I found this encounter a pleasant contrast to the one triggered by my reading another library paperback at a job in Orange County (it was a volume of Stormwatch). In this case, he started in on the usual tiresome inquiries as to how much his comics are worth. When he explained that they were largely published in the 1990s, I explained that they were in fact likely worth nothing, but the man decided to act as if I’d said nothing and and continued speculating about his potential windfall. To paraphrase: “gee, how much is my copy of the eight-million-selling X-Men #1 (1991) worth? no really, it can’t be worthless, that’s impossible!”

Perhaps, however, it’s unfair to blame that guy too much when most of the shops out there, including the closest one to my house, are run by people who should know better, but seem to be in as much denial. Riverside, California once had a shop downtown in which issues of Hourman or Starman were priced at $4 each, even though I had picked up most of each series at conventions and Sacramento shops for $0.25 an issue! Truthfully, though, that Wicker Park shop is rare in selling most of their 80s-00s back issue catalog at $1. The reason I took the bus out there was because they actually advertise this fact on their website, although they have recently removed some text that had set themselves up in direct opposition to those other stores, working off of some kind of faith-based pricing.

I suppose the point of all this is that the depreciation in comic book value is usually posited as some kind of unfortunate event, when in fact, it should be seen as a great opportunity, not just for the hardcore fan who has a few gaps in his or her collection (having started the habit in 2003 as an adult, my gaps are larger than most), but also for the lapsed fans or the never-were fans who has a whole world of discount back issues to dip into. Or at least, that’s the way it should be.

Johns is usually derided, not entirely unfairly, as an unsophisticated writer mostly concerned with simplistic heroics (and increasingly nasty villainy). Reading this hardcover, however, I was struck by the degree to which he engages in metacommentary. This is not really new; superhero comics writers have used their titles to score points and make arguments with peers or readers since the 1980s at least, but Johns lets meta dominate the entire series in a way few “normal” writers (i.e., people not named Grant Morrison) are comfortable with.

In this case, the “subtext which is rapidly becoming text” (that’s a Buffy paraphrase if you were wondering) is the question of whether Barry really needed to come back, a question on the lips of many, including those who had clamored for Hal’s return for ten years. Barry, as any fanboy will tell you, sacrificed himself heroically (while Hal went out quite ignominiously,) and gave way to his former sidekick Wally West, who headlined his own Flash title for over 200 issues… 63 of which were written by Johns himself.

Here’s the thing; despite his pitch in the back of the book, I don’t think Johns is fully convinced that Barry really needed to return. Spoilers follow…

As I’ve said before, Barry spends a lot of time questioning his reasons for being here. We later learn that he was being corrupted by some malevolent force (strangely and unnecessarily similar to the plot device Johns used to absolve Hal of his past crimes in the other Rebirth), and of course his arc leads him to triumphantly take his place as the most important and even original Flash (yes, he manages to somehow predate the one who debuted in the 40s, don’t ask), and revel in his return.

Maybe it’s just my bias, but I found Barry’s earlier comments more convincing, as if Johns had more conviction behind them. Considering everything we know about Johns, it’s more likely that, much as a freshman composition student might do, he brought up all the opposing side’s arguments only to find himself incapable of refuting them.

The other metatextual element is the fascinating use of the retcon (it stands for retroactive continuity) in this book. It’s common enough for heroes to have new details retconned into their personal history in order to fit the whims of contemporary writers and readers, and such a thing happens here, as Barry now lost his mom to a grisly murder, and lost his father (falsely accused) to prison. Yes, Barry is now Bruce Wayne, in fact you could argue that he had it worse! If he was raised this way instead of by two happy, alive, and free parents, he can no longer be the same man he once was… which is, more than anything, the most significant admission by Johns: “okay fine, yes this guy is boring, there’s no hook to his character, so look, here’s another guy that we’re just gonna call Barry Allen.”

What amuses me about this change, however, is that rather than simply insert it in and blame on it so-called cosmic crises (the usual practice at DC), Johns actually makes it part of the story, as we learn eventually that Barry’s mother was the victim of a time traveling villain, the (supposedly) rare individual who can actually change the past rather than merely create an alternate timeline (or whatever). I consider this to be the only real innovation in this series, a realization on Johns part that retcons need more motivation behind them. More than anyone, he seems to have learned from the unending mockery earned by the Superboy-Prime universe punch (don’t ask, really).

