WWC Scratch

Sadly, Beemsville is a late scratch from Wizard World Chicago this year.  It’s the first time I’ve missed the con in five years.  This year was going to be purely consumer and spectator mode anyway as I have no projects and no real plans in the comics realm.  Crap.  Now I’m depressed.

Anyway, the combination of a family commitment, expenses with the house move, and some pending travel plans all combined to make it a no- go.  I’ll still be reading reports from the Con to see how it unfolds.  It’s only two weeks after San Diego and things are tight all over; hopefully WWC isn’t too diminished.   So I don’t get to go to WWC, one of my favorite weekends of the year, yet ironically it looks like I’ll be attending the annual Farm Progress Show next month.  Life is strange sometimes.

Maybe next year we can take the kids.  For now how about a link to last year’s photos.  Maybe that will cheer me up…

SD Comic-Con Stuff

No, we don’t have any live reports from the annual Comic-Con International in San Diego, the yearly media event wherein Hollywood courts Geek Nation like a sexy babe, rappers and rockstars release comic book tie-ins in hopes of resurrecting flagging careers or boosting CD sales, and Marvel and DC try to drum up excitement for their latest mega-crossover event.  This Con is huge, and by all accounts as well attended as ever, despite the current economic situation.  And thanks to the always entertaining G4 Network, reporting daily from the Con, you don’t have to be there to get a taste.

Now true Comic Book fans will tell you that there’s not enough about actual comics at the Con, which has arisen as a direct consequence of the success movies and TV shows driven by comics.  A fitting bit of irony there.  But just try googling Comic-Con for news and see how much of it is actually about, you know, comics.  Beemsville will wait to listen to several of the excellent comics podcasts to try to get the real scoop, but as always a few of the hundreds of press releases and announcements caught my interest.

• Digital Comics application for the iPhone
• Boom! Studios has a number of media tie-ins, including the Incredibles and the Muppet Show, joining the ranks of small publishers trying to sustain themselves in this fashion.
• X-Men Noir has been successful enough to warrant a sequel, and the idea sounds like something to check out with a title I haven’t read much of lately.

We hope to be at the Chicago Con in a couple of weeks, as per usual, and it will be interesting to see if everyone spent all their marketing budget on San Diego.  But for now, here’s an excellent Inspector Gadget video in the spirit of the Con, courtesy of G4.

Review: X-Men Origins – Wolverine

X-Men Origins – Wolverine, written by David Benioff and Skip Woods, directed by Gavin Hood, starring Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Danny Huston.  Wolverine will either satisfy your summer movie cravings or disappoint your narrative sensibilities.  It all depends on your perspective and expectations.

On one hand, if you’re going to have a big budget-fx driven action movie, you might as well stock it with mutants and comic book characters.  It’s a proven formula for success, and if the early returns are any indication, Marvel has another winner.  On the other hand, Wolverine the character has a singular place in the realm of comics, and his origin is ripe for some creative extrapolation.

Original Mini-Series (1982)

I always felt Jim Shooter, Chris Claremont and the guys at Marvel got it right by leaving Logan’s origin story the hell alone in the 80’s and 90’s.  It was a big reason why Wolvie became so popular.  Unlike every other Marvel character, you didn’t really know that much about him; he had that mysterious and grimly alluded to past before he showed up as an X-Man and we liked it that ways.  He was the anti-Spidey, a dude with a mean and vicious streak who sometimes killed the bad guys.  This was new ground at the time (unlike today, where half your comic book ‘heroes’ have no bones about taking scalps).  But Professor X trusted Wolvie, and he always proved himself a loyal and selfless teammate.

As the years went by, we saw more glimpses into Wolvie’s past.  The original mini-series spoke of a lengthy stay in Japan, and there was the Weapon X storyline that overlapped with Alpha Flight in Canada.  You had the whole ‘Patch’ persona on the island of Madripoor, and then Sabretooth showed up.  Along the way, some older character would seem to know Logan from days gone by.  It was pretty cool.

Zac’s New Art-blog

Fellow Kung-Fu Master and Beemsville ally, Zac A. has begun a new blog chronicling his art.  Click here for the goodness evilness.

For those who don’t know, Zac is a professional freelancer, mostly doing colors for comic books.  He’s done some work for the big boys as well as some  independent books.  The blog has some recent samples of his evil powers.  Zac will flat school your ass in Illustrator.  He also does his own pencils, a lot of cool sketches, and is working on a concept for a web comic.  

One aspect of Zac’s work I’ve always enjoyed is his warped sense of humor, which often comes out in his sketches and other artwork.  So check him out.

Now if I could only get him to do a custom header for Beemsville…

Checking in with The Goon

A couple of years ago, I started reading Eric Powell’s The Goon, a noirish old timey zombie send-up featuring the hamfisted title character, his sidekick Frankie (“knife to the eye”), the Nameless Zombie Priest, and a memorable supporting cast of misfits.  I loved it.

