The Cape (TV Show - Spoiler Warning)

We watched the premiere 2 hours of The Cape on NBC last night.It was less of a 2 hour premiere than it was a one hour premiere and first episode shown back to back, in that the story in the first hour wraps up, and a new plot line comes up for the second hour. There is continuity of course, and it worked just fine for me as I like getting 2 hours of a new thing right up front. This way we got the origin, and some development as well.

The Cape, as far as I know, is an original TV property, which is good, as it allows for none of the fan ranting that a character is being portrayed wrong, etc. that you get from properties that were comics first, or otherwise have an established run of some sort. It is VERY much in the style of superhero comics, and fortunately it has a sincere golden age vibe to it without being a deconstruction or a camp heavy send-up of the genre. It has a sincerity to it and also a good amount of humor and fun in its execution and character personalities and their interactions with one another. What was good about this show is very similar to what I find appealing in the Fox show Human Target. There is action and adventure, but there a compelling characters, and decent character interaction, etc., without coming off as too heavy or dark, but also not too light or campy. It is a nice balance.

Here are the basics:
The show takes place in the fictional 'Palm City'. Good cop, former soldier Vince Faraday (David Lyons) is our hero. He is on a police force that not only has a good bit of corruption, but one that is also on the verge of being privatized by a giant security firm called ARK, which is run by billionaire Peter Fleming (James Frain). At the beginning of the show, a new, good police commissioner is being sworn in/introduced, whatever, and he is killed with a new sort of explosive device right under everyone's nose, and with Faraday overseeing the security detail on the commissioner. The crime was committed by the masked murderer known as Chess. Later, Faraday's friend on the force suggests he join ARK prior to the firm taking over the police, and that way he can be in a good position, etc. Faraday gets a message from mysterious covert blogger Orwell, who routinely exposes corruption in the police and government. The message points him in a direction to uncover the truth about Chess and the explosive used to kill the police chief(or whatever he was). Faraday goes all good cop and pokes around, finding out that ARK is smuggling the explosives in other products. His friend betrays him, and Fleming, who of course is also Chess, sets up Faraday as being Chess. Faraday flees and seemingly gets killed in an explosion, but is actually taken into custody by a group of circus folk and performers who rob banks as The Circus of Crime.

At no point so far in the show are you winked at. Yes, if you over scrutinize, some of this will seem ridiculous, but it is done in a way that lets you stay immersed, and doesn't take you out of the story so much that you start nitpicking or worrying over those things. Circus of Crime is a pretty awesome thing, and certainly a well used device. I get a golden age feel to it as you have these sort of exotic mentors and a well trained hero that is based firmly in good. He works with the circus, and helps them commit crimes, but they establish that their crimes will be against ARK and Fleming, so it works with Faraday's need to avenge himself because of him.

Max Malini (Keith David) Is a standout in this as a master illusionist and sort of curator of the craft who has turned to crime, but not abandoned showmanship in the least. Once he signs on to help Faraday, he provides him with a special one of a kind pure spider silk cape with a weighted hem, etc. and overseas his training in all of the great super hero friendly circus disciplines. He arranges a regimen of instruction in fighting styles that favor a cape, as well as cape based disappearing illusions and hypnosis, etc. Some of these at the hands of other circus folk. There is no sense of time in the training montage, but at the end of it all he becomes The Cape, a shadowy figure who uses stealth, escape, and a cape that acts like a whip in many ways to thwart crime and get at The man who separated him from his wife and son (since he is considered dead, but would put them in jeopardy if anyone discovered he was alive.)

Comics, in particular a comic called The Cape, are important in this story. He gets the idea from the comic book that his son likes, and that he shares a special bond with his son over. They covertly read the comic together at night when the mom is out of the room, etc. I thought that was a nice nostalgic element there too. The idea of a parent and child bonding over comics is a pretty nice on to me. My daughters share an appreciation of comics with me, and when I was little, before I started getting comics with adult themes and art in them (Love and Rockets) My dad used to pick up my comics and enjoy reading them as well. I like that it is shown here, and that a primary part of his using the comic character persona is to show his son who he can't be with, that one person can make a difference.