Strangely, I did enjoy this book while I was reading it, mostly because of the callbacks and references to the Wally West Flash series, which as far as I can see outnumber any references to the actual Barry Allen series. But then, that’s the amusing thing about Johns’ attempts to purify the past; he always spends more time referencing the “bad” stories of the 90s than the “good” stories he’s supposedly restoring. There are many reasons for this, one of course being that they didn’t exist, at least not in the way he seems to remember them.

It is a dark time for comics lovers. Those who like any kind of comics for themselves and not just for their adaptations in other media are more disgruntled than ever by Comic Con (I actually stopped reading comics for almost two years after my one and only visit). And a war is being fought between the pretentious elitists indie-lovers and the drooling spandex-loving decrepit sex-fearing babymen. One side feels (when they’re being nice) that it’s unreasonable and unproductive for such a large percentage of comics to be about superheroes (true), and even more unfair for so many dedicated comics stores to all but ignore anything not about superheroes (doubly so). The other side mostly wants to be left alone, since they are fairly content with things as they are and will continue to ignore all the other comics.

To begin with, much of what I talk about will actually be about superheroes, but in my view, at least, the solution to this is not to stop reading superhero comics, but to read more of other types of comics! You know, expand rather than contract. I will rarely ever suggest what can be done to save the industry, because I really have no expertise in that. I’m a grad school dropout and as such I am good at literary analysis (comics are sorta like literature after all) and at arguing.

In terms of comics arguments, what I would really like to do is break down the tendency to resort so quickly to ad hominem attacks on the people who had the termerity to like, say, New Avengers or The Flash: Rebirth. Those may indeed suck, but I reject the premise that a person sucks for liking something that sucks. Don’t get me wrong, fanboys definitely have their… foibles, and these will be attacked in turn (coming soon, why are fanboys racist? how much more racist are they than non-fanboys? and so on). But let’s try not to conflate things too much, if possible.

Next up, well it’s the aforementioned The Flash: Rebirth.

This entire post is very SPOILER heavy, so I don’t recommend you click on the link below unless you already know what happens in Gran Torino, or if you don’t mind finding out.

Sue (Ahney Her) is the first of the family to actively befriend Walt, after he rescues her from some black gangsters when her white psuedo-date lets her down (yeah, it’s a loaded scene, no question about that). He shares several scenes with her, until the film suddenly shifts when her brother Thao (Bee Vang) is sent by his fatherless family to do manual labor in order to atone for his attempted robbery of Walt’s titular vehicle.

Vang is definitely less charismatic than Her, partly by design, but also less stilted, and in any case, the somewhat familiar “mentorship in masculinity” plot (variations on exhortations to “be a man” and not “a pussy”) sweeps Sue aside entirely. Walt’s ideas about masculinity are not completely endorsed by the film. His first attempt to drive off the gangsters who pushed Thao towards crime (driven entirely by self interest) succeeds, but his later attempt, when he viscously beats an obese gangster in a bid to convince the gang to stop harassing Thao, by this point gainfully employed, backfires horrifically when the gang carries out a drive-by on his home (no serious casualties), and rapes Sue off-screen (some or all of them are her cousins).

Walt immediately recognizes his tremendous error, and although he never admits it to the family, he ultimately atones for it in an overblown, yet apparently successfully, gesture of sacrifice. But the inclusion of rape still rankles for two reasons. One is that, early on, the guests at one of the Hmong family’s frequent gatherings complains that Thao is being feminized by his pushy mother and sister.

