Bin Fodder: Blue Monday

Welcome back, ladies and gents, to the second installment of Bin Fodder.  This week I’m spotlighting one of my favorite indie titles, Blue Monday, written and drawn by Chynna Clugston-Major.  If you’ve never heard of it, I’m not surprised.  It’s published by Oni Press, which is a less-than-large indie comic company, obviously most well known for the Scott Pilgrim books, but has also produced other notable titles like Barry Ween and Scooter Girl.  Don’t be surprised if you see spotlights on each of those last two in the near future.

Blue Monday is by definition a teen-dramedy involving four main characters: Bleu, Clover, Victor, and Alan, all of whom are engaged in lusting after one another (sans same-sex inclinations) with a cast of ancillary characters that play entertaining background roles throughout the storylines.  But don’t let the teen-dramedy aspect of it through you off, this isn’t “Twilight” (which is unintentionally a dramedy).  It would be more akin to the first three “American Pie” movies, not in the story at all, but rather in the sense that the characters have character and you feel involved in what’s going on.

Now, if you’re not a fan of black & white comics then you’re about to be disappointed because Blue Monday is, other than the covers, entirely done in black & white.  But if you don’t like that style of comic then that means that you most likely don’t like The Tick, Strangers in Paradise or Bone(in its original form) and that calls into question your right as a human being to even read comics.

There are a number of reasons why Blue Monday is a book you should run out and pick up.  First, it’s fun.  Most people turn to independent comics because they are looking for some relief from the muscled-up, spandex-wearing superheroes commonly found in mainstream books, so the fact that Blue Monday finds ways to be compelling and engaging while not taking itself too seriously is a nice combination of elements.  Second, every few pages Clugston-Major adds songs to the soundtrack of the book and I have to say it’s a pretty great list.  For instance the first song listed in Absolute Beginners is The Smiths – “There is a Light that Never Goes Out”, which is a fairly prominent band but the list of songs and groups ventures into the obscure with serious regularity.

For those comic book readers amongst you who look for more surface-type reasons to read a comic, those who read Gen 13 for the “awesome story,” please see picture inserted below.  Despite the fact that this comic is written and drawn by a woman there is a heavy dose of scantily clad ladies (for instance one character who seems to be perpetually in a rather sheer nightie.) 

Clugston-Major has done other works along the way but she has never abandoned Blue Monday and new issues still come out with infrequent frequency.  Thankfully, though, unlike some titles that post in Diamond and then miss their deadline, I’ve not seen that happen with this title. 

So, my friends, go Bin Diving and find this and other gems!

Until next time,

This is Bin Fodder Guru Tim Blacksmith signing off!

Late to the Party: A Review of Fringe

I just finished the final episode of Fox's Sci-Fi thriller: Fringe. And if I had to sum it up in two words I would use: Rushed & Anti-climactic.

I realize I came late to the party on this show, as I am prone to do in this day in age as a man without DVR, Netflix is my best friend.  Doing so allowed me to watch Five Seasons in a matter of weeks (late at night a couple episodes at a time).  

Fringe sucked me in, as I'm sure it did many sci-Fi addict, with its cool X-Files type weirdness and Government conspiracy intrigue. But I knew the show was in trouble at the beginning of Season Two. I nearly gave up and quit watching because the storytelling and acting degraded so much from Season One.

To use a drug metaphor, incorrectly probably since I'm not a drug user and never have been, Season One was like that first hit and Season Two was the second hit you take just as you're coming down and it's not nearly as good.

It was clear that there was an over-arching story involved, something that everything was building towards, but it was so overt that the random, aside episodes, seemed tedious and almost haphazardly shoved into the rotation. 

For example: some HUGE piece of information would come out in an episode and the next ep would seem to infer that whatever had happened wasn't important because no one was talking about it.

Season Four practically required a masters degree in physics to follow since it was bouncing around from timeline to timeline and inter-dimensional exchanges of characters, etc.

I feel like in the vacuum left by LOST networks tried to grab hold of that audience who were sucked into a sci-fi show without even realizing it. Fringe was no different and Season Five finally unveiled the big plot: the Onservers had come to conquer us.

The problem with that story route is that its too predictable for American Tv. There was NO POSSIBLE WAY the good guys weren't going to win. Sure, some people died along the way and it was sad, but you knew they were going to pull it out.

X-files never really fulfilled its promise of Aliens. Not till the movie. LOST ended in a way people didn't understand (unless you'd been paying attention) and Fringe tried hard to be great and fell just a bit short.

I don't slight them for trying and I suspect uninspiring ratings continually threatened the stability of the shows story integrity: never knowing if you'll ever get to finish your overall plot is a scary thing, just ask Firefly fans.

