Category: Comics (page 6 of 8)

Crank File: Cross-Over Comics

November 9, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Every now and again, life catches me off-guard. It’s times like these I need to turn to contributions from you, the audience. If you’ve ever read the Opinions section of the local newspaper, or the comments of an article on the Huffington Post, you know that sometimes the readers contribute just as much as the established writers. Thus, I present to you the Crank File.

Today’s Crank File entry comes to us courtesy of Monica A. Flink. Enjoy!

The trend of cross-overs is everywhere. Music is sampled, fantasy finds its way into modern Earth, and American superheroes drift to Japan to be reborn with bigger eyes and longer eyelashes. Unfortunately, of these things, I cannot find the fortitude to actually recommend the idea of Batman visiting Tokyo, or Spawn having a cousin who looks just like him on the outside but on the inside is a confused Japanese boy who wants to protect his sister.

American superheroes that are manga-sized for our pleasure is somewhat of an inflammatory topic, with both sides of the wall, “It’s crap!” and “It’s genius!” respectively, having good points. But does Bruce Wayne in Japan hold the same joy for Batman fans as Bruce Wayne in Gotham? And does anyone give a damn about the person inside the suit if it is not the horribly scarred Al Simmons? There are both sides to every argument to consider before making up your mind.

If you enjoy comics, you are going to look at the art as much as you look at the story, and the first bone of contention is certainly the difference in artwork. Gritty smears of ink and bright colors are replaced by slick black and white drawings, changing the air of the comic. Eyes are larger, more cartoony, and while one might think that works for the genre, it can also throw someone right out of the story. My biggest problem with the change in art is that the characters we are familiar with no longer look as they should. I find nothing familiar about the Bruce Wayne depicted in the graphic novels Batman: Child of Dreams or Batman: Death Mask.

Part of the love that will drive someone to read a manga version of his or her favorite American comic character is the familiarity. Take that away, and it is like reading something that has just had the Batman name slapped on it, leaving the reader disappointed. Pains may have been taken to match a more well-known art style, but it is still different enough to be noticed.


Where is his face?! That’s not a gritty smear of ink, it’s a lazy-ass smear of ink. Faces, Japan. Americans have faces.”

Aside from the art, the story is certainly something to consider as well. Anyone who has read Frank Miller or Kevin Smith’s stories can appreciate the dark tone and incorporation of canon-defined characters in new plots that keep readers coming back for more. I have found that the cross-over versions of superhero comics lack this distinctly.

It seems that the manga authors wish to write their own stories, and then happen to have Batman or Spawn or Iron Man in them. They brush off the established characters that man fans love and read to see just as much as the main characters, and come off with a story that does not have nearly as much impact because once the story is over, the new characters introduced are left behind or dead, with no emotional attachment required.


“Your lack of Joker makes you unacceptable. Feel free to commit seppuku.”

Even when the manga translations are adapted by someone famous, such as award-winning mystery writer Max Allan Collins, there is something wrong, something disjointed and disappointing about stories that do not include the characters we love, that support a good story. Perhaps it also can also be attributed to the fact that these manga versions of our beloved heroes are also generally one volume long, leaving precious short time to find something to attach to. It is as if they are afraid to hurt anyone’s feelings by making changes to a canon that technically the manga would not belong to, being stand-alone novels.

I suspect my largest beef with the idea of cross-over comics is the fact that I have come to expect a certain level of something special from manga. To put a finer point on it, they miss out on a lot of tits and gore that I really have come to expect from the Japanese, and I personally enjoy. I’m not asking for splatterpunk Batman here (though, seriously, how cool would that be?!) or Spawn pulling a mech out of his ass to use to fight Malebolgia, but keeping it so safe and careful is just too bland to pull off the manga style of art and story.

In the end, I will still buy more of these graphic novels with the eternal hope that someone will find a delicate balance between breaking new ground and incorporating what is beloved by millions. But if they continue to be as contaminated with insipid story lines and half-assed art proclaimed to be “realistic” because yeah, Batman is so damn realistic, then the American superhero manga cross-over graphic novel will be a fad of the past sooner than we think.

And I think every comic lover will be missing out if that happens.

Got something for the Crank File? Email me here.

Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

July 25, 2011 / / 1 Comment

I miss pulp adventure stories. I miss uncontrived, straight-forward yarns with two-fisted, dashing heroes working against megalomaniacs to rescue leggy dames. Yes, these stories were simple and could be campy or hammy or just plain boring at times, but their simplicity was a strength, their tales unfettered by an artifice of philosophy or an undercurrent of cynicism. Films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Rocketeer understood that broad, epic tales don’t need a lot of inscrutable layers or nuances of postmodern construction to be interesting, exciting and fun. In their tradition comes Captain America: the First Avenger.

Courtesy Paramount Pictures

The year is 1942. War is rampaging across Europe and, unbeknownst to the Allied powers, a particularly bent Nazi genius has decided he’s been chosen by the gods to conquer the planet. Meanwhile, in Brooklyn, a skinny, asthmatic and somewhat nervous kid named Steve Rogers is trying – and failing – to join the Army. At his fifth attempt, a kindly if somewhat eccentric doctor asks why a kid with his conditions is so eager to kill Nazis. “I don’t want to kill anyone,” Steve replies. “I just don’t like bullies.” That doctor gives him the opportunity to become a super-soldier, and the results of the experiments cause Steve to be reborn as Captain America.

So Steve is a nice guy. He’s a scrawny, smart and brave young man who wants to do his part to take down the biggest bully the world has ever seen but his body isn’t living up to the demands of his spirit. Who he is – the 98-pound weakling – is very different from who he wants to be. And every time he tries to face this disconnect, cross his Shadow as it were, he’s slapped down by either the bureaucracy or the closest bully. And then, he gets his chance. He crosses his Shadow. The question is, does this transformation change him?

Courtesy Paramount Pictures
Not sure what I like more: wearing fatigues over the costume, or the aw-shucks grin.

It doesn’t, and that’s what makes Captain America at once a failure and a success as a character. In terms of character growth and progression, once the procedure is complete, he’s done. He has to get used to his new proportions, strength and agility of course, but he requires no other growth to be the man he’s always wanted to be and his personality doesn’t change at all. He’s still sweet, still shy around girls, still willing to do his part and still intolerant of blind ignorance and hate. Removing his physical flaws in an artificial way, in lieu of a more gradual and familiar arc, has lead to anything interesting about the character also being removed.

At least, that’s how it should work. He should stand there as a big beefy wish fulfillment fantasy for fat Americans in the audience itching to punch out terrorists, or failing that, the nearest brown person. Yet, Captain America is actually not all that American, when you think about it. Many Americans now are belligerent, loud, violently opinionated and fervently religious folk who are primarily concerned with shouting down anybody who disagrees with the opinions fed to them by talking heads in soapbox programs that masquerade as news, and the world’s perception of the country, for better or worse, has put this greasy face on the country. Captain America, on the other hand, stays soft-spoken, confident without being arrogant, more concerned about the well-being of others than himself and uses the power he’s been given with wisdom and precision. In other words, he is what Americans could have been, and perhaps could still be if they’re willing to look past their own selfishness and strive for something better.

Courtesy Paramount Pictures
Marvel’s own Band of Brothers.

That is how the character of Captain America succeeds, and Chris Evans does a fantastic job of conveying that to the audience from beginning to end. The best part is he’s not setting out to be a paragon of decency, no more so than he’s setting out to be the guy that punches out Hitler. We get a sense of gentleness about Steve due to Chris’ performance and it’s this feeling that sets him apart from the other Marvel heroes we’ve met. He’s no less heroic, he’s just heroic in a different way. The other characters turn in great performances, from Tommy Lee Jones’ taciturn Army commander to Hugo Weaving’s calculating and cruel turn as the Red Skull. And while Hayley Atwell does a phenomenal job ensuring her character rises above simply being ‘the girl’ in the picture, at least once most audience members (and characters!) will find themselves thinking only “Hommina, hommina, hommina.”

Director Joe Johnston is very much in his element with this sort of film, and the quality of it shows. Granted, these qualities may be considered by some as belonging to throwbacks, to less intellectual fare and stories that don’t have the ‘mature’ sensibilities of the works by, say, Christopher Nolan. However, Captain America: The First Avenger doesn’t seem any less intelligent than any of the other summer flicks out there, and in fact goes about telling its story in a clean and straightforward manner without dressing things up too much with effects or spectacles. It’s not a terribly cerebral picture, sure, but it cares about a good story with good characters, and that’s more than I can say for Green Lantern or Transformers 3.

Courtesy Paramount Pictures
“Superheroes are the disease… and I… am the cure!”

