Asian Superheroes part 3 - Super Young Team

It's been a while since I've written about Asian Superheroes (when DC, Marvel, Image, Wildstorm et al take an honest crack at writing Asian spandex heroes) as frankly, there's not a lot out there. But when you do come across em, you take notice, scratch your head, and in my case with the Great Ten, happen to stay abreast of whenever they make appearances (such as in Checkmate). This time around, the focus is on Super Young Team - another creation of Grant Morrison (who created China's Great Ten). SYT is from Japan, and as such can best be described as trendy, superfluous, J-pop/idol-based, idiosyncratic tomfoolery. Let me be blunt, I don't know if I hate them or respect the effort put into making them a statement of today's 5-second attention-span, twitter-saturated youth or a mockery of what heroism is supposed to mean. They are not heroes. No, SYT is a bunch of meta-powered teenage idols thrown together by a PR machine with no reason for being. Sadly, they know it themselves. Despite pinch hitting saving the universe in Final Crisis along with the Checkmate Organization, Renee Montoya, the Justice League and Captain Marvel - their true contribution to the side of good is looking glam, endorsing cocktail parties and merchandising.

They were introduced as the current incarnation of Jack Kirby's Forever People, for fuck sakes. I LOVE the Fourth World (Darkseid, Desaad, Kanto and the rest of them) and seeing Kirby's creations turned into things I HATE (having lived in Japan for seven years and working alongside the Tokyo talento industry gave me this perspective) made me shudder at the vapidity and hypocrisy of a bunch of superpowered amateurs with little understanding of morality and sacrifice. This would all be fine, I suppose, but because they resemble the idiocies of a supremely shallow and bereft-of-talent industry, I'm going to see how they develop. To be fair - the writer, Joe Casey, nailed down the Tokyo Pop environment pretty damn well. References to Kiddie Land, Akiba, Shibby-Shibs, etc etc are all in there. Anyhow, here is who they are:

- Most Excellent Superbat: costume based on an amalgamation of Batman and Superman. His talent? Being really fucking rich. Limited martial arts capabilities but when you save Japan by buying it outright, hell even I'm impressed.

- Big Atomic Lantern Boy: sexually-repressed virginal nerd who combines Firestorm and Green Lantern. Hint of being a pervert with some kinky fetishes regarding his team-mate called....

- Shiny Happy Aquazon: similar to Mera, Aquaman's wife, in being able to create hard-water constructs and can live underwater. Wearing S&M PVC gear, she is the team's bimbo, ready for her face to be plastered on ads and keitai's (mobile phones) all over the world. Well, Japan anyways.

- Shy Crazy Lolita Canary: a fist-sized winged schoolgirl alcoholic. Her primary superpower is a sonic scream - only screams "Sumimasen!!!" (excuse me) a la Black Canary. Her secondary superpower is being annoying. Actually, I liked her the most. The alcoholism rung a chord, I guess.

- Well-Spoken Sonic Lightning Flash: you guess it - the team's speedster. He looks plain awful with an eggshell helmet, and can only go 500MPH. Considering that is Jay Garrick's (Silver Age Flash) cruising speed, and Wally West and Bart Allen have both gone Speed of Light, big freaking deal.

Oedipus Redux - Peter Milligan's Greek Street

Apologies for the late posting - been busy.

Ahem. Anyways, let it never be known that we are not literate here on this blog. Today, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be focusing on the Greek Classics. Or to be more specific, the story of Oedipus. Yes, the lad who shagged and then killed his mother. The forebear of a psychosexual complex that forms the basis of today's psychology and a huge industry of anti-depressants manufacturing.

Greek Street is a bit of a pun, something to be expected from one of DC Vertigo's pioneering writers. It's an actual street found in London, a home of vice, baklava, strippers and gangsters. Actually, no it's not, it's really just a lane filled with a slew of ethnic restaurants in Soho. But then what better home than to put a modernized version of a veritable mish-mosh of Greek stories mixing Oedipus, the Iliad, the Golden Ass and more? At the center of the story is Eddy (which for those quick on the take is a hipper version of Oedipus), a street urchin/junkie/ne're do well in trouble with the local mob, run by the Fury family, nee The Erinyes. The local crime family is itself in some kind of debt to their local House of Lords representative Lord Menon (Agamemnon). He has a clairvoyant daughter named Sandy (Cassandra) and there is a Greek chorus of strippers who bookend each chapter with a summary and a taste of the shit to befall young lord Eddy. This has cannibalism, incest, ultra-violence and drug-taking. Why it's got everything we need in our modern Greek plays!