Sue later, in referring to her deceased father, repudiates Hmong masculinity and the scenes with the gangsters fulfill the same role, while holding up Walt’s American masculinity as comparatively enlightened (much to his confusion, as he of course doesn’t view himself in this way at all). Thao is shown to clearly need a savior (Walt) from overbearing matriarchal rule, and as he is schooled in the ways of normative American masculinity, the plot’s punishment of Sue can easily be read as a further repudiation of her earlier power over Thao (certainly, this couldn’t have been intentional on the part of the filmmakers)

The second problem is that Sue’s rape is shown to be important only insofar as it affects the male leads, Walt and Thao. We never hear her reaction to it, in fact we never hear explicit verbal confirmation that it occurred until Walt’s final showdown with the gangsters. Rape is just a motivation for the two men to avenge her honor, or at least want to (Walt resorts to trickery to keep Thao out of the fray). Considering that Sue was, earlier, a major voice in the film, rape seems to be the final even that eradicates any sense of her self-presentation, as she barely speaks in the last part of the film. To make matters worse, Eastwood ends the film with a scene of Thao smiling while driving the Gran Torino, Sue nowhere in sight. The audience is supposed to be content with this as a resolution, something sufficient to make us forget about Sue’s unimaginable trauma.

Gran Torino

Gran Torino is a mixed bag in every possible way. It’s certainly admirable to give some visibility (to the tune of a $100 million plus gross!) to the little-known Hmong people, a semi-nomadic minority group from Southeast Asia who became refugees in certain pockets of the US, such as Minnesota and Michigan (the latter portrayed here) and Sacramento (where worked alongside several Hmong people) because they helped us in the Vietnam War (in Cambodia mostly).

The trouble is, the two main Hmong actors, both amateurs, are pretty terrible, although they certainly have their charm. Perhaps this was unavoidable, but an IMDB commenter (I know, you can find insight anywhere) did point out that Clint Eastwood’s one-take ethos (the featurette on the disc includes many testaments to how good Eastwood is at coming in under budget) probably didn’t do these teenaged neophytes any favors. Perhaps Eastwood was content knowing that his screen presence would be effective, as always (the snarling in particular is completely over-the-top and yet completely justified and, well, awesome), leaving the Hmong kids to fend for themselves.

Much has been made of how race is portrayed in this picture. Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, even taught me a few new ethnic slurs (while not in the habit of using them, I previously believed that I was familiar with all or most of them), and while his change-of-heart is inevitable, it is not, at any point, accompanied by an alteration in his dialog. Perhaps what’s most interesting are the toothless ethnic insults he casuaully lobs at his two white friends (one Italian, the other Irish), who respond in kind, although they seem to be playing along more than anything.

It’s clear that Asians (generally lumped together under one slur or another) are something else altogether for Walt and even his friends (one scene, in which the threat of violence is involved, makes this division explicit), but the gradual revelation of how Walt has always engaged with his fellow “white ethnics” makes you realize that his gradual rapprochement with his Hmong neighbors is actually part of a pattern in his life. Walt is a Korean War veteran, and his history of violent conflict with Koreans (consistently equated with Hmong) does present something of a stumbling block to good relations with the Hmong, but of course, the plot allows him a way around that by placing him in conflict with the Hmong gangsters.

Beyond this point, my post includes spoilers. Click below if you’ve seen it, or if you don’t care about being spoiled.

My biggest problem with this film doesn’t really apply to race. While some on IMDB have interpreted this as a thumb in the eye of PC-happy liberals, I am actually impressed that Eastwood refrained from bashing people who take a less, shall we say, overtly belligerent approach to the “Other.” The priest might seem to be the well-meaning liberal, but he turns out to be surprisingly nuanced and sympathetic, despite Walt’s initial hostility. Walt’s family is scum (of course that’s partly his fault, something he eventually acknowledges), and we’re led to believe they don’t engage in the kind of verbal bigotry that Walt is so fond of, but neither are they positioned as “liberals” or “tolerant,” something particularly apparent in their glares at the Hmong teens during the funeral at the end.

No, my biggest problem is one relating to gender, and that will wait until the next post

I’m also going to spoil both films, as I don’t think the plot is really the point. If for some reason you think you might go check these out, please avoid, good sir or madam.

The Masque of the Red Death
Roger Corman, UK, 1964
Viewed on DVD, Aug. 4

Judging by, well, Wikipedia, this flick takes a to-the-point Edgar Allan Poe setpiece allegory about the indifferent rich getting their just deserts at the hands of a personified plague, and drags it out to feature-length with an aimless “seduction” plotline (with an even more marginal and inexplicable subplot about the arguably excessive revenge of a little person, appropriated from yet another Poe story).

