The Factual Opinion

Too Many Movies: So Much Violence, Like Unlimited Birthday Cakes

This time around, Joe McCulloch delivers his take on Drive, direct to your heart (as the Gosling intended it), while Tucker goes through a bunch of movies with violence in them, as well as Guarding Tess and some movie about a picnic.

Drive
I liked Dead Man’s Bones, it was a cool album, 2011
Joe McCulloch


In case you’re wondering why this is drenched in the internet’s cum, the answer’s pretty simple. Despite its director’s public toasts to Alejandro Jodorowsky and Gaspar Noé, Drive is fundamentally the same kind of thing as the Crank series: a smart/dumb winking-but-just-because-I’m-enjoying-myself-so-much rendering of goofball movie thrills deep through the horizon of absurdity as a bath of sheer visual aesthetic, rippled and splashed through by a wildly and simply dedicated protagonist.

Mind you, instead of hyperkinetic racing racing racing it’s a mostly rich-lit thing of Mannish mise-en-scène, yet not above arching the authorial eyebrow as criminal chauffer Ryan Gosling -- who apparently insisted on the involvement of director Nicolas Winding Refn in what was at one point supposed to be a more straightforward heist-gone-bad picture -- passes through a garage full of flashy muscle cars to arrive at the nondescript consumer vehicle in which he’ll be pulling off his next big crime scene escape-for-hire, potentially rousing film critics of a certain inclination to stand on the seats screaming YES! YES! FUCK YOU MICHAEL BAY! GOOD GUYS WIN! GOOD GUYS WIN! Breathlessly, Refn withholds the speed release of Gosling’s adventure by portraying the getaway as a game of hiding your car in shadows until a dozen or so final seconds of furious velocity accompanied (knowingly, I’m sure) by the shittiest, hackiest trope imaginable: the Big Game on the radio appearing to comment on the protagonist’s on-screen action. THEN - pink neon credits! The most on-the-nose song-selections-as-commentary this side of Zack Snyder! Ryan Gosling dressed as a cop, but he’s really on a movie set where nary an eyes is blinked in the face of dangerous stunts before slipping on a latex tough guy mask because who is he, really? EH? EH??

I liked Crank and Crank 2, though. I liked Drive too. Hell, despite how my review sounded, I also liked Joe Wright’s Hanna, which, alternatively, married intensively stylized action to a defiant intellectualization of every fucking thing in sight. Refn, meanwhile, is content to play at games of performance and illusion -- Gosling is a stuntman pretending to be a movie tough guy by living as a tough guy until the burden of toughness demands he wear a literal tough guy mask in audition for perhaps the ultimate cool stoicism of death… and the villain is a producer! -- which I found to be largely banal and overwrought. He’s far better at presenting Ron Pearlman and Albert Brooks(!) as ludicrously clichéd mob types, the former gesticulating wildly underneath an awesome spray tan while the latter, in response to Gosling’s refusal to shake because ’my hands are dirty,’ suckles the inevitable ’so are mine’ like a honeyed lozenge. Better still is the (again shopworn) idea of time and sound slowing as Our Man readies himself for action (I mean, there‘s a fucking Saving Private Ryan hearing blowout bit! Seriously!), which Refn takes to the frankly wonderful extent of Gosling stepping into a veritable pocket dimension, lights shifting and everything, to exchange a long, erotic kiss with Carey Mulligan As the Good Girl in the millisecond before moving in to crush an assassin’s head like a plastic cup, Toxic Avenger-style.

Yet if there’s anything that remains constant between these bursts of ecstasy, it’s gotta be Gosling; heaven knows if Drive starts up a trend, its already got its Nicolas Cage. This is the kind of performance that dares to appear completely ridiculous for a good portion of screen time in the service of a persona sewn together from so many classic toothpick-chewing gestures the Driver comes off like an uncanny living seinen manga tough guy with all the stiffness of the page somehow intact in three dimensions. But by the time heads are erupting from gunfire and pierced necks are gushing blood in the bathroom, Gosling is sweating and trembling, like he never really expected to be this guy he’s been playing for everyone, most of all himself. Again, it’s not so fascinating an arc, but its actualization is something to enjoy moment by moment, which describes the film neatly.

Rise Of The Planet of The Apes
Who Let The Dogs Out, 2011 

This was pretty exhilirating, and surely the best of this summer's dire crop of popcorn blockbusters. There's a lot that could have been improved--that's one of the most tacked-on female characters in recent memory, practically could have been added in post--but considering the film is, essentially, the action thriller equivalent of Roger Rabbit or Space Jam, it's hard to come down anywhere but "yeah, sure" on this one. It takes balls to set that much action in the daylight, y'know?

The Man From Nowhere
He's not gay incase anyone is wondering, 2010

This is broadly similar to Taken in terms of plot structure, but it's more just any movie ever about a guy who wants to look inward (because of a tragic loss) being forced to act outward (because of an innocent victim of evil). On the other hand, it's also movie about a guy with a really horrible haircut and no personality who is pretty good at beating people up, and then he cuts his hair and becomes a really beautiful physical specimen who is insanely good at killing people. Some really great violence in this one.

13 Assassins
Total Massacre, 2010

Diabolical film. The sequence where the camera is turned on its side nearly knocked me off the couch. There's a lot else to love here, although much has been pointed out that might be a sticking point from a certain intellectual level. Honestly though, it would take me multiple years of rewatching to get to a point where those final battles no longer carried a visceral impact. I envy the teenagers who are currently soaking their brains in this thing's brine.

