SmartRemarks

No, I haven’t posted in several weeks, but no, I haven’t abandoned this blog, either. I’ve just been exceedingly preoccupied with other things. More on that at a later date. It’s starting to ease up, though, so for the moment I at least have the opportunity to offer a short new post.

About? Superman: Secret Origin #3, which shipped last week.

As I wrote at the time, I actually kind of enjoyed the first issue of this Geoff Johns-written revamp of Superman’s backstory; it didn’t really seem necessary, but at least it was being done reasonably well. I had some more reservations about the second issue (which elaborated on Lex Luthor’s origins in Smallville in a way that made it completely pointless to have transplanted him there in the first place, and which reinserted the Legion and a kinda-sorta Superboy career into Clark’s youth in a way designed to pluck all the most obvious emotional chords, but which still had some fun elements). The third issue, though? This one was an outright disappointment.

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Tags: continuity, DC Comics, Geoff Johns, super-heroes, Superman

In one sense, everyone knows Superman’s origin. At least the sound bite version: “strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men,” “rocketed to Earth as an infant from the dying planet Krypton,” and so forth.

The thing is, it’s really hard to build actual stories on a sound bite. And in another sense, hard as it may be to believe, Superman as seen in the comics hasn’t had a coherent origin for the better part of a decade now.

Superman’s backstory was fairly consistent for decades, from its first full telling in 1948’s Superman #53 to 1961’s classic Superman #146 all the way through 1986… notwithstanding lots of retroactive detail that got inserted over the years (especially under Mort Weisinger’s editorship in the ’60s) and a few minor tweaks to accommodate the Earth-1/Earth-2 split. The cumulative history was enough to justify a Superman Encyclopedia in the late ’70s compiling it all. Then all that was swept away in 1986, in the aftermath of the continuity-reshaping Crisis on Infinite Earths, with John Byrne’s Man of Steel mini-series and the simultaneous relaunch of all the Superman titles. It was controversial at the time—particularly for the way it retroactively erased Superboy—but it provided a clean slate on which to create new Superman stories in the new DCU continuity.

For a while.

Then in 2000, as part of a change of creative teams, Superman experienced a “time storm” that left his backstory in doubt. In 2003, DC published Mark Waid’s Superman: Birthright mini, which confused things even more, as it contradicted MoS in many respects but was never acknowledged as fully canonical either in-story or by the editorial PTB. In 2006, Infinite Crisis shook up the DCU again, though not as severely, and in the aftermath hints were dropped about a whole new set of changes to Superman’s backstory—nothing comprehensive, though, just various tweaks like another new look for Krypton here and a revised introduction for Mon-El there. The thing is, there was still a relatively unbroken sequence of stories tracing back to MoS in 1986, and characters and events from many of those stories were still being used or referenced regularly. Confusion reigned.

Now, after a seemingly interminable wait (for those of us who care about these things), comes Superman: Secret Origins—issue #1 was released this week—by writer Geoff Johns and artist Gary Frank. It’s the new Definitive Version. And it’s… not bad.

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Tags: continuity, Dan DiDio, DC Comics, Geoff Johns, Legion, Lex Luthor, super-heroes, Superman

Short version of my previous post:  I really didn’t like the movie. To me, it not only doesn’t work as Star Trek, it just doesn’t work as a movie, period. It has Big Stupid Summer Action Blockbuster in its very cinematic DNA. 

Lots of fans seem to be embracing it, though. Ironically, I could do worse to underscore my points than merely to quote a few bits from this review, which strains far too hard to be positive by way of excusing its myriad flaws:

“It’s clear there was something about Shatner’s Kirk, the very human but sometimes high-flown soldier-philosopher, which the filmmakers either couldn’t relate to or felt no longer spoke to modern audiences.”

“McCoy is in there pitching throughout the movie, often seeming to reprise every trademark line the Doctor ever uttered in the series—but he doesn’t get the kind of intimate, key scene with Kirk where he can truly function as the film’s conscience.”

“The one unfortunate artifact from the success of 1982’s The Wrath of Khan is the need to have a madman out for vengeance in every other Star Trek movie.”

“Nitpickers will have a field day with some of the movie’s science, tech and logic issues…. [and] may also wince at the amount of coincidence that drives the plot.”

Really, after making all those apologetic exceptions, what’s left? I’m particularly amused by the dismissal of “nitpickers”—as if plausible science were too much to ask for in a science fiction film, or coherent plot logic in any kind of film at all.

—

Meanwhile, while reflecting back on the movie and surfing the tide of opinions about it, yet another continuity snafu occurred to me:  has it struck anyone that Nero’s revenge plan actually guaranteed the destruction of Romulus in the new timeline just as in the old? It was the Vulcans who created the “red matter” that defused the supernova, but with Vulcan destroyed, there’s nobody left to do that. However, an altered timeline does nothing to change the internal processes of the star itself. It will presumably still explode on schedule, except this time with no way to stop it at all. 25 years cooling his heels, and yet it didn’t occur to Nero that he could save his race; instead, he doomed it.

