12
Sep
That’s what the gasping throes of modern conservatism has left in the tank. That’s what they’ve got. Twenty years.
Don’t be afraid by Michelle Malkin claiming two million people showed up: the police estimates are thirty thousand plus. (Besides, we already know what two million people on the Mall looks like.)
In twenty years, the majority of these stupid old white people – and it’s mostly stupid old white people, and where it isn’t all three it’s just about always two out of three – will be dead or senile (or more senile than they are now). The kids aren’t voting Republican, and they’re not voting Republican in massive numbers because it turns out the kids, while not perfect, generally disapprove of instititional racism, homophobia and sexism.
It’s the last gasp of insanity. So chill, everybody. The next couple of years might suck, but even in the worst case scenario there is simply no chance in hell that a Republican is elected President in 2012. No. Chance. In. Hell. If anybody wants to bet me money on this I will take any wager.
11
Sep
Iggy Popped
Poor Michael Ignatieff. For months he’s been neck-and-neck with Harper in the polls, and people have been warning him that if he doesn’t force an election soon it’ll make him look weak. Then no sooner does he say he won’t support the government any longer but his support drops by ten points, because people say they don’t want another election. Even the publication of a nearly hagiographical profile in The New Yorker probably can’t cheer him up now.
So what’s behind the about-face? Were people’s eyes just bigger than their electoral stomachs? Personally I think the not-another-election thing is a smokescreen, a rationalization for the ugly truth: people feel they ought to want to vote for Ignatieff, but nobody really does. Outside of the West nobody much wants to vote for Harper — certainly nobody wants to hand him a majority government — but they’re not ready to vote for Iggy either. He’s the classic case of someone who looks good on paper, the computer-selected date that generates no chemistry: he’s everything we say we want in a prime minister, but when it comes down to it we just can’t get behind him.
The reason, I think, is that he isn’t mean enough. It seems odd to say it, since Canadians are renowned for our polite and easygoing nature, but the fact is we like our leaders to be sons of bitches. Sure, we tell ourselves we like Trudeau because he was charming and did pirouettes and brought home the Constitution, but what we really liked was that he fought with US presidents and gave people the finger and invoked the War Measures Act. No wonder Robert Stanfield and Joe Clark — nice guys both; try to get anyone to say a bad word about Joe Clark — didn’t stand a chance. Mulroney was certainly mean: the only thing more dangerous than being his enemy was being his friend, always a temporary condition. And Chretien? The man choked a protestor! He made jokes about people being pepper-sprayed! He FOUGHT OFF A BURGLAR WITH A PIECE OF INUIT SCULPTURE! (That’s to say nothing of the damage he did to the English language daily.)
But Ignatieff is in a bind, because if he goes on the attack too much he’ll sound like he’s lecturing, which nobody ever likes. He also seems to be a guy who instinctively plays defense rather than offense, which doesn’t bode well for him. So Harper, whom we all say we don’t like, will probably stay, because he’s mean enough for us to respect him. (He’s also learned the secret to governing with a minority, which is to bypass Parliament completely and run the country through the PMO.) And we’ll all grumble and complain about the money that was wasted for yet another election that doesn’t change anything, and six months later we’ll be wondering why Ignatieff doesn’t man up and bring down the government already.
Revenge of the third banana
In all the hoopla around the Marvel-Disney deal and the Warner-DC restructuring, one point that’s come up again and again is the rich bank of characters each publisher owns, with the assumption that this is a good thing. The problem is that each company only owns one or two genuine first-tier properties (with first-tier being defined as “someone with whom a non-comics fan is almost certain to be reasonably familiar.”) For DC it’s obviously Batman and Superman; for Marvel it’s Spider-Man and maybe the X-Men or the Hulk — the X-Men weren’t really familiar to non comics-fans before the movies, but their fanbase was enthusiastic enough to guarantee good sales, while the Hulk is well-known to a certain part of the population which is, unfortunately, not the part that goes to movies. When you’ve only got a small number of properties, you’ve got to get them right: it took eight years for Warners to relaunch the Batman franchise after Batman and Robin, and they’ll probably have to wait ten years before the stink from Superman Returns blows away.
