I think “your dick’s a circle?” is going to become my new all-purpose sarcasto-question.

Have you ever read one of those novels that makes you angry? I mean, angry in the sense of decrying the utter waste involved; the waste of a good idea at the hands of an inept author, the waste of a publisher’s time and effort in cultivating such a novel through to publication (to say nothing of the opportunity wasted by selecting this novel for publication instead of another), the waste of trees and fuel used to print the novel and cart it to bookstores, and last but not least, the waste of your time in reading a novel like Ravenous, by Ray Garton.

The sad part, I think, is the way the good idea at the core of the novel is utterly wasted. There is a good novel to be written with the idea of lycanthropy as a sexually-transmitted disease, and its spread through a small California town. The subtext of the hypocrisy and deceit involved in people’s sex lives, combined with the potent symbolism of the werewolf as the unrestrained id, has the potential to make for a good novel in the hands of a good author. But Garton can’t think of anything, anything at all interesting to do with the idea. His werewolves are mindless raping/killing machines, lumbering through the endlessly repetitive novel with as much interest as a boulder rolling down a hill. Anything that gets in their way is in trouble, characters either escape them or don’t, but they have no personality to speak of.

They share this trait, unfortunately, with the human characters in the novel, who seem to have one of three roles: 1) Get eaten, 2) become a werewolf, or 3) some combination of 1 & 2. The author is clearly trying to do a novel along the lines of “Salem’s Lot with werewolves” (and sadly, I suspect that was exactly what he sold to the publisher as his outline) but reading Ravenous illustrates why Stephen King is a multi-millionaire best-selling critically-acclaimed author, while Ray Garton will be forever trapped in mid-list horror potboiler hell: This shit be hard. Creating an interesting small town, investing its population with life and personality and conveying that to the reader, it’s not easy. It takes a lot of insight into human nature, and a genuine sympathy for the characters you’re writing about, even the unpleasant and unlikeable ones. As opposed to a mindset of, “‘Werewolves come into town and rape and kill everybody’ is about 64,991 words too short for a paperback novel. I need to pad this out a little.”

That’s really the worst thing about Garton’s characterization. As you might have noticed from my frequent use of the word “rape” in this review, there’s plenty of rape involved in the novel. I’d be tempted to call it misogynist, but I really believe that it’s more an example of the rote, stimulus/response approach to characterization in the book. Garton doesn’t have the skill, or more relevantly the energy to invest his werewolf chow with real personalities. So he relies on the short-hand manipulation of brutality; the character with an abusive husband has to be sympathetic, because she gets beat up. The husband, by contrast, has to be unsympathetic, because he’s a rapist. As far as Garton seems to be concerned, the question is settled; why bother giving them personalities after that? The world of Ravenous is divided up into victims and monsters, and that’s about as much effort as the author puts into it.

The novel does develop a bit of momentum around the middle, as the author finishes with the dull “slice of life” section and you begin to suspect that there might be a plot waiting in the wings, preparing to make its appearance, but ultimately this is a novel in which the red herring is the idea that something might happen other than the obvious. As you’re reading it, various ideas might occur to you for the direction the plot might take, but I guarantee you, you’re putting too much effort into it. Just think of the most predictable conclusion to a novel that’s nothing more than an exercise in pointless sadism, and you’ll have it right there.

Um, in case I’m not clear here, I’m not recommending the book.

(What I hope is my final bar exam is today, so…)

Many people suspect that death is not the end of things, and some of them are right. Others aren’t. Death, in the Marvel Universe at least, is a capricious thing. Most everything never comes back: the spandex set has gotten so used to the idea of resurrection that they often fail to realize how many of them never come back. (Go look at the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe’s Book of the Dead sometime. I did the math: about three-quarters of them have never been resurrected.) And that’s just costumes. The regular joes of the MU know that dead is dead.

Of course, sometimes it isn’t. Sometimes, if you listen very carefully, you can hear the dead. Not with your ears, of course. But you hear them nonetheless. If you’ve got the right sort of training, you might be able to make out, on occasion, what they’re saying. If you tried hard enough, that is. And if you have that training, and you are the sort of person who discovered – relatively later in life than one might expect – that you in fact possess a deep wellspring of compassion, then you might try hard enough. And because you had that compassion, you might take action when you realized that they weren’t so much speaking as crying.

