MY STARK TREK REVIEW

YOU HAVE SEEN THEM STAR

YOU HAVE SEEN THEM TREK

NOW YOU WILL SEE THEM STAR TREK. . .

INTO DARKNESS

Star Trek No Colon Into Darkness is what summer blockbusters are supposed to feel like.

 

It's a roller coaster ride in the best sense of the phrase (besides it being a terrible cliche) and, in its more unguarded moments it manages to be genuinely emotional in a way that you can't fake with hundreds of millions of dollars.

I won't lower the conversation by naming lesser big budget movies like The Hobbit: A Unexpected Journey, which warbles and shambles along its nearly three hours like a drunken prison fifi brought to life by the cruelest of frat-magic, instead, I'll say that beyond all of the action and effects which work phenomenally, Star Trek No Colon Into Darkness succeeds because it manages to get a group of characters that you instantly know and like, give them stakes and motivations and relationships and you set that in the midst of intergalactic terrorism and Klingons and phasers and Tribbles and moons and space and accents and 9/11 and double-crosses and back and side references and Sherlock and FUCK THIS MOVIE WAS AWESOME.

Eating a fish taco waiting for the movie I was sitting next to a guy and his girlfriend who were on vacation from Las Vegas. They seemed amicable so, of course, I had to ask where someone from Las Vegas possibly go to for vacation. While they did not proposition me (it was before the movie and they weren't married yet so maybe the scene wasn't right), they did make me realize something about the movies that are out right now.

Of the four major movies playing that late at night there was Iron Man 3, Oblivion, Star Trek Into Darkness, and The Great Gatsby.

One of these things is not like the other. Of the massive, popcorn smashing affairs that you typically have invading the summer-- comic books, toy properties, reboots, TV shows you forgot about, Tom Cruise vehicles, Will Smith vehicles, Xenu repulsion vehicles, more comic books-- one of them is an adaptaiton of what might be the great novel written in the English language.


Taken altogether, you have a blockbuster that the exclamation point was created to service playing against a slick version of a story about a man failing to resurrect the past and that is awesome. We're living in a pretty decent age, even if I don't want to believe it sometimes, and it's perfectly fitting that a Star Trek feature is leading the way.

DSGN MGMT

I don't want to review MIND MGMT, I waste enough time on that. I instead want to talk about the design of the first trade of Matt Kindt's current series. So if you want an actual review go to an actual website with actual writers (that make actual money). Beyond its questionable art, what MIND MGMT, is one of the best designed books on the market.

From the artwork, to the margins, to the covers, to even the introductory pages of the graphic novel, MIND MGMT is something to behold. It's something no one else is doing in comics. Well, maybe Hickman.

Hmmmm, yeah, probably Hickman.

What I mean is the contents and shape of the book besides the story. It's the actual form of the book. It also means things as basic as paper stock and font (by the way: This book has some excellent paper stock). Design, as I understand it, is that bit of a work of art between the practical, physical aspect and what you're taking in as a reader.

Does that make sense? No?

What I am most impressed by is how this book is clever enough to overcome the sloppiness of the linework. The shape of the book is as much a part of the book at Kindt's art or writing. It's embedded in there and it isn't done in the way that Hickman does it, which is far more bombastic and segmented. To mangle a joke from iFanboy, “Hickman loves his title pages, doesn't he?”

Hickman's little flourishes of design (ie: Being a thing that is neither quite art nor writing, yet is a part of the same whole) are bold statements. They are title cards. They are supertext. They're calling attention to what is going on and it's great when he does it. It's one of the little things that makes The Manhattan Projects such a wonder of a book and it's something that adds to his other books, even when they might be lacking.

I'm sure some graphic designer is shouting at me through his computer screen right now.Well, shout away. Go design a gig poster, jerk, I'm talking about comics.

You know that this book is something entirely different from the other comics. From the first moment you crack open the covers, you see a series of almost entirely blank pages with a single statement made out of what appears to a ripped-out newspaper headline.

 Where he could have shoved ads for other books, we instead have a torn newspaper headline reading “TURN BACK.” I won't go so far as to say that they're wasted, but they aren't far from it (Somewhere, I'm sure there's some Marvel or DC editor looking at this book doing the math on what those six pages would have cost them).

Besides being this distracting and spacious introduction it also serves a practical purpose that reflects on the story.The book is warning you not to read it. But, you paid for this fucker and you're going to turn it anyways.