The success of Iron Man has people saying that the future is in the second-tier properties — which is a reasonable argument to make if you forget about Daredevil, Fantastic Four and Ghost Rider. I would argue, in fact, that Iron Man was successful because it wasn’t a comic book movie, or at least it didn’t look like one to the general public. After all, no matter how successful a comic book is, there simply aren’t enough fans to make a movie successful, never mind a franchise; you’ve got to appeal to people who don’t read the comic, and in most cases the trappings of a superhero comic — the costume, the secret identity, even the superpowers — work against that. But Iron Man, as presented in the movie, doesn’t have any of those things. The suit is presented as a tool or a vehicle throughout (note the direct comparison to a car), and the emphasis is always on Tony Stark as the pilot of the suit; we’re not invited to conflate the two into a single identity, as we are with Batman or Superman. As well, note that the villain uses the exact same technology as the hero, removing the two-origins problem that afflicts so many superhero movies. Even though it’s not actually more plausible than a typical superhero story, Iron Man feels more believable to people who aren’t accustomed to the tropes of superhero comics.
So are those thousands of characters, the ones that Disney just paid a mint for and Warner just realized they own, actually worth anything? Sure — but not the way people think they are. It’s very unlikely that Deadpool or Green Lantern or Thor or Wonder Woman are going to be franchises or even successful movies — cripes, I don’t know why Wonder Woman is even still a comic — and, more to the point, a flood of unsuccessful superhero movies, like the one that followed the 1989 Batman, will most likely make comic-book movies in general radioactive. If either studio is sensible, they’ll focus on the properties they own that, like Iron Man, can be sold to a broader audience: it’s probably no coincidence that the next two DC movies to hit the screen will be Jonah Hex and The Losers, both non-superhero comics. Another good example is Blade: could anyone have guessed that a supporting character from a long-cancelled comic would wind up being one of Marvel’s most successful licensed movies? But in fact it was the lack of baggage, the absence of superhero trappings that let Blade just be an action/horror movie, and that’s what let it be successful.
See, as comics fans we tend to assign an inordinate value to these properties, but to the movie industry they’re just more grist for the mill: they don’t care if something’s had one issue or a thousand, they don’t care if someone read it by flashlight under the covers when they were nine, they just want something that can be quickly made into one of the hundreds of scripts that keep the development cycle flowing — the more cheaply the better. If I were a production company, I wouldn’t even look at a DC or a Marvel property; I’d be scanning the small presses and webcomics, looking for the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Men in Black.
11
Sep
During World War II the British Americans couldn’t chance the Germans Japanese blowing up their largest airplane factory – so they hid it.
EDIT: I literally have no idea how that happened.
10
Sep
I realize you’re real busy tracing lightboxing photocopying drawing comic books and all, but I’ve got a question. So I am looking at the Marvel solicits and I see a solicit for a new Black Widow series, and you’re doing the cover. So…
…since when is the Black Widow a double amputee? Is this going to be the result of Dark Reign? Is Norman Osborn going to chop off the Black Widow’s legs? (Or part of her legs.)
I mean, I’m all for inclusiveness, but doesn’t Silhouette of the former New Warriors fill the “handicapped superhero” niche?
10
Sep
Last week, I mentioned something about Batman and Superman’s secret identities, and that I would talk about them if anyone was interested. Well, I recall at least two “yes” votes. That is really all it takes. To be frank, I wanted to do it anyway as long as no one actively said BOO THIS IS A SUBJECT ABOUT WHICH I DO NOT WISH TO READ.
But let me preface this with two things.
-I can’t claim the ideas I’m going to talk about are totally new or innovative, especially because I’ll cite existing sources of the characterizations in action.
-I also can’t claim my take is the “right” way to handle Superman and Batman’s secret identities. There is no right way; these characters are 70 years old, so diverse and contradictory interpretations are valid and inevitable. I’m just saying this is the way I prefer to think about it, and you might dig it as well.
So here goes: Superman and Batman do not have dual identities. They have triple identities.
See, during Batman Begins I always think Rachel’s being unfair in that bit at the end where she touches Bruce’s face and says, “This is your mask,” the idea being that Batman has become the “real” personality, and the Bruce Wayne persona is an act. This is a popular characterization of the Bruce/Batman split, and I used to buy into it as well.
