A week later, the Internet buzz about The Watchmen, and I've read many fans' reviews and impressions of the movie. They're all exactly the same. While many fans seemed to like to film, they can't help but criticise the original material that was omitted. Honestly, after years' worth of various inspirations and incarnations in pre-production, Zach Synder has created a film that goes out of its way to please steadfast fans and appeal to a blissfully ignorant mainstream audience. One part Forest Gump, one part X-Men, The Watchmen is a story that explores how history would differ if superheroes really existed, and now if they faced age and prejudice. While fanboys mettle over the minutiae of the film's forsaken details, I'm more interested in the piece's timeless ramifications. Over twenty years later, the dark corners of politics and pop culture that inspired Alan Moore still exist, and how would 2009 look in the world of The Watchmen?
First of all, the primary catalyst in Alan Moore's plot is the superhero as the has-been, with each of his Watchmen fulfilling the obvious various roles left when their iconic status dissolved. The Night Owl is the most realistic result, as he lives a meek life that silently regrets but functionally copes with its devolution, like a retired police officer. The Comedian is his polar opposite, living as an extravagant citizen yet obviously haunted by his past, particularly as the weight of his actions and their consequences occur to him in his old age. Dr. Manhattan is the personification of human achievement and therefore represents the inevitable product of mankind's own quest for power and celebrity, consequently both revered and misunderstood. Silk Spectre is his proverbial Tammy Faye Bakker, the first lady trapped by her leading man's reputation, not to mention her mother's legacy, which results in rebellion. If being a superhero wasn't against the grain, she'd garner some other controversy, again like Tammy Fay, or overcompensate with her own quest for authority, like Hillary Clinton. Rorschach is the wild card, like the child actor that refuses to quit and in fact proves himself by embracing the other extreme. Obviously, Jackie Earle Haley related to the role.
From the damaged child star to the retired cop, these archetypes in contemporary society and pop culture are just as vivid and significant today as they were in 1985, and Ozymandias is the best example and most pivotal to the Watchmen's story. At the beginning of the story (I really can't say "comic" or "film," because this plot now transcends either medium), Ozzie is depicted as a brilliant eccentric, hanging out in front of Studio 54 and negotiating his action figure line. Yet, we know behind the scenes he's really a mad scientist with twisted, benevolent intentions. Did Alan Moore know in 1985 that he was foreseeing George Clooney's career? Think about it -- George is a paparazzi darling, yet just recently he spoke with the Vice President in Washington about international affairs. We live in the kind of world where a celebrity feels influential in worldwide crises. If superheroes were real, they would always be on TMZ, and with that kind of attention, could their egos settle for foiling mere street level crime? The humility of Superman is so idealistic, it's unrealistic. Sean Penn stars in a movie about gay rights, and he's become a gay rights activist. How many times would a real Batman thwart the Joker before deciding to go all Erin Brockovich on companies that profit from poisonous chemicals?
The context of The Watchmen story is secondary to its characters and their history. Whether it's a giant squid or a nuclear bomb that destroys the city, the timeless appeal of Alan Moore's script is its heroes' respective resilience, made easier to understand through his frequent allusions and parallels to Hollywood and pop culture. From his opening credits onward, Snyder effectively changes world history by just dropping the stunning visuals of the superhero into the middle of America's Golden Age, and he pulls no punches with how ridiculous some of them looked. That image of the Minutemen is akin to watching The Wizard of Oz today; we know it can be done better, but the charm of how cinema began respects its humble beginnings. Yet now we know that Judy Garland wasn't a perfect person behind that mid-western smile, too. Like a comic book becoming a movie, whenever something takes on another face, we tend to prefer what we're used to seeing. Sometimes, we'd rather not watch.
Showing posts with label Alan Moore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alan Moore. Show all posts
Monday, March 09, 2009
Monday, November 10, 2008
What Could Have Been: Tom Strong #20
What a difference a week makes.
Last Monday, skeptical Americans, on the brink of an undoubtedly historical Presidential election, wondered about the fate of their country. A week later, Americans either celebrating a victory or lamenting a loss can still be proud that their nation has made a giant step forward in abolishing its reputation for racism, perhaps setting a standard for the rest of the world. That's how I see it, anyway.