“YOUR LAST CHANCE” is the next page. You can't tell me what to do! You're just a book! And not even a Bible or a Howard Zinn book! You don't own me!"

And so you turn into the story, ignoring all warnings, like the character, like the world. There you are, getting brainwashed by the secret files of a crypto-agency and it's all your fault.

How cool is that?

It can't recall something like that outside of the Bioshock Infinite ending where you're forced to make a decision and I thought “What if I just turn this off? Don't I win? Don't I prove all of you wrong?” Maybe you do, but in both cases you miss out on some impressive storytelling.

By the way, that's not a real spoiler, so fuck you if you're acting like a wuss about this

It also understands that a trade paper back is something more than a compilation of single issues. In a world where writers and artists are attempting to emphasize the importance of the single issue, where guys like Ed Brubaker are creating original content specifically for their monthly books, it is exciting to see Matt Kindt take an opposing approach and treat the TPB as a form on its own. It isn't until all of these issues are thrown together into a single book that it stops being a serial, semi-disconnected story, but something bigger and distinct (that is also a serial story).

The wider conceit is, of course, that you are reading a manual published by organization MIND MGMT. It's a sub-conscious trick Kindt plays on his readers. They don't need to know what a mise en abyme or metatext or subliminal messaging is to know that they're reading something with some, not all, of its layers showing. It's a book confident and compitent enough to never have to use five-dollar academic words to get you to understand what those actual concepts are. It's a lesson I could use to learn.

MIND MGMT also exists as proof that a medium as low as the comic book doesn't have to act like it. Nothing has to be changed or sexed up, everything that make a comic book worthwhile is already there, it just needs to be brought out by someone who knows what they're doing. Matt Kindt isn't the only comic book creator working who knows how to do this, he's just the one that really makes me think about this. Read it for the interesting story about hidden psychic spies and hold onto it for the impressive lessons in graphic design. This also reminds me that I'm a self-hating snob. Thanks for that, Matt Kindt. 

Thanks for everything.

And speaking of sub-conscious advertising--

SIDE NOTE: There should be a rule: If it's in hardback, you get the back matter. I understand the reasons why this is so. I understand the practical reasons that retailers espouse and I understand the importance of disnguishing forms that Ed Brubaker makes. I get it. I still want my damn extras, though.

SIDE SIDE NOTE: I am of the opinion that knowing what a roman a clef or a bildungsroman is the kind of thing that improves your life considerably.

SIDE SIDE SIDE NOTE: But don't just take my word for it.

Double Dose of Solipsistic Bullshit

Good work, Cruz. Good birthdaying. You got me this shirt and that's pretty swell. And it would've been a great day if it hadn't been for the fact that I also recieved a package from the National World War II Museum containing a free book. I mean of all of the days to get a book to me, you had to choose the one where I got a book about how we fucked up the Krauts. Can't compete with that shit, buh. Just can't be done.

I also bought an aloe plant, but you don't care about that either, do you, Cruz? Didn't consider for a second that I was going to buy some nice indoor plants to make my living situation that much more livable. Did you? Did you, Cruz?

Now, is the museum in a seceded part of South Africa and does the book primarily concern itself with Hitler's

So, anyways, sure we're podcasting partners, admittedly. And, yeah, he gave me this sick manatee shirt, alright. At what cost, though? Will I ever know that true cost of the World War 2 now? I don't know. I'm wearing an awesome fuck ass shirt.

Good job, dick. Way to obfuscate history.

Also, posting something on Facebook and getting it for nothing in the mail makes me feel like a pornstar.

Speaking of which, Cruz and I released a new episode of White Guys, Square Glasses (which is barely even accurate or a show at this point). Listen to it. Tell a friend. Send complaints to WGSGshow@gmail.com.

Good night and God bless.

SERIOUSLY THOUGH: The book I received was The Guns at Last Light (which is the third part of the Liberator Trilogy which makes me think that someone is trying to backdoor their fantasy novel over the bones of

FUN FACT: Pornstar apparently still isn't a word! Neither is videogame! Some petition Obama about this shit. Seems like he doesn't have enough going on for my tastes.