Fringe stands alone, separate from shows like X-Files because it dared to reach beyond what people could perceive as possible and I applaud it for that.

If you've not seen the show, it's worth a watch. But know that you'll have to stomach some annoying episodes along the way. But if you watched Battlestar Galactica all the way through, you're already used to that.

World War Z

Whenever Hollywood decides to take a book and turn it into a movie there are inherent dangers. You could wind up with a producer/director who decides that what the author wrote doesn't "really" work on the silver screen and they take certain...liberties.  Other times you get people involved who love the book so much that they hold true to it with such fervor that you almost feel inept as a member of the audience.

World War Z (WWZ) is somewhere in between. If you read, and really enjoyed the book, you might not like the direction the movie took since the book is more about the overall experience of surviving a zombie apocalypse told by myriad members of humanity. The movie is more singularly focused, meant to have  goal that audiences could get behind and root for.

The problem is that it never delivers on that goal.

Heroes are supposed to be people we care about; people we desire for victory because to watch them fail is to feel failure ourselves. Think back to the first time you saw Star Wars: A New Hop and Luke is making his attack run on the exhaust port. When Vader has him in his sights your heart skipped a beat! But then Han swooped in and saved the day and a feeling of relief and begrudging respect and affection came washing over you.

That's where WWZ falters. The story is all wheels spinning and now resolution. You're left with a feeling of incompleteness. The family characters, who in the end pick up an extra boy after his stupid parents get murdered, create little rooting interest. And when every situation creates drama, the drama starts to lose effectiveness as a plot narrative.

The writer never achieved what he set out to achieve: make me care about what Brad Pitt is doing. When he "discovers" a way to "battle" the zombies, the audience is less than overjoyed. Why? Not because we are heartless bastards, it's because the writer failed to bring us there.

Movie Review - This is the End

If you were a rich, young, Hollywood celebrity who came from nothing but were now famous what would you do?  Probably something close to what Seth Rogen did with This is the End.  Get a pack of your friends together and make a comedy about the end of the world wrought with giant demon penises, sink-hole humor and lots and lots (and seriously…lots) of drugs.

This is the End is one of those movies where people play themselves (like Being John Malkovich) but instead of being a weird introspective movie about a portal into the body of a movie star, this flick has always-awesome Emma Watson wielding an axe and stealing all the booze the fellas have.

Rogen brought in some heavy hitters for this movie: Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Craig Robinson, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride round out the main cast with appearances from the aforementioned Emma Watson, Jason Segel, Mindy Kaling, Paul Rudd, Aziz Ansari and Michael Cera. 

We are left to wonder at the closeness to reality in which these characters play themselves in This is the End.  Franco exhibits a serious man-crush on Rogen, Hill and Baruchel HATE each other, Robbins is constantly wearing a towel that says simply: Mr. Robinson, as if people didn’t know who he was.

Michael Cera plays a drug addict psychopath who slaps Rhianna in the ass, blows a handful of coke in the face of Christopher Mintz-Plasse and gets a tag-team style blowjob in the bathroom Baruchel was attempting to use in Franco’s house.

The movie goes from “over-the-top Hollywood party” movie to full-on craziness when the rapture hits and hundreds of people are sucked into the sky on beams of blue light.  The “good” people are taken from Earth, leaving the terran planet to the heathens.  Of course everyone at the party remains.

Eventually the main cast is stranded in Franco’s house with limited supplies and no hope of rescue because the world has gone to hell in a hand basket.  They battle demons, themselves, Emma Watson and hell hounds before they eventually make a run for Franco’s Prius, which of course is almost immediately totaled by cannibals. 

The culmination of all that is funny and wrong with this movie is when Rogen and Baruchel are running from the cannibals and they encounter none other than the devil himself.  He is in the form of a giant, horned, fire breathing monster with a proportionally giant swinging dong.  In true kid-like humor this is the focal point of the entire scene, but not directly…you just can’t miss it because it…keeps…swinging…like the pendulum on the world clock.

Often-times comedies that try to go “too big” fall flat, but some do not – Tropic Thunder comes to mind – and This is the End manages to go big but stay small in the humor department while maintaining a level of serious discourse about how relationships are strained and tested in life-threatening situations.

Overall I would give This is the End a thumbs up.  You should check it out!

Tb

He IS the Man of Steel

It is important to note straight away that the following account of Man of Steel will include spoilers.  I’m calling them out now because I won’t later.  If you haven’t seen it yet, I recommend stopping now.

And now…on with the rant, I mean show.