The writing is crisp but accent-heavy. If you're a fan of Guy Ritchie films or Irvine Welsh novels, this is definitely for you. This is UK gangster to the hilt with enough Greek Classic references to make you hit Wikipedia for a couple of hours. The art by Davide Gianfelice is spectacular, much better than the usual Vertigo norm, with bright colors and sharp line graphics that show the glitz and grit of today's London. I dunno if the rest of you have been there recently, but it captures the seedy dump-quality of the non-touristy areas. Don't get me wrong, London is cool and all that. But Disneyland it ain't.

The Best TV Show Never Made - Gotham Central

Imagine a television series that took place in Gotham City. Oh wait, that already happened. It was called Birds of Prey and focused on Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress. It came and went quietly. But imagine that it was done RIGHT, by making it in the Chris Nolan age where realism, grit and epic storytelling were the main themes.

Gotham Central started off as an experiment in 2003 by the best crime writers in the comics genre - Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka, two guys who know how to write genuine detective stories as well as police procedurals. Their idea was to do crime stories set in the city of Batman but with the costumed freaks firmly in the background. The main characters were formerly supporting ones themselves - Maggie Sawyer who previously was the head of Metropolis' Major Crimes Unit now transferred to Gotham, Crispus Allen from Detective Comics and the animated DVD Batman: Gotham Knight, Renee Montoya from Bruce Timm's Batman Animated and Marcus Driver, an entirely new character. Their stories focused on solid police procedurals that sometimes involved supervillains, sometimes not - and Batman's presence (if not the man himself) shadowing in the background. Many of the characters, of which there are almost 20 officers, look down upon their supposed need to always contact Batman to solve their cases. And while most refuse to accept his help when they hedge their own abilities to solve crimes, they do understand his necessity in taking down some of the supervillains when their own firepower isn't enough.

So combining top-notch storytelling and clever cameos by Batman and his Rogues Gallery (plus some cameos from the Titans and Flash's Rogues), what do you get? Eisner and Harvey Award attention in the first year for writing, series and inking. You had serious DC character development unmatched in other series, Montoya (who most of us remember as the plucky detective alongside Harvey Bullock and Jim Gordon in the DCAU) becomes a lesbian and starts her path into leaving the GCPD and turning into the next Question, and Crispus Allen is on his way into becoming the next Spectre. And it was a thrill to see how seemingly regular crimes ended up involving characters like The Joker, Mad Hatter, Two Face or Catwoman. Or vice versa, where you would think costume freaks are involved but you are not sure. Maybe not.

But funny enough, the series was a commercial failure. It was like a critically acclaimed art house movie that wins top honors at all the film festivals and yet never finds its audience. It ran for 40 issues before the writers could no longer justify its existence despite continually racking up awards.

And end footnote was that, ironically, TV execs at Warner Bros (owners of DC and producers of the Nolan films) LOVED the comic series. Although they were nonplussed with Birds of Prey's failure, their confidence in the quality of writing and character development (imagine Hill Street Blues or CSI, but with Batman in it!) would make it a reality if not for the fact that there is a moratorium on all Batman TV shows as long as the film saga will keep going. So we got that.

How to Spot a Vampire

http://www.virginmedia.com/movies/movieextras/top10s/how-to-spot-a-vampire.php

Scenes from the Tokyo Game Show

Full pictorial article: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/09/gallery-tgs-cosplay/

Negasonic_ultratokyo_popexplosion!! - Supermarket

One of my all-time faves off the IDW label - Brian Wood and Kristian Donaldson's Supermarket. A literal explosion of colour, culture and Generation Y angst mixed with some porn, yakuza and crass consumerism thrown in. An electro-pop fable for everyone of us who have visited Hong Kong or Tokyo (or want to), overdrawn our credit cards, measured the worth of a souped-up Japanese import versus a German piece of automotive engineering, and felt that illegal music downloads off our mobile is as good as life is gonna get.