The question is, did Barack Obama win because of the Dragon bump? Pundits will argue that one for the next four years, I'm sure . . .
To acknowledge America's celebration of change, I decided to read a few of the comic books in my stable of unread issues that star black protagonists -- a theme I've traditionally utilized in February for Black History Month, but black history has been made this month, so the obligatory wait would be a disservice. My hope in these next few reviews is to find some parallels between the black heroes of comics and our President Elect, who has become a real life hero to many, many people (and who has now starred in a few comics of his own!). Leave it to Alan Moore to kick off the concept with practically prophetic results.
When the Comic Bookie closed last month, I was delighted to find several issues of Tom Strong in the fifty cent bins. Tom Strong remains one of those series I regret not buying monthly, yet also remains a guilty pleasure when I flip through discounted back issue boxes, as it isn't foremost on my mind but always climbs the must-buy list when I find a cheap issue. With all the publicity surrounding the release of The Watchmen movie, Moore's other works are likely to take a backseat in these coming months, until of course each of them are optioned for film production, too. I dare say that Tom Strong is one of the writer's most ambitious works, though, with thirty-six issues spanning eight years (the longest Moore has been associated with any one character or story, with the exception of Swamp Thing, unless someone can cite another example). Reflecting, sometimes satirizing, the science fiction pulp of the '50s, Tom Strong also combines strands from almost every other significant comic book genre, as well (western, romance, horror . . . it's all in there, sometimes in a single issue!), utilizing flashback sequences and/or chapter breaks liberally yet with reverence. Again, why I still haven't read every issue is beyond me.
Tom's origin is perhaps the most interesting contribution to the entire series, however, as Moore successfully tells a complex, engaging origin story with striking originality. When scientist Sinclair Strong and his wife Susan are shipwrecked on a deserted island, Strong makes the best of it by building a laboratory where he and his wife raise their son in a high-gravity chamber, educating him and nourishing him with an indigenous root, goloka, in a culminating effort to perfect his mind and body. When a volcanic eruption destroys the lab and kills Tom's parents, Tom finds comfort in the local, hidden tribe, and he takes a bride who eventually joins him on a journey back to Millennium City, where he becomes a science hero. Of course, fans know there are many more critical intricacies to this story, but these are the nuts and bolts necessary to understand issue #20.
See, in issue #20, Tom encounters a visitor from an alternate timeline, one where his origins are vastly different. Apparently, when one of Susan's pre-Sinclair suitors gives her an element capable of dividing time, she does just that, creating a history that prematurely kills Strong and strands her on the island with Tomas Stone, their ship's Jamaican (?) captain. When Tom Stone is born, he attains the same longevity and strength from the island's beloved goloka and learns vicariously through Sinclair's stranded books, essentially becoming the same man from the original timestream, but with darker skin. In Millennium City, this alienation actually builds a bridge of camaraderie with the one that would become his mad scientist arch nemesis, and together they become a force for good. However, Susan soon discovers the timeline's split, and . . . ha, to be continued. Surely a tale with such chronological consequence couldn't be told in a single issue, eh!
So, what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, Moore pens a prolific line that reminded me of the Illinois Senator's recent accomplishments. When Tom's mother sees how beloved her son is in Millennium City, she muses, "And everyone's so friendly to colored people now. You must have educated them, son." The implication stands, that the positive impact of a single individual with a high enough profile could redirect the perspective toward an entire group of people. Racism certainly isn't over, in either our reality or Strong's alternate history I'm sure, but racists can at least tangibly grasp that they're in the minority, that they're in the wake of something much more progressive than their rooted and anchored beliefs. Thankfully, we didn't need a skewered timeline to teach us that.
Yet, this catalyst in Tom Strong #20 is what appealed to me most of all. A week ago, Americans were like-minded in their contemplation of another reality, one in which their candidate of choice didn't win -- an Earth-2, if you will. How exciting is it that those that aren't into comics or science fiction can understand the Doc Brown concept of an alternate timeline? In this other world, how many of your friends really moved to Canada when McCain-2 won the election? How did his spending freeze affect the economy-2? Most interestingly, how soon did Palin-2 take the White House, if at all? I'm hoping to discover some traits in black comic book heroes that reflect our reality now, the one with Barack Obama poised as America's President, but Alan Moore turns racism on its ear a bit and shows us that sometimes the color of one's skin does matter, just enough.