The Chaser
This Metal Folding Chair Will Show Me Your Head Secrets, 2008

Although the hammer/chisel scene that occurs early on nearly had me bailing for less gross-out pastures, I stuck it out, am glad I did. Perfectly aping the dead-run style set up by After Hours or Booty Call (and maybe a dash of 24), The Chaser is the sort of movie that would've been singled out as a "non-stop thrill ride" if that phrase hadn't been attached to basically every non-comedy ever made. It's of the mean fucker variety though, an action thriller that takes some aggressive detours into hard R slasher. Oh, and it also made a massive amount of money, and everybody involved in this movie apparently became a superstar afterwards.

Guarding Tess
Down In The Ground Where The Dead Men Go, 1994

Not sure if it's accurate to time it out perfectly, but I think I actually sank into a deep, deep depression right around when I decided it would be a good idea to watch this entire movie from start to finish. It's kind of fascinating to watch pre-crazy Nicholas Cage, because his performances aren't markedly different in any substantial way, and yet there's just a general sense nowadays that yeah, he's gone pretty far out on the beam. I genuinely love that scene where Cage shoots Austin Pendleton though, that hasn't changed a bit. Otherwise, I've got nothing to say here. We make our own hell, sometimes.

Lethal Weapon
Lethal Fucking Weapon, 1987

God, wouldn't you like to read that Chris Ryan book right now? Right/right/right now? Anyway: the only thing I noticed for the first time on this rewatch of the fifth greatest movie involving Shane Black ever made was that Mel Gibson doesn't seem to have a grasp on how to play Riggs until the second or third scene, to the point where it even sounds like he's speaking in his native accent. Then it clicks into place, he does that out of breath laugh thing and, bang, it's countdown to the scene where he kills somebody who torturers him. Watching Mel Gibson kill people who torture him is a time-honored American tradition, one he almost ruined along with all the other traditions he did ruin when he went batshit crazy (in an unfunny way) for the second time. This one still works!

The Bermuda Depths
Bad Movie Club #1, 1978

Oh, this is a stone motherfucking classic, right here. A sleazy cash-in on Jaws stapled to a story about an immortal ghost (married to a gigantic killer turtle) who falls in love with a paranoid schizophrenic orphan (orphaned by the evil, omnipotent spirit that animates the turtle and immortalized the ghost) under the watchful eye of Burl Ives and a drunk Carl Weathers (!), this is one of those movies that actually incorporates a scene shot in a bathtub, with a toy boat, and pretends that it's a boat on the open water. Oh, and you know how you've never seen a movie where a gigantic turtle jumps into the sky and knocks down a helicopter, thereby killing the people onboard said helicopter? That's a loss you can remedy. Wow.

The 36th Chamber of Shaolin
Dude Still Makes Movies, Dude Still Kicks Ass, 1978 

This is one of those movies whose cultural impact and overall wonderfulness overshadows a lot of its minor failings, the most egregious being that its way more interesting to watch the main character go through 35 chambers of Shaolin training than it is to watch him do anything with said training, and since the end of the movie is (necessarily) going to be him doing stuff just like that, the movie ends on a down note. (Except for the graveyard scene, which plays out like a black box theater production of Faces of Death style snuff/shlock, and pretty much redeems everything around it.)

The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three
Walter Matthau Threw That Piece Of Shit Like A Piece of Shit, 1974

Some movies you remember watching for the first time, some movies are just woven into the fabric of one's existence. Hail, hail. Prequels are stupid fucking concepts, the province of lazy audiences and lazy entertainment merchants: but man, I'd watch a movie about whatever mercenary work it was that Robert Shaw's character was doing up until he decided to bring hell back to the underground. That's an untapped vein of gold right there.

Wages of Fear
How's That Leg Feeling, Slippery Sam, 1953

Is there any working filmmaker who scares people as much as Clouzot did back in the 50's? The only one I can think of is Lars Von Trier, but he really just offends people, he doesn't scare them. Does any artist scare people the way Clouzot did? It might be a question of audience--Clouzot made supremely skillful thrillers, and "artistic" directors seem to have completely abandoned genre entirely, with the only exception being non-American filmmakers who still get stuck in arthouses when they leave their own countries and end up subtitled.

Whatever, it's not like this train of thought is giving me any pleasure. Wages of Fear: this really is a perfect  movie.

People On Sunday
From Your Hips To Your Finger Tips, 1929

Part of the reason people get so amped up about the past has gotta be that you could be one sexy motherfucker based purely off of attitude, as that's what all silent movies from the 20's constantly imply. (Unless you were a woman, of course.) Almost all of these flicks have dudes in them that are considered the Ryan Gosling/Jude Laws of their day, and yet those dudes appear indistinguishable from the specimen of man you oft find lurking around the 2AM hour at your local Waffle House (or local Waffle House equivalent). That whole "go to the gym"/"eat some boiled chicken" thing is totally a new creation. Movie star dudes used to be skanky.

Anyways: this movie is about a picnic. The dude who sets it up ends up banging it out with one of the girls while her pal gets all jealous and breaks a record. Trees are climbed, paddleboats are paddled. Solid as steel? You know it.

-Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone, 2011

My Wife: Finally Read Something By Warren Ellis

Hey hey hey! This comic was almost right up my alley.

That's gotta count for something!

Secret Avengers #16
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Jamie McKelvie
Published by Marvel Comics

My take on the rules is this: if you're going to read a comic book, then you're implicitly agreeing to suspend your disbelief and say, "Okay, I'm in. I'm taking the ride." If you're not willing to do that, then come on--the idea of super heroes alone is going to send you right out the front door, right? There's no point at sitting down for poker and then making fun of the concept of playing cards. As readers, we have an unspoken, unwritten contract with the creators/companies/artists that says we are here to play along.

And since that's the agreement, I picked up this issue of Secret Avengers, and I was all in.  

You're in a city built a mile below Cincinnati? Of course you are!

The car you're driving in is somehow atomic? Absolutely! This makes perfect sense, and I have no problem with the concept. 

You engage on a logic and emotional level with a talking blue cat the size of a man? Hey, who wouldn't do the same, if the possibility presented itself.