The seduction aspect ultimately takes over the film, turning the source material into something of a morbus ex machina rather than the central thrust of the piece. Prince Prospero (a hammy yet engaging Vincent Price), you see, is an honest-to-the-devil Satanist, while his prey, Francesca (a fetching yet grating Jane Asher) is a sincere-if- naive Christian; predictable conflict ensues. The devil worship seems to have been introduced mostly because that’s the kind of thing a horror film’s villain should be into, and it’s hard to tell if Satanism is supposed to be a metaphor for the depravity of the nobility (doubtful, since none of Prospero’s guests are “believers”) or if words like “metaphor” just shouldn’t be used when talking about this film.

Despite the overblown subject matter, the content itself is only really shocking or excessive on one or two occasions, both of them involving Prospero’s scorned mistress, who pitifully tries to plunge herself deeper into Satanism in order to get Prospero to pay attention to her again (mercifully, we are spared the unfortunate spectacle of cat-fighting between her and the heroine, despite some early hints).

The experience is far from painful, but when it comes down to it, you’d only watch this if you were a connoisseur of Roger Corman shlock (don’t laugh; a lecturer at UCR teaches an entire course on Corman!).

The Mephisto Waltz
Paul Wendkos, USA, 1971
Viewed on DVD, Aug. 20

And yet, Corman’s film starts to seem fun and exciting in comparison to this lackadaisical, modern-day (for the time) “suspense” film. It strikes me that suspense can go pretty far as an excuse to drag things out, as the premise of the film, namely possession, doesn’t  even come to the surface until about a half-hour has passed! What’s interesting is that, just as I was asking “is it over?” on a regular basis, they managed to throw in a few twists that, while not groundbreaking, were at least exponentially cleverer than the incessant build-up we’d seen for most of the movie. The truth is that the filmmakers were not able to create suspense, and although the devil seems to be involved, they didn’t have an actor like Price capable of selling it with a straight face, so it’s just a bit boring (they do soft-pedal the subject to some extent, but they still want to make a show of how twisted the main villain and his daughter are). Since they couldn’t present an interesting villain or maintain effective suspense, they might as well have focused the film around the set of reversals that occur near the end. As it is, they haven’t focused on much of anything! Let’s just say that if you are feeling bored or curious, you will feel more bored and less curious after watching this! I never would have finished it if I wasn’t being paid.

Well, maybe it just sucked because it wasn’t really meant to be a B-movie, but ended up as one anyway (both care under the “Midnite Movies” series of DVDs, two films per release). At least Corman knew what he was making, and deployed the campiness accordingly.

I sympathized. I refuse to use the Internet on my phone, no matter how many preset shortcut keys try to drive me towards it (I repogrammed as many shortcuts as possible, of course), and as such I usually don’t incur what’s referred to as “data” charges. My problem is that I pay extra for text messages while using only a fraction of the minutes I pay for, and of course I have the cheapest voice plan possible (for my provider).

The next snippet I heard, driving back to my house, was from soulless lobbyist hack John Walls, vice president of public affairs for CTIA, the International Association for Wireless Telecommunications Industry. His attitude about the hearings could be summed up as “bring it on,” as he seemed to think Congress didn’t have it in them to reign his people in. Undaunted, Morrison asked him if the telecom people would “welcome changes in the billing practices to make them clearer.” This was his response:

We think it’s, it’s appropriate that you itemize the billing… so they understand exactly who is charging them what. Right now, the average consumer is paying a little more than 15% of their monthly bill in taxes and fees, and those aren’t imposed, or charged, by the cell phone industry, they’re done by local governments, and state governments, and as well for universal service support, among other taxes and fees. So we think it’s important that people understand there’s a cost of their service, but there’s also all these other taxes and fees that are lumped on  there, and if they really wanna do something about that, they should talk to these passengers, they should let them know that enough is enough.

Oh my gosh! Fifteen percent?! Well folks, I’m going to make your day by giving you a peek into my cell phone bill, so we can try to see how on the nose this is.