Tom Strong #20 was published by America's Best Comics in June 2003 and was written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Jerry Ordway and Karl Story, colored by Dave Stewart, lettered by Todd Klein, and edited by Kristy Quinn and Scott Dunbier.
Last Monday, skeptical Americans, on the brink of an undoubtedly historical Presidential election, wondered about the fate of their country. A week later, Americans either celebrating a victory or lamenting a loss can still be proud that their nation has made a giant step forward in abolishing its reputation for racism, perhaps setting a standard for the rest of the world. That's how I see it, anyway.
The question is, did Barack Obama win because of the Dragon bump? Pundits will argue that one for the next four years, I'm sure . . .
To acknowledge America's celebration of change, I decided to read a few of the comic books in my stable of unread issues that star black protagonists -- a theme I've traditionally utilized in February for Black History Month, but black history has been made this month, so the obligatory wait would be a disservice. My hope in these next few reviews is to find some parallels between the black heroes of comics and our President Elect, who has become a real life hero to many, many people (and who has now starred in a few comics of his own!). Leave it to Alan Moore to kick off the concept with practically prophetic results.
When the Comic Bookie closed last month, I was delighted to find several issues of Tom Strong in the fifty cent bins. Tom Strong remains one of those series I regret not buying monthly, yet also remains a guilty pleasure when I flip through discounted back issue boxes, as it isn't foremost on my mind but always climbs the must-buy list when I find a cheap issue. With all the publicity surrounding the release of The Watchmen movie, Moore's other works are likely to take a backseat in these coming months, until of course each of them are optioned for film production, too. I dare say that Tom Strong is one of the writer's most ambitious works, though, with thirty-six issues spanning eight years (the longest Moore has been associated with any one character or story, with the exception of Swamp Thing, unless someone can cite another example). Reflecting, sometimes satirizing, the science fiction pulp of the '50s, Tom Strong also combines strands from almost every other significant comic book genre, as well (western, romance, horror . . . it's all in there, sometimes in a single issue!), utilizing flashback sequences and/or chapter breaks liberally yet with reverence. Again, why I still haven't read every issue is beyond me.
Tom's origin is perhaps the most interesting contribution to the entire series, however, as Moore successfully tells a complex, engaging origin story with striking originality. When scientist Sinclair Strong and his wife Susan are shipwrecked on a deserted island, Strong makes the best of it by building a laboratory where he and his wife raise their son in a high-gravity chamber, educating him and nourishing him with an indigenous root, goloka, in a culminating effort to perfect his mind and body. When a volcanic eruption destroys the lab and kills Tom's parents, Tom finds comfort in the local, hidden tribe, and he takes a bride who eventually joins him on a journey back to Millennium City, where he becomes a science hero. Of course, fans know there are many more critical intricacies to this story, but these are the nuts and bolts necessary to understand issue #20.
See, in issue #20, Tom encounters a visitor from an alternate timeline, one where his origins are vastly different. Apparently, when one of Susan's pre-Sinclair suitors gives her an element capable of dividing time, she does just that, creating a history that prematurely kills Strong and strands her on the island with Tomas Stone, their ship's Jamaican (?) captain. When Tom Stone is born, he attains the same longevity and strength from the island's beloved goloka and learns vicariously through Sinclair's stranded books, essentially becoming the same man from the original timestream, but with darker skin. In Millennium City, this alienation actually builds a bridge of camaraderie with the one that would become his mad scientist arch nemesis, and together they become a force for good. However, Susan soon discovers the timeline's split, and . . . ha, to be continued. Surely a tale with such chronological consequence couldn't be told in a single issue, eh!
