COMICS CULTURE SHRAPNEL from CBEM 323
Before I get one to the main point of this column, there were two things I wanted to clear up, just for your information.
After I wrote about the CrossGen website, the guy who apparently runs it wrote in to tell me that he appreciated my comments and that there was a way to turn off the music. There's a small icon at the upper right hand corner of the Shockwave window, apparently. Didn't see it. Sorry.
The other thing is not something anyone has wrote me on, but rather something I noticed the very same day I wrote and sent in the column. I mentioned how we need more informational books about our favorite heroes. Well, I bought Previews that day, and lo and behold, there's solicitation copy for DK books about Spider-Man and Batman. Go check those out.
Done with that.
Now, yesterday I went to see the Final Fantasy movie. I love the games and devour the new ones whole when I get them, but I still wasn't expecting much out of this movie. The games have rather simple or ridiculous plots, the dialogue is pretty bad at times, and game movies generally suck anyway. Except for Mortal Kombat, which was pretty cool. But I wasn't expecting brilliance from the Final Fantasy movie. The previews weren't too encouraging on the plot end, since they merely served to showcase the beautiful graphics. You wouldn't even know there was a plot by looking at the commercials. Though I have been looking forward to this movie for two years now, I appropriately lowered my expectations.
So in the end I wasn't too disappointed. The movie was very, very pretty. Graphically my only problem was that the women didn't seem to be as dubbed as well as the male characters, and the "dust" in some scenes only served to make the picture look more grainy than it needed to. Plotwise it was pretty simple and appropriate for Final Fantasy, though those forced emotional moments don't play as well on the big screen. All in all, it was worth the $5.50 I paid (matinee).
What makes this interesting to all of you out there in comic-land is the Spider-Man trailer that preceded it. Wow. True, it was only a teaser. But damn, it looked good. Especially the costume. Despite keeping myself in the dark about all the publicity, I'm already chomping at the bit on this one, just because of how it looks so far.
I probably shouldn't do that. I already made this mistake with the Phantom Menace. Grr. Pretty but insipid, that one was. Sam Raimi better blow me away, because he's got a lot of expectations to live up to.
Something that does not have a lot of expectations around it is the new Tick series. I got to see the first episode a few weeks ago, and heck, it wasn't that bad. The cartoon was brilliance. This is not the cartoon, but it has it's charms. We tend to overlook that potential because it looks so damn bad. And I'll agree on that after seeing the pilot. The scenery looks fake and the costumes are horrid. The only real set piece I liked was the Tick's antennae. They move with his expressions, and it's quite well done. Ever get the feeling a production company has wasted all their effects budget on one thing in the program? This is it.
The plot revolved around the Red Scare, though this time around it's a robot who's been programmed to kill the postmaster general of the United States. Of course, after its first fight with Tick the programming goes all skewed and the Red Scare reverts to it's original directive: kill Jimmy Carter. That's it, pretty much the entire plot of the episode. But we never enjoyed the Tick for its plot. More the characters.
The Tick is as goofy and clueless as ever, played to perfection by Patrick Warburton. For those who forget, he was Puddy on Seinfeld. Arthur is the straight man of the piece, constantly questioning the stupidity of the others. The version seen here is probably closer to the comic representation of the character, where Arthur is more likely to question the pointless stupidity of it all. Die Fleidermaus has been changed to Batmanuel, if only so they could add a Hispanic character to the crew. Annoyingly enough, American Maid is now "Captain Liberty." The personalities are generally intact, though Batmanuel needed to played more self-centered. I didn't get that vibe as much. And there was no need for any name-changing, especially in the case of Amer... I mean Captain Liberty. The mad shtick made her funnier, especially considering she was the only competent one in the bunch. The contradiction made her character great.
The show keeps most of the setting elements, such as the characters still congregating at the diner, and the famous scene where the Tick first enters Arthur's apartment and starts looking for his "secret crime lab."
All in all, it wasn't too bad. Edgier than most things on TV, and a likely candidate for my viewing time come fall. I advise every hard-core Tick fan (and all you normal, well-adjusted people) to give it a shot. You may be pleasantly surprised.