The protagonist is Pella Suzuki, a hapa (half-Japanese) born of a Japanese dad and a Swedish mum. She goes to school in your typical Catholicized private institution and works in a convenient store, conveniently ripping off her customers by letting them donate credit card charges to her charity of the day, meaning herself. A bit spoiled and with values mirroring her upper middle-class suburban lifestyle created by her enigmatic parents, all of that gets whacked the day she finds her folks assassinated.

She is forced to flee from the suburbs to the Supermarket - the ultra-city: a fantastic mish-mash of Shinjuku, Roppongi and Akasaka districts of Tokyo, and Yau Ma Tei and Central districts of Hong Kong with a little Pudong of Shanghai thrown in. Bearing in mind that this is still supposed to be in California. 70-story hotels, Acuras, sushi, chicken tikka, Paul Smith, Prada, Gucci, public transit, wi-fi networks, and dog massage parlors make up the background for an essentially fast-paced chase story that ends all too quickly. Unfortunately, memorable dialogue that reads hip like a Joss Whedon teleplay is counterbalanced by a glaring problem. Much like a William Gibson or Neal Stephenson novel, it ends too abruptly and the reader is actually left wanting more.

But what makes up for defects in the story is the ART. OMG, talk about art for our new century. It captures the pace, the mood and the groove of our current Internet-savvy, denim and dim sum-fed, virtual fast food nation. I once commissioned Mr. Donaldson for some artwork several years ago trying to get him to re-create the magic of Supermarket. The colours are electric, creating a new style that goes beyond anime or normal comic book form. Each page is to be savoured and soaked up, and try to catch the pop culture references if you can.

Cosplay Model - Marie-Claude Bourbonnais

Call Name: Marry Bardot

Status: Cosplay Model/Pin-up

Real Name: Marie-Claude Bourbonnais

Profession: Glamour/Adult Model, Pin-up

Does: Mortal Kombat, Gen 13, Fetish, BDSM

Noble Savages - Brian Wood's Northlanders

I seem to have a thing for relishing topics and themes rather unpopular by current standards. Case in point, Northlanders - a very well-written series by Brian Wood (DMZ, Supermarket) which focuses on that most trendy of subjects - Vikings. Why, you would ask, would anyone be interested in reading about folks who slaughtered each other, wore fancy helmets adorned with horns and wings, and drank themselves silly before battle? Or did I just answer my own question? First off, that horns and wings thing was just a myth, they never wore fancy helmets. Intricate hair braids, yes - but never winged helms. Second off, well unlike other hack and slash tomes, this one gets into the culture and socio-politics of the Viking era. You see, too often has that period of time been glossed over as bad-smelling barbarians leaping off a boat, gutting some hapless monks, and then getting rippingly drunk over their spoils of war. It's been few and far between that Norsemen (classifying those of Jutland, Varangian, Normans, Danes, etc) are given some depth and 3-dimensional characteristics atypical of this age. Oh sure, there are dismemberments, skull-cleaving axes, monks getting torched and all that, but without that they wouldn't be Norsemen.

Take for example the first story-arc - "Sven the Returned" (which would make a great epic film). An outcast from childhood, Sven leaves the Orkney Isles to Constantinople where he makes his fortune as one of the Varangian Guard (mercenaries in service to the Byzantine Empire). Or does he? Nevertheless he returns home to the savage Orkneys of his birth, and is disgusted by the backwards, superstitious, simple people that he had originally left far behind. No longer defining himself as one of them, he is torn between his birthright and heritage and his desire to be out where he truly belongs, being the civilized and educated man he has become. But let no one think that he is a sissy just because he shaves his beard and cuts his hair, oh no. No one gets away with that shit, lemme tell you.

Another classic story-arc that also hits its mark is the short and concise "Lindisfarne", an amazing tale of the old ways of the Norse Gods vis a vis a newfangled, slightly hypocritical and pretty impractical belief system called Christianity. Lindisfarne marks the start of the Viking Age and sets up the conflict between the Norsemen vs. the Celts and Saxons, or the Pagans versus the God-fearing. This religious conflict takes places again in "The Shield Maidens" and "The Cross + The Hammer". But Lindisfarne offers a snapshot of that special age, a Dark Ages childhood, and a unique situation when a boy has the choice between supplicating himself between Our Father The Lord, or The Gods of War and Thunder. Let's just say that he choose the practical over the pious.