I Just Realized that My First Dog Didn't Go to That Farm Upstate

There's a Philip K. Dick quote that I can't remember the source of where he is haraunging Robert Heinlein's lack of creativity. He cites a story he read in the newspaper where an eighty year old couple recently got married and said that this was the kind of tenderness and humanity that Heinlein, with his space captains and militarism could never achieve. I have to think he was right to a certain extent, but then again: Blade Runner. It's hardly fair.

(Of course he later was supported financially by Heinlein, who greatly respected the grand holy fool of classic science fiction, which is a turn of events that proves that some stories can go unwritten by a man as great as Philip K. Dick).

So, then I saw this on Yahoo's main page. These kind of stories aren't just limited to imagine scrimage battles between sci-fi authors. Romance still happens despite all the horror show that modernity seems to be churning out on a daily basis.

Then I saw the depressing fact: This guy is one of 11 US survivors of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
 
Eleven.

There were tens of thousands of these men at one point, now there's less than a dozen. And one of them has cancer.

I've got to have a lie down.

I remember telling an ex-girlfriend of mine why I wanted to take a World War II tour of Europe and as I was talking it out I realized that someday, within my lifetime, every one of these guys is going to die. Same with Holocaust survivors (who, even as children aren't that much younger then the men who fought in the war, especially when they start hitting the 100 years mark). The last survivor of World War I died within my lifetime and that war, like this war, is going to lose all of its witnesses. It's going to decay into the Past in a very real way

While we're never going to forget what these events stood for and it's stories like the ones above that remind us that there is still plenty of life left in these people. Their story isn't over. And yet, the past is an endangered species and we're going to watch all of it slide away if we give it long enough and Jesus Christ what the fuck is that about?

NOW NOW I WANT THIS NOW

MAKE IT HAPPEN LET'S DO IT COME ON ALREADY

Just Finished "Four Lions"

It was a very good movie, but the only thing I am going to add is this.

Pleading for Some Kind of Sanity

Sanctimony is a plague of the modern era.

Back in the day sanctimony was something that either made you a look-out at the end of a very sharp spike or an unpopular pope. Or, I don't know, got Prohibition made into an amendment. Nowadays it's the bread and butter of comments threads and people with too much time on their hands and too little of a poli-sci degree (or too much of one). The empowerment that comes with the internet has done a lot of great things, but it has also spawned a culture of people who feel entitled to tell everyone how something offends them or how it might offend someone else (despite not being involved at all with the group they're defending).

This sort of thing might come out of a positive place (“might” is the crucial word), for the most part, though, it comes off as boring and reactionary as the dumbest parts of the internet you can imagine and as close-minded as the people they're attempting to harangue.

I'm sure the past was full of people whining about how offensive things are. In fact, there must have been. If the internet has proven anything, it isn't that people are getting worse or that they're getting weirder, it's just that they're visible now. It is just that in the past, at least then they were somewhere else and speaking in, I don't know, Swedish or some other ungodly language, and we didn't have to hear about it (because of that pike I mentioned earlier).

I say this then, with a heavy heart: I want to stop seeing violent comic book covers.

You hear that? Stop it. Just stop it now.

Enough of children holding bloody knives (or palming severed heads). Enough eyes sewn shut. Enough guts. Enough of David Lapham getting work. Just put it all to bed, will ya? I'm trying to buy a comic book here and you're up there lopping off heads and laughing. Except that you can't laugh because your throat is impacted with maggots and sick and it's only 2.99 to buy into this Degas-like excercise in living poetry. It's rarely what I need more of in my life.

I mean, okay, we've got a lot of vampire books, some blood is going to happen, I'm not a madman here. There has to be exceptions. And zombies on covers are fine (even if that means that there's a zombie comic inside). Guns in general are fine, I guess, since it's really only the guns next to exploding heads that kind of gets to me.

But my problem really isn't with the kinds of grotesque covers that, let's say, a Raphael Albuquerque comes up with, because he has a sense of what makes good design and good art. The rest of the shit I see is just sub-1980's VHS shlock that only the dumbest, most black metal shirt wearingest middle schooler would ever fall for (and God knows the comic book industry would be better for it if more of those kids showed up every Wednesday). It's not just unpleasant art, for the most part, it's just bad art.

Maybe I'm just old or maybe I'm just enlightened enough to realize that this is a bunch of hackneyed, overcompensating prison tattoos playing at being art. Or maybe it's both. Or maybe it's just the second one twice.

