We're all DOOMED!

I saw the guy who plays Dr. Doom in the FF movie on Dave last night. I don't know anything about this movie except it doesn't look very good and it seems to be one of those movies where the lights are dimmed to near darkness to cover up shitty special effects. And, in the grand Hollywood tradition of Missing the Point, Victor von Doom goes on the flight into space with Reed, Sue, Johnny, and Ben. Huh? And he gets superpowers? What? I know it's just superhero comic psychology and all, but Doom just being a regular crazy motherfucker in a tin can with no powers except those he makes for himself provides a fairly decent contrast between him and Reed. But what do I know? I'm not in Hollywood.

Ooh, culture

Late the other night, when I should have been sleeping, I caught a production of Swan Lake performed by the American Ballet Theatre on the PBS series Great Performances. I'm not a fan of ballet — it's one of those deals where I appreciate the skill and dedication and blah blah blah, I'm just not into it — but I have a soft spot for Tchaikovsky's music, so I watched. And it wasn't so bad. Mostly, though, you all need to watch because the fellow who plays the eee-ville von Rothbath in his human form looks disturbingly like General Zod from the Superman movies. And believe me, I scoured the net looking for an image but came up empty. So, check your local listings. He features prominently in Act III which is, personally, my favorite act.

"Pulse-pounding"? Not exactly.

I'm behind on my comics reading and used some recent stress as an excuse to get caught up with some relaxing picto-literature. Joe Casey and Giuseppe Camuncoli's The Intimates seems a bit sparse despite its density, if that makes any sense, but it's a good read for a fan of the teenage-jerks-with-superpowers genre like me. Like a lot of Casey's work, it benefits from being read in large chunks. That's how I tend to read comics, anyhow. That's how I read... The Pulse issues 2-8.

The "Into Thin Air" story wasn't bad, just not nearly as interesting as it should have been considering the subject matter -- Norman Osborn killing random folks at his company, then choking to death a Daily Bugle reporter who's on his trail -- or, well, worth five issues considering how terrifically underwritten it is. I have to say Jessice Jones's position as a consultant on the superhero beat is pretty much a bust. And is Ben Urich the only reporter in the MU who has dirt on anybody, ever?

But really I want to say something about issues six through eight, the "Secret War" crossover issues, or as I like to call them, "Satan." Seriously, you guys read this stuff? I refused to buy the Secret War mini-series on the grounds it sounded like crap and cost too much. (I know we're tumbling headlong into House of M, but did Secret War ever wrap up?) I figured I'd keep reading The Pulse because the concept of the series intrigued me; I had no idea until I read these issues not a fucking thing is done with that concept. This, though... it's easy to see why it's called "Secret War" because nobody knows a goddamn thing about what's going on. We've got two and a half issues of people running around in a fog, making phone calls, trying to get a hold of someone who might know what's going on, leaving messages, listening to messages, making more calls, running around. There's an interminible amount of NOTHING going on in these issues, and the recap pages help not at all. The events of issue seven add only one sentence to the recap page of issue 8: Jessica Jones passed out. Nothing is said about what Nick Fury is up to until the middle of issue 8, when we're given the sole interesting conversation in the whole 66 pages as Jessica is offered a job with Hydra. Boy, she sure is popular. And did I mention the phone calls? Forty-some-odd pages of people on the phone! Even the explosions manage not to excite, because no one knows why they're happening. These are the worst crossover issues since Infinity War. At least some of those had a purple guy with an afro.

Bits and pieces

Hey, look, I finally got around to doing the bloggerly thing and linked to some folks. If you link to me and you aren't there, let me know. If for some reason you don't want to be linked here, let me know and I'll take you off.

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I also finally finished reading Walt Simonson's Fantastic Four run. I have a vague recollection of the big deal made of his "New Fantastic Four" issues when I first started reading comics regularly in the early 1990s, no doubt because the issues featured Spider-Man, Hulk, Wolverine, and Ghost Rider, all hot properties at the time. Never heard anything about the contents, however, which happen to be fucking awesome and drawn by Art Adams. And Art Adams drawing Skrulls and the Mole Man's monsters is, I'm convinced, the best thing to happen to the Fantastic Four since Lee and Kirby parted ways. If you only read three issues of Simonson's run, make it these three. The rest is incredible, too. There's some great Dr. Doom stuff in 350 and 352. Not a whole hell of a lot as far as things like character development go, but really, when is developing a property like this ever actually worthwhile? I don't want that from the Fantastic Four. I want monsters and Skrulls. And time-travel battles against Doom. And islands disappearing into the time stream. And Galactus destroying the universe 30 years in the future. And the Time Variance Authority. That's what I want. Thanks for giving it to me, Walt.

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Jesus Christmas, the Brubaker/Gulacy issues of Catwoman make my brain hurt. I love Brubaker's work, especially the first two years of Catwoman with Cameron Stewart and Darwyn Cooke. After that, even if the writing hadn't been bad (which it got to be) the art... oy. Gulacy's bizarre anatomy — Selina's fighteningly long neck, for example — far outstripped the jarring shift in the art's tone in my opinion. Getting all tied up in War Games didn't help matters; reading the plot made it sound almost interesting, but not interesting enough to stretch through some 30-odd comics. That's the deal with most crossovers, so I should totally be used to it by now. The Catwoman issues happened to be the only ones I read, and they also happened to be boring pieces of shit. And the issues written by Scott Morse were no improvement. I eagerly await the arrival of Will Pfeifer and Pete Woods. And I'll probably have to buy Captain America if I want some Brubaker.

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You know what's good? Kyle Baker's Plastic Man. I got the first smelly, plasticky collection, and it's a big pile of bouncey, stupid, cornball fun, which my life has been sorely lacking. It's worth it alone for the scene where Batman recounts his origin. And I'm very much looking forward to Baker's Nat Turner. I had a friend in junior high and the only thing he learned from history class was "Nat Turner, a former slave, killed 57 white people." I'm not sure but there could be more to the story than that.

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Peter David and Mike Wieringo on Spider-Man gets me worked up about Spidey for the first time since I-don't-know-when. And excited about a Marvel book since... well, since Bill Jemas left, probably. (Excited about a Marvel book that wasn't an Essentials reprint, anyhow.)