As if I needed more to like about this show, Orwell(played by fan favorite Summer Glau... I saw it written that way somewhere, so I had to use that line myself) is like Watchtower from Smallville, rolled up with Eyes Only from Dark Angel. Very very similar to both in the tech and media/ exposing corruption angle, and the ability to do anything with computers, etc.) Her character is pretty good, but may be a slightly weaker point of the whole setup. We will have to see how it develops.

I am pretty sure I will continue watching this for a while. I really do like all the elements that are brought together. It has so many things in it that are comic tropes without seeming stupid. You see something, or hear a reference Like the secret criminal society the Tarot (which sounds like The Fraternity(from Wanted) and all the other shady organizations named after tarot or chess, etc.) and it makes you smile and nod. It hits a lot of notes, and does it in an authentic seeming way, what I was calling sincere earlier.

The pilot is available online, and I think will air again tonight. It is worth giving a watch if you like super heroes in my opinion.

What I took away from X3 The Last Stand, This time

I rewatched X3 again today with my daughters. My reasons for this are my own, but I took away two things from this rewatching that I hadn't previously.

1.) I was able to do MST3K running commentary through the entire thing, and it certainly enhanced my enjoyment of the movie (My daughters were able to join in to some degree, and a good time was had by all.)

2.) This is a spoiler if you haven't watched the movie, so you've been warned... At the battle on Alcatraz at the end, as Wolverine is fighting his way toward Jean, this revelation stood out, and once again, my Hugh Jackman loving 16 year old daughter pointed this out... Wolverine has magic pants. His skin, his shirt, everything, is being shredded. His skin is being peeled off, his clothes are gone, except his pants. His pants are there, and mostly unharmed. I for one am glad this was the case, and I am going to assume for the purposes of not accepting any other answer that my daughter is glad they stayed on as well, but they sure did survive, and at point blank range, while the woman was vaporizing everything else around her, his magic pants stayed on.

My Resolution Is This

In 2011 I will kick all kinds of comic blogging ass.

Or I will post at least once, whichever actually happens. Since my last post I have picked up a number of good comics and some comics I assume will be good. I have, but haven't read, Carol Tyler's second book in the 'You'll Never Know' series. It looks great and I have read some of it. It continues the interesting mix of biography / autobiography / project diary, etc. That the first book had, and i am pretty certain I will have some things to say when I finally get to reading it.

I picked up Locke and Key volume 2 and have already read and thoroughly enjoyed it.

My youngest used some of her amazon.com gift certificate to buy the hardback of Beasts of Burden by Dorkin and Thompson. As beautiful as the comics were, this thing really just glows as a hardback. It is absolutely beautiful, even when depicting gore and grossness. I need to read all the extra material I never had a chance to read as I was picking up the issues.


Happy New Year friends.

Marvel VS DC

Ok, this isn't really a Marvel VS DC situation at all. I had a Marvel related thing and a DC related thing that I didn't want to do separate posts for. Is that so wrong? Yes, it probably is.

Marvel Digital - I have subscribed to Marvel's Digital service for the past 2 years. A day or so ago I subscribed to the paid Pandora 'Radio' service, and canceled the marvel so it won't renew. Pandora is nearly half of the cost of Marvel, and while it doesn't provide me with conics, it does give me commercial free music that perfectly matches whatever my tastes might be on any given day, and It is easier to use it at work and not get fired than if I am reading comics online all day, which I wasn't.

I think the fact that I wasn't sitting around reading comics online all day is a sign that I wasn't really loving the service. It was never fun to read comics online through Marvel's interface, and the variety and the way comics were updated, and even the available back catalog were not really what I was craving. I want a pay service more like Rhapsody. I used to subscribe to that off and on, and on a whim I could pick a pretty wide variety of artists and listen to a pretty wide variety of their stuff in it's entirety. Yes it was also limited, but there was still the ability to listen to a majority of artists I might have heard about from friends, etc. or read about, whatever. Marvel's digital comics service never gave me that feeling, and in a lot of cases it seemed to withhold the issue I most wanted to read in a series or storyline. Also, I want to read newer stuff consistently if I am paying monthly. Don't give me anything to keep unless I pay extra for it, but do let me read current stuff on a larger scale. It wasn't terrible, but for me it didn't add up to value. If I were rolling in dough I would probably continue it anyway.