In Case of Vampire

Paul Dini's Fetish

Paul Dini is probably most famous for being one of the original producers and writers for Batman The Animated Series, and for having helped launched the DC Animated Universe, itself having the nickname of "Diniverse". Today he is still active in the comic world for being the current writer for Gotham City Sirens and Batman: Streets of Gotham. He just penned the script for the game Batman: Arkham Asylum (although the original concept was done over a decade ago by Grant Morrison in the now classic Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth). His writing style can best be described as solid, compelling, and knows when to take light and serious steps in his writing, anchored by strong characterizations in his dramatis personae. IMHO, the only other writer of similar ability is James Robinson.

What he is not as known for is his eternal appreciation for sexy, garter belt-armed magician women. Being himself a bit of an amateur illusionist, no doubt being in the circles of performing magicians led to a relatively healthy fascination with said type of fine women. Starting with an infatuation with DC Comics' homo magi character Zatanna Zatara, he no-doubt coincidentally eventually married a magician by the name of Misty Lee, who then took on some of the trappings of Zatanna (or vice versa, well Zatanna was chronologically around longer). He then wrote his own creator-owned comic series called Madame Mirage on Top Cow Comics, about a vengeance-fueled illusionist superheroine which coincidentally and admittedly was based on his wife.

I include pictures, in order, of: 1) DC's Zatanna, 2) Zatanna as portrayed by the actress/model Serinda Swan in Smallville, 3) Misty Lee, Paul Dini's wife, and 4) Paul Dini's Madame Mirage. See the resemblance?

Masters of Horror - Pt. 3, Junji Ito

According to Google Analytics, I notice that traffic increases every time that I post scantily-clad women on these blogs, whether they are comic/anime women - such as Bomb Queen, or real-life bodacious women - such as Yaya Han or the ladies from the cosplay photo shoot. So with that knowledge in mind, I thus completely and intentionally ignore sexy women for this outing. In fact, I am going to post the exact opposite and continue on my series of The Masters of Horror. This time around concerns the all-time grand champion Mister Disturbo gross-out king Junji Ito. Most of his works have now been converted into television shows (one starring Miho Kanno) and movies in Japan but in truth, it's his manga that stands apart for just how completely sadistic and balls-out creepy they turn out to be. It would be of no surprise that Ito-san is probably the most normal looking bloke in Japan and favors cheesecake while listening to The Carpenters. Those people have dark dark secrets, let me tell you.

In his collection of short stories - Flesh Coloured Horror, I would guess that he rather dislikes cute girls, especially the cutesy-kawaiiiii! Japanese schoolgirls that are the fetish of many a salariman. When girls kill each other simply because one of them *thinks* killing each other would work to stem off their own deaths by disease, I would guess there is some little neuroses at work. In fact I would guess that he hates society as is, enough to show how it decays from some abstract and nameless horror that only by cannibalizing each other is there some form of escape. Another particular favorite has a girl's long black hair come to life and with a homicidal will of its own, go to extreme prejudice in order to maintain its own survival from say, a much-needed trim at the hair salon.

In his opus, Uzumaki, there is no escape from the doom of the Spiral, as each issue shows how a little village slowly descends into ultra-disgusting horror and madness. One week, people are turning into snail creatures, the next week, people are now eating those snail creatures, cuz... well, they're yummy, I guess. The next week, people who ate those snail creatures are being contorted into the spiraling shapes of those snail shells and on it goes. There is no way out, no redemption, no shelter from some rather barf-inducing concepts.

Bloody Heathens! - Definitely Not for Sunday School

After recently reading how American distributors are not going to be allowing any showings of the new movie Creation due to its "controversial" topic - that of Charles Darwin and the lead-up to The Origin of Species, it got me into a fairly combative mood. Using reverse psychology: if a Gallup poll shows that 39% of Americans don't believe in evolution then it underscores how the Christian faith is obviously under attack from belief systems not in line with its own. To wit - getting defensive about someone else's POV is a sure sign of insecurity and ham-fisted judgement.