But then who is that sharing jokes with Alfred, and who is that talking to Rachel at that very moment? It’s not the public “drunken playboy” persona that Bruce has cultivated, but it’s not Batman, either. Bruce doesn’t talk in his gravelly “intimidation voice” to Alfred or Rachel or Ra’s al Ghul (and thank goodness for that). Heck, this is a guy who talks about Batman in the third person (“Batman has no limits,” not “I have no limits”).
The Dark Knight is as much a role, then, as the drunken playboy. The real guy isn’t Public Bruce or Batman, it’s Secret Bruce. In the JLA trade paperback of “Rock of Ages,” there’s bios of all the Justice Leaguers, and I absolutely adore this fragment of the one Morrison wrote for Batman (or at least I assume he wrote it, because it sounds like him, and it’s somewhat in opposition to DC’s official treatment of Batman at the time).
“Perhaps the most misunderstood and complex figure of his day, Batman is not driven by vengeance, as he would have us believe, but by a desire to use the persona of the Dark Knight to instill fear in his opponents and ensure that others will never experience the tragedy that has shaped his life.”
That absolutely blew the doors off of how I used to think of Batman the first time I read that in high school. I knew the big scary “I AM THE NIGHT” stuff was to scare criminals, but I never stopped to consider he might be trying to put one over on his JLA comrades as well. The guy is a method actor. And whoever’s writing that text does say “us”; looking at it through a metafictional lens (metafiction in a Morrison comic? Unheard of!), what if all of Batman’s dreadfully angsty, emotionally stunted “MY PARENTS ARE DEEEAAAD!” characterizations in other comics are him trying to fool the audience as well? Maybe Private Bruce, that ultracompetent perfectionist seen in all of Morrison’s Batman appearances, is so committed to his role that he even started thinking like the psychotic vigilante sometime in the eighties just in case anyone is reading his mind (or reading his thoughts in little word balloons over his head)! He out-Andy-Kaufmans Andy Kaufman!
No? Well, it’s just an idea…
As for Superman, I tend to go in a similar direction. Mort Weisinger’s version was Superman first, with Clark Kent largely a charade; I confess I don’t really understand what pre-Crisis Superman would get out of just pretending to be Clark Kent. John Byrne’s version was Clark Kent, and Superman was just a suit he wore; I don’t feel the two identities were contrasted enough to be compelling, and Byrne’s assertive, outwardly confident Kent lost that poignant humility that’s the whole point of the character.
So instead, I like the notion put forward in Millar/Morrison/Peyer/Waid’s rejected Superman 2000 proposal:
“Clark Kent isn’t what Superman really IS, Clark is what Superman WAS–until he reached his teenage years and began to realize what all those years of soaking up the Kansas sun had done to his alien cells. Superman’s story here is seen as the tale of a Midwest farmer’s son who BECAME AN ALIEN shortly after puberty. […] This is someone who by any stretch of the imagination is no longer just human–except for the part of him, the ethical, humanitarian base nurtured by the Kents, which forms the unshakable foundation for everything Superman is BUT WHO IS WHAT SUPERMAN CAN NO LONGER BE.”
Thus, the “real” character in this dynamic is the alien who was raised by the most decent people in the world. Let’s call him Kal-El for the purposes of discussion, though he might more properly think of himself as Clark.
Metropolis (or Public) Clark, then — that timid, bumbling, sad-sack reporter — is a role; even if he had no other reason to exist, his function is to give this incredibly powerful demigod some much-needed perspective, to remind him no matter how powerful he becomes or how high he might fly, just what it feels like to be The Little Guy.
But Kal-El isn’t just Superman, either, because Superman has to be a symbol. Superman has to be all things to all people as the world’s pre-eminent superhero; the Kal-El lovingly raised by the Kents, on the other hand, is a specific person. Superman has no political ideology, but Kal-El does. Superman endorses no religion, but Kal-El has his own belief system. Superman doesn’t have a preference when it comes to Coke or Pepsi, but Kal-El certainly buys one or the other when Clark Kent goes to the supermarket.
This “threecret identity” notion, I feel, is a richer way of looking at what is usually thought of as the dichotomy of superheroes’ lives, and I feel it’s more relevant for the 21st century. In 2009, it’s not quite as simple as one’s “public” life and one’s “personal” life anymore, is it? The lines have blurred; we have multiple facets we show the public, whether they’re on our blogs or our Facebook pages or our interactions with co-workers, and these merge the public and personal in many respects. But somewhere underneath it all is the true self, the one not even the closest to us are invited into entirely.
