The comments, reviews and rantings are for entertainment only. If you are offended then someone else is getting entertained. Welcome to the internet. Have at it. This is where I sound off on what I read in comics this week, and occasionally ramble about other things.
For months I've been diligently and steadily working my way through all the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Frankly there hasn't been much of anything that's kept me from breaking stride with this. The volumes sit in my car and are read whenever I get a chance. In fact I'm nearing the end of it. The home stretch. I'm looking forward to completing my journey through the Holmes mythos.
And then Greg Rucka just had to put a book out, and when that happens, I'm dropping whatever I'm reading and picking it up.
I've read all his Atticus Kodiak novels. I've read all of his QUEEN AND COUNTRY work. In fact I was eager for more Q&C, but here we have something different. ALPHA gives us a whole new protagonist, Jonathan "Jad" Bell, and all the excitement we could want from a Rucka novel. This book shines. The characters are pitch perfect. The action isn't forced. The suspense is high. As with every Rucka novel once it gets going its nearly impossible to put down.
The premise is straight forward, there's a suspected terror attack eminent on a major theme park, and Bell needs to stop it. What sounds simple is given a ton of beautifully crafted twists that make this book amazingly compelling. First off is the park. Before you even start reading, there's a map of the park, Wilsonville. We quickly get a feel for this park and the characters that inhabit it. We find out all about Gordo, Betsy, and pooch; the Flower Sisters; and Clip Flashman. All of this is laid out to the point that it seems tangible. Wilsonville comes alive just as much as Disneyworld or Universal Studios.
As always with Rucka's work the character's are fully realized. Jad Bell is very likable in that this man is a professional who holds his job and what is right in the highest regards. He's lived a very rough life, which we get a brutal taste of in a flashback scene. We get everything we need to know about this man very quickly. He's not the only character we get to know well as we also follow his opposite number, Gabriel, in this. Gabriel is a sleeper agent who is going to be running the attack on Wilsonville. Here's a really nasty twist to this: you almost start to like the guy. It would be so very easy to write this guy as a total scumbag. Still, Rucka inserts a very sympathetic side to him. No doubt that what he's doing is completely wrong and horrible, but there still that little bit of him that's completely in love with his girlfriend that makes you like the guy just a bit.
I do love the little moments some characters get. We see these park employees under the worst possible circumstances and we see them doing their jobs and doing right by the park guests. We see people in the control room that know that something really horrible is possibly happening and just by staying where they are it could mean their lives, and they keep doing their jobs. On the other side we get glimpses of the men pulling the strings behind this operation and, oh, how we loath them.
The one thing that stuck with me just a bit was the timing of certain events and how coincidence was such a factor. Jad's ex-wife and daughter are scheduled to visit the park when the threat is imminent. Jad's daughter is deaf and Gabriel's girlfriend is an ASL (American Sign language) interpreter. It seemed a bit too coincidental, but it certainly served to up the drama level and gave both players in this game a high emotional stake. Its pretty easily forgiven too since Jad's daughter and Gabriel's girlfriend are both delightfully written.
This book moves. Rucka gives us plenty of information to go on and conveys it interestingly. He doesn't beat us over the head with facts we don't need, and when he gives us something extra its always entertaining. The flow is fast paced and easy reading. There are time in here where chapters overlap events, in that the same thing is covered in three different chapters from three different perspectives. While I could see this going horribly wrong and getting tiresome, that's never the case here. Every different perspective is fresh and gives us a vital new take on things to totally flesh out the events.
I loved every bit of this book, and its looking like the start of a strong new series from Rucka. I left this book wishing I had the next one right in front of me. He's devious like that. Typically, when you get to the end of a Rucka chapter there's a little bit there compelling you to say to yourself "OK, I know its two in the morning and I have to be up at six, but just one more chapter..." This whole book not only left me satisfied, but sunk a hook in me craving more.
This blog isn't in your face, its in my hand. Its Wednesday, August 17, 2011, the game is again afoot, and this is The Side. Quick announcement: my weekly comic book reviews will be out on Sunday as opposed to Friday for the foreseeable future. Due to some personal scheduling changes I won't be able to pick up my comics until Thursday at the earliest and that's not much time to get the reviews done by Friday morning.