Stuff I Liked: No modern music, and a fantastic score by Alan Silvestri. All cool gizmos and disposable goons you’d expect from a pulp adventure.
Stuff I Didn’t Like: Why are the German characters speaking in English all the time? I also felt Schmidt could have used a bit more in terms of motivation or development other than being the token crazy evil mastermind.
Stuff I Loved: Marvel’s subtlety in its tie-ins – a vast improvement over Iron Man 2. The earnest performances of the cast. The tightness of the screenplay. The clean shots of the action, the sweeping sense of scale and the emotion packed into a few key scenes, particularly the ending.

Bottom Line: Definitely worth seeing and for more than just the lead-up to The Avengers. Speaking of which, stay through the credits. I probably don’t have to tell you to do that anymore but I just did. It’s worth it.

Powers Cosmic

January 22, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Courtesy Marvel Comics

I grew up on the old Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica TV series, at least until Star Trek: the Next Generation started. There’s a lot of good science fiction out there to be read, and while I definitely enjoy and appreciate harder sci-fi, from Niven & Pournelle’s The Mote in God’s Eye to Moon, the more sweeping and somewhat fantastical epics always find that soft spot in my heart, the place where I’m still twelve years old and believe that I can accomplish anything. Which probably explains some of my more erratic behavior.

Take Marvel Comics’ Annihilation, for example. A series of story arcs collected into graphic novels and consumed by Yours Truly, Annihilation is a war in space involving just about every character from the Marvel Universe outside of Earth (which was undergoing the Civil War at the time). Old characters got modern revamps, hated enemies forged alliances of convenience, Thanos was a canny and manipulative bastard and “normal” folks got some of the best lines. There’s plenty of action and great alien locations, making a Halo campaign look like a day at a firing range in comparison. There’s a sequel (Annihilation:Conquest) and a follow-up series, Guardians of the Galaxy, that had my attention for that short while I was able to afford monthly comic books. I’ll always have Annihilation, though.

Recently my wife and I finished watching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series. It was her first time watching it, and the first time I’d watched that many episodes back to back. In retrospect, RDM modernizing the “Wagon Train to the Stars” storyline and deepening the mythologies at play was a very smart decision, as it deepened the characters and made the story more gripping. Even the much-maligned series finale plays much better by the light of what goes before it, without weeks of fanboy speculation/rage clouding the issue. However, in watching it again I noticed there were some interesting similarities between it and Annihilation that makes them and their ilk so damn appealing to me.

I’m a sucker for good characterization, and these stories tend to provide a heaping amount of characters. BSG in particular involved quite a few ascended extras. Marvel went back to the barrel and pulled out a lot of semi-forgotten cosmic characters, from Drax the Destroyer to Quasar, and brought them front and center in a variety of ways. Drax goes from a hulking green-skinned joke of a character to something resembling Riddick. It was like seeing Starbuck change from the ladykilling Dirk Benedict to the foul-mouthed insubordinate best-frakking-pilot-we’ve-got Katee Sackhoff. In both cases, the campy old version makes me smile and chuckle, while the updated version makes me smile because the character’s gone from camp to badass in the space of 5 minutes.

Doctor Who probably qualifies under this sort of science fictiony pleasure as well, but that’d be a post in and of itself.

Multiple Multiverses

January 4, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Courtesy Wizards of the Coast

They’re everywhere. They persist in existing when logic and reason insist they shouldn’t. They entice us with wonders and haunt us with dangers. They are worlds beyond our own, worlds beyond even the basic strictures of the fantasies we create. Other worlds, other planes, other universes – and we’re at the crossroads.

Take for example the different campaigns of Dungeons & Dragons. The lovely lady above is a witch from Dark Sun, a desolate world that subscribes to many of the same strictures and conventions as the ‘default’ D&D worlds such as Greyhawk and Mystara, but sets itself apart with its intelligent bug-people and malevolent sorcerer-kings. Ravenloft got a bit of the World of Darkness treatment around the time of version 3.5 but remains a dark, corrupted reflection of more heroic (if somewhat forgotten) realms. All of them are tied together by Sigil, the City of Doors, an environment so rich and deep it got its own campaign setting for a while. The prevelance of these different worlds grew to such a degree, however, that Sigil became folded into the ‘default’ setting. While shaving down the distinction between a ‘default’ D&D campaign and a Planescape campaign causes Sigil to lose some of its lustre, it also opens many doors for DMs to take their campaigns beyound the setting they’ve chosen and into brave new worlds. Except for Ravenloft, of course. You do NOT want to go to Ravenloft if you weren’t born there. Paladins especially. I get chills just thinking about it.