The world is depressing enough as it is without me having to stare at horrifically cynical comic book covers. We live in a world full of bombings, corruption, the New York Yankees, and an Entourage movie to deal with, I don't need bad art knocking on my head every Wednesday to remind me that the world sucks. I can do that on my own time.

I think what offends me is that most of the covers that I'm complaining about aren't from very accomplished artists. They aren't a Mignola or a Fabry or a Johnson, so they gussy it up with something some dummy is going to pick up. “A guy vomits out the bullets he's been shot with! Brilliant! Everyone at my imaginary adventure society in the alley will sure get a kick out of this!” I guess I wouldn't be so exhausted or annoyed if any of these things actually looked like anyone gave a fuck about what they were drawing.

I mean, severed heads are something you should be committed to if you're going to stick your name on a picture.

“Well, don't look at them?” you say. “Why don't you just not buy them and shut up about it, old man!” Well, that's a good point, but I have a better point: Fuck you.

All I want to do is buy my Garth Ennis comic book where he strangles a guy with his own intestines in peace. I'm an American citizen. I pay taxes. I vote and I'm barely a criminal. I should have the privilege of not having my comic book store drenched in blood and guts.

You know what the really depressing part is? That I feel the need to say this. Don't put fucked up shit where other people are going to see it. Children buy comic books. Parents buy comic books. People who aren't into piss-soaked teeth bullets buy comic books. Sane, healthy adults sometimes  accidentally buy comics. If I'm some irksome minority that wants to take away everyone's fun, then the opposite amount of scorn should be aimed at the types that want to flood the shelves with horrible art. We shouldn't let shitbirds of any feather crap on our parade (the parade is society).

I'm not so worked up about all of this as I am tired, because I don't want to put an end to this sort of thing entirely, I'm just asking for a basic call to decency. I feel tired that I have to ask for this. I feel tired knowing that it won't matter (especially here, on this blog). We don't have to stop telling stories about murderous hobos collecting child hands or pretending to murder a man's children and surrogate father as a goof (and that's just Scott Snyder), I just want people to shovel less crap into the world.

If I have a basic philosophy at all is that you should try to not make things worse for other people. You don't have to stop being who you are or become some positive force in the world, I just want you to not make it hard for other people. Do your thing, don't fuck it up for everyone else if you can. It works for doctors alright. Do no harm. Words to live by. 

The alternative to me not complaining is someday sitting in this world that we're wallowing in, lettiing it soak into our pores, and throwing up our hands and saying “Well, it's just the way things are!” and fuck that whole genera of shit.

Ugh.

I guess it must work if there seems to be so many. Actually, you know what? That's the most depressing thought in this whole mess.

SIDE NOTE: I considered posting pictures of some of the things I'm irritated with, but then I thought "Fuck them." Even for a guy with maybe five readers that seems like too much exposure for the kinds of books I'm talking about. Also I am lazy. There's always a second installment, right?

SIDE SIDE NOTE: I now realize what this should have been about the whole time: Dark Place.

Damn. What am I even doing here?

EDIT: Goddamnit, why the hell are those videos not embedding? The world needs to know about Dark Place!

I've got something to say!

All this talk about Ann Coulter being a "racist." Pleas! Sell you sad story somewhere else! Muslim isn't a race! It's a choice! Same thing being a papist or in a trade union or Arab. And as for my so called "distasteful" flaming cross display, if you want to scare somebody out of the neighborhood, I'd like you to come up with a better idea.

Oh, what's that? Use ghosts? It's 2013, people aren't even scared of vampires anymore and people give so little of a fuck about werewolves they carry them in handbags. Ghosts? Please. Sit back down.

What was I talking about? Oh yeah, yes you can drive a lawn mower on city streets while drunk, but you can't drink while driving. Fun law fact. Next question.

Gun Machine is Good Medicine

Gun Machine, like most of Warren Ellis' work is about shoving interesting people into a situation that is both familiar and chock full of  big ideas that one would never think to associate with something as pat and done as a murder mystery. Law and Order this is not.



With Ellis it's always been less about the results than it seems to be about this passage of time between the covers. There are exceptions to that, but you look at Planetary or Crecy and you see that the grand story takes a backseat to the plot. The moment is more important than the sum total. He is less interested in presenting the why of an interplanetary spaceship hidden underneath the pavement of New York City than he in presenting what that would do to a guy. The depths of his work come out of passing through the world and not out of some traditional conclusion. He rarely ever bothers with telling you that this all means something, instead he lets you sort it out from the puzzle pieces he left behind.

