Archive | October, 2012

The Captive Prince

25 Oct

Shuster award-winning cartoonist Scott Chantler’s YA graphic novel The Captive Prince is a charming and accomplished third instalment in a series about three thieves on the run in a medieval fantasy world where humans coexist with both giant and elf-ish races. The story is told primarily from the viewpoint of Dessa, a teenaged acrobat who has literally run away from the circus with her friends Topper and Fisk, searching for her lost twin brother and staying one step ahead of the Queen’s Dragoons.

In this book, the trio rescue a kidnapped prince called Paladin, who insists that they stay as his guests at the castle. His father, the king, is not so welcoming. Dessa finds herself the object of Paladin’s affection, endangering an alliance with another kingdom; meanwhile her pursuers are closing in. The Captive Prince is a solid adventure story, well-suited to Chantler’s clear compositions and strong character design skills.

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Safety Not Guaranteed (***)

24 Oct

Aubrey Plaza (Parks & Recreation, Scott Pilgrim) is Darius, a directionless intern at a Seattle magazine who volunteers to accompany her boss Jeff (Jake Johnson, New Girl) and possibly virgin co-intern Arnau (Karan Soni) to a small coastal town. The purpose of the visit is ostensibly to investigate a mysterious classified ad from a man who intends to travel in time and is looking for a companion; but when they arrive, Darius discovers that Jeff is happy to let her do the investigating while he reconnects with a high school sweetheart. Jeff soon becomes determined to not only recapture his youth, but also to get Arnau to appreciate his own (or at least get him laid).

Meanwhile Darious tracks down the man who placed the ad, Kenneth (Mark Duplass, The League), and gains his confidence. She finds it difficult to determine if he is completely delusional, because while he may exhibit symptoms or paranoia and eccentricity, he is also definitely being followed and has devised plans for what appears to be a very complicated machine; one whose operation depends on high powered lasers that she helps him steal. The longer she spends with him, the more Darius wants the machine to be real and to work, so that Kenneth can fix a life that has gone in the wrong direction.

The script and cast of Safety Not Guaranteed work well together to tell a low-key story that is both personal and fantastic, building to an ending that is quirky but fitting.

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Binky Takes Charge

23 Oct

Binky Takes Charge is an endearing graphic novel for young readers about a cat that is secretly a lieutenant in the space program – which, for cats, means the space outside the house. Binky is expecting a new recruit to arrive soon and is prepared to instruct the new kitten in everything he or she needs to know to survive in the house and yard. Binky is surprised, then, when the new recruit turns out to be a puppy; and being such, apparently unteachable.

Saskatoon-based writer/artist Ashley Spires has a lovely illustration style for this type of story, and while it may not be a complicated plot by adult standards, it does have some clever and unexpected moments. Small wonder that the series is winning and being nominated for a wide range of awards.

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Seven Psychopaths (***1/2)

22 Oct

In 2008, Colin Farrell collaborated with writer/director Martin McDonagh on what was to be both Farrell’s finest performance and the best film of the year: In Bruges. It’s a hard act to follow, but Seven Psychopaths is a good try; this time Farrell is Marty, presumably a figure for McDonagh, a Hollywood screenwriter struggling with the script for a new crime picture that is part Tarantino, part Pinter.

Marty’s friend Billy (Sam Rockwell) is eager to help – perhaps a little too eager, since he places an ad in the paper inviting actual psychopaths to present themselves and tell their stories. Meanwhile, Billy and his mentor Hans (Christopher Walken) have a lucrative side business: they kidnap rich people’s dogs, keep them for a day or so, and then return them for a reward. This backfires when they kidnap the beloved shih tzu of vengeful crime lord Charlie (Woody Harrelson).

And so the movie unspools, jumping between Marty’s imagined script, Billy’s embellishments, the recollections of the psychopaths they talk to, and Charlie’s relentless pursuit. The script is a clever fusion of revenge-movie tropes and the kind of philosophy bantered about by the In Bruges hitmen, with amusing commentary on crime movies sprinkled throughout (“you can blow a woman’s head off, but don’t hurt the animals”). The whole cast rises to the script, but Rockwell shines as a man who is truly unhinged, even in comparison to the psychopaths around him.

In the wrong hands, Seven Psychopaths could have been a smug and hypocritical genre exercise; instead it is smart, funny, and genuine, and well worth a look.