So, what does all of this have to do with Barack Obama? Well, Moore pens a prolific line that reminded me of the Illinois Senator's recent accomplishments. When Tom's mother sees how beloved her son is in Millennium City, she muses, "And everyone's so friendly to colored people now. You must have educated them, son." The implication stands, that the positive impact of a single individual with a high enough profile could redirect the perspective toward an entire group of people. Racism certainly isn't over, in either our reality or Strong's alternate history I'm sure, but racists can at least tangibly grasp that they're in the minority, that they're in the wake of something much more progressive than their rooted and anchored beliefs. Thankfully, we didn't need a skewered timeline to teach us that.
Yet, this catalyst in Tom Strong #20 is what appealed to me most of all. A week ago, Americans were like-minded in their contemplation of another reality, one in which their candidate of choice didn't win -- an Earth-2, if you will. How exciting is it that those that aren't into comics or science fiction can understand the Doc Brown concept of an alternate timeline? In this other world, how many of your friends really moved to Canada when McCain-2 won the election? How did his spending freeze affect the economy-2? Most interestingly, how soon did Palin-2 take the White House, if at all? I'm hoping to discover some traits in black comic book heroes that reflect our reality now, the one with Barack Obama poised as America's President, but Alan Moore turns racism on its ear a bit and shows us that sometimes the color of one's skin does matter, just enough.
Tom Strong #20 was published by America's Best Comics in June 2003 and was written by Alan Moore, illustrated by Jerry Ordway and Karl Story, colored by Dave Stewart, lettered by Todd Klein, and edited by Kristy Quinn and Scott Dunbier.
Monday, December 31, 2007
Tomorrow Stories #1
Tomorrow Stories #1, October 1999, America's Best Comics
writer: Alan Moore
artists: Kevin Nowlan, Rick Veitch, Jim Baikie, Melinda Gibbie
letterer: Todd Klein
colorist: Wildstorm FX
assistant editor: Eric Desantis
editor: Scott Dunbier
Tomorrow's A Comic A Day challenge begins . . . today!
New Year's Eve is a day of excitement and anticipation, so what better day to begin A Comic A Day: Year Two? Actually, what I'm anticipating is infrequent access to the Internet in the next few days, since my girlfriend and I have moved to a wirelessly sheltered part of town, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a review in the chamber. Who says New Year's resolutions have to wait for the new year?
I think Alan Moore can relate. After a few years of relative inactivity in the comics scene, the acclaimed writer of The Watchman burst back into the industry with his America's Best Comics imprint, featuring fan favorite series like Tom Strong, Top 10, and this, Tomorrow Stories. Featuring four eight-page tales in an anthology-style format, Moore caps off this inaugural issue with a vivid essay about his futile road trip to visit a vacationing Todd Klein, in which he realizes that most of his collaborators live or vacation in predominantly rural settings. "Maybe this is a book of collected rustic dreams about technology, about civilization seen from far away." Indeed, each of Moore's Tomorrow Stories are actually colorful blasts from the past, in their own respective ways.
Consider the misadventures of Jack B. Quick, boy inventor. When Bessie the cow suffers from bovine night-fits, Jack finds a loop hole in Einstein's theory of relativity and creates a mini-sun with a quantum-enhanced vacuum cleaner. Jack's little big bang inadvertently creates a little galaxy, complete with planets and moons that inconveniently orbit around town. Just when Jack acclimates his neighbors to their new resident cosmos, the galaxy implodes, and Bessie plugs the resultant black hole with her protruding butt, now time-stuck in mid-air forever. "Best of all," Jack explains in an attempt to look on the bright side, "according to Einstein's general theory, we should still be able to milk Bessie, although she'll only yield buckets of x-rays." Even without the x-rays, even the most casual reader can see through the lingual slapstickiness of this first Tomorrow story and recognize just how much fun Moore must have had crafting it.
Unfortunately, the adventures of Greyshirt aren't as light-hearted. In "Amnesia," an amnesiac finds himself bloodied and standing above a seemingly murdered woman. When he hears of an eight-time hammer killer prowling the streets, he assumes he is the maniac and spends the subsequent pages running from himself, until Greyshirt and the police find him and pursue him. The presumed paranoid perpetrator darts into a warehouse and stumbles onto a security guard, and shortly thereafter Greyshirt captures him. In a not completely unexpected twist, Greyshirt explains that the fallen woman from page one was actually the presumed hammer killer, and that our protagonist's amnesia is the result of her first blow to his head, before tripping and braining herself. In another, more surprising twist, our hapless victim reveals that he murdered the security guard in his attempt to flee, since, "I thought that if I was going to be executed for eight murders . . . then one more wouldn't make any difference." Initially, Rick Veitch's art wasn't my cup of tea, but by the last page, I deemed his shadowy strokes the perfect compliment to Moore's tale of muddied morality. In this pulp world, the hero's shirt isn't the only thing that's grey.