Powell is one of those writer/artists with a firm grip of technique and  knowledge of comic book history.  You can see the influence of giants like Will Eisner and Jack Kirby without much effort.  You can also see the influence of more recent pros like Mike Mignola, Mike Oeming, and yes, Garth Ennis in his work.  The Goon has been with Dark Horse for several years now, usually published 4 to 5 times a year.  The book often includes smaller side side stories as well as a main feature that may or may not have anything to do with a longer narrative thread.  Following this recipe, Powell managed to build a devoted fan base and garner some awards (several Eisners included) over the past years.

Movie Review: Watchmen

Directed by Zach Snyder, starring Malin Ackerman, Billy Crudup, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and Patrick Wilson. The great Alan Moore, comics scribe emeritus and the writer of Watchmen has famously sworn off all movies associated with his work. Word is this happened around the time of the release of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. No one can really blame him.

Maybe Moore should reconsider this stance for Snyder’s cinematic version. The movie is a loving and uncompromising attempt to replicate the look and narrative of the original graphic novel. And as anyone who’s ever read and appreciated the comic would attest, this is no mean feat. The movie painstakingly recreates nearly all of the memorable scenes and sequences from Dave Gibbons’ original artwork down to the panel level, and Snyder does not flinch from the bleak, the violent, the disturbing aspects of the text. It’s all here: from the Comedian’s misanthropic behavior, to Rorschach’s bloody origin, to Dr. Manhattan’s atomic blue penis. No compromise on the visuals; very little compromise on the narrative. Even Alan Moore might approve.

No Love for DK

Over 100,000 people lost their jobs last week, and here in Illinois we fired the Governor.  With the economy looking worse and political corruption appearing more pervasive, let’s move on to something really pressing…

Yes, the Oscar nominees were announced recently, and The Dark Knight took the big fat snub, surprising virtually no one in the Tinseltown scene.  There wasn’t much hope after DK received no love from the Golden Globes, but I was still holding out a sliver hope.  Sure, sure, Heath Ledger is figure-four leglock for Best Supporting Actor, and they got some nods for cinematography, editing, art direction, special effects, etc., but what about the screenplay?  What about Chris Nolan’s directing?

Movies: The Spirit

…written and directed by Frank Miller; starring Gabriel Macht, Samuel L. Jackson, and Eva Mendes.

The Spirit is a lot like that girl you never should’ve dated but did anyway: the one that was a little too crazy, a little too vapid, but too damned good to look at it to leave alone.  The movie kind of bounces around all over within the confines of an overly familiar boilerplate superhero script.  Here’s The Spirit (not Will Eisner’s version, let’s be clear), an amalgamation of Wolverine, Dick Tracy, and Batman playing the boyscout/rake in the dark bleak city.  Here are vintage 40s and 50s autos along with cellphones and super guns.  There’s crazy-ass Sam Jackson playing the villainous Octopus with over-the-type Jim Carrey-ish glee.  And there goes Eva Mendes as Sand Seraf, the Spirit’s old flame, in yet another ridiculously hot ensemble.  Story?  You want to complain about story?!?

On the Dark Knight

Wasn’t sure how to approach a review on The Dark Knight – the movie has received so much critical acclaim and made so much bank, it almost seems like piling on.  I wanted to be sure so I saw it again last week.  Didn’t want to seem too sensational or over-the-top, but…

The Dark Knight is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.  It’s that good.  It’s also that seriously in my wheelhouse.

Of course you have to take into account personal tastes and biases of the writer, which may be a little different from your own.  But from the Beemsville perspective you have an all-time great superhero and fictional character, you have the villain that most embodies the protagonist-shadow relationship, you have total commitment to the character and source material with no sidebars for yuks or ironic self-abasement.  You have intense film-making with vision.  You have meditation on good vs. evil and what defines a hero.  Finally, a movie that lives up the best the comics can offer us — and with The Dark Knight that means Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One, and Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke.  

Hellboy II: Weird Romance

Guillermo Del Toro and Mike Mignola’s Hellboy II: The Golden Army is all about mythic vision, epic weird, and yes, romance.  It’s sort of like a creature-feature love song.   Great fun, interesting storyline, and a feast for your oculars.  But one thing it isn’t is a superhero movie.

The film brings us another chapter in the story of Hellboy, “the son of the fallen one” rescued from an interdimensional rift by American soldiers at the close of World War II.  Hellboy grows up to become a field agent for the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense (BPRD) — which is sort of a magic-based Men In Black outfit.  Hellboy, based on the Dark Horse Comics, has always been about mystic monster bashing with a pulp and silver age comics feel.  In The Golden Army, Del Toro and Mignola introduce the ancient powers of faerie and mythology into the mix.  These ancient races have faded into the shadows with the growth of human power.  But they still have their doomsday device, an unstoppable magic-powered army of automatons, locked somewhere in the earth.  When the renegade prince decides its time to raise this army and give humanity the heave-ho, it’s up to Hellboy and Co. to stop him.