What Stephen Strange heard was weeping – fearful weeping. And so he put himself into a state of living death, because how else are you going to visit the nether realms? And he found a professional super-criminal, dead and gone, trapped in a box of their own making: a trial (this particular super-criminal had been through many trials when they were alive) of their entire life. It’s grounded in real-world details – a judge, a jury, bailiffs, a set of scales – but it’s all ever so wrong, and because this person is already scared every detail serves to reinforce their fear. The judge’s eyes don’t appear to exist. The jury is at times twelve people and then one person with twelve faces. Sometimes there are walls, sometimes not. Sometimes there isn’t a floor except for the faces of people the criminal sort of remembers. They’re not friendly faces.

Now, Dr. Strange knows better than most people that we can and usually do influence our own afterlives, but he also knows that just telling someone that doesn’t work – the delusion of our souls is too strong just for one to say “well, no, actually this isn’t happening.” That doesn’t work. You need to guide them through it on their own. So Dr. Strange takes up the role of this super-criminal’s defense attorney in the last trial of their existence. It’s as good an opening as he can manage: by representing the lost soul, he can subtly remind them of why they don’t deserve to be here. He can give them peace, which is, for them, the only gift that endures.

Of course, this is the Marvel Universe, which means there’s a problem: the prosecutor. You see, the prosecutor isn’t a delusion. He’s quite real. He knows when opportunities like this pop up, and he’s always ready to capitalize. He wants this criminal’s soul for reasons of his own – there are always reasons when you’re dealing with this sort of being. He wants the guilty verdict: he wants that super-criminal to want to be punished, unendingly and forever, and to choose it themselves. And he’s not entirely happy that Stephen Strange has come along to muck things up. But fine, he thinks, let the Sorcerer Supreme flail about; Strange doesn’t know the tricks of the courtroom of the soul, but the prosecutor does.

Because Mephisto has done this many, many times before. And his record is perfect.

Mitchell Hundred: The above article was written a while ago about fantasy novels, but a similar trend could also be identified in many forms of contemporary art (increasing gritty realism, morally ambiguous narrative, graphic description of unpleasant events, etc.). What do you make of the accusation made in the above article (that these pieces demean the genre and art as a whole)?

It’s wank, pure and simple. (I know, wank at Big Hollywood? Goodness gracious me!) Just for the sake of argument, let’s rattle off the bestselling fantasy authors of the past decade: Stephanie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, Philip Pullman, Christopher Paolini, Robert Jordan, George R.R. Martin… are we seeing a trend here? The overwhelming trend in fantasy isn’t what the writer describes; it’s a push towards moral clarity to appeal to a young-adult audience. (And, in the case of Jordan, braid-tugging.) Even Martin, who’s probably the closest to what the author complains about, has very strongly moral characters in his books: Jon Snow, most of the Starks, many of the Night’s Watch, Davos, Daenerys… you can even make a case for Jaime Lannister.

What the author is complaining about is that the sort of sword-and-sorcery fantasy he likes (which he tokens to become all fantasy writing period) is getting gritty and unpleasant now, to which I respond “where were you when Stephen R. Donaldson started writing books in the late Seventies?” Hell, has he read any old Conan stories? Conan is not a nice person!

Nicodemus: Have you ever read the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher?

No. It’s one of my “get around to it” things. That list just keeps getting longer.

FistFullofFists: On a scale of sad to depressed, how sad are you to see stargate universe canceled?

Not at all. I mean, I’m sorry people who liked Stargate: Whatever lost out on a show, don’t get me wrong. It’s not like The Bachelor where the existence of the show is actively offensive. But I watched the movie and then I watched a few episodes of the first season of SG-1 and then I said, “well, that’s enough for me.”

Skemono: I think everyone would benefit from an essay on why Hawkman is a dick and everybody hates him.

Some people think Hawkman sucks because all he does is fly. This is erroneous. There are plenty of superheroes who “just fly,” and many of them are quite nifty, because flying is honestly pretty cool all by itself, and because it’s a natural progression for flying heroes who just fly to be more skillful fliers (Angel of the X-Men, for example, or Dawnstar in the LSH – yes, I know she has tracking powers too, but big deal) which gives them an additional niche. Hawkman, however, does not do this. What Hawkman does instead is be a dickhead: he’s the Token Conservative to Green Arrow’s Token Liberal (and Green Arrow is just as annoying as fucking Hawkman is) and it’s become his character thing to be a pompous, annoying douche.