And then, of course, there's the big conflict of the plot: the Von Doom field that will destroy the planet! (Or at least Cincinnati...)  Oh no! Oh no! Hey, Secret Avengers, do WHATEVER IT TAKES to handle the Von Doom Field!

I (we) never question any of this. We never stop to say, "now wait a second.....wait a second. How do you even turn on an atomic car without it blowing up?" Neither do we try to poke holes in the plausibility of ANY of the stuff about the Beast, who is a big blue talking cat. Why would we?

I don't have any problems with that part of the comic. I'm being a bit sarcastic in the way I present some of its major (and minor) points, but none of it bothered me. No, what bothered me showed up right in the middle of all the funny, pulpy, sorta cool/sorta crazy stuff, right in the middle of the good time I was having  riding the wave of fiction, when the dialogue turns to the subject of time machines.  

Let's all agree on something right now, at least so any potential review reader who happens to be kind of crazy goes away for a bit: in real life, there is no such thing as a time machine. Oh, I know - I wish they did too! Soooo much! I'm the descendent of a bunch of Jews who bailed for America with Nazis in the rearview: you think my people aren't thinking about time machines? We think about time machines all of the fucking time.

But they don't exist. We know they don't. That's part of the reasone they always show up in stories like this. You think would sit around and read about fax machines? There's no mystery to a fax machine. My mother threw a perfectly good fax machine away after the hospital she volunteers at told her they couldn't find a use for it: fax machines are boring as hell.

Now time machines--that's a topic for a fun story involving underground cities, talking blue cat men with senses of humor. Time machines can only amp up a story of this genre.

And yet, when we read about the topic of time machines, The Beast (our talking cat friend) decides to instruct everyone in the fact that they are an incredibly complex and dangerous weapon. Oh yes! How so?   How so, talking cat-beast, are fictional time machines incredibly complex and dangerous weapons? Well, because "a time machine is also a space machine. As we go forward in time, we move forward in space: the Earth moves around the sun..."  he goes on (and on, and on) to say, "So to go back in time on Earth, you have to also be sent to the postion your target was at that time in the past."

Hmmm. This seems very right and true and scientifically sound, I guess. Mmmm-hmmm. YES! Logic!  

Wait a second. LOGIC?

That's the problem.

In the midst of a fun, silly, fictional comic about the Secret Avengers plummeting below the earth's crust, one mile down to a whole other secret city built beneath Cincinnati to drive an atomic car (read: bomb) to deactivate a Von Doom field to keep the world from exploding, we the reader are suddenly burdened by made up logical explanations about made up things, and it's the reading equivalent of somebody taking the book you're enjoying out of your hands and forcing you to listen while they spell out the letters that are found in the words that make up the remainder of its sentences.

It's a buzz kill, and something tells me that the highest possible achievement a comic book like this is going for is to keep that buzz going on until the last page.

Seriously, ya'll, this irritated me. I was in the zone, you understand. My head was in the right place. This slick blond dude in his crazy suit is shooting his disc gun while this goofy British (Tucker said he isn't British, but that's got to be a mistake on his part) blue cat sputters and says "But I have paws" and everybody is so sexy and funny and crazy and it's set under Cincinnati and I even started thinking "Is this why I think Cincinnati is so uncool, because I've never imagined what exists under its surface" AND THEN: you start trying to make sense out of the nonsensical?

It breaks our contract. It destroys our agreement. It makes me think this comic was only sexy and cute and cool on accident, when what it was really supposed to be was about What If This Shit Was Real and that is so--god, that is so not fun at all. That is so much not interesting. I was loving being on board, and I buying whatever story you told. I didn't break my end of the deal. You did. You started poking holes in the plausibility of things, and then, well, I have to. I have to start thinking about time machines, and science, and then "is there enough oxygen underground for a city?" and "How did they build a mile below the earth without disturbing the surface" and "what exactly is a Von Doom field and how will it destroy anything?" Wah - wah. Game over. C'mon, comic book. You're way too short to win me back.

And all of a sudden, what was fun moments before is now totally unfun. I've not only lost interest, I feel complete disdain for the comic and how stupid it suddenly seemed, I feel mean, and I feel bad for feeling mean, and I wonder why the hell I showed up in the first place. And I'm saying that just to illustrate how only moments before I thought it was totally fun and creative, and that something in the writing caused me to turn on this comic book.  

I know it's not fair. Feelings are weird, right?

I'm kinda sad about that. Sad? Yeah, I'm sad. Sad enough that it took me several tries (and days. Weeks?) to write this review. The whole thing was just kind of a bummer. Ah well. Better luck next time, Mrs. Stone. 

-Nina Stone, 2011

Comics Of The Weak: I Think I'm Gonna Need To Reboot The Way We Kiss

Action Comics #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Rags Morales
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked At: 113%
Amount I Honestly Read: 62%

This one's a snooze festival, population everybody who read it, but hey, maybe you've accidently started a relationship with somebody that you would rather put in a coma and shove off a bridge. If that's the case, this is totally up your alley. The art is funny. There's a part where Lex Luthor is drinking a can of soda, and then it turns into one of those skinny Red Bull cans, and then all of this miniaturization of cans climaxes in the thing disappearing into Lex's hand. The rest of it is just a strange looking comic where Rags Morales tries to confuse the reader by drawing all of the character's faces differently from panel to panel. Other than that, it's a really boring comic. Pretty much a complete failure, especially when you remember that the same writer did a Superman comic that was qualitatively about 8000 times better not but a few years ago.

