New Comics Purchase: FRANK FRAZETTA'S DEATH DEALER (2022)

Hey everybody, it's been awhile since I posted anything, but I've been working a lot on Serpent Sword, the sequel to my novel Battle for the Wastelands. However, I'm writing to let you all know that I've bought some comics from a comic shop for the first time in probably over a decade. Here goes...

A couple weeks ago a friend, his wife, and new(ish) baby were visiting from out of town and after lunch we went to a Marietta comic shop in the same shopping center where, many years ago, the son of our old Scoutmaster worked. One of the comics I saw--but ended up not buying at the time--was based on noted fantasy artist Frank Frazetta's iconic fantasy character The Death Dealer. Given how I'd read the 1990s-era Death Dealer novels at the library when I was younger and own the Frazetta art book Icon, my curiosity was piqued. And when I found out via CBR that Frazetta's family intended the new Death Dealer comic to be the beginning of a "Frazettaverse" incorporating characters and creatures from his art, I decided to give it my financial support.

So I went to a comic shop closer to my home in Atlanta and purchased the first, the second, and the third issues, which is all of what seemed to be available. According to this website, the next issue is slated for August 24.

The Plot: I would describe this as "Conan the Barbarian meets Venom." The protagonist Kur, once a warrior seeking power and glory, put on a supernatural horned helmet, which he cannot take off. The helmet has a mind of its own, generally egging him on to more violence and talking enormous amounts of smack. Kur lives alone and is contemplating suicide when he rescues the red-haired witch Admira and her young son Mesh from wolves. He takes them back to his underground lair, where Mesh takes a liking to him and Admira, tending to his wounds, quickly gets physical. Awakening the next morning, Kur finds both of them kidnapped by dark forces and, against his better judgement, sets off to rescue them. He encounters a sorceress--who seems to be an old flame who has a history with the damned soul dwelling in the helmet--and it turns out there are more supernatural doings afoot.

The Good: Giving the Horned Helmet (in the novels it was capitalized) a mind of its own rather it just being a device that amped up the protagonist's physical prowess and aggression was interesting. This allows for Kur to have an Eddie Brock/Venom-type relationship with it. That was one thing I really liked about the first Venom film (I haven't seen the second), even though the movie was basically a buddy comedy and this...isn't. The Death Dealer is such a cipher character--in the painting he's just a big scary-looking dude--that one can do a lot with him. In the novels he was a noble savage trying to defend the valley that would someday become the Mediterranean by any means necessary, while in this one he's a much more tired and anti-heroic figure. Given how the Horned Helmet can go from person to person, it's possible the novels (and an earlier attempt at comics) take place in the same continuity, although the novels were explicitly set on prehistoric Earth and this comic seems to be in a totally different fantasy world.

The art is also really good. It's very colorful and vivid. I also liked how they worked specific Frazetta concepts into the comics--not only is the titular character a direct draw from a Frazetta painting, but they also worked in another one in which the Death Dealer confronts a gigantic crocodile.

The Bad: I must be a bit spoiled from graphic novels (which are typically collections of multiple issues that tell the complete story) because I thought the comics were a bit short. This is especially blatant with the third issue, in which two side quests (a unicorn and a wizard) that might merit expansion into an issue each are dealt with in a few pages. And since this is a monthly comic, it means a lot more waiting in between. If each comic were a bit longer, this wouldn't be a problem. Also, although I wouldn't expect a Frazetta adaptation to be particularly modest--Frazetta wasn't known for that at all, even if he wasn't nearly as raunchy as other fantasy artists--the way we first meet the sorceress is kind of dumb.

I emailed the comic company to see about the possibility of subscribing (since unlike the 1990s X-Men comics there's nothing to mail in with a check) or whether the individual comics would be consolidated into larger graphic novels. At $5 per comic, a graphic novel consolidating all the individual comics into one larger issue covering an entire storyline would be the better buy. However, the comic is so new (and it's from a smaller company) that it might not get to that point unless it does well enough financially. And that requires people buy it now. The comic shop offered to set me up with a subscription (i.e. they let me know when it's in for me to pick up or they mail it to me), which I might well do if I don't hear back from the company.