Verizon Wireless Surcharges and Other Charges & Credits Verizon Wireless Surcharges – Includes charges to recover or help defray costs of taxes and of governmental charges and fees imposed on us by the government. Other Charges and Credits – includes charges for products and services, and credits owing.

$2.09

Taxes, Governmental Surcharges & Fees Includes sales, excise and other taxes and governmental surcharges and fees that we are required by law to bill customers.

$1.03

Taxes, Governmental Surcharges & Fees Includes sales, excise and other taxes and governmental surcharges and fees that we are required by law to bill customers.

$1.03

Um, wow. Yeah, that $0.03 charge is really breaking my back. Something must be done! In fact, I did the calculations and my taxes and fees take up a whopping 5% of my bill. Hell, that’s lower than our sales tax!

I’ve had a theory for a long time, although I’m sure it’s not an original one, considering various forms of what this scumbag lobbyist called “itemizing.” It’s pretty simple, actually. If you are in the United Kingdom, for instance, and decide to buy a ₤2.50 sandwich, you will pay exactly ₤2.50 when you get to the register. If, however, you are in the United States, say Riverside, California, and decide to buy a $5 sandwich, you will end up having to dig for change to pay $5.43.

As you may well be aware, the VAT (Value Added Tax) that Brits pay puts almost any American jurisdiction’s tax rate to shame, yet it’s Americans who are induced by the price-displaying practices of their country, to curse the government for that “extra” $0.43.

Some people think this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but when you hear an actual lobbyist offer this as a solution to high cell phone bills, you have to realize that singling out the taxes (however meager) is in fact their strategy not only for distracting you from how much they’re overcharging you, but for incessantly driving people to the notion that no taxes are justified. I mean, who needs to pay for roads and junk, anyway? Society? Eh.

The fact that the dude had to lie about it (sure maybe somewhere you pay 15%, but Southern California is after all one of the higher-taxed jurisdictions, as far as I know, and certainly he was talking to us) just shows that he is doing his job the only way it can be done.

At the beginning, I was impressed by how readable Tomine was able to make a book filled mostly with unlikable characters (okay, Alice Kim, the spunky Korean American lesbian, is a hoot despite being a womanizer and a cad). By the end, I was thinking, damn, that’s bleak. I guess I expected some kind of twist ending, but that would have been too easy.

Tomine, who is Japanese American himself, initially focuses on his relationship around all-around bitter dude Ben Tanaka and his long-suffering, more idealistic (or is she?) girlfriend, Miko Hayashi. They argue about a lot of things, in particular whether he really wouldn’t rather be a white girl (you can guess where this goes).

I’ve read that Tomine, who seems pretty focused on the hipster scene, never actually addressed race in his previous work, which is funny because I probably wouldn’t have picked up (even at the library, as I did here) his previous work if I saw it. I do think that what Tomine does with race is here is interesting, particularly because, by the end of the book, you get the feeling that he considers everybody to be wrong, even though I think he portrays almost every argument and viewpoint with an interesting kind of sympathy.

I think the greatest flaw of this “graphic novel” is that near the end, Tomine does have one of his characters spell out some things that were already, one imagines, pretty obvious. Of course, the effect is devestating, so maybe it works, but it does seem a little on-the-nose.

As I said, Tomine ultimately doesn’t provide us with any answers, which is definitely an unsettling experience, moreso than I would have expected, if only because the characters really deserve everything they get (no contrivances here). I think his work is worth taking a look at, as long as you’re not already feeling depressed!

Ponyo

I am an insufferable purist who always prefers to see films in the original language (the last foreign film I watched in English was another Miyazaki film, Spirited Away, in its 2002 US theatrical release), but this time I decided that it was worth the trade-off to see it in the big screen.

After watching it, I learned that Noah Cyrus younger sister of Disney Channel star Miley “Hannah Montana” Cyrus (yes, it’s not enough to cast celebrities, now they’re casting the relatives of celebrities), provides the voice the little girl in the English version, but by this point, Cyrus’ inept attempts at voice acting (lots of shouting) almost ruined what was otherwise a pleasant experience). Unless you have a small child and as such have to watch it in English regardless, I’d wait for the DVD or the Blu-ray so that you can listen to what is undoubtedly a superior Japanese vocal track (I say this without having heard it, of course!).

