Moving into the Elite?

Well, from having read some reviews of this one online, it appears that there's a pretty big schism of opinion on this - the first collected volume from Justice League Elite.

My initial reactions from this volume are that the artwork is sloppy and - at times - confusing (making Jack Rider look like Clark Kent enough that I had to reread a number of panels two and three times to make sure who just said what). But then the artwork fits the darker, morally ambiquous, at-times-confusing nature of the stories, so that might be intentional.

There are two stories being told in this volume. The first, a one-off from Action Comics #775 is one of the more impressive Superman stories of past few years. In the span of twenty-some pages, the artist and writer craft a fabulous morality tale of a man pushed to his limits and questioning whether what he is doing is the right way. It's something that Alex Ross took four books to do just about as well in Kingdom Come, but here is a cliffnotes version of the same debate, and the artwork - while offputting at times - supports this beautifully.

And it was intended as a one-off.

But it was too successful to stay that way. Manchester Black returned to torture Superman and "die" when he eventually couldn't turn the Man of Steel into a killer. In the rest of this TPB, Black's sister comes to the JLA with a proposal to create a team of "villians" who would be a covert branch of the Justice League, one in which heroic acts could be performed even in gray areas where the Justice League proper simply couldn't step. At first, this game of cat and mouse, the front story and back story is a little hard to follow - are the bad guys bad or are they good or are they bad guys acting good. And it's not something entirely answered in this - the first four issues of a twelve-volume maxi-series.

I'm looking forward to finding out, however, as I once I found out what was happening - oh, that's not really Deathstroke, it's Vera...and Flash is on both teams - I really enjoyed the moral quandries that the JLElite found itself in.

Clearly, the violence and borderline crass language makes this a more mature title than one little kiddies might be picking up, but it's not to the extent of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Watchmen, but this isn't your typical superhero book.

Weekend catsup

I'm at school and catching up on postponed grading. I'm offering myself ten minutes break after getting two classes's labs finished up. So, Fight for your Mind by Ben Harper is an excellent album, quite and introspective. A little hard to catch if you're not paying attention. My first thought - gathered while listening to the cd and talking to my wife while making dinner this past week - was that the album wasn't catchy, wasn't much more than lightweight. On second listen, in a quieter session, I found that it's a marvelous album. It's got some very tender songs - including the most plain, easy-going pro-pot song I've ever heard in "Burn One Down". Great album but one that'd be easy to miss.

A couple of weeks ago I reviewed Chant Down Babylon, and in my mind, this is a sister cd. On Dreams of Freedom, the original Marley recordings are remixed by Bill Laswell into beautiful, swirling rhythms with new feelings but the same spirit of the original recordings. It's a nice chill out cd but not nearly as gripping as Chant. Pleasant but not earth-shattering.

More info coming...(chuckle)...

In my review of the movie Kinsey, I mentioned that I wished the filmmakers would have included more information about the real Kinsey, comparing their film with the reality. Turns out that such a program is going to be on PBS Monday evening when American Experience airs a one-hour episode dealing with Kinsey and his (in)famous report. Check your local listings to see when it'll be on (9pm here in Cincinnati).

Neil Gaiman's young stuff...

Coraline is Neil Gaiman's first drop in to the fairy tale world of young adult fiction (listed as for ages eight and up - I'd probably go no young than that and might be leary of immature eight-year olds because there are scary moments here and there).

As is often the case, I listened to Coraline on cd, and Gaiman's performance is spectacular, providing just the right creepy notes for the characters in the looking glass world of the Other Mother but still being comforting enough so that the listener is never quite in true fear.

In the book, Coraline - an adventurous, often-bored-with-her-own-life, small-for-her-age girl, wanders through a door in her family's new flat - a door that is supposed to be bricked up on the other side but that Caroline finds leads to a mirror world populated by not-quite-right versions of the people in her own house, most particularly by the Other Mother, the wicked witch of this story. At first, Coraline's visit is exciting and entrancing as she wishes that her world were more like the exciting world that she has found. On her return to her world, however, she finds that her mother and father have been kidnapped and taken through to the mirror world. Coraline sets out to rescue her parents and finds three other souls to help along her way. In her journies, she finds out what is truly valuable and finds within herself a reserve of strength and courage that she had previously doubted.

