My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
2
Jun
So Wizard Magazine – yes, that Wizard Magazine – recently published their “top 200 characters of all time” list. The only reason I know this is because I got emails and comments in large numbers asking me for my take on this. (God knows why. I mean, I’m not Scott McCloud or anything.)
My take, firstly, is that it is Wizard. Wizard is a shitty magazine written by condescending assholes who cater to the ultimate-fanboy bloc and try to hold themselves above the teeming masses while simultaneously engaging in its basest whims. (Or, more simply: they mock fanboys then make cheap titty jokes about female characters. I can’t stand people who try to have it both ways. Either be a schmuck or don’t, but either way, embrace your choice.) Making fun of Wizard is like shooting babies in a barrel, except you feel less bad afterwards.
Also, Brainiac Five is not on it, which means it is flawed right from the get-go.
But, regardless. First, let us consider their rationale for creating this list:
What follows is a rundown of the 200 stars who have transcended their original concepts and are, whether it’s from direct influence or a distant ripple effect, those that resonate in 2008. In some cases, we’ve followed their stories for decades; others made only a single, but spectacular, impression. But all of them possess dimensions so real that we can practically imagine their lungs expanding, their triumphs and tragedies as poignant as anything on the front page.
Okay. Check.
continue reading "MGK Versus Wizard’s Top 200 Comics Characters Of All Time List, Part One"
I’m moving to new digs today, and my home net access won’t be solid until Friday at the earliest, so posting over the next week will likely be lighter than usual.
31
May
Behold: a burger made from ground bacon.
31
May
KIRK: Hey, man. You up?
FLAPJACKS: Blurrrgh.
KIRK: Yeah, but are you up?
FLAPJACKS: Ugggggh.
KIRK: Great. So can I borrow some rubbers?
ME: (opening door) Okay, look, you were here last night.
KIRK: Yeah.
ME: When he ate that sandwich from Subway.
KIRK: Yeah.
ME: And when he started vomiting two hours later.
KIRK: Yeah.
ME: And it turned out he had a mild case of food poisoning.
KIRK: Are you going somewhere with this?
ME: My point is you are aware he’s been up all night, sick as a dog.
FLAPJACKS: Guuuuhhhhg.
KIRK: Actually, that’s an observation. You haven’t made a point yet.
ME: All right – if you knew he was sick, why would you knock on his door at ten o’clock in the morning asking for condoms?
KIRK: Because I don’t want to get AIDS.
ME: No, that answers “why do you want to use a condom?” There are other places you can get condoms at ten o’clock in the morning, you know.
KIRK: Awesome. What brand do you use? I like Trojans.
ME: I was actually talking about the drugstore.
KIRK: I dunno, man. That comes suspiciously close to paying for sex.
ME: …just go to the drugstore, Kirk.
KIRK: Oh, all right. Hey, what’s that smell, by the way?
ME: I believe that would be vomit.
The fourth edition Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks have leaked onto the interwoobs, and out of curiosity I decided to take a look. I highly doubt I’m going to sit down and play straight D&D ever again – standard fantasy RP doesn’t interest me any more, hasn’t for years, I find whatever RPG interests I have left veer more towards the altered-historical sort of setting – but fourth edition D&D will likely be what people crib from for the foreseeable future, so I figured it was worth taking a look just to stay in touch.
It’s a whole new concept at work here, people. Wizards can cast magic missile at will any time they want – all the classes, in fact, get basic attack and defense powers they can activate at will. Other powers become available as your character advances and can be activated on a time basis (once per hour, once per day, et cetera). But these powers are scaled to character advancement and weaker than you would expect. The standard big-boom spells like lightning bolt and fireball now do greatly reduced damage, for example.
Then you take a look at the monster stats, and you realize – wait, the monsters have shitloads of powers and hitpoints out the ass. This isn’t to say that they are overpowered, but simply to point out that in fourth edition, a party taking on equal-level monsters will have a tough go of it, because the old one-shot-one-kill techniques that have always been present in any form of D&D are pretty much entirely gone. This trend just becomes more noteworthy as you look at the really high-end monsters: arch-demons and dragons have 600 to 900 hitpoints, for crissake.
Fourth edition D&D promises to be, in short, a grindfest of massive proportions. And I have no doubt at all that this is intentional in design, because the more I look at it and think about how a combat between a party and a bunch of monsters would go, the more I think, “my god, this plays like a tabletop recreation of World of Warcraft.” Or a Japanese console RPG. Or anything along those lines, really. You can just hear the fighters yelling out their custom attack names as they perform their power moves.
The more I think about it, the more I’m positive that’s the idea, because, come on, if you want to make money with D&D these days, rather than bother catering to the diehards, why not simply instead try and snag the massive online play market with a game similar to that which they’re accustomed?