The Big Lie #1
Written by Rick Veitch
Art by Veitch and Erskine
Published by DC Comics
Pages I Looked At: 100%
Amount I Honestly Read: 45%

This might have not been published as part of the new 52, I can't remember. It was a new number one though, the first issue of this really weird series where the hero (Uncle Sam, from that Alex Ross comic) shows up just to talk to the reader about something called the Noble Lie, which is this thing where somebody spends so much time on the Internet that they think they have a degree in Knowing Lots Of Philosophical Shit. But then the guy--Uncle Sam--isn't there for the rest of the comic! And the rest of the comic is about some lady traveling back in time to 9/11 so she can show a boardroom full of people proof of how 9/11 really happened, and she has the proof on her iPad, and so everybody in the room keeps interrupting her to ask about iPads, and you know--it's my own fault, that you don't believe me right now. But this is true, this is a real thing, and they really do take a bunch of breaks during the Hey 9/11 Was An Inside Job portion of the drama to make jokes about iPads. And then everybody dies anyway, because it's a comic and comics are short, and then it's over and Uncle Sam uses a bunch of old timey slave-era slang--that part is really weird--to tell you in this gee-shucks fashion what a shitty American you are, guy reading this comic, because you don't sit around talking about 9/11 being an inside job. But hey, The Beat thinks this one is a "great comic", and a decent portion of their freakshow commentors agree. Sometimes pizzas have tomatoes, whatever that saying is.

Detective Comics #1
Written by Tony Salvadore Daniel
Art by T. Salvodore D.
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked At: 100%
Amount I Honestly Read: 100%

While Mr. Matt Seneca took a break from Google Buzzing with White Shasta and Blaze Larmy to point out that Tony Daniel's reference o' homage doesn't extend beyond the books alphabetically shelved next to the ones he had some involvement in, there's still something left on the table to shake ones head at in this piece of shit, like the line "Gotham is a hellhole and it always will be" which is immediately responded to with the line "Like HELL it will". So much in comics should be said out loud before it gets written down, but that might interrupt the parts of the day where TSD lifts freakout pages from Preacher.

Batwing #1
Written by Judd Winick
Art by Ben Oliver
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked at: 63%
Amount I Honestly Read: what's two pages? Two pages.

This comic seems to be for people who watched that movie The Crazies and got pissed off that the day wasn't saved by M.A.N.T.I.S., and considering how well recieved the Saw Goes Brucing thing is going down lately, maybe that's a whole bunch of people. How fucked up is it that, after this horrible piece of shit comic that no one will ever enjoy reading is cancelled, Dan Didio will use it as an excuse at a convention for why nobody wants to read about black super-heroes? How fucked up is that the same assholes who retweet cutesy Powerpuff drawings of Elektra going "tee-hee-hee" are going to argue in some weird, locked up inside due to lonely logic that he's sort of right because wook-ie, mew makes Excel sheet tumblr face with my spawe time. Fucking trashheaps. I'd give 'em both cancer. You too, Jesus. Where were you when those people on the last page of this Batwing comic got their heads cut off inside a school for book learning? Were you hanging out with your lazy friend Allah, who didn't help them either? Batwing.

OMAC #1
Written by Dan Didio
Art by Keith Giffen
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked at: 100%
Amount I Honestly Read: 30%

The coloring in this comic is so hardcore ugly that you want to go backwards in time to the guy who was excited about Mark Chiarello being named as "guy who will fix DC's horrible art" and punch that guy in the face for his dumb, unfounded hope, even though that guy is you. And while the only reason you're noticing the shitty coloring is because you got on board to check out this sort of amazing Kirby-esque Trencher-style art that Giffen brings to the table, you notice it's shittiness nonetheless. Thankfully, it's just ugly enough to make the thing a weird search for meaning type of experience, which is good, because reading any of the dialog will seriously impinge on your ability to get an erection ever again, even if your mom is Mandy Fisher and she wants to take you camping.

Men of War #1
Written by Ivan Brandon
Art by Tom Derenick
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked at: 100% of the main story, 1% of the back-up
Amount Of It I Honestly Read: 100% of the main story, 0% of the back-up

While being a fan of first person shooters might make you think my favorite part of this comic was the part where it opened with the main character woozily waking up mid-battle and flashing back to reveal his own origin (I was on pins and needles, waiting for the comic to tell me which button lets me skip through the cutscene), the best part is actually, by far, the part where the main character--who is one of Sgt. Rock's kids or something like that--gets told by a couple of high-ranking military types that they have interviewed every single person he has ever served with, and all of those people thought that he was the best man they had ever had the distinct pleasure of meeting. It's very specific about this, and that's all kinds of sweet. That's more of a wish-fulfillment moment than a power ring or a night with 90's era Demi Moore. Can you imagine how it would feel to have two authoritative types sit you down and say "we've done the research, and everybody who has ever met you said that you are totally fucking awesome"? To be told there wasn't a single hold-out? Dude, don't lie. Don't you dare. That would feel totally amazing.

Casanova Avaritia #1
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Gabriel Ba
Published by Icon

The biggest problem Casanova has always had has been its unfortunate timing--in a better world, it would be getting published by somebody who just wanted it to come out and exist, but in the one we live in now, it has to pretend towards being some kind of "story", which is never going to be as interesting as what it should be. It should be a place where Gabriel Ba can take Matt Fraction's oft-confusing verbiage and self-referential gamesmanship and chase after making them into singular moments of the insane and weird. It might end up being irritating, but no more so than it already is to watch the book struggle to appease the needs of a genre it would be better off without engaging with at all. Some of us just want to like something that's new, you know? Something that's coming out. This is it already--so lovely, so plush. But if only it were given the room to blow itself out, and up, even further! To be stranger, to drown in undiluted block cartoon sex appeal and guns and jokes, or whatever else filled up the lines.