As an adult reading the story, I found the pacing a little odd (particuarly the last third of the story when the villianess had been vanquished but Coraline found herself with one last remnant to clear up), but I would imagine that most younger readers would find the pacing perfect because it does resemble to some extent the storytelling methods of younger people in which the story continues just past where you might expect the classic progression of climax and short declining action. In this volume, Gaiman allows the declining action to rerise to a second climax, smaller but no less enjoyable than the first.

Faiman has also ommitted many details from the storyline, details that an adult reader might be looking for but that I imagine a younger reader would simply take at face value.

Overall, this is deserving of its place in the canon of modern classics of children's literature. It's another in Gaiman's line of gripping and incredibly well-crafted tales, slightly lesser than his Sandman storyline, but no less important in its field.

Not worth millions...

This TPB collects a number of issues form a large crossover event a few years back. The biggest problem with this comes from the size of the crossover. There are so many issues to collect here that the TPB designers have had to pick and choose which issues to collect, and we're left with a story that between each issue gives a one-page summary of what happened in the issue that the collectors chose not to include. This leaves the volume with a jumpy feeling, as though the entire story was being told by only half the participants instead of by everyone involved. This might've worked had the designers chosen to release a second volume telling the stories of the other half of the people, but this was never done, leaving the story woefully undertold.

The story is an interesting one, though, contrasting the present-day Justice League with their 853rd century (seriously, I'm not making that up) counterparts, showing the evolution in powers between now and then. The artwork is solid, and there is an excellent use of Vandal Savage, one of my favorite villians. The issue of Resurrection Man 1,000,000 that is included here has a very different feel from the rest of the volume and leaves me quite curious as to what that comic series is like. And I'll even admit that I enjoyed the circular plot of a villian from the future sending plans back to the past causing the heroes to create the villian who would eventually send back the plans (infiinte loops - fun, aren't they?) and Savage setting into motion a plan that would take thousands and thousands of years to come to fruition.

This isn't the finest of the JLA TPBs, and it isn't quite an Elseworlds story, but it's an entertaining, if incomplete, lark.

Beautiful...but dead...

Saw the Corpse Bride this Friday night with my wife and the whole of the Heckman crew.

The movie is a visual marvel with the animatronic puppets showing subtelties of expression that I have never seen from stop-motion animation at all. Nightmare Before Christmas didn't have "actors" with this level of sophistication, and the old Harryhausen films could never have even dreamed of. There were, in fact, times when I found it hard to believe that Barkis Bittern, in particular, wasn't being acted by a live person. The puppetry was impecible and impressive and amazing.

The sets and scenery were also phenomenal. Little details from the shift in color tone from the world of the living (a beautiful sepia tone) to the world of the dead (a greenish-blue tint) - pointed out to me by the matriarch of the Heckman clan - were subtleties that added to the overall gorgeous look of the film.

The storyline, however, was thin at best. This would have made an outstanding short film or a children's picture book, but stretching it to a 75-minute film left the movie relying on artwork and songs instead of plot and character to keep things moving along.

And the songs were lesser efforts. They were interesting but not catchy, there was nothing to the level of "This is Halloween" or "Oogie Boogie's Song" from Nightmare Before Christmas, and the whole of the group agreed that the choruses were very hard to understand as the music rose and drown out the words - a problem that I noticed when watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory this summer.

It's gorgeous and beuatiful, but it's empty and hollow.

Red Son soaring

DC Comics has a history of allowing writers and artists to tell stories staring their characters but that lie outside of the canonical storylines. These are part of the Elseworlds imprint, and they contain some of the more impressive stories that DC has told because the authors are freed of the constraints of the weight of history baring down upon them.

In this TPB - Red Son, author Mark Millar rewrites the entirety of the Superman history with a simple adjustment - instead of the rocket with young Kal El landing in Kansas and Superman growing up to be the great force fighting for truth, justice, and the American way, the rocket lands in siberia, and Superman grows up fighting for truth, justice, and the Soviet way, a true son of Stalin and force for Soviet good in the world. As the forward by Tom DeSanto says "in the hands of a lesser writer the story would have fallen into cookie cutter, black and white, America good, Soviets bad, feel-good propaganda." Instead, Millar crafts an emotionally complex tale of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman reimagined in Soviet Russia, Lex Luthor the greatest American hero - a scientist whose loyalty and genius are initially guided toward saving America but eventually turned toward simply destroying Superman and all that he stands for.