The First American and U.S. Angel's adventure is much more contemporary, but the lead hero's gee-whiz mentality echoes of a simpler time. When the super-villainess Gerta Dammerung blames the television violence of The Jury Swinger Show for her latest armageddon-inducing crime spree, the First American and U.S. Angel infiltrate Swinger's set, where, after nearly succumbing to his eerie mind-deteriorating effects, they unmask him as an smarmy alien whose show "made us feel embarrassed for our entire species, lowering our self-esteem and softening us up for an alien invasion!" What begins as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on American daytime television turns into another slapstick satire, which makes me wonder, was Moore poking fun at the circus that is Springer's ilk, or the out-of-this-world mentality of the American superhero?
The Cobweb's story is the Moore's most ambitious of the four, both structurally and artistically. Starring the pulp heroine the Cobweb, this adventure begins with the sudden debilitation of beautiful debutantes around town. When the Cobweb discovers that they share a mutual admirer, she tracks him down and discovers his knack for mad science, which he uses to trap our heroine's spirit in a toy doll, just like the vulnerable bachelorettes. While trapped as the villain's proverbial menagerie, artist Melinda Gibbie depicts the women's perspective with Victorian-like, picturesque pencil sketching (Doll-O-Vision, as it's called on the story's title page), which captures the eeriness of their predicament. Moore's insistent alliteration protects the yarn's light-hearted pulp factor, though, establishing a tale rife with distinct vapid femininity and obsessive compulsion. In his own way, Moore's subtle point could be that women like Paris Hilton are toys whether a desperate mad scientist captures their soul in a Barbie doll or not.
Yes, while each of these stories boast an admiration for comic genres of the past, quantum vacuum cleaners, grapnel hook walking sticks, alien talk show hosts, and puppetron beams are definitely touchstones for the technology of tomorrow. Alan Moore has always been ahead of his time, but Tomorrow Stories epitomizes his ambition for fun, open-ended comic book storytelling. Though the series are vastly different in attitude, Tomorrow Stories picks up where The Watchmen left off. Whereas the latter affirmed comics' significance in contemporary culture, the former boasts a timelessness that proves comics will always be a viable, enjoyable storytelling medium.
With such optimism, I can't think of a better way to start another A Comic A Day . . . not to mention the new year.
writer: Alan Moore
artists: Kevin Nowlan, Rick Veitch, Jim Baikie, Melinda Gibbie
letterer: Todd Klein
colorist: Wildstorm FX
assistant editor: Eric Desantis
editor: Scott Dunbier
Tomorrow's A Comic A Day challenge begins . . . today!
New Year's Eve is a day of excitement and anticipation, so what better day to begin A Comic A Day: Year Two? Actually, what I'm anticipating is infrequent access to the Internet in the next few days, since my girlfriend and I have moved to a wirelessly sheltered part of town, so I thought it wouldn't hurt to have a review in the chamber. Who says New Year's resolutions have to wait for the new year?
I think Alan Moore can relate. After a few years of relative inactivity in the comics scene, the acclaimed writer of The Watchman burst back into the industry with his America's Best Comics imprint, featuring fan favorite series like Tom Strong, Top 10, and this, Tomorrow Stories. Featuring four eight-page tales in an anthology-style format, Moore caps off this inaugural issue with a vivid essay about his futile road trip to visit a vacationing Todd Klein, in which he realizes that most of his collaborators live or vacation in predominantly rural settings. "Maybe this is a book of collected rustic dreams about technology, about civilization seen from far away." Indeed, each of Moore's Tomorrow Stories are actually colorful blasts from the past, in their own respective ways.
