Category Archives: Comics

Hell on Reels

HellboyMost of the people with whom I’ve casually discussed “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” have insisted that I should put aside my prejudices — specifically my unwillingness to get suckered into another attempt at reinventing Jim Carrey’s heretofore painfully unwatchable career, first, and my aversion to watching yet another ridiculously hip music video director’s transition to the silver screen, second — so as not to miss one of the brighter offerings in this year’s crop of movies. “I was skeptical too, believe me, but it was really good,” said one of my friends last week. I just can’t do it, or at least I haven’t been able to yet, and if I do, I’m pretty sure I won’t be writing about it here unless I find it sufficiently unworthy of all the praise it’s got. Something stubborn in me finds the whole enterprise just too plainly offensive.

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Life as a Cub

TintinWhere have all the cub reporters gone? Fictional enterprises no longer seem to harbor the fantasy of underaged journalists risking life and limb in the pursuit of a hot scoop, something that seemed once to be a fairly commonplace — or at least somewhat plausible — pretext for throwing likable young adult characters into unspeakably dangerous situations.

This was the absurd and yet intoxicating premise behind the indefatigable cub reporter Tintin, the Belgian comic strip character who celebrates his 75th anniversary today. My father, who spent a good chunk of his childhood growing up in France, introduced me to the oversized collections of Tintin’s adventures when I was a kid, and I was blown away by the sure artistic hand of the character’s creator, writer and illustrator, Georges Rémi — he signed his work simply as Hergé — and I was sure then as I am now that he was some kind of genius.

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Don’t Spam the Messenger

iChatI’ve had to remove my iChat/AOL Instant Messenger screen name from my already fairly outdated About page because in the past month or two, I’ve become the victim of some pretty frequent IM spamming. There’s nothing interesting or clever about this junk advertising, aside from the fact that it gets delivered over a previously spam-free communications channel; in fact, it’s probably among the more banal and least innovative ways of capitalizing on a new medium that I’ve seen.

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Four Color Fire Sale

Comic Books

There have been three boxes full of my old comic books sitting in my apartment for over two years, shipped to me by my father when he moved out of his house. Every once in a while, I come across these unwieldy boxes in the course of cleaning up and think to myself that I should get rid of them and reclaim that precious Manhattan real estate for something a bit more adult.

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Lee vs. Lee

The HulkUnexpectedly, the battle that’s truly at the heart of “The Hulk” is not the one that the titular green antihero fights with society at large, the massive arsenal of the U.S. Army or even the tortured depths of his own soul. Rather, it’s the battle between the moviemaking prowess of Ang Lee, who has been responsible for some of the most intricate and touching personal epics committed to film, and the cantankerous spirit of Stan Lee, controversially-proclaimed father of the famed stable of Marvel Comics super-heroes. What results is a movie that pits a grotesquely literal interpretation of the graphical storyteling of comic books against a psychologically complex exploration of human horror. It’s not an altogether disastrous experiment in opposing sensibilities, but it is ultimately, hugely, disappointing.

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Hulk Smash! Or Flop?

The HulkI’m feeling kind of time-pressured today, because I’m trying to leave the office early to go see “The Hulk,” which unfortunately got a pretty poor review in The New York Times today. This is a shame, because I had so many high hopes for Ang Lee’s foray into multimillion-dollar box office spectacles as a sign that the characters of popular mythology can actually be treated with truly artful hands. I don’t know why I do this to myself each time I head out to see a comic book made into a movie, because I tend to be let down. It’s just that I think these characters have so much potential for mature, literate dramaturgy that it’s a shame that Hollywood is not aiming to make true classics out of them, rather than just box office smashes.

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Serially Folks

Serializer.netSerliazer.net, which I stumbled onto while poking around Ethan Persoff’s Web site, is a vibrant experiment in online comics. A subscription goes for the almost ridiculously affordable price of US$2.95 per month and gives you access to hundreds of pages from 25-30 regularly updated strips. I bought a subscription last night and so far one of my favorites is the beautifully drawn “Pup” by Drew Weing.

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Atomic Comic Book

The Atomic Revolution“The Atomic Revolution” is a gorgeous relic from America’s early love affair with its ability to split the atom. A kind of promotional brochure for the wonders of the atomic age that highlights the concepts and history behind what was then a brave new frontier, it was copyrighted in 1957 and has been apparently forgotten until now. The comic book artist Ethan Persoff recently happened across a copy at an estate sale and has kindly published some wonderful scans of its contents on his site.

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Gene Pool

X2The summer movie season effectively kicked off last night with Bryan Singer’s “X2: X-Men United.” With these would-be blockbusters, it takes a dogged determination to avoid being inundated by advance publicity; I tried my best over the past few weeks to avoid trailers, television commercials, critical reviews and entertainment journalism, all in an attempt to preserve as much novelty as possible for the 10:00p show on opening night. What little publicity I was unable to avoid seemed really positive — the ‘buzz’ was good, sometimes outrageously positive. I worried that my expectations were already being inflated but I shouldn’t have, as “X2” is a complete success.

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Postcard from the Past

Postcard from the PastAn old interview with Alan Moore sent me running back to my old issues of his 12-part “Watchmen” series, probably the best comic books ever produced. To do this, I had to dig through three cardboard boxes of comics from the early 80s, a dusty, aging booty from my adolescence. In my mid-twenties I nearly threw them all out, not wanting to deal with the hassle of lugging them around as I moved from one apartment to another. Luckily they were stored at my father’s house and he didn’t have the heart to pitch them.

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