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Digital Comics Thoughts, Fall 2012

19 Oct

You may recall that after the beginning of this year, I bought an iPad and posted some words about digital comics, particularly what they should cost (especially if they are coming from a major publisher) and how they could be produced by independent artists. It’s hard to believe that it was less than a year ago that people were fretting about how Marvel and DC would get their books to market, what it would cost, how it would impact comic shops, and so on.

My opinions on all of that stuff have not changed much, but I do have more data to work with now in terms of my own experience and buying habits, so I thought I would check in. So, here is a bit of an update:

1) Paid legal downloads. I don’t do a lot of this, and when I do it tends to be either a title on sale in Comixology or one that is “on special” for a limited time. I usually hear about these deals on Twitter, where I follow dozens of cartoonists and publishers who work in all genres. I have not yet gotten into the habit of checking Comixology every Wednesday to see what’s new; but then I haven’t been in that habit with comic shops for a long time either. Generally, I don’t care for paying a same-as-print price for a digital file which I can’t freely copy but which I have to store; this applies to video games and other software as well as comics. That said, I have found some nice gems when I bother to look, like Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover’s Bandette or Penny Arcade’s Lookouts comic.

2) Unpaid legal downloads. Some artists, especially webcomics artists, have experimented with providing samplers or archives of their work for free, like Rich Stevens’ Diesel Sweeties or Mark Waid’s Insufferable. J. Torres invited reviewers to do the same with the first volume of his series Bigfoot Boy, drawn by Faith Erin Hicks; a book which I recently picked up in print. I expect I will do something similar in the future once I have enough instalments of my own webcomic, Time Wounds All Heels, built up.

3) Unpaid borrowed downloads. This is probably more common with regular novels being lent as ebooks through public libraries, but I have been able to read a fair number of graphic novels lately through a galley service, which provides DRM-protected books that expire after a few months. They are intended to be read in Adobe Digital Editions, which is a terrible thing to try to read with on a standard computer screen; and thanks to Adobe’s butthurt over Apple not wanting to deal with the piece of shit known as Flash, there is no version of ADE for the iPad. Fortunately, an independent app called the Bluefire Reader will handle ADE content, so I am able to read those books in a comfortable format. The tradeoff is that if I finish a book, I write a review about it on my blog and send the resulting link to the publisher. Seems fair enough. It tends to be smaller publishers like First Second, who can harness the power of online reviews for their sort of books perhaps a little better than a more-scrutinized publisher like Marvel. My only complaint about this route is that some publishers do not provide a very readable copy of the book; presumably concerned about DRM being broken and PDFs of their books being released into the wild, they submit a very low resolution file that makes the artwork look like shit and the text difficult to read. In which case, why bother?

4) Free online comics. Apart from the above mentioned galleys of graphic novels, these are far and away my most common source for reading comics now, from old favourites like John Allison and Tatsuya Ishida to relatively new ones like Kate Leth or Eric Dyck. Webcomics artists support themselves all kinds of ways, from website ads and physical merchandise to day jobs and commissions. I try to support the ones I like however I can.

5) Ethically questionable downloads. Let me get this out of the way: I download torrents of stuff, especially TV shows, movies recently released on DVD, and the occasional album by some band I want to check out. Downloading torrents is legal in Canada (though uploading is not, resulting in some confusion, but I suspect the main goal is to discourage wholesale widespread piracy rather than downloading something for personal use). I have no qualms about downloading TV shows; to me it is no different from having digital cable, and it is not my problem that Media Corporation A has not yet figured out how to measure and bill Media Corporation B for it. The big reason I don’t have reservations about downloading TV or new DVD releases is that the quality of the resulting file is not a replacement for what you would buy; it’s watchable (usually) but it’s not HD, it’s just a compressed AVI or Quicktime rip of a better quality product. I think it’s fair in the sense of sampling, and there have been numerous occasions where downloading that way has led me to buy the DVD later for myself or as a gift.

However, I am not so comfortable with downloading rips of digital comics as torrents, or ebooks, or other situations where the file you get is basically the file you would get if you paid for it. As a result, I have done very little torrenting of comics, with the exception of a few situations where I have already paid for the series in print and would like to have a digital copy to carry around or refer to. The most notable instance of this is Lone Wolf and Cub, which I originally bought in the form of Dark Horse’s tiny trade paperbacks; 27 volumes at about $12 a pop, totalling over $300 in comics which due to my advancing age and sudden need for bifocals, I could no longer read. So, I downloaded them and am not losing any sleep over it. Your mileage (and local laws) may vary, of course.