Movie Review: VALERIAN AND THE CITY OF A THOUSAND PLANETS (2017)

While I was at Videodrome renting a copy of The Abyss for a future Myopia Movies podcast episode, I saw a copy of the film Valerian and the City of A Thousand Planets, which I thought about seeing in theaters back in 2017, dawdled, and ended up missing. Like my father says, if you wait long enough, "I don't know," becomes "no." I eventually got around to renting the film, and now it's time to review it.

The Plot

In the distant future, humanity is one of a vast number alien species coexisting throughout the galaxy and what was once the International Space Station has grown into a galaxy-traveling city of millions. It's also the base of operations for an interstellar police force, two agents of which are Major Valerian (Dane DeHaan) and his partner Sergeant Laureline (Cara Delevingne). Although they both clearly have romantic feelings for each other, she isn't content to be one of his many sexual conquests and he's commitment-phobic.

Into this drops a mission to retrieve a rare "Mul Converter" from a gang of black marketeers. The two officers stumble into a conspiracy involving a planet officially erased from the records and a high-level military cover-up.

The Good

*The acting and characterization are very good. I really liked DeHaan and Delevingne playing their characters as essentially Harry Potter's Ron and Hermione, if Ron were James Bond in terms of martial capability and libido and Hermione were much more sarcastic and rebellious and had a shorter temper and more explicitly traditional views about sex and family. The two have really good chemistry and are fun to watch.

*Writer and director Luc Besson, the mastermind behind The Fifth Element, is clearly having a blast adapting one of his favorite comics to the screen. It's clearly a labor of love and very well-done. This shows in the casting--Besson put in the effort to cast well-known performers like Clive Owen and Rihanna and the costuming, art, etc. are all awesome. Owing to the obscurity of its source material, it's a hell of a lot more interesting than the endless remakes and sequels of more well-known films that dominate today's market.

*The overall plot is a lot more thoughtful than a lot of sci-fi films.

*There are some good uses of "show, don't tell," like a scene early on when Laureline uses the ship's computers to make a point about Valerian's love life.

*There are a lot of fun action sequences.

*The opening montage in which the International Space Station grows to include more and more Earth nations as well as increasing numbers of alien species to the point it becomes a city in space is very well-done, and even includes some cool science bits like how artificial gravity is introduced.

*Although this is hundreds of years in the future, religion--touched on however briefly when Valerian and Laureline are about to go on a mission and during a conspiracy flashback--is something that still exists and is respected, even by a lothario like Valerian. Valerian's offer to find a priest specifically is also a nice tie-in with Laureline from the comics--she was a medieval French peasant who was brought into the future and thus likely to be an actual Catholic.

The Bad

*The movie is about thirty minutes too long. This wouldn't be a problem if an entire subplot involving Laureline getting kidnapped--something that shouldn't be possible if her armor and martial skill are half that of Valerian's--got cut down or excised completely. Seriously, it basically came off as an excuse to have a Rihanna dance number, plus it also relies on a section of the titular space station essentially being off-limits to federal law enforcement agents. That makes no sense.

*There's a sequence at the end where a character introduces some elements that would make the overall situation much more morally gray, but it isn't handled well. And Valerian and Laureline make some ludicrous deductive leaps to figure out parts of it. More details about the war we see before we meet Valerian and Laureline would have been nice, as it would explain a villain's actions.

*There are some Chekov's guns that are put on the mantle but not fired. Valerian's promiscuity could have caused problems during the main plot--perhaps he's betrayed by a bitter ex-lover--but it doesn't really come up.

*There's also a major suspension-of-disbelief problem with a group of aliens who play a key role in the climax of the film.

*Early on some people our heroes are supposed to be close to get killed, but they don't seem to care.

The Verdict

It's definitely good and I hope that Besson eventually gets his way and produces a sequel, but it's got some flaws. Worth a rental, or buying cheap. 7.5 out of 10.

Ideas for a Soft Reboot/Sequel for HELLRAISER...

A common complaint about the state of the film industry these days is that it's all sequels and reboots, with few original ideas. One film that's been subject to Sequelitis and has had a reboot in Development Hell for years is Hellraiser, the tale of an occult puzzle box that can be used to summon the grotesque Pinhead and his Cenobites, "demons to some and angels to others."

This subject was discussed on one of the horror-related Facebook groups I joined in order to hawk my novel The Thing in the Woods and so I posted some of my thoughts on what such a film should look like in response to a June 23 post. The following discussion is my ideas, expanded.