DC 75th Anniversary - DC Comics Year by Year
I borrowed this from the library, and it was a joy. It is a big beautiful book, and absolutely fun to read. It is just what it says it is. The book goes year by year since the early beginnings of DC comics, working its way to the present, giving us representative titles with cover shots and news about what characters and storylines were featured, and who the various artists were, and the high points of the era for the company, etc. It was cool to just soak up a lot of little historical details, and get a better feel for the artists and writers involved in the various time periods.

The other cool thing was that throughout the book there were issues featured that I have in my collection (a few from the sixties, and a TON from the seventies.) My copies are generally yard sale finds from when I was little, but that makes it no less cool. I would love to own this book, but probably won't buy it. I would far rather spend my money on trades for things I haven't read. This is an exceptionally fun read, and I recommend giving it a spin if your library has it, or you can borrow it from someone. Once you read it a few times it doesn't feel like something that I would feel a need to have, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't love it as a gift if my family reads this...

Pug - Derek McCulloch and Greg Espinoza

Not long ago I got a an email from Derek McCulloch with a link to a number of pages from his and Greg Espinoza's graphic novel Pug, published by Image Comics. He also gave me an option of getting a review copy if I was interested. I read and enjoyed the pages, and let him know that I appreciated the offer would be interested in reading the whole thing. I knew I recognized his name, and he had mentioned that he has had entries in all 4 Issues of Popgun, which I have done cover to cover reviews of for the first 3 volumes. I went back and read how I had reviewed his work previously, and then it came to me that this was the guy who wrote the Stagger Lee graphic novel that I had liked so well. That made it even more exciting for me since I had really enjoyed that. It turns out I had nothing bad to say about any of his works that I had commented on previously.

I had commented on one of his pieces in Popgun that I thought it was evocative of Brubaker's Criminal. I had said that because I felt that even in an anthology piece we saw solid charicterization and a humanization of the characters that is part of what stands up so well in Brubaker's series, and something that he is recognized for, as an industry standard for crime writing in comics that has real depth and quality. I think that was a good call, and I think it holds up. I think that McCulloch doesn't need me comparing his work to anyone else, as it obviously is his talent, and it stands on its own.

Pug is a good story, and not an unfamiliar one. It has at its core a fairly standard concept. Variations on the theme of a boxer just outside of his prime who has something in his past that casts some doubt on him, and finds himself a bit damaged physically or mentally, and or emotionally have been done. Stories of a boxer approached by the mob to throw a fight have been done. We've seen the woman in a boxer's life unable to stand by and watch her guy let himself be destroyed punch by punch. We have seen the knee breaker with a conscience, but it is a disservice to the quality of the story to suggest that it is really just a collection of things we have seen.

The thing about Pug, is the number of levels it has working within it. Espinoza's art is great. It is clean black and white with good faces and expressions. It doesn't get in the way of a fairly simple story of a fairly simple man who has a lot of decisions to make, but doesn't say a whole lot about them to anyone. The art is used consciously to tell the two parts of the story that are being laid out simultaneously as the book progresses. Slightly different styles are used to set them apart as well as to convey a sense of remembering the past, and even the single page pictures between the many small sections add greatly to the story telling.

The book uses a great mechanic to get everything across. On the cover, before you even open the thing up you have a picture of the main character taking a punch that you have to imagine most people not even being able to get up afterward. There are two stories that are being told simultaneously in the book. One of the stories takes place prior to that punch, and the other one takes place several years after it in the 'present' of 1962. Each piece of the present, starts with a ring girl holding up a round card. Each piece of the past, leading up to a fight that the mob told our protagonist Jake to throw, in which that punch on the cover is thrown, is marked by a page of Jake in his corner, and the designation of Rest Period. Getting these two pieces of his story delivered in that fashion, absolutely make this story in my opinion. It builds everything up, and lets us see who he is and how he got there at the same time.