Maybe sometimes you even think differently than you feel … just in case somebody’s reading, right?
9
Sep
On this Tuesday I bring you the most delicious of internet meats: animated beat poetry.
If you aren’t familiar with Nick Cave, well, once you have recovered from the resultant therapy and been re-introduced to society, let me say only this: the man can make a kazoo sound badass.
9
Sep
-In terms of tangible changes to actual comics produced, I suspect this is actually bigger news than Disney’s acquisition of Marvel, at least in the short term. I wonder how many DC editors are updating their resumes this afternoon…
-Bugs Bunny could totally kick Mickey Mouse’s ass. Just saying.
-Rob Liefeld isn’t young enough to be taking cheap shots about Paul Levitz’s age.
-Number of times Diane Nelson’s connection to Harry Potter is mentioned in the press release: 3. I’ve got to give them marks for restraint on that one.
-DC Entertainment will release roughly 90 comics a month, at least 5 of which aren’t going to be written by Geoff Johns.
-As one of his final acts as DC publisher, Paul Levitz screws Christopher Bird by returning to write the Legion of Superheroes. I’d find that really exciting if I was still fourteen; as it is, I just hope he’s happy. Levitz, that is. Bird’s funnier when he’s pissed off. Sorry Boss, but it’s true.
-Sorry, Joe Quesada. You had your chance in the spotlight and you waited too long. Nobody cares about Marvel and Disney now, that is soooo last week.
-A few years back, an acquaintance of mine predicted we’d see a day when DC and Marvel would stop publishing and instead license their characters out to be published by others. This is still a ways off, but I can actually envision a time when Dynamite Entertainment’s SPIDER-MAN comic vies with Todd McFarlane Productions’ BATMAN for top spot in the sales charts.
-Does anyone happen to have a spoon handy? After that last thing I feel an overwhelming urge to gouge my eyes out.
Foley
9
Sep
Your guest judges this week are Sean Cheeseman and Melissa Williams, bringing the Cancon and the actually capable judging.
Kim and Emanuel: jazz/funk./ I am coming to understand that “jazz/funk” as a genre actually means “Blake McGrath is a pervert.” This is the sort of routine that really serves Emanuel well: heavy on character, so he can vamp it up (which he does very well) and the sort of technique required was the sort that he already has. Kim was great as always. It was very strong and, of course, very perverted.
Amy and Vincent: hip-hop. I’m willing to declare Vincent the new Pasha at this point – he’s just good at everything, seemingly regardless of genre, and he absolutely killed this routine (which, incidentally, I liked – Flii Stylz is a welcome addition to the SYTYCDCA choreographer roster). Amy wasn’t quite as good as Vincent was, but she was only a little off Vincent’s level. This was great.
Corynne and Austin: contemporary. Ah, Stacey Tookey: “Canada’s Mia Michaels Except Better.” So the routine is good. Corynne’s facial expressions are great, but for a routine that demanded physicality I felt that she was very… light, really. Which is to say that it was pretty obviously that she was a ballerina from the way she danced: airy and light on her feet, even when the choreo demanded more forceful steps. She didn’t miss anything, but she brought a fragility to the routine that I didn’t quite care for – your mileage may vary. As for Austin, all the hype about him “finally getting to dance” rather than just doing tricks was a little tiresome, especially when I don’t think his connections were quite as good as claimed. They were okay; not great. But these are by and large nitpicks for a well-danced quality routine.
Melanie and Cody: mambo. I love Gustavo Vargas’ Latin choreo, and I love Melanie thus far (Cody is okay but only that), so I was looking forward to this, and was slightly disappointed on all fronts. The choreo felt very stop-and-start, although that might have been in part the fault of the dancers, who didn’t transition between the tricks well at all. Cody’s Latin flavour was distinctly lacking; Melanie was okay and nothing more. The judges oversold this quite a bit.
Tara-Jean and Everett: quickstep. Oh god this was awful. It really annoys me when people call quickstep the “dance of death,” because some of my favorite routines on the show ever have been quicksteps: when it’s done well there’s almost nothing quite as fantastic. But this was not “done well.” This was bloody terrible, even with tons of Charleston choreography thrown in to make it more crowd- and dancer-friendly. There was just too much of this routine that came across as awkward and clumsy to call it good or even passable; even the big tricks were done poorly.