Suspect Device
By Various
Published by Josh Bayer & Edwin Vazquez

This is one of the best things I've read since Love and Rockets 4 and Lose, a tripped out Cadillac of comics. It's printed on newsprint and acts on the reader like something you'd find in the trunk of a serial killers car, an experiment comic (not experiment-al) where each cartoonist takes a panel or two from Nancy (the Bushmiller Nancy) and draws something out of it. Some of the cartoonists come back for more, some don't credit themselves with their real names, some do huge Panter rip-off art styles and others do fluctuations of their own. So little of this is bad, it's the opposite of anthologies, almost everything in her kicks ass. It's funny as hell. Scary. So good.

Batgirl #1
Written by Gail Simone
Art by somebody
Published by DC Comics
Pages Looked at: 5%
Amount I Honestly Read: 0%

No sir, not a chance. I want to have kids someday.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Great Haircuts of Future Past: Clap Your Atomic Hands Say Yeah

Welcome to the fourth in a six-part series examining some nine-year old Marvel Comics featuring their Cable character, written by myself, Tucker Stone, and Noah Berlatsky. The first part is located here, the second is here, the third is here.

Soldier X #7
Written by Darko Macan
Art by Igor Kordey
Published by Marvel Comics 

Following the six part arc that saw Cable exercise his deity muscles in Russia, "The Low Budget Action Movie" sees him at play in the skies over Kashmir. (Part of the reason Soldier X is remembered fondly has to be Macan's diversity of location. When's the last time somebody set a super-hero comic in Kashmir?) Arriving just in time to save a young boy from the certain death that being thrown out of a plane has to offer, Cable is once again using his powers--which now seem to be limited only by imagination--in a way that paints him as religious icon, this time a classic angel/lumberjack hybrid. Holding a full size military cargo jet stationary high above the Earth with only his mind, he rescues a group of children (and then grants sanctuary to one of their would be murderers as well), carrying them telekinetically through the sky, using oxygen itself as his own elevator.

Upon his return to solid ground, he becomes intrigued when hearing of a stranger using a word that comes from Cable's past. Believing it to be a possible lead on his friend Blaquesmith, who had previously sent Cable off to the tiny Russian wasteland that had spurred the previous storyline, Cable agrees to head over and check it out. Upon arrival, he's once again given a chance to play super-hero, and in keeping with the "Low Budget" aspect of Macan's title, he ends up saving the day with yet another use of his not-so-flashy-when-you-get-down-to-it powers.

Here's the thing about Cable, by the way. As far as history explains it, the character is one who brought two particularly stupid things to a great popularity during his short reign at the top of comics. The first one is guns, and the second one is pouches. Now, I don't have anything to say about the pouches--I don't get why those were fun for artists like Rob Liefeld and Jim Lee to draw, but they clearly were--but the first one makes a whole lot of sense. You know what is sort of lame, always? Looking at a comic about telekinetic people who can redesign the very fabric of reality. It's not that lame to read about it--telekinetic stories in and of themselves are fine--but there's just nothing to look at other than a guy screwing up his face into a look of concentration, and if you've seen one "i'm thinking so hard that it's making me grit my teeth" panel in your lifetime, you've seen the exact amount you need to see to get by in life, forever. And you know what does look kind of crazy interesting, especially if you've got an artist who is hell bent on going bigger every time, as Rob Liefeld was during those brief, heady days when Comics Featuring Cable were outselling things like "books by Haruki Murakami" and "milk"? Guns. Guns that grow to insane, page-spotlighting fashion, guns that make no logistical sense as weaponry, guns that, if real, would weigh as much as a Honda Prelude. If you were a 13 year old trying to choose between looking at a comic book drawing of Cable thinking all of his enemies into naptime--which Macan and Kordey depict as something he could do without the slightest effort, instantly--or looking at a drawing of a guy shooting two lazer bazookas into their faces while screaming, you'd pick the bazookas, everytime.

Of course, if you're funny enough, maybe you can make the other thing work too.

When Cable arrives on the scene in the tiny village, he met by a division of the Pakistani army, who have arrived at the behest of their "greatest of generals" to enlist our hero as their latest recruit. (In keeping with the previous issues, Kordey's lollipop obsession gets prominent placement in the splash page above.) And while, as Cable immediately points out, he could "disarm his army in the blink of an eye", Macan plays the scene out for seven pages...until Cable snaps his finger and teleports all of the surviving bad guys away anyway. Following the lessons learned in Russia regarding personal responsibility, Cable exercises his power to an extreme degree while still basically letting people punish themselves. (For whatever reason, the person who suffers most--besides the General, who is executed by his own men out of a misunderstood notion of personal safety--is the translator, who Cable transforms into a hideous bird-man hybrid.) But after that, we're done with Soldier X for the most part. There's three more pages where Blaquesmith reveals himself not to be Cable's longtime compatriot, but instead a professor at the University of Calgary surgically altered by Jackie Singapore (the Bond villian from Cable #107) so as to trick Cable into becoming a Singapore-sponsored movie star cult leader. It's not hard to see in this little twist, so abruptly delivered, the seeds of what Macan and Kordey might have been planning. After all the actual religion stuff in the first six issues, what other follow up could there be then a post 90's commentary on celebrity? 2003--hell, we didn't even have Real Housewives until 2006.

Closing things out, faux-Blaquesmith's weird "teach me how walk" line lands funny, but then again, nobody ever does morals in a way that isn't a bit queasy. Thankfully, there's one last joke, a third-wall breaking apology to the reader that serves as an acknowlegement that this comic never did a good job of playing by the rules "nuMarvel" had set up, and then we're done. There was still an epilogue to come from Macan and Kordey, and then there was one of the sharpest turns into hellish shit that any super-hero comic would see until Tan followed Quitely, but for all intents and purposes, this was as far as they let the rope play out.

And then none of these people ever worked for Marvel Comics again.

-Tucker Stone, 2011

Great Haircuts of Future Past: Now That's How You Say Goodbye

Welcome to the third in a six-part series examining some nine-year old Marvel Comics featuring their Cable character, written by myself, Tucker Stone, and Noah Berlatsky. The first part is located here, and the second is here, and the fourth part is here.