So I might as well feed a bit more tinder into the fire and show how some titles really take the piss out of misinterpreted dogma, particularly that represented by the Big Bad Institutionalized Cross. I'll sidestep Preacher by Garth Ennis, perhaps the grand-daddy of "vs-Christian" (rather than anti-Christian) comics as that deserves its own blog one of these days. Instead I'll touch on:

BLOODY MARY:

By who else? Garth Ennis. Mary Malone is a former special forces soldier who also happens to be a nun. She is literally invulnerable for part of the series, having ingested a creature that makes her immune to.... well, death, as she takes her share of bullets and even tank shells penetrating her torso. Blowing up the Vatican, killing Christian cults, bringing down fascist dictatorships - all in the name of whatever Garth Ennis believes in. The style is irreverant, as to be expected of the writer, but not so much as The Adventures of the Rifle Brigade but actually on par with say, Preacher. Ultra-violence is balanced against *some* degree of empathy for the characters but it doesn't take itself as seriously as Battlefields.

FAITH:

You either love the art by story-teller Ted McKeever or you hate it. But this series concerns itself with a concept of purgatory called Murr where the dead are sent, whether they were saints or devils. Robbed of identity and purpose, they come to realize they have a common enemy - the forces of God himself who is a corrupt landlord out to clear out Murr for unknown reasons. If you have a New Testament/Lifetime Channel concept of angels as harp-playing, blonde cherubs, this may not be for you. If, on the other hand, you are inclined to think of angels as God's mercenaries: eyeless, soulless, and unthinking as per Christopher Walken's Prophecy movies, you might get a kick out of the portrayal of brutally horrific angelic warfare. Takes all kinds. Cameos by an uber-pissed Joan D'Arc and Lucifer in a bad toupee.

BTW - this blog is NOT meant to be a Garth Ennis fan-page, just so you know.

World Class Cosplayer: Yaya Han

Call Name: Yaya Han

Status: Cosplay superstar

Real Name: Yaya Han

Profession: Costume Designer, Model

Does: Resident Evil, Macross Plus, Clover, Blue Girl, X-Men, Dead or Alive, Final Fantasy, Ranma 1/2, Death Note, Darkstalkers, Urusei Yatsura, Chobits, Parasite Eve, Dirty Pair, Blue Submarine 6 and more

Possible movie plot lines - Alita

As most of you know, James Cameron took a stab at two CG-heavy sci-fi narratives at the same time - Avatar and Yukito Kishiro' Battle Angel Alita. Avatar won out as the first to come out as the script came along faster. This isn't exactly surprising considering the density of the Alita story. The main problem with scripting a 2 to 3 hour movie about her is that the origin story doesn't take a full 2 hours to plough through, so in other words there will have to be one or two extra story lines to fill it out. While this would be a fairly large departure from the actual manga, it's probably acceptable due to the fact that someone like Cameron actually cares about things like telling a story and that there is a good chance that Yukito Kishiro will have some input as to the actual story.

I would guess that the Motorball derby saga isn't going to be part of it as although it has the most spectacle (and admittedly, I would LOVE to see that on film), the whole saga was a diversion in her life to "get away from it all". I think Makaku the Sewer-Orphan is a likelihood as it leads into the Desty Nova/Tipharean plotline, and Zapan's Revenge is a continuation of it and possibly the climax. All of it takes place in the Scrapyard and contains the same characters from the beginning.

If there is a second movie, I would guess it would combine the Barjack/Den road warrior-ish plotline combined with the Secret of Tiphares. This is a lot to combine into one 3 hour flick, but very possible. The problem with all of this is that it leaves out the Motorball story which *barely* fits into the larger Tiphares plot, but has some of the coolest and exciting visuals ever committed to print. Realistically, it could set a new standard for science fiction hyper action. It would pale the highway chase of Matrix Reloaded, Speed Racer's headache inducing races, and any race car flick like Driven and Days of Thunder by light years. A possibility is that Motorball is a second movie and Barjack/Tiphares is the third to finish off a trilogy .