Jayme-Rae and Daniel: hip-hop. I like Luther Brown’s choreo because the guy is such a hip-hop traditionalist: no stupid big lifts to make the crowd scream like Pavlovian dogs, just solid, entertaining floorwork the entire way through. Of course, since he doesn’t go in for huge stunts, that means the dancers have to be fully on their game to make the routine work. Jayme-Rae and Daniel were beyond fully on their game: they’re probably the best and most balanced partnership of the season, and both of them are stunningly good at hip-hop (and for Jayme-Rae that’s quite impressive given her contemporary background). Second week in a row where these two have had the best routine of the night.
Jenna-Lynn and Nicolas: hustle. Benji Schwimmer didn’t get to choreo once in the most recent American season, but frankly I’ve always been a big fan of Benji’s work so hey, more for us. I liked the choreo here but Nicolas and Jenna-Lynn didn’t sell it for me: there were too many parts where they were rough, even with nice chunks where they got to work in their own styles. Also, Nicolas needs to stop with that freakish Joker-like grin of his. It is downright unsettling.
Natalie and Danny: rumba. Danny isn’t a bad dancer by any means, but he’s just not a memorable dancer, especially given that he’s paired with Natalie, who has so much performance ability it is scary. This rumba was a case in point: it came across as Natalie in the role of classic Cyd Charisse dancing in a old movie, and Danny as a background dancer who lifts her around a few places. It doesn’t matter how good Danny’s technique is (and he is good, he hasn’t really failed to do anything yet) if he dances like a supporting cast member.
Probable bottom three: Jenna-Lynn and Nicolas, Tara-Jean and Everett, Natalie and Danny.
Should go home: Jenna-Lynn and Nicolas.
Will go home: Tara-Jean and Everett.
9
Sep
this is probably the closest we will get to a Rex The Wonder Dog teevee show any time soon.
8
Sep
I was trying to figure out when to do this post, and then I realized, based on an Ancestry.com search, that Harry Lucey died in August 1984. I don’t know the exact date (like I said before, there was no obituary), but even though I’ve missed the 25th anniversary of his death, this might be the right time to write a bit about him. The rediscovery of Harry Lucey has been one of the best things to come from the revival of interest in Archie comics in the last few years. I don’t think most people, including me, had any idea who Lucey was until quite recently. He retired before Archie started giving credits, so readers couldn’t see credited stories in the ’80s and use them to identify the earlier work. And he doesn’t really have a clear hook to identify him: Bob Montana created the characters, Dan De Carlo set the new house style in the ’50s, but Lucey was… well, he was a house artist at MLJ who did a lot of fine work on their superhero and adventure titles (including Madam Satan, a character he helped create), proved equally adept at comedy when his company chose to focus mostly on “comical comics.” According to a commonly-told story, his girlfriend’s sister at the time was named “Betty,” which is how the name came about. (The only other stories about him are that he once came into the office to hand in his pages after being hit by a car, and that he used to draw his stories with the girls wearing no clothes on all but the first page.) He was the main artist on the Archie title from the late ’50s through the mid ’70s, applied his skill to everything from regular 6-page farce stories to an issue-length Beverly Hillbillies takeoff where Veronica apparently falls in love with her own cousin and even bringing some decent craftsmanship to that infamous story that was nothing but 12 pages of plugs for Archie merchandise. In 1974 he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and retired.
But now I think that while he’s not precisely a cult figure, he’s better known than he was at any point in his lifetime. He even has some advocates: Jaime Hernandez frequently talks about Lucey as a big influence (along with De Carlo), Kurt Busiek recently cited this Lucey Betty and Veronica cover as his favorite of the series. Dan Nadel wanted to include Lucey in his book “Art Out of Time: Unknown Comics Visionaries 1900-1969”, and reluctantly left him out only because he decided the book should be exclusively focused on non-mainstream comics creators. But that’s how interesting Lucey has become to some collectors, artists and historians: he’s an Archie guy who is discussed in the company of the greats.