Well, its plenty of time, but anyone who has actually met me will attest to the fact that I need as much beauty sleep as possible.
LITERATURE
If you head into Barnes & Nobles and go into the Mystery section you may be lucky enough to find "The Complete Sherlock Holmes". Its two volumes at about eight bucks each, so for sixteen dollars you get it all including bunches of footnotes. I'm working my way diligently through volume one still. I did look into the back of the book for some of the notes and came across four questions. They were very much like the questions I would see in my literature text books in high school, but required a bit more thought.
One of these questions in particular caught my attention: "Do you think it is possible to tell an updated version of these stories considering today's technology?" Well, i think we have the answer to that...
If you haven't seen it yet, you can stream all three episodes, each about an hour and a half long, on Netflix. Its brilliant stuff.
And of course there's the big screen version which seems to franchising its way up.
I do have to say that I think they are dropping the Moriarty card a bit too soon. Then again, there's no way that he's going to be as brilliant as Andrew Scott's take on the character in the previously mentioned BBC series. There's a clip on YouTube featuring him, but its such a big spoiler that I torn between posting because its awesome and not wanting to ruin the ending of "The Great Game" because it was an incredible piece of work. As such, I'm going to err on the side of non-spoilery.
When I requested people name three literary characters I got a wide variety of answer, and Sherlock Holmes was in the top three. I do believe that this character will indeed stand the test of time and continue to be an inspiration and influence. One thing I do find fascinating is that the character works even if modernized. He's not like Batman who has been published regularly for decades. He had his stories. Then he had more stories. Then movies came along and he had movies. Then television came along and he had shows and cartoons. I've seen him in his natural 19th century setting. I've seen him in a cartoon in the far future in which Watson was a robot. I've seen him in the present.
He works because he's a person. For all his flaws and quirks, he is a brilliant and capable who strives to see justice done. And he's not an ideal person. He has a drug problem. He's obsessive. He's not terribly sensitive. Yes, I'm still talking about Sherlock Holmes and not Greg House. As you can see from that last line, what Holmes is and what makes him tick still resonates with audiences today.
I do find it interesting, especially since I heard the recent flap about the impending WORLD WAR Z movie, is that no one really gripes that the original books aren't being followed closely. After all, the Robert Downey Jr movie wasn't "A Study in Scarlet". Maybe some people passionate about Holmes realize something that's important when considering any adaption: its an adaption. Its not going to be the same. You can stray, but as long as you stay true to the characters and the intent of the story, then things can still turn out alright.
I do think there's a direct relationship to the amount of content from the original source and the willingness of readers to go along with adaptations. In the case on smaller projects like novels or short series of comic books (ex: WATCHMEN) any variation from the source material is frowned upon. Subjects with more content to draw from (ex: BATMAN, SPIDER-MAN, SHERLOCK HOLMES) tend to get a little more leeway from fans.
So don't be a hater. At least until you see the movie or TV show or whatever. Then if it sucks, go ahead and hate all you want.
MUSIC!!
From "When I was Cruel".
Alrighty, I'll see y'all back here Friday. Be prepared for foul language.
Cripes, but I would prefer crepes. It's Sunday, December 5, 2010, I'm hungry, and this is The Side. See, I typically put this thing together in the time between updates and put the finishing touches on things the morning I put it up. Most of the work is done between six and seven in the morning. In fact I can't remember the last time I slept past six in the morning in my own house. Yesterday I got nothing done, because I was busy reading. So that meant I was going bang out the entire thing this morning in one sitting because a self imposed deadline is still a deadline.
So if I was smart I would brew a pot of coffee and have some Pop-Tarts and then set to work. But I'm not smart. I got up, made sure the house was secure, came online, read today's SINFEST, checked e-mail to see that I got a nice response from Vito Delsante over at Comic Kings, and then set to work. No food. No coffee. Not yet.