As for the film itself, I feel that I can only explain it by comparing it to his earlier work. In the 1988 classic My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki told an amazingly powerful, minimalist story with a couple of very young children and a largely-mundane, domestic setting, with minimal magic. In the aforementioned Spirited Away, he plunged an equally young child into an elaborate, often-bizarre (at least if you’re not familiar with Japanese mythology) fantasy world.

Ponyo splits the difference between these two approaches. Like Totoro, the film minimizes the degree to which conflict drives the plot. Like many of Miyazaki’s films, there is no straightforward villain. Both of these facts are still somewhat remarkable for a feature film of any cultural tradition, but despite some refreshing characterizations (particularly Lisa, the main character’s mother), Miyazaki struggles to hold the viewer’s attention here, something that was rarely a problem for him in the past.

Certainly, it’s still worth a look on home video, as the visual inventiveness is considerable (and, as in Spirited Away, downright-unnerving at times). However, the core of the film is a bit lacking. Ponyo flirts with the ecological theme of Princess Mononoke and the family crisis theme of Totoro, but seems to shy away from pursuing any theme very closely, in notable contrast to those earlier films. Like any greatest hits album, this effort seems to lurch between different periods and ideas without really achieving the coherence or success of Miyazaki’s greatest moments in their original context.

Instead, if you’re interested in a decent Wonder Woman feature, you’ll have to satisfy yourself with this direct-to-video, 75 minute-long release. If you’re at all familiar with the celebrated Justice League TV series produced by Bruce Timm, you might be forgiven for thinking, based on the similar character design and the participation of Timm, that this video ties in with that series in some way, but no, this is part of the “DC Comics Original Animated Movies” line, which retells classic DC storylines from the last 20 years or so, this time with PG-13 rated violence.

Of course, you’ll be forgiven if “direct to video animation” makes you want to throw your computer out of the window, especially if you’ve seen even the billboards for the Disney efforts in this category (Cinderella II?!). Fear not; this would be a solid if unremarkable effort as television, and with a little upgrade in script and some voice acting, it could probably fly on the big screen (honestly, most super-hero action would look better in feature-quality, hand-drawn animation).

Wonder Woman’s origin was last revised (this happens to the best of them, including Superman) in a 1987 relaunch of her title, and this film more or less follows that plot (albeit in our present day). The story swiftly moves from the mythology-lite origin of the Amazons, to the birth of Diana, to her introduction to first to a man and then to “man’s world,” and finally to a whole lot of fightin’, culminating in an apocalyptic battle in the National Mall (most of the monuments we see are older, but I found it especially remarkable that one duel took place in front of Maya Lin’s Vietnam War Memorial wall!).

Voice-acting is a mixed bag, mosty due to the usual C-list celebrity stuntcasting that this kind of animation is now subject to; Firefly’s Nathan Fillion inevitably shines as male lead Steve Trevor, but Kerri Russell, while adequate, is obviously inferior to her Justice League counterpart, Susan Eisenberg (an actual voice actress, mind you). Some of the briefer parts are much worse, honestly.

Despite this, I quite enjoyed it, although I suspect you have to be at least favorably disposed to comic books to respond to it in the same way. As a project that only fanboys (and fangirls!) will probably be aware of, it makes less concessions to “normal” audiences than the theatrical adaptations tend to, but the characters are still engaging. Finally, the film looks beautiful on Blu-ray; the backgrounds are carefully drawn with vivid color, and the characters are simple but crisp. Action scenes are dynamic and “dramatic” scenes are convincing. You might well be surprised to see a non-theatrical release look this good (if you’ve got hi-def, that is).

In the end, I can’t deny that it falls short of the best Justice League episodes, but if you’re looking for more animated DC, it’s definitely worth a Netflix rental (and if you’re just curious about a well-known but under-promoted superheroine, it’s certainly much more self-contained and tightly focused than the Justice League saga). And it definitely beats Batman: Gotham Knight, the only other release I’ve seen in this “line.”