Soldier X #5
Written by Darko Macan
Art by Igor Kordey
Published by Marvel Comics, 2003

Before I get into anything about these particular issues, I feel I must take up a sidebar: you've got to look at these covers. Don't focus on the Kordey illustrations--they're great, it's not that I'm stuck on--instead, take a look at the background colors, specifically on this issue and the sixth. How gorgeous are those? I doubt whether the color selections had any specific meaning, but doesn't it add a certain layer of...not seriousness, not maturity, but a certain adultness to the material? You know, that sort of fake adultness that super-hero comics still, even now, does better than iCarly or Big Time Rush? Maybe it's just me. I doubt it, that I'm the only one who still gets a bit jacked in when super-hero comics play at being grown-up and serious in ways beyond somebody cutting the Joker's face off and hanging it on a wall while the Joker makes a joke about how said torture made him cum. (That example is from a comic that was released today.) It's that feeling, the one you get when fake-Thing realizes what friendship can mean in "This Man, This Monster", or what Bruce Wayne's say when he shakes his fist at his empty costume in "Death in the Family", that feeling that has nothing to do with being a real grown-up but still encompasses what you thought being a grown-up meant.

That's what that washed in background reminds me of, I can't help it. It reminds me that this was a series from a couple of guys who were resolutely committed to making an American comic, but couldn't help the fact that they were serious dudes from serious places. They cared about stuff that a lot of American super-hero comics just don't care about as a general rule, and one of those things was the way the background colors on the covers had to look handmade. (And if it is handmade, even better.)

Following Cable's accidental resurrection of mutant healer Magdalena in the previous issues, "The Siege of Saint Lenin" opens with him once again in the position of beggar, trying to convince a young mutant not to take risks and exploit her powers. And like before, his attempts to convince fail--but this time, Macan makes it more obvious why:

It's an old twist, a classic one: he's the same as what he condemns. Arriving in an impoverished, crime stricken wasteland of no hope and old religion under the vague, unconfirmed orders of someone Cable hasn't seen in years, the character sets about doing "what's right". And Macan whips it up into a lather--here's a mutant girl, her mother's a religious harpy happy to suck the last cell of life off her daughter's albino flesh, her father a broken wimp; here's violent crime, the poor, the stupid, the hopeless and weak--all the better for Cable to save the day, right?

And yet he accomplishes so little. Like a man who considers fatherhood to end at orgasm, or a kid who adopts a dog because he liked a puppy, Cable resurrects a damaged, fearsome young girl and then finds her repellent when she fails to act like a high quality victim. But unlike before, Cable doesn't run a broad spectrum lobotomy on the surrounding locals, most of all, he doesn't run. He's learned a lesson.

He's got to learn one more.

I don't completely disagree with Noah's criticisms of Cable as being a bit of a boring slug, after all, I think that might be, in part, what Macan and Krodey thought of him as well. Look at the way he's depicted in those first three issues--a death tourist, an oblivious wrecking ball. He goes down into the bowels, gets irritated by the way those in the bowels operate, and then he destroys. When he's accosted for his failings and offered direction--one that's unclear, but a direction nonetheless--he flies off into the sky, yelling for attention like a grounded teenager pounding pillows. And now, in the abandoned art dumps (ridiculous, hilarious, overwrought sculptures of historical Soviet icons) of Russia, he wanders, trying to accomplish a task.

It's the Geo character--that's him screaming at Cable in the panels above--that seems to make Macan's curious case the best. A quaint (and yet not at all harmless) terrorist credited for the destruction of hundreds of McDonald's, the fight scene between Geo and Cable takes up only a scant few pages in "The Siege of Saint Lenin", but the point is still made, albeit as bluntly as possible. After listening to Cable bark around about "orders" and "superiors", Geo finally snaps and tries to beat some sense into him. Like the rules or hate the rules, but this isn't where Cable lives. It's Geo's home, Magdalena's, and the constant braying that his values and priorities apply here, that his cell phone should work, that people should talk in calm voices or at the very least make some kind of sense...it isn't just arrogant, it's obnoxious. Now, Geo's screaming ranges all over the place. Not all of it makes sense. Some of it might be a philosophical argument, so Macan just goes one better, and works it into the lens of what is, basically, a comic foil with insecurities and earthy lusts. Geo doesn't have a firm worldview to advertise, he's not that kind of dude. He's a simple, emotional person, and he's sick and tired of seeing this hard edged soldier prick treat this little Russian hellscape like Yojimbo's chessboard.

Geo can't beat Cable in a fight, that's always clear. The most he can hope for is to get Cable out of his head for a minute, to make him realize his value isn't to be found in the processing, but in the doing. He doesn't know that's what he's shooting for, of course--but neither did Falstaff when he leads Henry astray, he was just trying to get the kid to learn about good times--and the intent isn't what matters, and it's instinctual either way. Who hasn't tried to convince Mr. Serious to come outside and fuck around a bit?

Of course, as Noah has pointed out, this is a Marvel comic. There's certain other tricks we've got, when gags won't work.

Throughout this portion of the comic, Magdalena's mother has been getting tortured by the local Russian gangsters. Macan isn't kind about it either--he works really hard to make those gangsters funny, and he lays the overall horribleness of the victim on with a trowel. She's as close to evil as civilian characters get in comics, with that stock religious mania that always bodes extremely bad tidings forMarvel mutant characters (in the last few decades, only the Scarlet Witch has outpaced religious zealotry in devastating Marvel's mutant population).

But forget about complexity, say Macan. A naked woman is getting tortured in broad daylight by a bunch of angry young men. Her daughter is listening, on the verge of becoming a monster herself. The husband? A weak, sniveling mouse of a man. The local, homegrown hero? Bested.