Gun Machine is very much in that style. It seems to be about what these characters are presently dealing with rather than how all of the pieces come together. It is about gears, not the machine. This approach to a procedural prevents the story and all of its threads getting in the way of its main characters. You see this the various history lessons it presents (that seem to have only a tangential baring on the plot) and you see it in how they go about solving the crime. There aren't any hard revelations, there is just the continuation of these characters putting work into this horrific murder contraption that spans New York City. Rather, there's just people dealing with their moment to moment problems. Sometimes those moments involve horrible, roccoco murders.

And you see this in the fact that the serial killer of the story doesn't even have a name (and it even says in the book that it doesn't seem to matter). It isn't about who he is or why he's doing it, the story is about what he is doing and how to stop him.

Another one of Ellis' strengths are his characters. While all great stories tend to have really memorable characters, there is just something special about characters like Spider Jerusalem or Jakita Wagner or just about anyone from Agents of HATE. He writes vulgar, violent characters that are fun to listen to and who you want to hang out with, even if they are utter maniacs and Gun Machine has all of that in spades, even if they aren't as cranked as high as the kind of characters that populate his comic book work (or even Crooked Little Vein, from what I remember).

Ellis' John Tallow, like James Bond, seems to have a name that is designed to be forgotten. He's a terminally uninteresting person and has spent much of his life working at that.

Ellis doesn't seem to be too interested in Tallow's life. That might be because he doesn't have one. The lifeless detective is a blanched human being just short of being a cipher. But being a cipher at least shows the hand of the author, however lazy, Tallow is just, well, he's just a nobody. He's a cop that, like so many people seems to be in the place he is because life carried him along like a piece of driftwood.

Another character that Tallow reminds me of is another sluggish, troubled detective, which is Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole

In that way he is different from the long tradition of troubled detectives. Tallow might not be as complex as a Harry Hole (by the very nature of Hole being featured in nearly 10 novels), but he also cannot be accused of being cliched, except by the laziest and, I'm sure, simple of critics. It certainly is brave to write a main character with no distinguishing personality and it's certaintly a sign of skill if the author can get away with it like Ellis does.

And I want to see the further adventures of John Tallow. Though, there is another difference, which is that Nesbo avoids giving his audience hard and definite ends to al of his book's crises because he has a series to continue and Hole has a life to live beyon this one book. Ellis, on the other hand, just doesn't seem that interested.

What Tallow and this world exists as is perfectly fine. Yet, I want to see more of the batshit insane CSU personnel and I want to see Ellis contrive a way to make Tallow into some kind of a human being, which is something that Tallow seems desperate to try and avoid.

In a way it doesn't matter as this book is all about present action. Seeing Tallow in the future where the past begins to creep into his life would be interesting to see, I also just want more lines like “I am a Crime Scene Unit detective for the New York City Police Department, you heinous fucking mongoloid and there is nothing I cannot do.” If that means that some of the quality of the story is going to suffer, then I guess I'll just have to be okay with that.

On the downside, too much of the story relies on coincidences that a first year screenwriting student would be forced to hack out.Then again it's these coincidences that keep the book from getting bogged down. They're depressingly convienient plot devices. While the plot and the characters are what stand out in this book, they also stand out because they have to do most of the heavy lifting. In many ways the story is an excuse to get their people into rooms with each other and to explain weird things about New York's crypto-geography and that's all well and good, but I don't know that's what the novels were built for.

I still wonder if the novel is Ellis' artform. I do not that even if it isn't one of his mastered mediums, he can still crank out a worthwhile novel that still has all of the massive ideas and creative cursing that you come to expect from the man who dreamed up Spider Jerusalem. Though, creative cursing isn't exactly what one goes to books for (or even comic books for that matter). Ellis is lacking something in this book. As much fun as it is and as many wonderful ideas are on display, none of it adds up to something more significant than just a kooky murder mystery. I guess I'm okay with that.