This thread provides a good selection of Lucey covers and art, including one of the quintessential Lucey stories, “Two Little Words” (which, miracle of miracles, recently turned up in a digest, and Archie wasn’t even re-drawn to remove his bow tie). And I’m going to borrow this comparison idea from the beginning of that thread: There’s a 1973 issue of Life With Archie that had a cover story drawn by Lucey, but the cover itself was drawn by Stan Goldberg (starting in the late ’60s, almost all covers had to be drawn by De Carlo or people who drew in his style, like Goldberg; Lucey and other artists rarely got to do covers from that point on). This is Goldberg’s cover, based on the splash page of the main story.
Now, that’s a good cover. It shows that Goldberg wasn’t always the guy turning out disfigured tinmen. You can see, with Reggie, how the curved mouth-to-jaw line, which has now gotten out of hand, was effectively and tastefully used. It’s the work of a very good artist. But then we turn the page and see Lucey’s splash page from the story proper. It’s not like this page is Lucey’s best work or anything; his way of drawing faces had become so stylized as to be a little freaky at times. But everything is specific instead of generic, even though it’s a generic scene. The girls aren’t just doing standard girlie-art poses, they’re holding themselves at slightly awkward angles, trying to find things to do with their hands. If there were no dialogue balloons, you’d still get a sense of every character’s role in the panel. (Why Jughead replaced by Reggie on the cover, don’t ask me.)
The thing Lucey was really good at was physical acting: making body language convey emotion, making one drawing convey the feeling of something that led up to it, giving the feeling of physical impact to a drawing. When money-sniffing Cricket O’Dell makes her first appearance by literally running over Archie to get a quarter, you sure feel the impact of him getting knocked over. (Though you may also wonder what happened to his head.) Of course he could always handle a “Archie gets thrown out of Mr. Lodge’s house” splash page, conveying every bit of pain inflicted on Archie but playing it for comedy.
And Lucey’s body-language skills made him especially good at handling those Frank Doyle scripts where it’s almost nothing but the characters talking for six pages; those scripts are great, but they can’t work without an artist who always keeps the characters moving and active and never makes the story seem static.
The other thing that I think makes people value Lucey so much is that he really made Archie into a more endearing, funny, everyman kind of character than anybody else. It’s easy to make Archie a bland, personality-free loser who undeservedly has two sexy girls fighting over him. Lucey always seems to play up the more specific and interesting aspects of his character: his clumsiness, his tendency to get really emotional and demonstrative, his over-reaction to any situation. Lucey’s Archie is always getting really angry or really scared, crying, screaming, waving his hands in the air and railing against fate; when he’s happy, he’s unbelievably happy, and when he sees a hot girl his eyes look like they’re this close to doing a Tex Avery pop-out. Lucey’s Archie is also the most destructive (he always wrecks everything in Mr. Lodge’s house). All the characters benefit from Lucey’s theatrical, broad gestures, the flailing arms, the angular poses (he could rarely bring himself to let characters walk or stand completely straight), because it’s funnier that way. But Archie himself benefits most of all, because by giving him a broader emotional range than any other character, Lucey sort of gives him the right to be the star of the comic.
Other characters Lucey was really good at: his Veronica was probably the only version who could actually make you understand why Archie found her hotter than Betty, despite their identical faces and figures. De Carlo was an undisputed Betty and Veronica king, but he drew them more or less as the same wholesomely sexy type; Lucey usually made Betty a little more wholesome in her body language — and very needy and clingy when Archie was around — while Lucey’s Veronica is very sultry and self-possessed. His version of the Mr. Lodge/Smithers comedy duo was also a highlight; I almost wish they had given him some kind of Lodge family spinoff.
If IDW makes good on its promise to publish best-of collections for the great Archie artists, I’m hoping there will be a Lucey collection in there somewhere; if not, the best way to get your Lucey fix is to pick up some cheap copies of Archie from before 1974. Especially the late ’50s/early ’60s because that’s when the whole company’s output was at its strongest. But even with the coming of new fads, strange story ideas, Saturday morning tie-ins and some inkers of dubious quality, the basic Lucey virtue — strong, emotion-specific poses and staging that sells the jokes — is usually there. Even when he’s asked to turn “Archies” producer Don Kirschner into a comic book character.
