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Podcast #5 is up…and it’s still 2009!
Posted on January 1st, 2010 No commentsI promised Erik Burnham that I would have all of our older recordings published before the end of 2009… and I have 1/2 hour left to make that promise KEPT. This one’s less than 10 minutes long. Just a brief recording that wasn’t worth throwing out, despite some audio problems, because I relate to Erik an old TV Special that I enjoyed.
I don’t even have any Amazon links for this one, because sadly enough, it was never released on video.
DC Comics, Podcasts, Reviews - Movies Dana Carvey, podcast, Robert Smigel, Saturday Night Live, Superman
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the Darker Seid of Life
Posted on November 25th, 2009 1 commentBy all means we at Monitor Duty should have written dozens of histories and recaps and essays about DC Comics’ vile Kirby demon, the evil New God Darkseid. By now there should be hundreds of references and odes of love. If kicked we might see it happen in the future, but I do not care to do that now.
Recently when I should have been working I googled for Grant Morrison interviews about Darkseid. To tell you the truth I do not think that Mr. Morrison has anything profound or unusual to say about the character but I like the way he puts together words and descriptions. He puts together ideas that are not necessarily new or great in ways that are interesting and entertaining. Honestly that is a good thing. It does not matter whether the ideas are his or not. His 52 co-writers claim that his virtue is not his creativity but his fearlessness. He will go where his fellows will not and that seems like a strength to me (and a burden to editors and marketing staff).
Grant Morrison successfully delivers upon the marketing and communication of old ideas mixed together in way that editors would not let less experienced writers attempt. That is the only reason I bother looking for his interviews. I like his words; Ienjoy good poetry. I do not care to give him credit for new meanings or new ideas.
Here is a quick Darkseid link dump. It might be nice if, in the future, Monitor Duty has the greatest and most authoritative Darkseid link directory. Let us leave that for the future.
- Marc Singer, who is not the Beastmaster, writes a defense of Darkseid against the Howling Curmudgeon, in that he declares why the character is a good one, but insists the biggest injury upon the character is its overuse. They agree on the character’s three best stories but alos there are moe good stories with the character. The most profound note is that the character is used best in stories where he seems to die a permanent death. I think that the character is not made better by having no inner conflict, but to have the character have an inner conflict is to write him out of character. Most good characters have inner struggles; to an extent it easier to see the super-villain in this case as a plot device. In this light most villains are plot devices more than characters. I can think of exceptions like Lex Luthor (depending on the writer, of course) and Doctor Doom, both of whom are self-realized as Darkseid is. Yet Luthor (again depending on the writer) has a character arc involving his own jealousy, need for attention, his place in the world, and possibly friendship with Superman. Doom struggles with vanity above all. Darkseid has not issues. He merely is. He will never grow and he will never learn. He will simply act, conquer, enslave, and at the end of the story arc in question he will die. Occasionally he gets trapped in the Source Wall or something.
- A lot of this comes from a September calling for Darkseid essays. Who has the time? The point is that Darkseid “is a person” and I cannot say it is wrong because I sadly have read less Kirby New Gods material than I should, due to cost constraints. As it is, what I declared in the point above is that recently Darkseid is a more a plot device, an abstract menace (as Galactus has almost always been) because while he may have been a person with a personality most writers simply treat him as an abstract personification of a dark ethos.
- The best response is this:
by Keith Giffen in his Ambush Bug mini-series. - Andrew Hickey insists that Darkseid’s desire to seize control of all life, the universe, and the entirety of creation and existence is borne out of fear of death. Mr. Miracle is the logical counterpoint and the arch-enemy of Darkseid because as an escapological archetype he is positioned outside of the constraints of control. Yet Scott Free himself is still not a direct and successful contrast because Darkseid name him and set his purpose. That is Mr. Hickey’s point anyway and I am not certain I buy into it. This plays all into ideas of “degrees of freedom” but as a Liberal Democrat (in the UK political sense) Mr Hickey’s views about what is acceptable as a definition or execution, application of freedom is suspect.