Writing is best done hungry and surly.
COMIX!!
Snagged an early look at STAN LEE'S STARBORN #1 from BOOM! Studios by Chris Roberson and Khary Randolf. The comic revolves around an office worker, Benjamin Martin, who is an aspiring science fiction novelist. He seems like a nice enough fellow. We know this because this issue gives us his life in full detail. Its tough for books like this to start off and let you get to know these new characters and still have something interesting going on. There's plenty of interesting stuff here, but the only problem is that its all pretty predictable. We get so much detail as to the science fiction story Benjamin creates that I knew that it had to be real. Once I knew that, all the pieces quickly fell into place. So there were no real surprises for me.
Having said that, this book does succeed in doing a lot of really good world building and layering that in seamlessly with character introduction. That's two very tough things to do, much less do them both in the same issue. So, I wasn't terribly surprised by things, but I'm willing to trade that in because there's enough stuff going on here that it warrants further attention.
In all this comic wasn't really blowing my doors off. Still, there's a ton of potential for this book, and I think now that we've got a awkward parts over with we could be in for a great ride.
BOOK... without pictures.
Try not to look horribly shocked that I read something that wasn't a comic. I can see you through my computer. That said, put some pants on. Freak. Just finished up reading Greg Rucka's THE LAST RUN. This novel marks the long awaited return of his award winning and best selling QUEEN AND COUNTRY series. It series debuted as a comic from Oni press and spawned a slew of comics and a few novels. The comics have been collected into four awesome definitive editions which are just awesome.
The only problem with reviewing this book is that I can't do it objectively. I can't even imagine coming into this as a new reader. Tara Chase and I are well acquainted by now. I live to see what Paul Crocker will do next. I can taste how horrible the coffee is in the Pit. I can smell Ron's cigarettes in the Ops Room at Vauxhall Cross. I have a big crush on Kate Cooke, and would completely read an entire 12 issue series all about her even if the only thing she did in it is go shopping. That is the extent of awesome that is Kate Cooke. So this book was me visiting very familiar territory, but everything is not exactly as I left it. Some people had been promoted. There's been a few other changes, but most importantly the feel of the book is the same.
This is spy-fi the way it should be: smart and surprising. These are people who leap right off the page as if Rucka was writing a biography of their amazingly insane lives. The attention to detail is remarkable, and as always Rucka doesn't beat us over the head with it. This book moves. Once it gets going it demands to be read.
Our dear Tara Chase is nearing the end of her stint as head of the SIS's Special Section. She's got a daughter now. She been doing this job for so long and done so much that the majority of the other intelligence organizations around the world either know who she is or must be limited to goat counting. So the "last run" in the title is hers. One last job before she resigns and moves on to a different position. Of course it isn't a milk run. This mission will take her straight into the heart of Iran to extradite a target too good to pass up no matter how much everything around this whole mission stinks on ice.
This book is an absolute page turner. The action is sparse, but the tension is high. The little scenes such as Paul debating over lunch who he wished to murder with his little plastic fork are classic. I now have a completely different view of the city of Tehran. Rucka writes that city as if he'd been living there for years.
Rucka only has one problem. Every time I finish a chapter of his book I am left with a burning need to keep reading to see what happens next. Sure enough he did the exact same thing with this book. Rucka has left me with my brain humming demanding more QUEEN AND COUNTRY. Last I heard the comic was supposed to return. I am, as you read this, actively resisting the urge to drive into Rucka's Twitter account and beg for details as to when it could possibly come out. I'm hoping soonish.
MUSIC!!
Bounced back to the 80s last time around, might as well hang out in the past a bit longer.
Alright, I'm going to go have some coffee now. See y'all Wednesday.
Its Wednesday, September 1, 2010. and today is an important day. Brother Anonymous is joining me in my quest to acquire as many gray hairs as possible. Now some of you might be thinking, why on Earth would my brother only comment on here anonymously?
If you were related to me would you really want people to know it?
I thought not.
Happy Birthday, dude.
UNPLUGGED!!