The artowrk is a little jarring at times, with a carttonish manic-ness showing up in the characters from time to time - especially in those that are reprogammed by Superman in his more draconian times. The tone and coloring of the artwork is, however, excellent for the most part. We see Superman as a darker force for good, still viewing himself as that force for good, and we see nothing in the story to disuade that notion.

It is this last part that makes the story an excellent one. The Soviet Superman is not written as a blind force for communism. He is a great man who wants to make the world a better place - as does the Superman of the canonical DC universe - and who wants nothing more than to be a great man, not a superhero, not an alien, simply a man. He does everything to support the bettering of the world instead of taking power until it seems impossible for his image of the world to come true unless he takes full control, and even then he tries to allow humanity to freedom to make mistakes, lamenting that people don't even wear seat belts anymore because they know he will save them.

And his adversaries, Lex Luthor foremost among them, are not blank villians, instead they are attempting to create a different version of the same utopian world that Superman wants to see. Even Brainiac, the only true villian in the book, is simply doing as he was programmed to do, to make the world an orderly place, devoid of the danger and randomness that life brings.

The storyline begins simply enough, but it is in the third volume, after Superman and Batman have had their inevitable showdown, when Superman has become ruler of the Soviet - and nearly entire - world, that the story reaches full steam. In this final confrontation between Lutho, Superman, and Brainiac, every move is perfectly planned to cause the opponent to react so that the protagonist can react as planned right back. Ths final plotting resembles nothing so much as the chess games that are constantly being played by both Luthor and Superman throughout the book.

Overall, an outstanding book. Certainly one worth reading - it would help if you know a little something about the Superman mythos, but it stands alone brilliantly.

Soaring angel

I've done a brief bit on Peter David & David Lopez's last collaboration - Supergirl - Many Happy Returns - and was quite impressed by that volume. In reading reviews of that, I noticed a number of them pointed out the new series Fallen Angel which seemed to be a successor to that Supergirl series. With that endorsement, I checked out the first collection of Fallen Angel.

First, let me mention that this is not a comic book for children. It deals with sexual situations, complex morals, sometimes graphic violence, and adult themes. And it's an excellent start to a series. There's still work to be done, but it's a good start.

We find ourselves coming into the middle of the scene, the Louisiana town of Bette Noir which is a true den of iniquity watched over by no government, no polic force, and only one protector - the Fallen Angel herself, a dark force with her own moral code. Her past is hinted at throughout the volume - at times, a little too obviously - and we are told - again, a little too blatantly, perhaps - that there is more to this situation than meets the eye. The Angel can be vengeful and caring, violent and tender in subsequent pages and panels.

The artwork is a bit dicey at times but is generally a nice relief from the pneumatic fanboy drawings that seem to pervade a number of titles these days. The dialogue could ease back a bit to a less forced tone of neo noir, but the tone matches what the author is trying to create.

My one complaint in this title is that David seems a little less than patient with the reader. His last series - Supergirl - was cancelled just as the title was beginning to find its way, and David seems eager to not let this title do the same. To prevent this, he is throwing in so many "hints" that there's more here than meets the eye, so many notes to force us to keep coming back because we haven't found out the answers (where did Angel come from? why are there two scars on her back? what the the relationship between her and the governor of Bette Noir?). It seems a little forced.

All that being said, the series does achieve a nice balance of good and evil with most of the characters falling into the grey area between the edges. And, as an added bonus, Brian Stelfreeze does an incredible job on the covers for this series. Amazing visuals...

Going back to the library...

A bunch of stuff heading back to the library today, so I'll give general impressions on the stuff before I send 'em away.

I grabbed this because I had heard Dreams of Freedom: ambient translations of Bob Marley by the same Bill Laswell. Dreams of Freedom is engaging, taking well-known songs and adding meditative dub music to them. This album, however, is just bland to me. Sort of drifts in and out, back and forth without going anywhere. I'll admit that I'm not an experienced listener to dub music, but this isn't one that's going to tempt me to hear more.