So, the main lesson I have taken away from owning an iPad so far is that I am reading more digital comics than I expected I would even a few months ago, and sometimes even paying for them despite my initial skepticism of services like Comixology. If there is ever a service like Netflix for comics that allows access to a content library for a flat fee, I would probably be all over it. Publishers with deep backlists, like Marvel and DC, might want to consider it as a way to generate interest in the current adventures of their characters.

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Persons Unknown

18 Oct

One of the things I enjoy about Netflix is the chance to catch up on short-lived series, usually either British ones that were planned that way (Luther, The Last Enemy, Eleventh Hour) or American ones that were cancelled or summer fill-ins (Harper’s Island, The Gates). Persons Unknown falls into the latter category, a short-lived NBC series that debuted only a month after the end of Lost. I point this out because Persons Unknown is about 7 people who are abducted from their regular lives and placed in a small town in the middle of nowhere from which they cannot escape, as part of a mysterious experiment. Sound familiar…?

Well, yes, it also sounds like The Prisoner. Unlike Lost, Persons Unknown does not have lofty aspirations of redemption stories and demonstrating the connections between us all; it is much more like The Prisoner in that the focus is primarily on one of the candidates (a young mother called Janet), with the other characters being manipulated in and out of play. Meanwhile, her journalist ex-husband and his editor are flying around the world trying to unravel the conspiracy.

Persons Unknown was cheesy, and has some groan-inducing moments, but for what it is I quite enjoyed it. It ends on a sort of cliffhanger, clearly hoping that there was going to be another season, but it works in its way.

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In The Tall Grass by Stephen King and Joe Hill

17 Oct

It’s been a little while since I read a book by Stephen King, though not for lack of interest. When his oldest son Joe Hill tweeted last week that this novella was available for $2.99 through the iTunes store, and that it included previews of both King’s upcoming sequel to The Shining and Hill’s upcoming novel NOS4A2, well; I can take a hint.

In The Tall Grass is the tale of college-aged siblings Cal and Becky, who are driving cross-country so that Becky can start a new life on the west coast and decide what to do about her unplanned pregnancy. They amuse themselves on the trip by visiting tourist attractions like the largest ball of twine.

As they drive past a field of tall grass in Kansas, Becky thinks she hears a child crying for help. Cal pulls over on a side road next to another car, whose occupants appear to have gone into the grass. They hear the boy calling for help again, and then another voice – apparently the boy’s mother – calling for them to stay away. Naturally concerned, Becky charges into the grass and Cal follows.

And that’s when things start getting crazy, because Cal quickly discovers that no matter what he does, he cannot find Becky; they call to each other, sometimes seeming very close, but as they move the grass seems to shift them around the field, bogging them down in mud and clinging stalks. Meanwhile, the boy continues to yell for them to come closer, and his mother is suddenly silent.

In The Tall Grass is creepy as hell, reminding me often of the elder King’s story The Raft. The previews of Doctor Sleep and NOS4A2 were quite good as well. If you like gore and otherworldly, Lovecraftian situations, In The Tall Grass if for you.

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Tune by Derek Kirk Kim

16 Oct

Young Korean-American cartoonist Derek Kirk Kim won Eisner and Harvey awards for his debut graphic novel Same Difference, and collaborated with Gene Luen Yang on The Eternal Smile. He returns with Tune, the story of an art student called Andy Go who loves comics and drops out of school because he feels he is ready to work professionally. When his dream job does not materialize, his parents force him to look for any job, leading to an interview that seems to good to be true. Meanwhile, he accidentally discovers that the girl he had a crush on in art school is into him too; when the interview leads to a real job that involves some travel, he is torn between taking it to please his parents and staying to explore the potential relationship with his crush.

When I say the job involves some travel, here is where Kim throws the reader a curve: Andy is recruited as an exhibit in an intergalactic zoo, living in a cutaway reproduction of his family home. It’s a clever touch to put Andy into a situation that is alien and yet not so different from home, where his parents provided for him. His alien bosses supply all of his favourite foods, TV, video games; almost everything a young single man could want. His parents’ more traditional Korean values are sometimes played for laughs, such as their reaction when they learn that he will not be returning home for a while.