Courtesy Wizards of the Coast
Mirrodin’s razorgrass

Magic: the Gathering is a similar setting. Each player is a planeswalker, a wizard or other arcanist gifted with a ‘spark’ that allows them to channel their powers into travelling between different planes of existence. There is the ‘default’ plane of Dominaria, which has been expanded upon, invaded and nearly destroyed more than once. Some are lush places where planeswalkers are practically on vacation, such as Lorwyn, while others like Zendikar might as well hang a big ‘Keep Out’ sign on the front which planeswalkers are sure to ignore because, hey, there’s loot there. I personally happen to be a fan of Mirrodin, the plane of metal, because that’s where all the best equipment comes from, and those myr are just too damn cute.

Courtesy DC Comics These are both fantastical and somewhat clean examples of this sort of multilateral storytelling. For a messer but more popular example, look no further than DC Comics. I won’t go into laborious detail over DC’s multiverse – MovieBob’s already done that – but it’s taken almost two decades for things to shake themselves out since the Crisis on Infinite Earths. And they’re not done yet.

If you have a favorite multi-faceted universe, what would it be?

Paging Doctor Strange

December 23, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Courtesy Marvel Studios

As much as I never really got into reading his stories on a regular basis, I’m a big fan of Doctor Strange.

Marvel’s a world full of armored geniuses, super-soliders and Viking gods. Standing right beside them is this bookworm, a former surgeon who managed to become Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme? How did he do it? Did he stumble across a magical MacGuffin or get touched by an angel or bitten by a magical spider?

No. He worked for it.

Granted, his origin story isn’t a terribly noble one, but this is Marvel we’re talking about. Strange was a gifted surgeon who cared more about his wealth and reputation than actually helping people. He got involved in an auto accident that damaged the nerves in his hands. He lost much of the fine manipulation necessary to be a surgeon. Stubborn and vain, Strange refused to take a position as a consultant or practice ‘lesser’ medicine and hunted down every potential cure he could find. His search was fruitless and drained his fortune, leaving him a destitute back-alley doctor, his reputation lost and his bar tabs mounting. Finally, he heard word of someone called “the Ancient One,” pawned the last of his possessions to seek the hidden monastery, and begged for the Ancient One to heal him.

The Ancient One refused. Furious, Strange very nearly left only to see the Ancient One beset by mysical forces. His curiosity overwhelmed his frustration and he began to speak to the Ancient One as a pupil does to a student. Uncovering treachery and trying to warn the master, Strange overcame his selfishness and vowed to combat the evil he’d seen with his own eyes. Through years of study and practice, he became a sorcerer and one of the foremost minds of the arcane in the world.

He’s been through a lot. He’s faced all sorts of challenges from the likes of Doctor Doom to personifications of cosmic forces. He’s survived them all, with nothing more than the contents of old scrolls and his own quick thinking. And he has never, ever gone back to thinking only about himself. At every turn, he’s contributed to the greater good of the world around him.

How is this not something to which we should aspire? Doctor Strange is a shining example of the proper response to hubris and hardship. Despite all his challenges, all he’s lost, he soldiers on, taking on the next obstacle as resolutely as possible. He never gives up. Even when he loses the title of Sorcerer Supreme, he holds on to his abilities not to pursue his own aims, but to help from the sidelines, advise from the shadows. He still refuses to give up on a world that would have given up on him long ago.

Courtesy Marvel Studios I have to wonder if, these days, walking as he does with a sullen disposition and rocking a mean trenchcoat, he ever thinks back to those days as a surgeon, to the way he’d casually light a cigarette the moment he’s out of the operating room ensuring the patient can pay for the life-saving medicine he just administered. Since becoming a sorcerer, he’s never demanded payment, never asked for special recognition or reward. Even when he’s all but bugged to remain with Luke Cage’s New Avengers, he politely and humbly tries to tell them he’s not worthy to stand among them, that his mistakes are too great, his burdens too much for others to bear. Yet he has borne the hardships of others many times, and when Strange finally cracks the smallest of smiles, it’s a greater statement than reams of text could make.

Brian Michael Bendis and Grant Immoren are doing a fantastic job with Strange. I’m glad to see him in this current form and look forward to more. When I was a child, I was fascinated with the magic. Nowadays, I’m fascinated by the man.

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