This? This is a job for Cable. Hell it's perfect for him--right on the verge of becoming a complicated person, right on the verge of realizing that his save-the-girl, punch-some-dudes, and talk-righteous method doesn't work that well when he's surrounded by people who are more indebted to personal passions (be they hate, be they love) than they are ennamoured with rules. Some blind righteousness is needed. There's a lady that needs rescuing.

Get to stepping.

Soldier X #6
Written by Darko Macan
Art by Igor Kordey
Published by Marvel Comics, 2003

The sixth issue of Soldier X is pure, bloody climax. And like those three Cable issues that came first, it's a specific subversion of expectation. Every minor note that was hinted at before--religious mania, resurrections, the Passion--is blasted again, at a diabolically loud volume. Every character gets a chance on the stage, but they gotta be prepared to ham it up.

First, of course, is Cable. Given the opportunity to play hero, he spins the dial to eleven--he won't just win, he's going to make some people believers while doing so. Specifically, he walks into a neverending hail of gunfire, forcibly shutting down his own super-hero shields so that the bullets can rend his flesh and explode through his skin. His severed fingers fall to the earth below, separated from the muscle, torn from the bone. Of course, he's never really in danger--he dedicates that never-ending powerset of his to repairing the damage even as it is occurring--and his would be killers and the civilian populace read into him right what Macan wants them to: a savior, right here in our shitty neighborhood.

(I feel like I've seen this joke a million times, but I can't remember it being done with a guy who is actually missing a limb.)

Due to space limitations, the comic has to leap from "Everybody thinks Cable is some kind of God" right to "They decide he's not, and attempt to kill him, crazy mob style" in the span of four panels, and yet this makes it the perfect set-up for our next Classic Genre Beat, Extreme Edition, this one most commonly known as The Previously Emasculated Joke Character Sacrifices Himself. Geo, delivering what has to be my favorite bit of dialog he gets, and he's got a lot, literally shoos Cable away, before welcoming the mob to beat him to death, one pipe wielding fucker at a time. Again: these aren't the gangsters doing the slaughtering. This is just regular old people, the poor, bored and sad. It's been a shitty couple of lifetimes, there's been a lot of bloodletting, and this is one of those nights where everybody goes a bit too far. Geo is more than happy to draw the short straw. Make fun if you want, he seems to say.

No problem guy. (You know it's raining, right?)

From there, the conclusion to this six part arc is finally reached. Magdalena forgives her mother (by killing her, but hey, that's how forgiveness works sometimes) and Cable puts her on a truck out of town. Our gangsters commit a quick, sanity-saving coup, and the local church decides to toss the only body part Geo has left behind--his cheap cyborg arm, stolen from a gorilla who would've wasted it--up on the alter.

It's a cheap, standard present that Cable leaves behind--release and religion, the same shit that missionaries always have in their rearview. But this being a Marvel comic, he can give them a miracle, and before Macan and Kordey close the door on this--the only true "arc" that Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada let them have--that's exactly what Cable does. In keeping with Kirby, it's big and loud, and in keeping with Lee, there's an unbelievably cornball rainbow in the background.

(I don't know if those are the best kind, but I'm pretty sure they're the only kind I like.)

-Tucker Stone, 2011

 

Great Haircuts of Future Past: In The Beginning, Rio Was Her Name

Welcome to the first in a six-part series examining some nine-year old Marvel Comics featuring their Cable character, written by myself, Tucker Stone, and Noah Berlatsky. We've teamed up like this before to write about some amazing comics by Bob Haney and Jim Aparo, but our second attempt to capture that bottled lightning resulted in us getting pretty depressed. Here's hoping for a charming third time.

The second part of this series is here, the third is here, and the fourth is here.

Cable #105
Written by Darko Macan
Art by Igor Kordey
Published by Marvel Comics, 2002

Three issues away from the series conclusion, the first issue following Igor Kordey's notoriously blunt depiction of 9/11's smoking towers (in an issue he wrote as well as drew), "The Sound of the Arena" was Darko Macan's initial dose of Cable. At first blush, the story isn't that far removed from something that his predecessor David Tischman might have written. Cable is struggling with his powers, which are greatly increased and somewhat out of control following a prior plot twist, and he's trekking around the world. After accidentally destroying a hotel room, he aimlessly wanders out to while away the evening on the beaches of Rio. There, he watches a young mutant boy ruin a soccer game (by telekinetically destroying the soccer ball), and after rescuing the kid, Cable is led to a local underground fight club, where drugged up mutants are pitted against each other in death matches.

So far, so standard. These are the sorts of stories that a thousand Wolverine comics are made up of, to say nothing of the thousands of television shows that use the same format. A singular character, usually a loner, who bums around, looking for problems to solve. There's the cliched kid--he's not necessarily cute, but a kid nonetheless, at the crossroads between going good or breaking bad--and there's some nasty sons of Satan that need to be taught a lesson. Insert Cable in place of Wolverine/Caine/The A-Team, cross the t's, and you've got yourself a story that everybody knows, and more than a few love.

Except:

When Cable's half-hearted attempt to "talk some sense" into this young mutant combatant fails, his immediate solution is to sterilize the mutant powers in her brain. It's a strange, brutal choice, but most of all, it's just lazy. He's only just happened upon the girl, the fight club, and even though some of the dialog makes it clear that the girl is drugged--and that Cable knows she's drugged--he seems to be more irritated about the situation than he is concerned. He jumps into the ring, tells her she "doesn't have to do this" and "she's wasting the gift", and when that lame attempt at reason fails, he jacks up the juice. His powers overreact--as they've been consistently doing, worse, as he's aware they've been consistently doing--and along with the girl, a large portion of the audience is completely lobotomized. That gunk coming out of the mouth? It's probably just blood, but for story purposes, that's basically the parts of their brains that make them individuals. After Cable leaves the room--which he does immediately, with zero attention paid for the young child who brought him to the arena--those victims are left behind, vegetables for life.