Finally, probably the quintessential Lucey story is still “Actions Speak Louder Than Words” from Pep 140. It’s a story that makes good on its title: No dialogue, and there doesn’t need to be because Lucey’s drawings tell you everything you need to know about what the characters think and want.
8
Sep
Now maybe you go to a big convention and you see someone in an unfamiliar costume and you are all “gosh I wish I knew who that was, but I can’t say that out loud or I will lose valuable nerd cred, and nerd cred is the only cred I have since I came to this convention and all.” So you sit there in silence, drinking your Mello Yello because the convention only has Mello Yello to drink because they ran out of all the other soft drinks three hours ago, even the Fresca, but what is worse than the silence and the vaguely citrusy pop is that you sit there in anguish because you don’t know what those nerds are dressed up like!
Well, never fear. I am here to help you nerds. I know everything that there ever was to know about anime. I know so much about anime I actually know what it will be called next, just like how I knew it was going to start being called “anime” back when everybody else was still calling it “Japanimation.” (I can’t tell you what the new name is, because that is top secret, but I can give you a hint: it will rhyme with a large animal commonly found in zoos.)
ANIME: Honor Of Panda
BRIEF SUMMARY: Kenji Watanabe is a 17th-century ronin with a very unruly student: Popo the panda! Kenji and Popo ride through the countryside, righting wrongs, helping villagers against bandits, defending the honor of beautiful maidens (who inevitably are allergic to pandas) and reading from The Book of Five Rings. Humourously, Popo never quite understands the way of war – he always wants to eat bamboo instead! Silly Popo!
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “I like dressing as Kenji because he’s tough and cool, but with a good heart. Steve has been looking forward to dress up as Popo ever since he first saw the series. I’m not sure why.”
ANIME: Mercenary Princess Toyoka
BRIEF SUMMARY: Toyoka is a medieval Japanese princess who one day, while picking chrysanthemum blossoms to place in an artistic arrangement to present at court, falls through a time vortex right into the middle of a crazy gunfight: evil yakuza versus Isamu and Seiko, the famous mercenary duo known as the Running Bomb Angels! In their company, Toyoka quickly discovers skills she never realized she had as the Running Bomb Angels get a third member, who is deadly with her delicate fans and sense of right place.
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “I’ve always wanted to commit horrible acts of violence, but I don’t like guns. Then I started watching Mercenary Princess Toyoka and realized the horrible things you could do with a fan.”
ANIME: Byzantine Fashion
BRIEF SUMMARY: Aglurk, a soldier for the Ottoman Empire, secretly wishes he was a fashion designer. Although bound by his warrior’s code to defend the Empire, this does not stop him from accessorizing in this wacky comedy for anybody who has ever loved shiny things.
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYER? “The sparkles!”
ANIME: Oops! Jun Loves The Dead Girl!
BRIEF SUMMARY: Poor Jun – he finally gets up the courage to ask out Yukie, the girl he has loved all through high school, but on that very day she dies in a freak snorkeling accident. Will Jun ever realize that Aoi, his best friend, loves him very much and wishes to be his wife? Or will he spend all his time pining for dead Yukie and wishing she was alive so he could have sex with her? Find out in the 327 episodes of this fun sexy comedy!
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYERS? “Alan likes it, and it means I don’t have to move around too much.”
ANIME: Zucchini Warrior Z
BRIEF SUMMARY: Z is a mutated zucchini, a cross between vegetable and man. In the future wars of 1993, Z leads the war against Petroglox, a massive corporation bent on control of all the world’s agriculture. Over the series’ six-season run, Z horrifically murders 1,924 corporate goons, each in a completely unique way. Anime Compendium says this series should have been called “Fist of the North Star 2: The Search For More Violence.”
WHY DO YOU LIKE THIS ANIME, COSTUME PLAYER? “I originally just started watching it out of boredom when I couldn’t get copies of Ranma 1/2, but somewhere around the three hundredth death I started wondering if they could keep up the original kill streak. It gets really compelling watching them come up with new ways to rend and tear flesh.”
7
Sep
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
Also, now that I am the Managing Editor and Big Chief Hoo-Hah at thecourt.ca, I don’t really write posts there any more so much as I run the place. That having been said, this post about the Prime Minister’s office appealing the Khadr case to the Supreme Court by new staffer James Gotowiec is, I think, a hell of a read.
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