- The first Darkseid story I ever read was not the entire story but the final chapter of a JLA/JSA team-up story. As was the the fashion at the time the occasional/formal meeting between the League and the Society finds it self linked to a third super-team, in this instance the New Gods. I remember Justice League of American #184 (and here is the cover) because the New Gods were not only definitely super-heroes in this incarnation (and there is nothing wrong with that) but Darkseid has a personality, he is a villain with motivations and relationships. In point of fact the bulk of the story is about relationships as well as a rise to power. Upon his return from his most recent death in the New Gods strip from Adventure Comics, Darkseid punishes the Injustice Society for accosting his son Orion, clearly with a view of propreitry and seeing Orion as a creature, a prince, someone whose fate is more tied to Darkseid’s whim than mere encounters with bad guys. Orion’s group consists of a Leaguer and a Society member. All the split-groups (I love how they follow the Gardner Fox tradition) consist of such a configuration. For isntance Batman’s group has Mr. Miracle and the Huntress because both are versions of him in the different worlds of the different teams. At this point each team resides in a different dimension of the DC Comics storytelling. Because Darkseid has his relationship with the New Gods he seeks to teleport Apokolips to the spot where Earth-2 resides, destroying Earth-2 and thus landing his domain inside a universe where there would be no heroes, and no heroic New Gods.
- OAFE assesses/contrasts two Darkseid action figures making his size and sculpt major emphasis. The Mattel version, which is the one really looked at, comes with a Mother Box as his accessory, and despite being smaller than the DC Direct Darkseid figure, is apparently just better. Of course there is a brief history asserting that Darkseid only recently became a Superman villain despite that his first appearance was in a Superman comic. He also discusses Grant Morrison’s formulation of the Anti-Life Equation.
I think there is something to be said that properly written the villain is a character but this applies to every character. It is also important to note that the ending of the story as well as how often the character appears has serious impact for story quality.
Animation, DC Comics, Reviews - Comics, Television, Toys, Games and Fun action figures, Darkseid, Grant Morrison, Lex Luthor, link dump, the Joker
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Superman and Batman team-up really worth it?
Posted on November 13th, 2009 No commentsUPDATED: Coding corrected.
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Sgt. Rock movie? Yeah, right.
Posted on November 12th, 2009 No commentsOh look, Akiva Goldsman is a producer. And it’s moved from World War II to the future. Next thing you know, he won’t be American…because that would be “jingoistic”.
Relax. This will not get made.
Look, they missed their chance to do it right by casting Bruce Willis in the 1980s. Stallone and Schwarzenegger? Nope, that didn’t happen. And this current generation of pretty boy actors is very short on the kind of men who could pull this off. Unless we’re going to cast Gerard Butler or Robert Downey Jr. in every comic book adaptation, I doubt they’d be able to get past the casting stage.
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Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special
Posted on November 12th, 2009 No commentsI’ve always meant to see this. As we enter the holiday season, it’s time to relax with the Lobo Paramilitary Christmas Special. NSFW, contains language, etc. … though it’s nowhere near as explicit as the real comic.
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Batman Movies, Part 3
Posted on September 12th, 2009 No commentsTune in for our third and final Batman podcast, sponsored by TooManyLongboxes.com. No, we’re not doing the podcast quarterly! We now have better equipment and will turn them around much faster. Here is the last of the three Batman podcasts that I recorded in January with Erik Burnham. The sound is improved, but after this one they should all sound as good as my introduction to this third installment.
Discussed:Batman Begins
The Dark Knight
What’s Next?In case you missed them:
Batman movies podcast Part 1
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DC Comics is now DC Entertainment…and Levitz is out!
Posted on September 10th, 2009 No commentsFirst Marvel gets bought by Disney. Now DC Comics becomes DC Entertainment.
Is this the first step towards the death knell for the comic book? It sure seems as if both companies are more focused on pitching comic projects as new media. (I would like to see a live action DC product BESIDES Batman!)
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“Offline” indeed
Posted on August 21st, 2009 No commentsI was reading this archived message board post about how Nightcrawler was created.
Why? I was learning more about Dave Cockrum and had found a link to it.
This message board post from 2002 is Dave’s write-up about how he first conceived of Nightcrawler, pitched it to DC as a member of the Legion, and then brought it over to X-Men as a member of the New X-Men.
Dave posted to the board as “Dark Bamf”. Then I looked again at the board member information when this caught my eye:
“Member Is Offline”
Dave Cockrum passed away in 2006.