On top of that, there are the melee weapons. In a setting where people can blow you up with eye lasers, melee weapons are stupid. More importantly, though, is that because they are stupid, writers have come up with justifications as to why they are not stupid which make them even stupider. I believe this reached its apex in Cry for Justice, wherein it was explained that Hawkman was “unpredictable” and a “berserker” and therefore Prometheus was worried about him for some reason, as if for some reason Prometheus could not just, like, shoot him.

And then there’s his origin story. Hawkman’s origin story has been so mangled that it is beyond belief, mostly because people wanted to “reconcile” Egyptian Hawkman and Space Hawkman into one character, which is stupid because it’s not like there’s some special ability you need to let you put on a flying belt and wings.

So basically everything about Hawkman sucks.

drasnianfrank: What are the best Dr. Strange issues to read (or issues that have Dr. Strange in them)?

Anything from the original Lee/Ditko run is good, but my soft spot is Roy Thomas’s run on the line; just gorgeous cosmic stuff, as you would expect from Thomas. “The Montesi Formula” story is truly excellent writing with mediocre art (and available in trade). Warren Ellis’ brief run on the character towards the end of Dr. Strange: Sorcerer Supreme is well worth reading, as is Brian K. Vaughan and Marcos Martin’s The Oath.

Just go with the Essentials, really: the B&W art actually, I think, improves the comics, since the lack of “hey look we’re otherworldly” colouring makes the book far more readable.

scarecrowprophet: I realised the original text for the first 30 ISWTLegion posts isn’t up, just the pictures and later commentary. Could you post the original text?

The original text largely isn’t worth reproducing. Remember, ISWTL started out as a series of joke posts; only towards the end did I start doing what I did with them later, exploring plot hooks and the like.

Cookie McCool: But then, I had a huge crush on Aquaman back then, too, so what the fuck did I know?

Hey, Aquaman is pretty cool when he’s done right. Which isn’t often (WHERE IS HIS BEARD, DAMMIT? HE LOOKS TEN THOUSAND TIMES MORE AWESOME WITH A BEARD), but hey.

JL: What’s the status of that Novella? I really liked what I read and the hook was golden.

Novel, not novella; it’s on hold while I try to get a lot of other things done. I’m hoping to finish it by the end of the year, but then again I said that last year. (I have a lot of sympathy for George R.R. Martin.)

James, in accordance with a request made in the AMA thread, has installed both search and comment-link functionality on the site.

I would like to point out that he did this without having me even ask, so, as usual, I will reiterate how awesome it is when people hit up his wishlist.

I was going to do another answering-questions post last night but then some news happened and Torontoist asked me to write about it so I did.

Thornae: How big are your comic and book collections?

Comics: I have about two large shelves of trades and some overflow. My longboxes are in storage and I’m gradually trading/selling them off (anybody interested in a Green Arrow Grell/Dixon run? The Denny O’Neil Question?) except for my Legion and Dr. Strange collections.

My books – another two large bookshelves’ worth. At least.

Stephen T. Stone: What would your alignment chart for King of the Hill look like?

The problem with King of the Hill, alignment-chart-wise, is that there isn’t anyone who really qualifies as evil. Even Dale is just kind of stupid as opposed to mean or selfish.

PS Bernard: Now that Gates is part of the new “Levitz Legion”, would you re-introduce Kent Shakespeare to the Legion?

Confession: I have absolutely no emotional connection to the current remix edition of the Legion. The book’s readable now (it had a horrible start), and I quite liked the recent Legion of Super-Villains special, but it’s still kind of feels ersatz; I “know” what happened to these characters in v4 and it all seems like alternate history or something to me.

That having been said, Kent Shakespeare was always intended as Yet Another Superman Proxy; if you don’t need someone to play up the Legion’s Superman connection then he’s kind of redundant.

given that Doctor Strange would be your first choice to write that’s not your own original stuff, who or what would be your second?

The Legion, obviously. After that: Runaways, Justice League International, Anarky, and Fantastic Four. (Anybody who wants to write comics and doesn’t want to write Fantastic Four has something wrong with them.)

Steve Timberman: Which handles serialization better – Television or Comics?

TV, because TV by virtue of cost has to have endings.

Desumaytah: Does the idea of a MGK-written “Shang-Chi: Master of Kung Fu” hold any interest for you?

Not really: anything I would want to do with it has already been done – and probably better – in Immortal Iron Fist.

rbx5: Two questions: if one wanted to get into the Legion, where would one start? And also, after seeing your Akira post (which summed up my thoughts on the movie perfectly, and almost in passing at that), I was wondering what other manga you like?