Superman is probably the most iconic super hero character in the history of the industry.  He is one of, if not thee, oldest characters in comics dating back to 1938.  When I was a kid I was exposed to the original Richard Donner Superman movies (and those other two that shall not be named or spoken of…god damn battles inside elevators on the moon…).  But as I became a fan of comics Superman was not a character I was drawn towards.  I could blame a lack of exposure, which is certainly possible.  My growth in appreciation of the art form took place in the early nineties when companies like Image were breaking out and doing new things which everyone was excited about.

But in the end, one of my best friends is the biggest Superman fan I know, and yet I still rarely picked up a book and when I did I failed to be impressed by it.  The nineties were a tumultuous time for the man with the S on his chest; he died…took multiple colored energy forms…was reborn…and then it got weird.

I was always one of those ordinary detractors; “Superman isn’t an interesting character”, “Superman is impossible to beat, how can you even write a good Superman story?”

But then something wonderful happened, Greg Rucka took up the mantle of Superman and by god if he didn’t make him awesome.  The run Rucka had on Superman is still the best in-continuity story I have ever read (for those comic-novices out there: the comics’ universe has a general continuity structure where events happen and are remembered and spoken about.  Then there are alternate realities where stories occur but are not part of the main thread, see: Superman – Red Son). 

This opened my eyes to a whole new reality when it came to Superman.  He could be vulnerable, make mistakes, be…human.  What a grand and glorious notion!  One I am sure is not original, even for writers of Superman, but Rucka did it so well. 

So, why did I just spend the first five paragraphs of my review of the Man of Steel movie not talking about the movie?  Because it’s important that when I say that if you didn’t like this movie for any reason other than simply not enjoying that took place and instead do not like it for reasons pertaining to the way the characters were portrayed or how you thought they should have been portrayed separately…and then I tell you to SHUT THE FUCK UP AND STOP TALKING you will know that I am speaking from a position of knowledge and strength.

Man of Steel was a masterful movie.  It reignited what had truly become a dead movie franchise.  I am one of the few people who actually enjoyed Superman Returns but it wasn’t new; it was a tired attempt to recreate what was done before without any originality.  This movie, THIS ONE is worthy of our adulation and praise.  THIS movie is worthy of sequels and co-op tie-ins.  What the world of comic fans has been clamoring for these many years has finally come to fruition.  And its popularity cannot be denied.

I realize that the detractors are the hardcore fans.  They are the same people that would probably (and stupidly) say that I am a hypocrite because I hated the new Star Wars movies and hated how Lucas twisted what the original three told us with half truths, lies and misdirection’s to fulfill his desire to CGI a giant penis on the screen for 400 minutes and see if he could get away with it (he did, by the way). 

But in reality this movie does none of those things.  Man of Steel takes into account so many things from Superman’s history – all 75 damn years of it – and says to fans: I am something different than you know, I am the real world’s Superman.  And when he kills Zod (see…told you there were spoilers) he instantly and immediately is filled with rage and pain and regret.  But he knew, he KNEW, that it was the only way.  Zod told him what he intended to do in order to recreate Krypton.

The film is visually dynamic; the scenes on Krypton erupt at you like the flash of a neutron bomb.  But instead of having waves of radiation and death roll over you; its beauty and wonderment.  Portraying Krypton as both a technologically advanced world (flying ships, ethereal technology) but also as a culture tied to its history (ostentatious clothing and the riding of winged beasts).  

The history of how Clark Kent becomes Superman is one that is rarely shown even in glimpses.  In the original Donner films the young man travels to the north pole (inexplicably and without direction other than the pulsing of a glowing crystal) and then hurls it into the water to create his fortress.  The film doesn’t even explore how the hell he got there!  What an adventure that must have been…oh, wait…we have that adventure now! 

Man of Steel is by no means perfect.  It’s not a master stroke of filmography that will soon be replacing Citizen Kane in every pretentious hipster riddled film class in America.  But as a sci-fi, comic book movie it is hard to beat and we have those involved to thank.  Nolan took Batman under his wing and made that franchise great again.  It rose like a phoenix from the ashes of nippled-costumes and boots with ice skates built into them.  Man of Steel is the affirmation that we as a people can trust Hollywood to make good comic book movies again…maybe, at least a little.

In a society of people looking for the bad in everything and loathsome of their own lives enough to spend hours watching the tawdry lives of others we should all be jumping for joy that a film of worth and value has found its way out of the muck to brighten our days.  I am pleased that Man of Steel has done so well at the box office and that more is to come.  It is a good sign for the DC Universe.  Now we just need that Lobo movie to get off the ground! (hah…that was for you Williams!)

I hope you enjoyed this rant.

Tb