“Offline” is an interesting euphemism.
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Geoff Johns revisits some old favorites
Posted on August 14th, 2009 No commentsOver at Dixonverse, they’re discussing a topic I’ve been thinking about for a while: Geoff Johns seeming to go overboard with the material from a number of Alan Moore stories. While I like much of what has been happening…indeed, Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps are the ONLY DC Comic books I still buy… this does bug me somewhat.
Mogo, and the F-Sharp Bell, and Qull of the Five Inversions: they’re from short stories. Moore managed to tell very intriguing stories in far less than 22 pages (let alone multi-issue story arcs taking half a year) and they were one-off throwaway bits not intended to be the launching point for epic sagas. “Tales of the Green Lantern Corps” was an uneven back-up series that would occasionally produce a gem such as “Quarzz Terranh Knows Joy” (or whatever it was called) and sometimes introduce a Corps member interesting enough to revisit later (such as Ch’p, Stel and the Green Man). The point was to take the Green Lantern mythos and do something you couldn’t just do with Hal Jordan, such as ending with the GL’s death (or a credible possibility of death on the last page, which isn’t the case with Hal) or showing an alien approach to using the ring.
“Mogo Doesn’t Socialize” is a wonderful story that loses most of its ending’s power if you’re going to use Mogo again and again in other comics. It’s like having Rosebud the Sled, Verbal Kint and Tyler Durden as a recurring superteam in the DCU.
The bounty hunter from that same story showed up in GL Corps. Know what bugged me? I guess I always thought that story was ancient history, not a current event. The Book of Oa contains tales of things that happened to Green Lanterns throughout history… and we’re talking an organization with 3600 members that has been active for a BILLION years!
Qull of the Five Inversions? I was pretty sure he was just a liar. After all, not long after that story was published, the entire GL Corps was destroyed after their execution of Sinestro caused the Great Battery to lose power. (Remember, how only Hal, John, Guy, G’nort and a few others had rings, and it was a while before the Corps was restored?) Then in 1994, Hal Jordan causes the deaths of all the Guardians…so Qull’s prediction of drums with blue skin couldn’t be true. The whole point of the story is that Qull manages to produce fear in Abin Sur, and he dies because of the starship he is flying in instead of using his ring.
By the by, Johns’ interpretation of that story is very literal: there are aliens called the Inversions, and there are five of them. Huh. I always thought that was just Qull’s name, that there were five things “inverted” about him. If there are only five creatures on that whole cordoned off planet, that’s way less scary.
As has been pointed out about the Black Mercy, it’s taking one cool story element (a McGuffin excuse for telling some cool imaginary stories) and running it into the ground. The Black Mercy shouldn’t be packaged with the Mongul action figure as though it’s his primary weapon. It was a plot device, pure and simple, and next time Mongul appears he will resort to something else.All of these little elements that Alan Moore rattled off as throwaways… Ranx the Sentient City, the Children of the White Lobe, Sodam Yat, etc. … they were cute references to a mythology we haven’t heard yet. That was neat-o. Spending several years setting all of them up as canon seems like it’s missing the point.
If I wrote a story where Batman encounters Rip Hunter and Rip says, “Last time I met you was fighting alongside your daughter during the Atlantis/Paradise Island/Gorilla City war… oh wait, that hasn’t happened yet!”, do I need to worry that some kid who loves that issue will, fifteen years down the line, spend three years building up to a Atlantis/Paradise Island/Gorilla City War mega-event as a glorious in-joke where that disposable humorous line comes true?
Look, Blackest Night seems like a great storyline and I’m looking forward to reading it. And I like Johns a lot, really! But Johns should be a writer who tells his own stories instead of “What happened to those characters at the end of Crisis on Infinite Earths?”or “Let’s start integrating as much Kingdom Come future into the DCU as possible!” or “What if Blackest Night really did happen?” He should be creating the characters and telling the stories that cause future fanboy-cum-writers to want to revisit HIS work. And hopefully, they’ll have editors that tell them to just do their own damn stories.
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Best picture from Comic-Con yet!
Posted on July 28th, 2009 No commentsI’m not going to be a bandwidth-thief. If you want to see it, go to Big Hollywood.
