vol 1

Grant Morrison, Cameron Stewart

I’m not quite sure what to make of this; I really think I’ll need to read it again. It is a strange coming of age tale for a strange sort of hero. Seaguy is a man is a scuba suit, a would be hero in a seeming utopia with everything run my one Mickey Eye, an anthropomorphic eyeball that acts as sort of a Mickey Mouse type character. With his sidekick Chubby da Choona, Seaguy sets out a series of surreal adventures. It is a world where everything is both great and unsatisfying, so when even the smallest adventure appears, Seaguy jumps at the chance. For such a slim volume, there I a lot to unpack here. Seaguy is beautiful (Cameron Stewart’s art is great), haunting, sad and funny all at once. The sequel has now shot to the top of my to buy list.

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Descender Vol 1

Jeff Lemire, Dustin Nguyen

Descender is something like a comic version of Mass Effect, but told with some actual storytelling ability. Ten years after giant robots show up and decimate living populations on several planets, people have all but stamped out robots. On a backwater colony, a small robot boy named Tim-21 wakes up to find everyone in the colony dead, possibly including the boy he was supposed to be the companion of. His creator finds out that that little robot might be the key to figuring out what drew the giant murderous robots, so he sets out with a team to retrieve it. The book is just incredibly well done. You feel for the characters, even those that are far from perfect. And there are so many possibly directions for this story to go that I am eager to get more. Because this book is just the first chapter, it whets the appetite for what I hope is a lengthy story to come. I will likely jump on the recently released second volume sooner rather than later.

Captain America Civil War

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The first two Captain America movies were among the best of Marvel’s solo movies and the ones most closely tied into the larger Marvel universe. In a lot of ways the first Cap movie was a prelude to the Avengers (It even had “Avenger” in the title) and the second Winter Soldier, aside from being the best Marvel superhero movie to date, was the bridge between the first and second movies. That connection is even stronger in Civil War, which is more Avengers 3 than Captain America 3. Captain America Civil War is everything that Age of Ultron should have been, even if it doesn’t quite nail the landing on the Captain America part of its story.

The bad first. I don’t think the movie fully sells its villain’s plot or the gives enough time to the ideological split that ignites the conflict. Time that could have been spent having Steve and Tony actually express their points of view rather than have them assumed by the other party was used instead to introduce new characters like Black Panther and Spider-Man, the latter of which has an especially small role in this film. Also, there is little resolution at the end of the movie; instead the characters all reach the end of this movie’s journey by the mid-point and the rest just kind of plays out with little consequence.

Those are my complaints with the movie; aside from some other inconsequential ones (I did like the location titles). Otherwise, it was pretty great. The Russo’s did great work with Winter Soldier and this continues that. What it might fail at from a plot perspective, it nails from a character one. Civil War is a movie with a lot of characters and nearly all of them are portrayed well. The newcomers, including Ant-Man, all shine and bring a lot of fun to the film. This movie does more to let viewers into the head of Scarlet Witch and Vision than Age of Ultron ever even attempted to, while still giving viewers good moments with Falcon and Rhodey and Black Widow and Hawkeye. The character’s journeys, as short as then end up being, are mostly well done.

While I found its last act anti-climactic and didn’t completely buy the confrontation in it, the big fight scene in at the airport is pretty much perfection. It is everything I want in a superhero fight, with a dozen heroes duking it out in a variety of combinations. Somehow it remains coherent while juggling all of these characters and letting each one show off their powers and personality. Most time these sort of extended, consequence free fight scenes end up being a drag, but Civil War’s airport scene keeps through new wrinkles on often enough to keep things interesting.

Civil War is, like the last Avengers movie, completely overstuffed. That this movie is trying to pass itself off as a Captain America movie is disingenuous, but that doesn’t make it unenjoyable. The perfect casting of each of the heroes really helps them find their voices and the sides they take feel like natural outgrowths of their characters, even if the conflict comes about absurdly quickly. This might not be the best Marvel movie (I would put it below Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy at the very least) but it is still highly entertaining.

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