The newspaper and the Yahoo news reel were looking very familiar. This is probably due to them getting around to what I was writing about a week ago. Facebook "check in", in which you can 'check in' other people giving away their location, is under fire for being an invasion of privacy, because its one thing if you want to paint a big old e-target on yourself and say "here I am", and its another if you want to paint a big old e-target on someone else and say "there he is". As I've said, you can block people from doing this with your privacy settings, but that involves actually knowing how to operate them.
So Facebook is now Big Brother, and I don't mean the CBS reality show.
But, in looking at job listings I've discovered some employers WANT their employees to be on Facebook to the point where they've said don't apply if you don't have it. Now this seems counter-intuitive on the surface because why on Earth would you want to hire someone who possibly would be wasting company time playing Farmville. However, this maneuver is a stroke of Machiavellian brilliance because the employer can bring up everything you are doing. Are you updating when you should be working? Were you really sick the day you called in sick? Got something nasty to say about them?
People have lost their jobs for things they have posted on Facebook. Hell, people have been arrested for it. And they do it to themselves. What you post online anywhere will eventually be made public, especially on Facebook.
Will this catch on? Will I have to go crawling back to Facebook and get another account if I want a nice job in a cushy office someday? Who knows. I do know that if this becomes the norm then Facebook is going to be about as popular as herpes and everyone over the age of 18 will have very boring Facebook pages.
DISCONNECTED?!
The Emmys were on, and I actually watched a good chunk of it. The vast majority of winners are shows I don't watch and many of them I've never heard of. So either my lack of cable is leaving me seriously out of the loop, my viewing habits suck, or there's a disconnect somewhere between the industry of TV and viewers. Its probably the first option, and even if it isn't I'd much prefer to plead ignorance than to cop to sucking. Honestly, I didn't know MAD MEN was a drama. All I knew was that it was on a station I don't get and Christina Hendricks is on it.
And now a Christina Hendricks moment:
OK, all better now. Back to business.
Often there's a disconnect between what people in an entertainment industry say is great and what an audience says is great. I don't think that was totally the case Sunday night, because many of the shows that won I have heard glowing praises about from Chris who knows good television when he sees it. I see it a lot with the Oscars since often the big winners are movies that no one really watched.
Its pretty prevalent in comics. The company powers that be tell us how awesome Barry Allen and Hal Jordan are despite newer readers having little frame of reference as to these characters they are thrust upon us whether we like it or now. We just had got done with half of DC comics being "Blackest Night" crossovers and having read "Blackest Night" I can say that its not a very good book. Its fine if you don't think very hard about it, but this isn't an event I'd flood a company with. "Brightest Day" looks equally inane. But we are told that these books are the greatest thing ever. We're supposed to pay attention to these things. We're supposed to rave about JMS's work on WONDER WOMAN and SUPERMAN. We were supposed to think ALL-STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN THE BOY WONDER was completely awesome.
Frankly if all of the thing I mentioned went away I'd be a much happier little nerdling.
I understand the creative standpoint. When you're crafting these stories you have to do it to your own tastes. The writer's tastes may or may not line up with my personal tastes, and that's fine. That's just how it goes. However it does seem that now in a time when editors seem to fall down on the job a bit more noticeably than before, that some of these companies need to listen a little more more and tell a little less. This is a good part of the reason why WIZARD magazine is a shadow of its former self. They became the premier source for information about the comic book industry and started telling us what is cool, and when enough people stopped and came the conclusion that they didn't agree they got their news elsewhere.
Its a risk I run writing this blog. I can rail on at length about how brilliant the Morrison Batman story is, but is someone does not agree at all then I run the serious risk of losing a reader. And that's tough when you don't have a ton of readers. But I can't just play it safe and try to write nice little piece for everyone, because that's pandering, and that gets us nowhere.
The bottom line: the Emmys and shows like it are nice and fun, but often they don't reflect the thoughts and feelings of the audience. That's just how things are. All we can do is find what we like and support the hell out of it.
BACK TO BASICS!!