The recent Great Darkness Saga deluxe hardcover seems to be in remaindered bookstores now all over the place – good job there, DC – and it’s a great starting point because it goes about ten issues on either side of the actual Great Darkness Saga itself and has Legion of Super-Heroes v2 Annual #1, which is a great intro story all in itself. The other good alternative is starting with the reboot Legion post Zero Hour, which is genuinely great superhero comics for about six years before sharply spiraling into mediocrity for a year or so and then rebounding just as dramatically into Big Space Opera when Abnett and Lanning sign on.

Other manga I like: Ranma 1/2, Maison Ikkoku, Oishinbo (despite occasionally being really irritating), Monster and anything by Yoshihiro Tatsumi.

Arthur Robinson: I loved what you did on your “How to start reading comics.” post. Is it possible to make a similar post for television? (“How to start watching TV, perhaps?)

It seems kind of redundant, because unlike comics, TV is a field that is widely criticized and discussed in mainstream media. The point of the “how to start reading comics” post was that comics which are widely critically praised are not necessarily good starting points for someone who has never really read comics (e.g. Watchmen), but honestly, you don’t need any help from anybody to start watching The Wire or find a list of shows telling you how good Larry Sanders is.

If you’re looking for introductions to older television, the AV Club recently did a couple of primers for 70s sitcoms and 80s sitcoms which are a good start.

Disco: What’s your number one board game of 2010?

I finally played Railroad Tycoon/Railways of the World in 2010 and absolutely loved it and bought all the expansions. So let’s go with that. I also played Mr. President, a political campaign game from 1967, for the first time in 2010 and was amazed by how damn good it was as a game; it’s gone seriously under-recognized. (Possibly because 3M made two games called Mr. President and the 1965 version is a crappy roll-and-move.)

chibikonatsu what’s your opinion on Astro City?

The Dark Age killed a lot of the series’ momentum, which is a shame because before that it was one of the best ongoing superhero series period.

rbx5: Is DS9 your favorite Trek, and if so, why?

Yes, and it’s simple: the most engaging ongoing plot, the strongest cast of characters with the most diverse moral spectrum and most character development, and the best overall writing of any Trek. TNG and classic Trek probably have higher peaks than DS9, but DS9 has the most consistency.

Zach: What, in your opinion, are the greatest comic storylines? And conversely, what are the worst?

That’s a post for another time.

Andrew Jeanes: Any thoughts on Chris “Dr.” Hastings getting hired to write Deadpool?

Good for him? And it’s a good match for the character.

KDBryan: Are you reading Secret Six from DC? If so, what would you say to get people to start reading it?

Yes, and I would say that it’s like Suicide Squad except more engaging and generally better than Suicide Squad was. If you don’t know what Suicide Squad is, then how about “it’s what Thunderbolts could have been if Marvel editorial had been brave enough to really do a proper book about villains without turning them into caricatures or ersatz heroes.”

Packerchu: Which alignment is Rex?

Neutral Good. Duh.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Seems to make sense to handle these questions today, so:

Benman: How far ahead have you plotted Al’Rashad?

Ex-roommate Other Chris is correct when he says it was first written as a movie script about ten years ago. I’ve revised it since then, though, to an extent – fixed some beats, changed around the ending a bit – and he’s also correct in saying that I’m revising it for the new medium. (Mostly because I told him that last time we had beers together.)

However, that’s not all of the answer, since Al’Rashad: City of Myths is the first part of a trilogy of stories, to be followed (hopefully, one day) by Ra-Boku: The Topless Towers and Karukomum: Empire Of Walls. Right now, we’re at about the halfway mark of chapter 2 of Al’Rashad, which should have eight chapters if I’m doing the story math right. Al’Rashad is completely plotted out; Ka-Boku‘s plot beats are about three-quarters finished, and Karukomum – well, I know the broad strokes there.

Edgar Allan Poe: What’s the driving idea behind Al’Rashad, other than Viking Prince + Sinbad?

Honestly, it started because I wanted to write a fantasy epic and it seemed like an underused choice of setting at the time. Sometimes you don’t start writing a story with “what’s the philosophy that underlies the entire plot.” That having been said, as I wrote it, I eventually found what I wanted from it. So, yes, there’s something. Saying what would be, at this point, a pretty major spoiler.

Prankster: People sort of already asked this, but I’ll reaffirm: how long is Al’Rashad planned to be, and what’s the “elevator pitch”? Where’s the story going, without spoilers obviously?