Nor is Imaginary Cuba also by Bill Laswell going to tempt me to hear more. Here Laswell mixes the same - to my ears, anyway - the same drifting rhythms and beats this time with Cuban flavor. If you want to learn more, read something about dub music.



In the same vein as Dreams of Freedom is this album - Chant Down Bablyon - which takes Bob Marley original tracks and adds very modern music and lyrics to them. As a whole, this album is a pretty good attempt to mix the two. It's certainly not for Marley purists as many of the tracks take nothing but his vocals, providing totally new music and additional lyrics from the guest artists (Erykah Badu, MC Lyte, Rakim, Krayzie Bone, Busta Rhymes, Aerosmith, and others). The feeling is one of an excellent hip hop album instead, mixing diverse rap styles and rhythms into a mostly cohesive whole - except for the Aerosmith track, which just doesn't fit in with the rest of the album at all.

I've mentioned previously the time when the Fugees were to rule the world, and this is the album that did it. The Score isn't quite the cohesive whole that I'd like it to be, but that's not a shock from three excellent artists working together as a loose group, bringing tracks to each other, tracks that they had each begun and written individually. There are some incredible highlights - "Killing Me Softly With His Song", "Fu-Gee-La", and "Ready or Not" were all hits - and a number of other strong songs. All in all, this is one of the top rap/hip-hop albums to come out of the 90's. Certainly one to give a listen to whether you're a fan of the genre or not. There are too many catchy songs here to avoid it.

A semi-wild ride...

Catwoman's Wild Ride TPB goes back to the Sharonville branch today, so feel free to grab it, though I'd recommend picking up the first three volumes in the series first: Relentless, Dark End of the Street, and Crooked Little Town. There are things that have passed before this volume that aren't entirely explained, so it's not one to start reading Catwoman with.

But, it is one worth picking up when you get a little background. The basic story is that Selina has taken on a sidekick who's had some rough times before this story begins. The two take a road trip to get some training and to get their heads clear before starting the rest of the story. Along the way, Selina continues her drift toward being a hero with a shady history instead of a criminal with a streak of goodness.

The artwork from the team of Brubaker and Stewart continues to set this title apart from anything else out there with a very blocky, art noir style that suits the storyline perfectly. It's far from the Alex Ross-style realism that was so popular of late, but it's excellent nonetheless.

The story is interesting and allows the main characters to show a good deal of characterization, deepening the family of Catwoman and her friends around the East End of Gotham, where Catwoman has announced herself as protector.

Overall, an excellent if not ground-breaking TPB. Four stars of five.

My musical radar...quick hits...

A bunch of cd's checked out of late...quick hitters on all of them...sorry, I've been kind of bad about posting what music I'm listening to...I tend to check out so many things from the library that it's often tough for me to keep up with all of it...

Grabbed this one for the Wilco song "Burned" which hasn't been released on any of their albums. It's an odd mix cd of covers of songs of the time ("Sunshine Superman" by Jewel, "Season of the Witch" by Luna) that generally are pretty crappy and of the times songs "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful and "Kick out the Jams" by the MC5. Nothing to see here for the most part unless you like crappy covers. The Wilco is a cover of a Neil Young song. The original was better, but that's no surprise as a great deal of Wilco's attraction is Jeff Tweedy's words.

Go out and catch this film if you haven't done that yet. It's a roughly 90-minute shot of hilarious animation. It's technically in French the whole time, but there isn't any dialogue through probably the middle 95% of the movie. Some little bit of subtitled speech at beginning and end of the film. The rest of the story is told through music in true old cartoon-style. The movie is hilarious and touching. That being said, the songs here sort of lose their way without the matching graphics. The one song that got some airplay "Belleville Rendez-Vous" is quality stuff and an entertaining listen, but the rest is a good movie score that I don't think holds up without the matching film. Get the movie, crank the stereo with the movie sounds, and leave the music to the movie.