I've been reading a book. Without pictures in it. Yes, that does actually happen from time to time. Specifically, I'm reading "A Study in Scarlet" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This was the first Sherlock Holmes story showing not only how Doctor Watson met Holmes but also scary Mormons.
A couple of things strike me as I read this. First, I like how a story written over a century ago can still be to alive and vibrant on the page. Very often literature is perceived as dry and dull. This story obviously isn't. Second, is that Robert Downey Jr didn't make a very good Sherlock Holmes. Not that it was a bad movie, but Holmes was always impeccably groomed and dressed nicely. He carried an air about him that Downey didn't, which is as much Guy Richie's doing. I prefer the books.
I love reading book. Yes, you can do it online and download books into your Fancy Dan handheld Tricorder but nothing beats the feel of a good book in your hand. I feel smarter just carrying them around.
MUSIC!!
And now a geography lesson featuring cute little animated characters.
That's a wrap for today. This is the part where I'd say I'll see y'all Friday, but not this time. Hurricane Earl is heading this way to say 'howdy'. And by 'howdy' I mean 'destroy all manner of stuff'. Right now its a category four hurricane, which for those of you who don't know is pretty damn bad. Bad enough that when those head this way I don't right it out, and get out of dodge. Right now there's a slim chance it will hit here directly, so I'm keeping an eye on it. Most likely it'll curve away from here, but we're going to get serious wind and rain regardless. Most likely I'll be spending Friday without internet and possibly without power.
So its a no go for Friday, and possibly Sunday if things go seriously tango uniform here. So, we'll see y'all when we see ya. Behave yourselves.
I always wondered about my place in the story. A lot of people do that. They see themselves in different characters. I suppose there's a lot of boys who have imagined themselves as Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. Then there's people who put themselves in the story. They create their own character based on themselves and imagine how the story would change around them. There's a lot of fanfiction based on this. Seems quite a few kids imagined themselves being the newest member of the X-Men or another team like that.
Along came Choose Your Own Adventure with a series of books in which readers took control of the story. They were geared towards younger readers and written in the little used second person tense. Readers were prompted to pick between multiple decisions, some of which continued the narrative. Some brought the story to a rather abrupt and often unpleasant end. There were also multiple positive endings and ways of reaching them. This line of books spawned others in what would become known as "game books". My brother and I were very found of the ones featuring G.I.Joe in which you became the newest member of the team. I also found an old copy on "Wizards, Warriors and You" on my bookshelf written by none other than R.L. Stine before his days writing GOOSEBUMPS.
It's pretty easy to navigate your way through interactive media when its in print. You can see right there on the page where to go next and respond appropriately. As such this sort of storytelling stayed in print until technology could catch up with it. It did in the form of video games.
Over the years video games have become a legitimate story-telling medium. Telling a story in video game is inherently interactive. The player has to advance the narrative. Early on it wasn't much of a story.
Example. Monkey has taken girl. Must rescue girl. Oh crap, he's throwing barrels at me.
This is mainly due to the limitations of the hardware and the software of the day. As these improved, so did the story.
Example. Giant lizard thing kidnaps Princess in a mythical kingdom. I'm a plumber that can jump really high. Whoa! Mushrooms and plants give me super powers! I'm going to get past monsters and save the princess!
And it went on from there, but eventually something new arose: the alternate ending. This started popping up in games here and there. In the early days of video games there was no "beating" the game. You played until the space aliens got you, your cities were all destroyed by the missiles or that big monkey finally took you out with the barrels. Then, along the time of the coming of Nintendo, video games had their Final Crisis in which the people creating these games had to ponder, how are we going to end this thing? Yes there were games that had endings before then, most notably the arcade classic Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, however these were the exception. Nintendo brought the platform game to a whole new level and like any platform game you needed a story.
Everything you did in these games advanced your character towards an ending, but later which ending you got would become the question. Konami gets my attention here with their Castlevania series. This series of games was personal favorite of mine, and really did interesting things with it's storylines. The third installment offered a set of partner characters and different routes to take through the game, thus changing the narrative and the ending. The pinnacle of the series was it's debut on Playstation: Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. For a long time I thought I had that game all figured out and had beaten it multiple times. I later realized that wasn't even halfway through the game yet.