And then the comic ends where it begins, with Cable on the beach. The only difference this time is that he's feeling sorry for himself instead of swimming with whales.

It's tempting to expend some energy here talking about what Cable was like before this issue came along, but if that's going to come up, it'll have to come up later. What's interesting to me in this story, and the reason why this little team-up is starting here instead of with Soldier X's first issue, is the character that Macan and Kordey are working with. Even though there's 100 odd issues of Cable that had gone under the bus, Macan decided not to focus on what the guy supposedly is, but on what he doesn't have--which is a reason to do anything at all. From the little I've been able to glean about what Cable had gone through in the issues prior to these, the character was one who had accomplished what was apparently his primary objective (the Terminator 2 style time travel murder of Apocalypse) and now, like a soldier returning from front to 'burbs, he had to figure out what he was supposed to do with the rest of his life. And due to the circumstances involved in the character's creation--that he was controversially, yet essentially, the product of Rob Liefeld's lust for drawing certain things--he was fictionally cursed with a set of powers far beyond those that could make any sort of rational narrative use. Unlike Superman, a character whose historical relationship with his adopted Kansas family fundamentally hardwires him to always care about people, Macan's Cable stories are more reminiscent to stories about a young Old Testament God: omnipotent, irritable, and purposeless. And if there's one thing the God of Genesis enjoyed, it's widespread destruction. And birds.

Cable #105
Written by Darko Macan
Art by Mike Huddleston
Published by Marvel Comics, 2002

And here both of those things are, in the one non-Kordey issue that Macan wrote. Also? Jokes! Like most of the ones you'll find in a Marvel comic, they're not funny, exactly, but unlike the stinkers that clog up Spider-Man comics, there's never a sense that they're supposed to be. First, there's the setting: Cable is trying to crack wise with a pretty young secret agent chucked into Kazakhstan's bewildering maw with so little oversight from her CIA overseers that it almost seems like she should be wearing a target around her neck. Second, there's Mike Huddleston, who seems to be teetering on the verge of drawing a Mad Magazine style parody of a Cable comic, while at the same time drawing a regular old Cable comic.

It's all silly stuff, groaner comedy, dad jokes and lame pick-up lines--and that's exactly the kind of humor that you'd expect from a character like Cable, which is probably why he became such a popular straight man for Deadpool during the course of however long that Cable & Deadpool comic lasted.

During the course of Cable's journey with this young American spy, Cable reflects on the actions he took in the previous issue--accordingly, we're told that the lobotomy count rests at a frightening 83--revealing that he's come to the conclusion that he didn't feel bad about what he did to those people. But he doesn't come to this conclusion like an adult coming to a realization, he comes to it at the tail end of some whining. It's even sandwiched between the clarion call of the teenage malcontent, a preening "you wouldn't understand", and immediately dispensed as a subject for discussion when his bored traveling companion lets him know that he's probably going to get laid, after all.

And then two pages of the comic pass by, and our young pretty spy is shot in the head.

While Cable's response to this moment of out-of-nowhere cruelty is predictable to anybody who has ever seen any piece of American entertainment, what makes this version different is some foreknowledge of what's to come. Macan's Cable, in these two issues, is somebody no one would rely on--he's good at taking care of himself, but he's basically shit for everybody else--and there's yet to be a evidence why that would change. He's a lousy super-hero, one whose every act thus far has resulted in death or destruction for anyone unlucky enough to be in his square mile radius. The only reason he ended up hanging out with this unlucky secret agent and her arms dealing murderers (who Cable completely annihilates) is because a local hustler kept bugging him about pumpkin seeds when he was trying to sit around on his ass.

The fragmentary images of Cable on the cover of the final issue aren't the best advertisements for the character's history. They mostly serve as a reminder that Cable's a weird character with a weird history, a glowing eye, and that he's always had better haircuts than any other super-hero. Unnecessary!

While 107 served as the final issue of Cable's long-running series, the Soldier X series was launched only a few weeks later. Macan's job in 107 wouldn't have been to write a conclusion--after all, Marvel would've wanted Cable's readers to continue on to Soldier X--but he couldn't really start anything, either. That's not how the renumbering trick works. So instead, he had to do a placeholder, and his solution was, like his first two issues on the title, to present another standard loner super-hero tale and then screw around with the ending. This time, Cable's peace is interrupted by both a gross-out version of Criss Angel as well as a newly-introduced James Bond style supervillain, complete with a pet sidekick. After hearing "Mr. Singapore's" villainous pitch, which involves so many empty buzzwords that it wouldn't be out of place at a TED conference, Cable delivers his response--an extreme showcase of his godlike power where he transmutes grapes to poison and then destroys localized portions of oxygen--before stealing away in the villains helicopter, which he flies into a lightning storm screaming "hit me". It's Macan laying it at its thickest, shaking your shoulder and saying "this is a guy whose shit is not 100% together" while still chucking in all kinds of silliness, like a helicopter in the shape of a merlion or a villain whose security forces are made up of 35 year olds genetically altered so as to appear as small children.

I'll be blunt though--this is my least favorite issue of the three. These three Cable issues are all visually interesting comics, even if the Huddleston one can't compare to his more recent work, but Macan is ultimately hampered by the fact that he can't really get moving until the first issue of Soldier X. There's just nothing for him (or Cable) to do beyond subvert some expectations and paint the character as one without direction or maturity. But that's not enough for these types of comics to rest upon, and by the time you get to the third iteration of "look at God lose his temper", there's just not enough plaster to cover up the skeleton.

Luckily, there was more plaster to come. Check out The Hooded Utilitarian for Noah's take on the first four issues of Soldier X.

-Tucker Stone, 2011