There was a small sliver of time when the Fugees ruled the world. "Killing Me Softly With His Song" was everywhere on the radio. "Fu-Gee-La" had just left our ears, and Lauryn Hill, Wyclef, and Pras were going to be everywhere for decades. They would rule the radio world. It's been a decade since they put out their second album, and now we hear rumors of a third. In the meantime, Lauryn Hill put out her first solo album, and it cleaned up all over the Grammys and sold millions. The album is incredibly well made, and it's not my kind of music. I liked the cover of "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You". Disappointingly, I can't grab "Do-Wop (that thing you do)" for school because it isn't clean. That's pretty much the whole reason I checked out the CD.

When I was fresh out of college, I worked a summer at WISU in Terre Haute - at the time, a jazz and blues station. One of my favorite songs to play during my six-hour shift was "Sing, Sing, Sing" from this soundtrack. Another was "Flat Foot Flugee" a little later on the disc. I remember the album fondly, but it turns out that the cd skips back and forth between kicky jazz numbers in the big-band/Louis Armstrong tradition and very quiet, very slow movie music. I grabbed a few songs but left a number more ungrabbed.

I've been trying to get a quality jazz selection on the computer at school, and in looking through the greatest jazz artists and albums (from allmusic.com one name and one album came up over and over again: Django. So I grabbed this six-disc set of the complete Hot Club of France 1936-1948 sessions that turns out to be some pretty wonderful music, real quality party stuff. The sound quality is - compared to modern ercordings - woefully scratchy and hissy, but that's to be expected considering that the it was recorded some 60+ years ago.

I used to own this - back in the day of the swing revival, it was right next to my Mugsy's Move and Zoot Suit Riot. Thankfully, in retrospect, the high water mark of the swing revival was reached right about the time of Swingers - a movie that I like less and less the more I see it, and Vince Vaughn is just a gigantic jerkhole in that film. Sorry, I digress. This album is pretty good, solid, revival swing. It's not going to go down as an all-time classic, but it's fun. It'll be on the school iTunes.

Xtreme Xcrap...

Why do I continue to even pick up the X-men books? There's almost no hope that I'll know who is and who isn't a part of the team (since there are three or four teams currently operating, since good guys become bad guys become good guys all the time, since half the artists draw the women as though they were over-sexed playboy bunnies instead of heroes). There's almost no hope that I'll understand the story (because so much has gone before, because the story makes no sense at all - they're free, nope they just thought they were free, now they're really free, nope still an illusion).

The storyline is incredibly hard to follow in this volume as the villian supposedly allows the heroes to believe they are free when they truly aren't at least twice. The action jumps around to three or four different locales almost without warning or explanation.

And the art is poor as well.

Steer well clear of this one, folks.

Oh, by the way, the title here is X-treme X-men Volume 8: Prisoners of Fire.

Worst retcon ever...

Oh, dear, lord. How awful can one comic book be?

Bad art? Check! (The characters go from looking like pneumatic fanboy drool picture in one panel to giant mouthed freaks in the next. The fight scenes are hard to follow. The artist forces the female lead into akward poses right off of posters but not at all reasonable for the situation.)

Dumb rehashing of past characters? Check! (Another goblin for Petey to fight. Looking back and remembering Gwen Stacey.)

Rewriting a character's history and poisoning the most important character in that past? Check! (Seriously, Peter Parker's true love - from the comic books - has always been Gwen Stacey. In this story, they retcon that she had an affair with his greatest enemy. Seriously bothersome to comic geeks. Admittedly, kinda bothersome to me, even though I'm a DC guy.)

All in all, horrible idea. Horrible execution. Let's just pretend that it never happened.

Let's talk about sex...

On a tired Friday night, the wife and I sat down to a showing of Kinsey.

For the most part, a very good movie. Liam Neeson stars as Alfred Kinsey, biologist from Indiana University. Kinsey begins as a zoologist studying gall wasps but shifts his focus to human sexual research. Kinsey gathers a team of researchers to collect sexual histories from around the nation, allowing Kinsey to create the - for then, at least - definitive study on sexual histories of the American male and the American female. In the process, however, Kinsey's team is nearly ripped apart and thrown into disaray by the changing public reactions to his research.

The movie is very well done - excellent acting by all the players. The story is compelling, boiling down to man against himself as Kinsey deals with his childhood issues with his father and his reactions to the old man. I found the ending saccharine and siappointing, however, as the struggle and strife to which were had been lead simply disapated into satisfaction on Kinsey's part.