I just re-read Ennis' Global Frequency, which was recently re-printed in a single trade in its entirety. It's a fantastic comic book and a perfect example of what the medium can do. As a book it moves like a hyper-manic love child of Mission: Impossible and The Twilight Zone. This book introduces these amazing ideas and then casts them off as soon as the story moves along. It isn't in love with its own cleverness, just in telling the story. Besides being a good yarn, it also might make one wonder why the fuck the X-Men need 27 issues and four cross-over books to tell the same kind of story (but with less thrills, emotions, and cost).

I mention this book in the same breath as Gun Machine because, while they are completely different kind of books, they share the same DNA. They are both stories about ideas and these ideas, in turn, help move the plot. The only real difference is that Global Frequency doesn't ever feel like a character has shown up simply to let you know about something rad. There simply isn't enough space for that sort of thing.

Global Frequency reads like a form of Ellis' style and interests that has been boiled down to a crystal form that is either perfectly suited as a weapon or a high-quality narcotic. It takes all of the dark corners that Ellis' stories exists in and only shows us them in these fast-paced forms that are already half-way finished by the time we get to them.

They are almost all tinged with Ellis' unshakable sense of hope, as well. He isn't an optimist, not exactly, but he is a guy that seems to believe that if the right people are there they can outsmart, outfight, outkill, and outlive the worst that the universe has to offer.

While it is also infected with Ellis' hyper-competent, benevolent dictator/Nietzchian superman character that he loves so dearly (ie: Men and women so intensley skilled that you deserve to be murdered by a robot for even bothering to ask who they are and why they are yelling so loud. See: Spider Jersualem, Elijah Snow, and Miranda Zero and maybe the bad guy in Gun Machine if he wasn't, you know, a baddie). As a comic book archetype, there are worse people to spend time with. At least they help stop cyborgs or solve mysteries about angels or gouge out each others' eyeballs.

Reading these two books in such close proximity, though, reminds me why I like Ellis so much and why he is so well regarded in the comics community (or at least why he should be). This trade also serves as is another piece proving that Ellis is not only one of the great storytellers living, but he is also one of our great idea men.

(And not to end this on a love in Wolfskin and Black Summer are both swollen dog corpses that were drowned in a shit-bog. Avoid these comics at all cost. One is lifeless to the point of being offensive and the other is incoherent dreck only serves to remind one that there are stories that exist that have beheadings for a reason.)

So, This is On TV

There's a scene in this movie where a Holocaust survivor is singled out by the Muslim terrorists, along with all of the other Jewish passengers.

Now keep in mind this is all scored to an overbearing 1980's synth soundtrack and was immediately preceded by Chuck Norris being re-recruited by the Delta Force to a score that would have seem not out of place in Team America: World Police. It's completely ridiculous and it'd be offensive if it wasn't clear that their intentions were sincere and, oh and if it hadn't actually happened in real life.

And. . . I think it got to me, even though I was laughing at a bad child actor shout "Please don't take my daddy," somehow through all of the bad music and character actors, I still got a little tingle. I guess that's a sign that this movie might just work.

Now Lee Marvin is suiting up to take back a plane chock full of hostages. Let's hope he gets out of this okay. Oh, hey, Robert Vaughn is in this movie.


That's never a bad thing.

Adventures of Imperial Glory!

A Quick Thought About the Lives of a Bengal Lancer--

This movie isn't a great one. The Lives of a Bengal Lancer in terms of Imperial Adventure moves falls below GungaDin, but above The Northwest Frontier (and probably well above Carryon Up the Khyber if the You Tube clips are accurate). There are certain kind of movies that I am drawn to though, and regardless of the quality I have to watch them. I've been over this before, but besides the obvious choice of WWII movies, movies about Imperial adventure are high on the list. It's a problem I have.

Outside of my own ridiculous solipism, movies like The Lives of a Bengal Lancer meet a larger need. They're the grease that keeps movie studios going between bouts of costumed affair dramas and biopics about dead jerks. Like the Western or the War movie or the screwball comedy, it meets a certain need, it stars a certain kind of actor, and it gets in and out without you having to think too hard. It's old fashioned film making and for better or worse it represents the kind of movie they don't make anymore.

And considering that it comes on a dual-disc with the movie Beau Geste,, I think that means that this isn't the most popular Gary Cooper film of all time. . . except maybe with Adolf Hitler, apparently (then again A Matter of Life and Death comes similar packaging and that movie is just about perfect). This movie is no A Matter of Life and Death, though, what it is is the perfect B-picture. It meets every need that it is expected to meet and it does it without you really ever having to pause and be embarrassed by the fact that this movie has a dramatic use of brown face.