The first commenter wins the caption contest: “For once, middle-aged, out of shape fanboys have the perfect body type for the characters they’re cosplaying.”
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Green Lantern: First Flight trailer
Posted on July 11th, 2009 No commentsI’m stoked. Are you stoked?
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That’s how it’s DONE!
Posted on July 10th, 2009 No commentsA fan made Batman production starring Batman cosplayers
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Idleson: “I never want to see Supergirl’s panties again”
Posted on July 9th, 2009 No commentsMatt Idleson, editor at DC Comics, wins praise from all of us who have hated the skanky Supergirl outfits of recent years. Why? He recently issued the edict, “I never want to see Supergirl’s panties again.”
For the past few years, Supergirl has been seen wearing little more than a frill that seems to stay across her groin through sheer force of will. Idleson’s pronouncement is actually a surprise to me, considering that many artists draw her skirt in such a way that she couldn’t be wearing underwear underneath it.
Here’s what bothers me: Why would Superman and his parents not say anything about Kara prancing around so under dressed? Does it seem like this would fly in the Kent household? Ma Kent is, after all, the woman who designed her own son’s outfit so that there were some modest trunks worn over the tights.
Supergirl is hardly the only comic book female who runs around in an impractical outfit. I don’t see how Wonder Woman can fly at Mach 5 with the wind howling down her metal bustier, and the butt floss lower garments look like they would need constant readjusting during a fight.
Some years back, there was an Elseworlds theme that ran across DC’s annuals, and one of them featured a future Wonder Woman who wears black athletic shorts rather than a skirt, a bikini bottom or a thong, and the look was not only very attractive but it seemed like the kind of outfit Diana would really wear.
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Batman Movies, part 2
Posted on June 23rd, 2009 No commentsOur second podcast is finally here, sponsored by TooManyLongboxes.com. In honor of the 20th anniversary of Mr. Mom playing Batman, Erik Burnham and I review the Batman movies directed by Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher.
Discussed:
Not discussed:
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Kryb’s babies
Posted on June 23rd, 2009 No commentsJust got some Priority Mailers from Scott Beatty filled with tons of comics! I haven’t read new comics since last October.
First priority: Catching up on Green Lantern Corps! I finished reading Peter Tomasi and Pat Gleason’s story arc where the GLC goes after the awful Kryb, who kills Green Lantern parents and then stuffs their babies in her skeletal crib on her back.
Here’s the bizarre thing: these babies are TOTALLY forgotten about! All this time, I’ve been wanting to see the moment that a Green Lantern cracks open her ribcage and releases all those babies. But this never happenes. There’s even a moment where Kryb opens her ribs wide to use them as a weapon, and it doesn’t appear that the babies are in there anymore.
Also, the GLs blast her full force, never worrying about the babies.
Is there something I just don’t understand about this?
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Green Lantern: Best Fan-Made trailer ever?
Posted on June 18th, 2009 1 commentBest Fan-Made trailer ever? You be the judge.
I wish it were real. Even as I recognize most of the footage and music used in it, I still got goosebumps as if I was watching a real trailer in a theater. Just…astounding!
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New Poll: Most screwed over character
Posted on June 17th, 2009 No comments
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Gorilla City is the size of Topeka?
Posted on May 20th, 2009 No commentsIf Gorilla City from Flash comic books really does exist in our universe, and it’s the size of Topeka, KS, then we had better watch out for Gorilla Grodd!
Bob and Brian cover this story.
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Superman / Batman: Public Enemies Trailer
Posted on May 20th, 2009 No commentsThe latest direct-to-video DCU Trailer is up on YouTube. An adaptation of the first arc of Jeph Loeb & Ed McGuMcGuinness’ Superman/Batman monthly.
Superman/Batman: Public Enemies Trailer
I’m amazed at how well they’ve brought McGuinness art style to the screen. Marvel & DC have both promised in the DTV movies that they will bring us adaptations of our favorite comic book artists style to the screen. Disregarding the creative merits of that promise for a moment, this certainly seems like the closest they’ve come to delivering on that promise.
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Sure he beat the Joker, but what about Darkseid?
Posted on April 15th, 2009 No commentsHow would Christian Bale’s Batman compare to the rest of the league?
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