This brings us to alternate narratives within games. Games like the GRAND THEFT AUTO series allow players to roam the virtual world doing all sorts of things and but the main story is pretty straight forward and the main missions drive the main narrative. FINAL FANTASY VII had extra character you could acquire and even had a scene in which the main character met up with another for a date if his previous interaction with her had been nice. If not, them the date did not happen. Players were used to controlling their characters on the screen but now they were starting to control the story.
HEAVY RAIN is looking to expand on this. While this game does have it's faults, it certainly is innovative. The story changes depending upon the players actions and decisions. I'm not sure if previous gaming systems could handle something like this. Voice acting has to be done for multiple different reactions. Scenes have to be done and redone in case certain characters aren't there or have done things to make people react differently to them. It's really a hell of an undertaking. I talked with a Gamestop employee and he said that the game is selling very well. Its a pretty hot item. I haven't played it due to a lack of Playstation 3 which won't be changing any time soon, but now I'm wanting one. With the amount of content that can be but on those game dicks HEAVY RAIN will likely only be the start of a new wave of interactive narratives in video games.
Video games aren't the only medium making strides in interactive storytelling. With the coming of DVDs movies makers had a lot more options on the table. Interactive movies haven't made much of a splash beyond a few POV porn videos. However, then comes the internet and YouTube specifically. YouTube has opened the door for many movie makers and now they've got the potential to make interactive media available right on your computer. At the forefront of interactive narratives on Youtube is CHAD, MATT AND ROB who have put up multiple interactive stories. I e-mailed Rob Polonski about these endeavors, and I'll be damned, he actually e-mailed me back!
MN: Did any of you read the old "Chose Your Own Adventure" books, and if you did, how much of an influence were they?
RP: I'm sure we've all, at some point, gotten our hands on one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books. Something about them felt so magical, almost as an illusion that made the story so big and endless. It was always fun going back to see what happened if you chose differently.
We're all about telling a great story and creating likable and fun characters. Using the tools that YouTube provided -- we realized we could do a "Choose Your Own" type story. We wanted to recreate the experience you'd get from the books, but more importantly, make it our own. That's when we came up with the name "Interactive Adventure" .
MN: Are you considering doing anything like a DVD release or are current plans to remain as an online presence?
RP: We're currently developing our Interactive Adventures to bring to television. We've been using the web as a way to showcase our content. Our primary goal is to crossover into more traditional media such as TV and Film while we maintain a strong presence on the web. We've written a pilot, developed a couple Interactive TV concepts and are working on a feature.
MN: Are there plans for a storyline with multiple positive endings and/or multiple "routes" to achieve a positive ending?
RP: We've tried that in "The Murder" where there we're three separate story lines and over 30 different videos, but the reaction from the audience wasn't as good as with a much shorter adventure. We've learned to keep the adventures simple and focus on creating a great story.
MN: I saw that you guys go featured on YouTube. Congrats! How much of a traffic bump did that get you?
RP: Thanks so much! Every time you have an opportunity like that, to be front and center on YouTube's homepage, your views, subscribers, etc. get a nice bump up. But viewership & numbers is not, or never will be our focus. It's all about and always will be about creating the best content possible.
MN: Right now your adventures are fairly short in length. Is there anything in works that's of a larger scale where the story would be feature length or comparable?
Yes! We've written a bunch of Adventures and we're developing an Interactive TV series. There's just so much potential, it's super exciting!
I would have asked him about the creative process of making one of these adventures, but they already handled that.
So where is this going? Well, pretty much the sky's the limit. Blu-rays are pretty ridiculous, but they hold an obscene amount of content. I expect to see more games like HEAVY RAIN. I also expect more interactive adventures to come up from various sources on YouTube and other nu-media, although I expect Chad, Matt and Rob to stay ahead of the curve for quite a while.
Eyes open, people. There's stories out there and people are willing to give them to you so can make them yours. Turbines to speed. There's narratives to drive.