And another, almost too obvious to mention (at least among Trekkers):  somehow Nero’s single initial time-change must have greatly increased the Federation’s contact with and knowledge of the Romulans. (In “Balance of Terror,” one of the best TOS episodes, Starfleet hadn’t encountered them in a century, had no idea what they looked like, and didn’t know they shared a heritage with Vulcans.)

And another, just a bit of sheer idiocy:  Spock’s claim that it’s “logical” for him to go aboard Nero’s ship because that “shared heritage” would help him decipher the Romulan computer systems. What, even though the cultures split two thousand years earlier? Really?

And another scientific whopper: the villain’s final defeat is achieved by opening yet another massive black hole, in Earth’s solar system. Possibly just a wee bit of danger in that?

There were so many of these little jarring moments in the film that it just wasn’t possible to keep them all at the top of my mind. But they keep bubbling to the surface again…

Tags: Alex Kurtzman, Bob Orci, continuity, J.J. Abrams, movies, Star Trek

Tonight was the opening of the new Star Trek movie. With IMAX tickets booked well in advance, my girlfriend and I and some friends went out for dinner and conversation, then joined an enthusiastic audience for the long-awaited and much-publicized film. It was a lovely spring evening, and overall we had a good time.

I just wish we’d seen a good movie.

I approached Star Trek (no number or subtitle) with cautious optimism. I’d had some cause for apprehension, as I’ve written about, based on the design aesthetic of the new Enterprise and the tone and style of the early trailers. A more recent TV spot tag-lined “Forget Everything You Know” wasn’t encouraging, either:  I’m a Trek fan from way back, and I’m showing up to see a new story set in the Kirk/Spock era because of everything I know, because of my affection for those characters and concepts, not despite it. 

But hey, most of those things could just be chalked up to marketing choices and visual sensibilities. They didn’t necessarily bode ill for the movie as a whole. Certainly the last few years of the Trek franchise under former producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga had been fairly disappointing, on both the small and the large screen, so some new creative blood was called for. Screenwriters Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman were reportedly sincere Trek fans:  the L.A. Times went  so far as to ask them about their favorite prose Trek novels, and they actually named four—and good ones, at that. So even if director J.J. Abrams admitted to not being a Trek fan, professing more of a Star Wars sensibility instead (anathema!), perhaps the story itself was in good hands. Leonard Nimoy’s willingness to be involved, reprising his role as Spock for the first time in 18 years, also seemed promising. Yes, as details leaked out it became clear that the film would not be a prequel to the original television series (as I would have preferred, all else being equal) but a reboot instead… but even so, it could be good on its own terms. It just needed to be handled thoughtfully and respectfully, with an understanding of the concepts and themes that had made Trek a success all along, and in numerous interviews the filmmakers assured us they were doing exactly that. So I was hoping for a movie I could like, maybe even love.

But Abrams and company didn’t hit the mark. What they delivered wound up meeting almost all of my fears and almost none of my hopes.

This was a big, stupid summer blockbuster, in the worst sense. It was a bad movie, plain and simple. 

[Ample SPOILERS below the fold.]

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Tags: Alex Kurtzman, Bob Orci, continuity, J.J. Abrams, movies, Star Trek

In my personal opinion, naturally. YMMV. If this were in any way authoritative, it would have been carved in stone by a finger of flame.

But I have been pondering, of late, the sort of things I like to read and watch, and I find myself mulling over some commonalities. There seem to be four recurring characteristics that mark a piece of fiction for me as enjoyable, memorable, and (if it’s in serial form) worthy of further attention. None of these by itself is either necessary or sufficient to make a story effective, but the presence of at least two of them is usually enough to pique my curiosity, and the presence of three or four almost guarantees that I’ll become a fan.

What are these oh-so-crucial characteristics?…

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Tags: Aaron Sorkin, books, continuity, genre, humor, John LeCarré, Joss Whedon, Lost, Mark Twain, movies, Star Trek, television, Watchmen

What.

The fuck.

Was that?

Seriously. Final Crisis #7 was every bit as crashingly disappointing as I feared it would be, and more so. Grant Morrison’s reach clearly far, far exceeded his grasp.

It certainly did exemplify a writing style he earlier described (warned? threatened?) as “channel-zapping,” though, and gods willing no one will ever be tempted to try such a style again. Morrison seems not to have considered just why the practice evolved in the first place—i.e.,  when people keep clicking that remote, it’s typically because they’re not interested in the random snippets they zap through along the way, but rather because they’re hoping (usually in vain) that something better will turn up that merits ongoing attention.