Jake is a quiet man. This is another thing that has been done. I tend to love 'quiet man' characters. For as big and powerful as he is, and for as many punches as he has taken, he is a good and caring man. He is a man with feelings and concerns, and a strong self consciousness about his own shortcomings, failings, and past mistakes and regrets.

Jake has a girl who is a good woman who wants only for the two of them to have the life together that is within their reach. She isn't judgmental, and she loves him. He has a son. He has a first wife that left him, but not because she didn't love him. There is a lot of character and story squeezed into this 86 or so pages of comics.

I don't want to give the story away. If you want a fuller synopsis of this, they are out there, but that is never what I want to do in my write ups.

I really enjoyed this book, as I think it takes a lot of things that are familiar (which can be a good thing in story telling. We revisit things because they resonate. common themes become a type of shorthand, and it allows you to get into them faster, and it also makes the variations stand out stronger. It gives more impact to the things that aren't the same. Characters are consistent and believable. The end isn't my favorite, and maybe comes a little heavy handed, but it isn't bad. I think for being a picture of a bloody punch, the cover is pretty and really grabbed me. The book is the size of a current comic turned sideways. I don't love that configuration as it makes the book a bit floppy for my taste, and a little hard to keep a handle on. I know that sounds ridiculous, but it was a thought I had a few times while handling the book, reading it.

This book is well worth checking out. I am a sucker for this sort of story, and Pug does it right.

SPX 2010 aftermath - where my money went.

Here is a list of what we picked up at #SPX Small Press Expo this year. My 11 year old daughter Tyler and I have both started our reading, and will have more in depth thoughts on everything, but for right now, this is it:

Tyler's Purchases:

• Red Moon (and Red Moon "The Rising") - David McAdoo
• Louis: Night Salad (hardback) - Metaphrog
• Sugary Serials - free comic - Jerzy Drozd / Mark Rudolph
• Owly - Tiny Tales, Flying Lassons, Just a Little Blue - Andy Runton *
• *Tyler was a bit disappointed that Andy wasn't able to make the show, but the deals were really good. For 30 bucks she got all 3 books and an Owly Plushy. a copy of the first Johnny Boo by James Kochalka was given to her for free also)She went away happy anyway.
• The Baby-Sitters Club 4: Claudia and Mean Janine - Raina Telgemeier
• Winters in Lavelle - Kasey Van Hise
• Mermin (Issues 1,2,3) - Joey Weiser
• Sudden Valley - Get a Job - Jamie Baldwin
• In addition to this she picked up a good number of buttons, singles and sets. Button hunting was another thing she enjoyed. She also loved putting them on her bag she was carrying
• Red Moon T-Shirt
• SPX T-Shirt for volunteering

Rob's Haul

• Kevin Days a Week: Year Three - Kevin Burkhalter
• Beyond the Canopy: Book 1: Sticks 'N Stones - Jonathan Griffiths
• Comics to Make You Go Krazee - David Yoder
• It Happened at Work - David Yoder
  
• Diary Comics - Dustin Harbin
• The Enquirer (May 2010) - Dustin Harbin (comics newspaper!)
• One Year in Indiana #1, 2 - Kurt Dinse
• Helium vs Hydrogen #2 - Adam Aylard
• Three Word Phrase - Ryan Pequin
• Stitching Together - Ed Choy Moorman
• More Beer - O'Shell
• The Replacements - Jerzy Drozd & Sara Turner
• Goodbye Chains - Alice Hunt & Tracy Williams
• Desmond's Devastating Dozen - Joe Foo
• Last Dollar Comics Fun Pack - JIM8BALL (8bucks for 10 comics, 2 buttons and a little 2x3 sketch. The buttons were spider-man drinking a soda and robots love puppies. The multicolored pen sketch is of the punisher) This was a neat idea.
• Carnival Anthology - Curls Studio
• Love and Rockets New Stories #3 - Hernandez Brothers
• Hey Pais - "Sic Semper the guy" - Paisley the Cat, and the Girl
  

So that's our list. I will post something about everything when I had time to read everything. If you have a specific take or opinion on any of these, let me know. Having written this all out, I notice some really glaring omissions. There were a number of people I wanted to buy from, and just didn't get back to them, or ran out of movey before I could get to them. I will try to make that up at some point.