All in all, the movie left me feeling unfulfilled as it simply left more questions than it answered. This could easily have been taken care of through the simple attachment of a DVD-extra documentary telling about Kinsey's real life.

I guess my recommendation comes down to a cautious recommendation. Good performances, good story, too many questions left unanswered.

I like the basic idea - a book in which a stat guy debates uses interviews and stats to decide who's better and who's the best in NBA history.

I like the writing, too, as Kalb reports statements from a number of hall-of-fame coaches and players in ranking the fifty greatest players of all time. The quotes and analogies (Tim Duncan vs. Pete Sampras, Wilt Chamberlian vs. Babe Ruth, Michael Jordan vs. Willie Mays) that the author uses to illuminate his many points make for a pretty great read.

My one issue with the book is that for a book written by a stats guy, it doesn't actually appear to be too statistically-based. Where Bill James's book Win Shares took a statistical approach to first developing a systematic method for evaluating a player's worth (comparing players across positions and eras) and then used the method to compare players, Kalb almost appears to have gone the opposite way. he seems to have ranked players based on his feelings and the survey results he got from great coaches and players who saw many of the players, and then used stats to back up his arguments. He doesn't use the same stats every time, and he doesn't always pick stats thoroughly, but seems rather to choose stats that support his arguments. It's no less interesting a book because of this difference in philosophy, but for a book meant to be the definitive book on the subject, it weakens the author's arguments.

That being said, I'm looking forward to his next book.

Singer/Songwriter - neither quite right for me...

Kris Kristofferson - Army captain, Rhodes scholar, movie star (for a while at least) - was at one point regarded as one of the greatest country songwriters working in the music business in the 70's and 80's. In this double-disc retrospective, one disc is devoted to his own versions of some of his biggest songs, and the other disc is made up of covers of his songs by other artists. My overall opinion is to skip this and go straight for his original, early source material - like the Kristofferson album, recently cleaned up and rereleased.

This one shows Kristofferson at his most acceptable, presenting his biggest hits - not really all that big as hits go, but quality songs - which generally tend to be the most polished and mainstream of his canon, which means that it misses the very things that he became famous for. Kristofferson, at the time of his major label debut, was notable as an alternative to the polish and shine of major Nashville artists. This set, chooses the very songs that defeat that purpose, and then pairs them mostly with covers in that polished style - except for the incredible and classic Janis Joplin take on "Me and Bobby McGee". Heck, even the Bob Dylan cover of "My God, They Killed Him" finds Dylan backing himself with a choir in true schmaltz gospel form.

Kristofferson deserves his place in the circle of great folk/country writers, but he also deserves to be heard for his album tracks as much as for his more successful songs.

Seriously, go deeper for Kristofferson. It's an outstanding album and a much better intro than this compilation.

On the Night Shift - sans Commodores...

I'm not entirely sure what book this one was exactly. It's titled as Stories from Stephen King's Night Shift, and they do all come from that volume, but there are two or three stories missing. Don't know what was up with the licensing there, but it's still a pretty strong collection.

Not many things that King has written aren't strong, admittedly. It's not his finest collection of short stories - I think Nightmares and Dreamscapes and Skeleton Crew are both better, but this one came before the others, it was earlier King. This one, is worth going through, however. It's a strong collection with not many of the stories falling flat. A couple of them - "Strawberry Spring" and "Graveyard Shift" and "The Bogeyman" all have weak endings, but they're still a decent amount of fun getting there anyway. Many of the short stories are excellent - "Jerusalem's Lot", "Grey Matter", "Battleground", and "The Mangler" - and "The Last Rung on the Ladder" is phenomenal. And the voice work by John Glover is outstanding. I find myself being drawn to books more and more by the reader rather than, at times, the story being told. I've tried Slaughterhouse-Five as read by Ethan Hawke, and I couldn't even get through the first tape, his reading was so bad, but an engaging reader can make things a lot more gripping.

A bit of curiosity, however. Is Stephen King a great author? I know he's easily one of the biggest selling authors of the last handful of decades, but does he get the credit as a great author, and does he deserve it? I know that I've read a number of his works, and his is among the most gripping things that I've read. Some of his books are just phenomenal, the entire Dark Tower series is so absolutely well-crafted that it should - in my opinion - be among the modern classics of literature.