Length: dealt with. “Elevator pitch” was always, to me anyway, “what if Lord of the Rings didn’t have fantasy races substituting in for different cultures, wasn’t slightly racist, and also was kind of different from Lord of the Rings,” which really isn’t much of a pitch but if I gave you the real pitch – well, again, spoilers.

As for where it’s going in the near future: well, obviously Halfdar and Kahal have to escape those slave cells, for a start. That’s just getting underway. After that, I can say that you’ll start to see the wider repercussions of Tanquir’s initial attack on Halfdar’s ship, as well as what Halfdar and Kahal do next.

Brendan: Why a “Caliphate” for the Al-Rashad setting, instead of a “Sultanate”? I mean, wouldn’t that be comparable to having Papal states in a traditional European fantasy setting?

Longer version: the Rashadi Caliphate gradually formed as Rashan, the religion that forms its backbone, grew in popularity. The current Caliph is the seventy-seventh in the line, the direct descendant of Rashad himself, the Eighth Seer. (The Ninth Seer, it is said, will arrive only before the end of the world.) By the laws of Rashan, the ruler of the Caliphate must from Rashad’s line, but politics being what they are this traditionally means that the various families who previously held their own sultanates in what is now the Caliphate now advance themselves politically by tying themselves to or advising the line of the Caliphs, or by being so economically powerful that although the Caliph technically is supposed to be able to say “jump this high,” realistically he never will. Dalakhra, whom you’ve only met recently, comes from the most powerful of the group of families calling themselves the Realists, who interpret Rashani scripture to consider slavery (among many other sinful acts) legal. The Realists used to control the Caliph quite efficiently, but this changed about fifty years ago.

Shorter version: It’s a Caliphate because it’s a state deriving its ruling authority through religious power. At least technically, anyway.

xourherox: Would you consider sharing your script for book one of Al’Rashad?

Maybe a bit further down the line, but honestly, you’re not going to get blown away by script pages a lot of the time, not least because Davinder and I work closely beforehand to establish visuals in advance of me writing about them, so panel descriptions end up being things like “and now we see TANQUIR’S SHIP, you know, like we talked about.”

Also, I generally like to give my artists wide berth when it comes to interpretation of what I write. Comics, they is a partnership, you know? I don’t do those giant monologues in the script like Alan Moore does.

googum: You may have already been asked or answered this, but do you work full script for Al-Rashad, or Marvel method (plot then art then script)?

Mostly full script, but I have altered the script a couple of times when I felt Davinder’s art demanded some slightly different dialogue.

I’ve been saying for a while now (ever since “Toy Story 2”, if memory serves me right) that we are living in the kind of golden age of animation that we thought had long since gone by. Pixar’s animated films, with their emphasis on story, their intricate visual brilliance, and their sheer magic, are the kind of things that people will remember as classics in a century’s time. Basically, they’ll think of Pixar today the way we think of Disney in the 1930s and 40s.

But since this is the Internet, it’s not enough to make a sweeping declarative statement: We need to turn it into a pointless, absurd comparison! (Woo, Internet!) So let’s go ahead and pit the Disney films of their classic era against the Pixar films of today, and see who comes up top.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves vs. Toy Story: On the one hand, Toy Story is a more densely layered, intricate story with more sophisticated narrative techniques. On the other hand, Snow White is sweeter, as the rivalry between Buzz and Woody is almost too intense at times to be “enjoyable”. And Disney, even in his first animated feature (actually, the first animated feature) already had a compelling grasp of imagery that made for some of cinema’s most iconic sequences. I think that I’m going to give Disney the edge here, even though Toy Story would probably beat most other entries.

Pinocchio vs. A Bug’s Life: Not even a contest in my mind. When it comes to orthoptera, Kevin Spacey’s mesmerizing Hopper easily beats out whiny, preachy, mealy-mouthed Jiminy. As to the rest of the movie, while Pinocchio does have some of the all-time champion scare-the-shit-out-of-little-kids sequences (Monstro the Whale, the kids turning into donkeys) it’s hard to actually root for the obnoxious little wooden dummy. The characters of A Bug’s Life are far more sympathetic and entertaining, and the plot holds together better than the “string of incidences” plot of Pinocchio. Pixar for the win here.

Fantasia vs. Toy Story 2: This is actually a very tough one for me. Both of these are among my favorite animated features (I’m watching Toy Story 2 as I type this) but one of them has to be better. Toy Story 2 earns major points for being a sequel with something to actually say rather than simply rehashing the incidents of the first film, but Fantasia was something never tried before (or, with the exception of Fantasia 2000, since.) It’s a dazzling feature, perhaps one of the purest expressions of art ever attempted by a commercial studio, and I have to love it a little bit more than Toy Story 2 for that. Plus, “Night on Bald Mountain”. Disney wins.