Like all of Kim’s work, I thoroughly enjoyed Tune and was sorry to read recently that he has decided to step away from drawing his own comics, concentrating instead on writing and filmmaking (Andy Go also appears in a parallel film project called Mythomania). The second volume of Tune, available online at tunecomic.com, was drawn by the equally fine cartoonist Les McClaine (The Middle Man, Jonny Crossbones). Kim has also revealed recently that he is not sure Tune will continue in comics form unless sales of this first collection are strong. I hope that they are, for everyone’s sake. The comics world needs all the Derek Kirk Kim it can get.

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Looper (****)

15 Oct

Joseph Gordon-Levitt was quietly building a career as an indie film star when he got the lead in writer/director Rian Johnson’s quirky debut, Brick. Critics and fans enjoyed its fusion of teen drama with film noir.

The pair have returned with an even more impressive collaboration. Looper is set in a world where time travel exists, but only organized crime uses it; and one of its uses is to dispose of murder victims so that the technologically advanced police of the future have no bodies to find. Gordon-Levitt stars as Joe, one of a group of “loopers” who are paid well to wait at a designated time and place, shoot the person who suddenly arrives there from the future, and dispose of the body. The catch is that loopers don’t have much of a retirement plan; their last victim is always the future version of themselves, a perverse way of tying up loose ends called “closing the loop.”

As we join Joe, he is having qualms about how he makes a living and hearing rumours about how a new crime boss in the future is eliminating other organized crime families. Suddenly all of the loopers are being retired, and when Joe’s future self arrives, he is so startled to see that it is Bruce Willis that Old Joe gets away. This kind of failure is not tolerated by Joe’s employer (Jeff Daniels), who sends assassins to clean up the mess; fortunately for Joe, his older self has a vested interest in Joe’s survival.

Old Joe also has another agenda: to find and kill the new crime boss, who is still a child in Joe’s time. And this is where the true genius of Looper kicks in, because for as long as time travel stories have existed, so has the ethical question: if you could go back in time and kill Hitler before his rise to power, would you? What if he was just a child? Johnson takes it even further, because Old Joe cannot narrow it down to one specific child: he can only narrow it down to three born in the same hospital on the same day.

Determined not to let his older self murder a child, Joe hides out at a farm owned by Sara (Emily Blunt), a telekinetic whose son Daniel is quite capable of defending himself. The resulting showdown is a battle for both Daniel’s and Joe’s future: an intoxicating mixture of Inception, Akira, and Kiss Me Deadly.

I loved this movie, and I loved that it does not fuck around. Willis does some of his best work ever here, as a man so tortured by his past that he is willing to straight up murder some kids to prevent it from happening. Joseph Gordon-Levitt wears prosthetics to make him look more like a young Bruce Willis, which is distracting at first but quickly surpassed by his ability to combine subtle communications with the physical demands of an action movie. The supporting cast is uniformly fine and the production design is sharp, offering a glimpse of a near future where cars run on ghetto solar modifications.

In short, Looper is one of the best films of the year. Check it out.

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Curses! Foiled Again

12 Oct

This is a very clever YA graphic novel by Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallero, the second in a series about a teenaged fencing prodigy called Aliera Carstairs. Aliera discovers that her finding skill is no accident; she is the Defender of Faerie, and her lab partner Avery is a troll sworn to protect her.

While the setup and plot are a standard heroic journey, Yolen’s Aliera is a pleasure to read as she discovers more about her powers, her family history, and who she can trust. Cavallero’s art complements the script well, using an ingenious device where Aliera’s “mundane” world is presented in shades of gray while the faerie folk are full colour. The script is ingenious as well, naming and structuring each chapter after a phase of a fencing match.

Overall, Foiled Again has the feel of an Americanized manga, focusing on Aliera’s emotions and cleverly employing the fencer’s admonition to “guard your heart.” Those who are already beyond their teen years might find this a little tiresome at times, and there are a few moments where script and artwork are not quite harmonious (for example, a panel where Aliera is making a simple statement but she is drawn as if she is shouting). But even Harry Potter had its clunky moments. Curses! Foiled Again is a lot of fun and I would recommend it for anyone aged 12 and up.

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