I’m not interested in playing 4th ed – not at all. But I have to concede the basic brilliance of the design from a marketing standpoint. It might not work at all, but it’s the best effort they could logically make.
29
May
29
May
In the final episode, the judges and choreographers dance in the big opening routine along with the contestants. And they are good.
Honestly, that’s a sort of national character thing right there.
29
May
Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.
I have to admit, I am completely torn this week.
On the one hand, the Manhawks are blitheringly stupid. First off, the fact that their enemy is Hawkman is just all kinds of dumb – Man-Bat was already pushing the “reverse name” villain concept to its utmost, but at least Man-Bat has a decent concept attached to him. The Manhawks are… giant hawks.
From outer space. With spaceships, which they apparently invented with their talons. And they’re telepathic. And they can fly through space (which kind of begs the question why they ever needed spaceships, but I guess they’ve got them). And they wear humanoid masks. Which shoot eye lasers. And their entire modus operandi is that they just really like stealing things a whole lot. (Because they don’t really need money. Because they are giant hawks.)
It’s like DC’s bullpen was getting drunk one night and decided that this time, they really, really had to see how far they could go before some kid looked up from his comic and said “Mom, what the hell is this shit?”
But on the other hand, I know that when I was eight I would have eaten this shit up with a fucking spoon. And I am a big proponent of the theory that superhero comics should be accessible to – and indeed, whenever possible, targeted at – eight-to-twelve-year olds. Plus, there’s some nice touches in there, like the fact that the Manhawks change masks every time they rob a planet, so their new masks match the appearance of the race they’re robbing. You have to admire an evil kleptomaniac alien race that just decides to fuck with other civilizations’ heads.
I’m going split decision on this. The Manhawks actually manage to make less sense than a Nazi vampire gorilla or Ice coming back from the dead. But they’re still kind of cool, in their way.
EDIT TO ADD: I am only rating the Silver Age Manhawks here, not the updated Manhawks, who reek of “we can make this cooler! To the EXTREEEEEME” and are everything that is wrong with comics.
28
May
Another week, another posting from me at The Court – this week is a critique of the recent ruling in Canada v. Khadr, which should be of interest to some of my American audience, seeing as how it concerns a Guantanamo Bay detainee.
28
May
Another film that got overlooked in theatres, and although most who have seen it sing its praises (and given the subject matter that is kind of a bad pun), it still hasn’t found the audience it rightly deserves on DVD as of yet. Right now it’s mostly a cult flick.
Saved is an excellent film about the troubling and fascinating power of faith, which takes very little for granted. As such, predictably, conservative Christian movie review sites hate it. The movie is a liberal one, but it is most certainly not an antireligious film; its conclusion lies firmly in the pro-faith side of the argument. I personally think this is part of the reason it fell under the radar – its target audience of tolerant faithful, while much larger than anybody gives it credit for, is not nearly so outspoken as the conservative religious and liberal non-religious camps.
It’s a movie with a number of nuanced performances, all uniformly excellent. Mandy Moore started off her penchant for playing hilarious psycho bitches with this movie. Her Hilary Faye is a terrific villain, but not unsympathetic – her nervousness and obvious lack of self-generated self-esteem turn what could have been a total cariacature into a compelling downward spiral. She might be bad, but she’s never one-note and she’s always understandable.
Jena “was Ellen Page before Ellen Page was Ellen Page” Malone plays the lead – a devout girl who becomes pregnant as a result of trying to “cure” her gay boyfriend’s homosexuality. She’s excellent – watching her faith shatter, then reform on her own terms is fascinating. When she hits bottom and stares at a church and just starts swearing, daring God to strike her down for blasphemy, it’s both sad and at the same time slightly funny. She’s not any good at blasphemy, so she just utters a few basic swear words like they’re the text of the Necronomicon, but Malone makes it work and then some. You can feel her devastation thoroughly.
The rest of the cast are uniformly terrific. Macaulay Culkin – of all people – contributes a gentle, understated and clever performance as Hilary Faye’s crippled brother. Patrick Fugit (who, I am informed by girls I have seen this movie with, has grown up all dreamy-like since Almost Famous) plays Malone’s love interest, a returning missionary who rides a moped. Heather Matarazzo (Welcome to the Dollhouse) contributes a brief turn as Hilary Faye’s lackey. Martin Donovan’s conflicted Father Ted is well done, and Mary-Louise Parker (whom I will watch in anything) is fantastic as Malone’s mother.
It’s a damned good movie, and a reclamation of religious faith for liberal values; the two are not incompatible and anyone who says different is simply wrong. And it’s funny. Especially when Mandy Moore runs Jesus over.
27
May
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