Dumbo vs. Monsters, Inc: Admittedly, Monsters, Inc isn’t one of the strongest Pixar films. Billy Crystal grates as much in animation as he does in live-action, and the sheer irritation factor of his character single-handedly knocks a great film down a notch or two. On the other hand, the crows in Dumbo? Much, much, much more than a notch. I realize that it was a different era, but still…wow. Pixar hands-down.

Bambi vs. Finding Nemo: Eerie parallels here, as both films are about single-parenting in the unforgiving world of nature. Disney’s expertly hand-animated forest is done as well in its own way as Pixar’s CGI coral reef, but I’ll give Finding Nemo the nod for its more involved story and the fact that its ending has not traumatized generations of small children. Those of you who believe that traumatizing small children is, in fact, part of what children’s films are for might choose the other way, but I’m picking Pixar here.

Cinderella vs. The Incredibles: I might be inviting controversy here by skipping films like Saludos Amigos and Melody Time, but I think that this should remain feature vs. feature, and so the Disney anthology films get a miss in favor of the full-length stories. Not like it matters, because this is The Incredibles we’re talking about, and pretty much any Disney movie is going to be steamrollered by it. I remain a comics fan, this remains one of the best super-hero films ever, and compared to it, even a sweet little Disney princess gets booted to the back of the line. No glass slipper for you, Cindy; it’s Pixar for the win here.

Alice In Wonderland vs. Cars: I know that Cars has its fans, but I actually feel like this is comparing two of the weaker entries in their respective canons. Disney’s Alice in Wonderland has the thankless task of adapting a story with almost no narrative drive whatsoever, while Cars is about car racing, a sport so boring that fatal accidents are actually welcomed as a brief respite from the monotony. Under the circumstances, I will choose the blessedly Larry the Cable Guy-free Alice, and give Disney the win on this one.

Peter Pan vs. Ratatouille: It’s interesting, but Ratatouille doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact the way that some other Pixar/Brad Bird films have; sandwiched between the immensely popular Cars and the ground-breaking WALL-E, it’s become sort of a forgotten Pixar film. And sad to say, it continues to get short shrift here, because Peter Pan is one of Disney’s best adaptations, Captain Hook one of its best villains, and Tinkerbell one of its best-loved characters. Which means that in this case, Disney wins. Poor little rat.

Lady and the Tramp vs. WALL-E: Did I say earlier that I gave Fantasia bonus points for trying something new, different, and artistic? Then I have to give WALL-E bonus points, too; not many films have the guts to open up with no human characters, no voices, and still be one of the most heart-warming and affecting character studies in years. Compared to the fantastic animation, the powerful story, and the overall quality of what could be Pixar’s best film, Lady and the Tramp is bound to come up short. Pixar by a country mile, and that’s nothing against Lady and the Tramp.

Sleeping Beauty vs. Up: On the one hand, I do have to give Sleeping Beauty points for what some consider to be the best villain in Disney’s canon, Maleficent. She’s got style, she’s got panache, and she even swears in a kid’s movie. But it also has a dull, passive heroine, a bland Prince Charming, and I’ve never been a fan of the animation style in this one. So it loses to Up on style points. Fair? Perhaps not, but I’m giving this one to Pixar.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians vs. Toy Story 3: Sorry to say, but at this point the rot was beginning to set in at Disney. The budgets were getting lower, the animation was taking short-cuts…even the films were getting shorter (One Hundred and One Dalmatians clocks in at just 79 minutes.) Pixar, on the other hand, seems to be getting stronger with every release; they’re finding more confidence, they’re learning how to do more with computer animation as processing power gets cheaper and graphics rendering becomes more powerful, and they’re established as the top dog at Disney and not worried about interference with their proven system of generating classics. This is where the picks start getting easier, and I suspect it’ll be a while before Pixar loses another head-to-head.

The final tally: By a final score of 7-4, Pixar wins! (I’m sure John Lasseter will covet this far more than the Oscars.)

I’m getting a bit bored just posting images during my study hiatus, so: ask me anything. About work, not-work, Al’Rashad, my other stuff, the blog, what I had for breakfast yesterday, whatever. Answers will be next week’s posts.

(Well, not anything – I’m not going to give legal advice, for example. But most things.)