(To be fair the brown face scenes are awesome. Hear that, liberal elite? Awesome. Also: It is totally grounded in historical fact. Chew on that, hippies.)

What I like is its expedience in storytelling. It's the kind of thing movies like it (or their distant relatives) should take note on. There are no B-plots that don't get resolved or flow into the main story. There aren't any ruminations on what this all means or the impact of their mission unless it directly

This film has no fat. A butcher would be proud.

It seems that movies forgot what they were. Nowadays everything is getting longer and longer. I suppose it is as a response to television and video games being what they are (3d is also a symptom of this fear). They want cinema to be more cinematic and one thing TV can't do is make something that's three hours long.

Looking at this movie (and many more like it), I think that they're missing the point. You don't need a one-hundred forty minute running time to make a movie cinematic. Since the birth of cinema they've made good films that are good partially because they're short and to the point. Making them longer, to me, is an attempt to treat the wrong symptoms.

There's also the old adage of quality over quantity, but I'm being a hypocrite here, so let's just move quietly along, shall we?

Another reason this movie benefits from its percieved brevity is that we don't get much of a chance to mull on the fact that this movie tacitly supports the subjugation of about a fifth of the world's population. That tends to put the damper on enjoyment, as a rule. Its storyline is also about as pat as a movie like this can get. There's no surprises, there's no real insight, it's just a story that follows three men (a jaded veteran, a cocky upstart, and an unproven rookie) as they take on an Afghan warlord (I should make a list of that stock character's apperances. . .) and then the movie ends as soon as they've accomplished that.

It's a frolic. There's no substance, there's no real philosophy, there's just men doing their jobs and then a big bad guy with an accent dies at the end. In between there's some horse riding, aome costumes, a some outdoors, a dragon lady, and dialogue that ranges from glib irony to cloying sincerity. In short: It's an old fashioned adventure film. What more could a man want?

The Post-Apocalyptic Sci-Fi Comc You Didn't Know You Wanted

East of West is the craziest comic I've read since. . . well, the last time I read a Hickman comic.

East of West feels like a blend between a high-concept indy comic that you saw at a convention (and would likely never read) and the most low-brow, straight forward pulp to fall out of Image's ass in the mid-90's. Due to what alchemy, I do not know, the results are something rather amazing. Violent, oblique,and ambitious, and amazing.

East of West tells the story of. . . I don't know what. There's a supernatural trio of murder machines (with a missing sibling) that exist in an alternate future where the United States was segmented into seven different nation and a nuclear war went down in the middle of the 21st century. Then there is a prophetic Mao Ze Dung and the president gets his head blown off. It's pretty good.

At the very least it's a fine first issue and considering how much of this world has yet to be revealed, I think this might end up being a very fine trade indeed.

My interest flagged slightly when the exact identity of the Four is revealed, which takes the mysterious power of these characters and then anchors them to one of the more well-worn pieces of Biblical mythology. It doesn't ruin anything, it just seems to present an answer where I didn't need or want one. Ideally, as the story unfolds, the intent and origin of the Four will reveal itself as something slightly different than that great Biblical quartet.

I know I throw the word “crazy” out quite a lot. Too much, probably. That's the trouble with not having an editor currently and that's the trouble of having the same thought over and over again. East of West is demonstrably a crazy book.

I know I've said it about Nowhere Men and I know I've said it about Prophet (hey, both are Image books, strange. . . ). It's true with this book too.

Ignoring psychiatric diagnoses for a moment, let me ask you a question: Is there anyone in comics doing as much varied and exciting work as Bryan Hickman is right now?

Between The Manhattan Projects, Secret, The Red Wing, his Fantastic Four run, and this I'm hard pressed to think of someone doing as many out-there projects as he is-- and that's without including his mainstream comic book work. At the risk of naming the Great Bearded One and bringing up all that name connotes, Hickman's current position in the industry reminds me of Alan Moore.

Time will tell if Hickman is also a cranky, old, bitter asshole.

You should read the first issue. It doesn't matter if you like science fiction or westerns or. . . whatever genre this actually is you need to buy it.

Another congenital defect of my writing is my repetition of the phrase “This is what comic books should be.” In this case it's still true.

At the very least it's what I need.