SPX 2010 This time with more 11 year old

This is my third year going to the Small Press Expo #spx in Bethesda, Md. It's my second year volunteering, and my first year to have one of my daughters with me. I talked about the show with her and she was well prepared for it. She knew we would be working as volunteers, and that I had some panels I wanted to sit in on. She had her gameboy, a sketch pad, and a phone(just in case we got separated). When we got there she bought a babysitter's club book from Raina Telgemeir, and another book that had caught her eye (Red Moon), at another booth. Also, she had a very strong desire to really experience the show. She had saved up a good bit of money on her own, and had some ideas as to the sort of things she wanted. She loves comics of all sorts. She's a fan of Manga as well as superheroes, she loved Smile and Scott Pilgrim almost equally, as well as Tiny Titans, Sonic the Hedgehog and Pokemon comics, Owly, etc. I love SPX, I think my daughter is pretty awesome, but I still wasn't certain how she would like the show.

I will jump forward a bit and say right now that she loved it. We were there six or seven hours on Saturday, and we went back on Sunday almost exclusively because she requested it. She met and talked to a good number of creators, and spent nearly as much as I did on comics. Her comics purchases will be detailed in another post, just as mine will. I'm hoping I will be able to get her to write down or dictate her take on the things she purchased, but we'll have to see.

From my perspective (and everyone else's I have read) It was a great show. There are so many genuinely cool people at that show, of all styles and levels. The demographic of the show from what I could see was pretty diverse in about any way you can judge diversity. The exhibitors tend to skew a certain age range for the most part, but that's to be expected I think. One thing I think you see at SPX that you don't always see at more mainstream focused cons is a pretty great concentration of female fans and creators. I can't pretend to guess the ratio, but it is something that more people should take notice of. I can't be certain, but I also swear that of the decent number of kids that were at the show, the majority I saw were girls, and I didn't see any of them looking miserable (I am certain there were some kids there that weren't loving it, but I didn't see them.)

I also feel that there were more people there with Comics that might appeal to an all ages, or especially a Young Adult audience. Comics Bakery, Make Like a Tree, Top Shelf, Red Moon, Hey Pais, Metaphrog, a2alien, and more were there with some top notch stuff, and they are just some I am pulling off the top of my head (some of those are the name of the business, and some are the comic I think.) In addition to that, there were a lot of other comics (trades and minis) that if they weren't specifically made with kids in mind were perfectly fine for kids or young adults. The cool part for me was when Tyler (that's my 11 year old daughter's name) Chatted up people at one booth while I was at another, and they had pointed out to her things she might like that would be age apropriate. There were also tons and tons of comics way over her head, or wildly inapropriate for her. Even so, with a moderate application of parenting, she already understood that, and most exhibitors made a point to let me know, or had no issue answering my questions, etc.

Tyler and I got to talk with Raina Telgemeier, which is always nice. She had just read my copy of Smile, and had previously read Raina's first three Baby Sitters Club graphic adaptations. We spent a good bit of time with Jerzy Drozd who is a pretty awesome guy. We had a discussion (all three of us on equal footing) about how cool Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends was, as he drew a great picture of Edwardo from that show for her in her sketch book. I got to meet Jaime Hernandez again, and get the third volume of Love and Rockets new stories before it was on the shelves anywhere. We both got to have a really nice time chatting with the talented creators of Beyond the Canopy(Jonathan Griffiths) and Winters in Lavelle (Kasey Van Hise) (whose tables were next to each other). I'm leaving a lot out, I'm sure, but I am sure I will cover things in other posts.

I am going to end this post now, or I will never get anything posted again, ever. Sorry for running out of steam on this.