Further self-descriptions of his work? Well, there’s this…

I had the idea to develop an approach to comic narrative that would actually benefit from becoming entangled in internet fan speculation, gossip and research… I’ve always liked to leave resonant spaces, gaps and hints in stories, where readers can do their own work and find clues or insert their own wild and often brilliant theories. I’m often trying to create a kind of fuzzy quantum uncertainty or narrative equivalent of a Rorschach Blot Test effect, which invites interpretation.

and this…

Superhero comics should have an ‘event’ in every panel! We all know this instinctively. Who cares ‘how?’ as long as it feels right and looks brilliant ? …

I found myself wondering what it would be like if comics’ storytelling stopped aping film or TV and tried a few tricks from opera, for instance. How about dense, allusive, hermetic comics that read more like poetry than prose? How about comics loaded with multiple, prismatic meanings and possibilities? Comics composed like music? In a marketplace dominated by ‘left brain’ books, I thought it might be refreshing to offer an unashamedly ‘right brain’ alternative.

Never a model of humility, in the same interviews Morrison attempts to compare his writing to TV and film works like Lost and Donnie Darko, and dismisses the critics of his recent work as “lazier readers” and/or “a particularly jaded minority on the internet.” Sorry, but I count myself as part of the large and devoted fan followings of the examples he names, and of many similarly “complex” works—not because they’re stylistically complex, though, but because they tell well-structured, emotionally compelling stories—and FC isn’t even in the same ballpark. “Disjointed” is the word that’s come up more than any other in reviews of Morrison’s writing in recent months, but this issue takes the adjective to a whole new level. Morrison’s effect—indeed, apparently his intent—was to have his story swallowed up by its own lacunae, and that simply doesn’t make for a satisfying reading experience.

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Tags: continuity, Darkseid, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes, Superman

My single overwhelming impression of this issue:

Wow, that was crap.

Again.

I kind of enjoyed issue #5, enough to be hoping for an upward trend as this story neared the home stretch. Apparently that was too much to hope for, though. (Which perhaps shouldn’t be a surprise, given the book’s multifarious agenda to be simultaneously a big accessible “event” story, a sequel to Jack Kirby’s New Gods work, a sequel to the classic Crisis on Infinite Earths, a thematic capstone to Grant Morrison’s body of super-hero work, and a thematic capstone to Dan DiDio’s chaotic tenure as DC’s executive editor.)

What did we actually get in this penultimate issue? Well…

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Tags: Batman, continuity, Darkseid, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, Green Lantern, Legion, super-heroes, Superman

Okay, it came out over the holidays, but I’m just getting to writing about it now.

This issue and the previous one have to fill a number of slots:  they make up “What The Butler Saw,” Grant Morrison’s installment of the “Last Rites” short tales closing out the current era of the Bat-titles; they’re Morrison’s coda to his own current run on the character, and a sequel (of sorts) to “Batman R.I.P.”; they’re a summary of the entire career history of the Batman, and an examination of his motivations along the way; and they’re a crossover with Final Crisis, detailing what happens to Batman therein and leading back into issue #6 of said Big Event.

And they work satisfyingly on every one of those levels. I’ve been critical of much of Morrison’s recent work, on Batman and elsewhere, but I very much enjoyed this story.

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Tags: Batman, continuity, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes

There has been ongoing concern in fan circles over whether J.J. Abrams’ upcoming Star Trek film will be in keeping with the spirit of Trek as we’ve come to know it over 40+ years. I’ve written about it myself, but I’m far from the only one… and Abrams himself hasn’t exactly quelled such concerns with remarks like his recent statement to TV Guide that “it’s really made for future fans of ‘Star Trek,’ not existing ones.” Such statements may warm the hearts of executives at Paramount, but we existing fans want to like this movie too.

In an interview last week, screenwriter Bob Orci attempted to ease these concerns, emphasizing that he and co-writer Alex Kurtzman are dedicated Trek fans (unlike Abrams) and that they’ve made sure to tie this film into existing Trek continuity in a way that fans will appreciate. The way he describes this, however, has caused more consternation than it’s resolved.

Many of the concerns so far have been about the differences seen in the trailer—in the Enterprise, the bridge, and perhaps most significantly the backstory of Jim Kirk. The movie has looked suspiciously like a reboot, rather than a story within Trek’s familiar fictional reality.

Long story short? What’s the inside scoop? It’s like this:

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Tags: Bob Orci, continuity, J.J. Abrams, Star Trek

Hot on the heels of Grant Morrison’s dramatically anticlimactic ending of “Batman R.I.P.” comes Batman #682, the first of two parts of “Last Rites,” Grant’s coda to his current run on the title.

In a drastic change of pace from what has come before, this issue basically offers a retrospective, a recap of (the first half of) the Batman’s career. Of course, Grant Morrison being who he is, it’s not as simple as that… it’s presented as a stream of consciousness, cryptic and disjointed, impressionistic. From all appearances the memories depicted are those of Bruce Wayne… but just to complicate things, the narration comes courtesy of Alfred the butler, and there’s at least one scene in which Bruce isn’t even present.

(The art, too, is different; Lee Garbett’s work is serviceable, but no better than Tony Daniel’s.)

What the issue doesn’t offer, despite the promises of publisher and editors, is any sort of narrative “bridge” whatsoever explaining how Batman got from the end of “R.I.P.” to the beginning of Grant’s other current opus, Final Crisis, with which this tale crosses over.

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Tags: Batman, continuity, DC Comics, Final Crisis, Grant Morrison, super-heroes