Consider the misadventures of Jack B. Quick, boy inventor. When Bessie the cow suffers from bovine night-fits, Jack finds a loop hole in Einstein's theory of relativity and creates a mini-sun with a quantum-enhanced vacuum cleaner. Jack's little big bang inadvertently creates a little galaxy, complete with planets and moons that inconveniently orbit around town. Just when Jack acclimates his neighbors to their new resident cosmos, the galaxy implodes, and Bessie plugs the resultant black hole with her protruding butt, now time-stuck in mid-air forever. "Best of all," Jack explains in an attempt to look on the bright side, "according to Einstein's general theory, we should still be able to milk Bessie, although she'll only yield buckets of x-rays." Even without the x-rays, even the most casual reader can see through the lingual slapstickiness of this first Tomorrow story and recognize just how much fun Moore must have had crafting it.
Unfortunately, the adventures of Greyshirt aren't as light-hearted. In "Amnesia," an amnesiac finds himself bloodied and standing above a seemingly murdered woman. When he hears of an eight-time hammer killer prowling the streets, he assumes he is the maniac and spends the subsequent pages running from himself, until Greyshirt and the police find him and pursue him. The presumed paranoid perpetrator darts into a warehouse and stumbles onto a security guard, and shortly thereafter Greyshirt captures him. In a not completely unexpected twist, Greyshirt explains that the fallen woman from page one was actually the presumed hammer killer, and that our protagonist's amnesia is the result of her first blow to his head, before tripping and braining herself. In another, more surprising twist, our hapless victim reveals that he murdered the security guard in his attempt to flee, since, "I thought that if I was going to be executed for eight murders . . . then one more wouldn't make any difference." Initially, Rick Veitch's art wasn't my cup of tea, but by the last page, I deemed his shadowy strokes the perfect compliment to Moore's tale of muddied morality. In this pulp world, the hero's shirt isn't the only thing that's grey.
The First American and U.S. Angel's adventure is much more contemporary, but the lead hero's gee-whiz mentality echoes of a simpler time. When the super-villainess Gerta Dammerung blames the television violence of The Jury Swinger Show for her latest armageddon-inducing crime spree, the First American and U.S. Angel infiltrate Swinger's set, where, after nearly succumbing to his eerie mind-deteriorating effects, they unmask him as an smarmy alien whose show "made us feel embarrassed for our entire species, lowering our self-esteem and softening us up for an alien invasion!" What begins as a tongue-in-cheek commentary on American daytime television turns into another slapstick satire, which makes me wonder, was Moore poking fun at the circus that is Springer's ilk, or the out-of-this-world mentality of the American superhero?
The Cobweb's story is the Moore's most ambitious of the four, both structurally and artistically. Starring the pulp heroine the Cobweb, this adventure begins with the sudden debilitation of beautiful debutantes around town. When the Cobweb discovers that they share a mutual admirer, she tracks him down and discovers his knack for mad science, which he uses to trap our heroine's spirit in a toy doll, just like the vulnerable bachelorettes. While trapped as the villain's proverbial menagerie, artist Melinda Gibbie depicts the women's perspective with Victorian-like, picturesque pencil sketching (Doll-O-Vision, as it's called on the story's title page), which captures the eeriness of their predicament. Moore's insistent alliteration protects the yarn's light-hearted pulp factor, though, establishing a tale rife with distinct vapid femininity and obsessive compulsion. In his own way, Moore's subtle point could be that women like Paris Hilton are toys whether a desperate mad scientist captures their soul in a Barbie doll or not.
Yes, while each of these stories boast an admiration for comic genres of the past, quantum vacuum cleaners, grapnel hook walking sticks, alien talk show hosts, and puppetron beams are definitely touchstones for the technology of tomorrow. Alan Moore has always been ahead of his time, but Tomorrow Stories epitomizes his ambition for fun, open-ended comic book storytelling. Though the series are vastly different in attitude, Tomorrow Stories picks up where The Watchmen left off. Whereas the latter affirmed comics' significance in contemporary culture, the former boasts a timelessness that proves comics will always be a viable, enjoyable storytelling medium.
With such optimism, I can't think of a better way to start another A Comic A Day . . . not to mention the new year.
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