Much like J.J. Abrams' 2009 Star Trek, one could have a sequel that's also a "soft reboot." Ashley Laurence and Doug Bradley, who are both alive and in good health, could return as Kirsty Cotton and Pinhead respectively. The decline in the series began after Hellraiser 3, in which they have a completely new protagonist Joey Summerskill (Terry Ferrell), and it went straight to video after Hellraiser: Bloodline. They brought Kirsty back for Hellraiser: Hellseeker, but that was direct-to-DVD and had a plot that made no sense--there is no way in hell (hee-hee) that Kirsty would be stupid enough to touch anything resembling the Lament Configuration again. And they replaced Bradley with other actors in Hellraiser: Revelations and Hellraiser: Judgement and I've heard very little good about those films--they were very low budget and existed only so the production company could keep the rights. And Bradley wanted nothing to do with them. Fortunately Bradley himself is a good sport and is up for reprising his role.

However, both actors are a lot older than they were back in the 1980s--Laurence is in her mid-50s and Bradley is nearly 70--so it can't just be "Kirsty and Pinhead at it again." Since the original cast is aging and the idea is to reboot the series, this could be a means of giving the original cast their last hurrah before they hand off the torch to a new generation.

My idea would be take Hellseeker into account, but make it a nightmare Kirsty had or some kind of hallucination induced by a head injury from the film's car accident. Kirsty is older and married to Trevor (Dean Winters) and they have teenage children. Due to her experiences in the first two films, Kirsty has a lot of baggage and isn't the easiest person in the world to deal with, a contributing factor to her husband cheating on her.

(Obviously not to the degree he does in Hellseeker--in that one he was unfaithful to Kirsty with three separate women. However, Kirsty is likely a jumpy paranoid mess due to her backstory, so she might think it was more than just him venting about his marital problems to a sympathetic coworker and things just getting out of control from there.)

Kirsty, though she's understandably upset (especially given how she remembers Frank and Julia), doesn't file for divorce--yet. After all, she knows the pain a broken home can cause a child--she moved out of her father's home and lived in a nasty apartment rather than share a home with Julia--and doesn't want to inflict this on her own children, who aren't aware of his adultery. Furthermore, she recognizes Trevor strayed in part due to drama caused by her own issues. However, their marriage is in a very fragile state and more problems arise when a letter from a foreign bank arrives. They've been trying to find the next of kin for one Frank Cotton for twenty-odd years--a small amount of money he'd stashed away has, through the magic of compound interest, grown to a somewhat larger sum. Trevor would like to put the money for some useful purpose (perhaps a family vacation to make everybody feel better, or some needed renovations on the house), but Kirsty, suspecting the money was gained through crime--Frank in the novella The Hellbound Heart smuggles heroin and earns money through other illegal means--wants nothing to do it.

(In Hellseeker Kirsty was the beneficiary of both Larry and Frank's wills and didn't want to spend the latter's money, viewing it as dirty. However, it was apparently a large sum and Trevor was able to enlist a close friend in a plot to kill her to get his hands on it. However, Larry doesn't seem particularly rich in the first film and in the book Frank is always in debt due to his hedonistic lifestyle. More realistic that Frank had some bug-out money hidden somewhere and it's been slowly accumulating interest ever since.)

However, this isn't going to be a domestic drama however much the original Hellraiser came off as one at times. Pinhead is involved somehow, either to get his hands on Kirsty at long last or go after her children like Captain Hook threatened Peter's family in the film Hook. 

(Pinhead has shown a willingness to make deals, like sparing Kirsty to lead him to the escaped Frank in the first film and Kirsty's own bargain with him in Hellseeker. Perhaps someone from the bank had solved the Lament Configuration but Pinhead, upon learning he had found Kirsty, agreed to let him help take her instead.)

If the goal is hand off the franchise to a new generation, in the resulting confrontation Pinhead and Kirsty (and perhaps Trevor too) are all killed. That might be tricky given how Pinhead withstands gunshots and even futuristic laser cannon in some of the films, but maybe Kirsty could run him over with her car (something that would inflict a lot more damage than a single bullet or laser beam) and die in the process, defeating her old enemy at the cost of her own life. 

However, her sacrifice is in vain--the forces of Hell claim one of Kirsty's children as a new Cenobite. However, another manages to escape and vows to reclaim them for humanity, something Hellraiser II: Hellbound showed was possible with the Channard Cenobite reverting Pinhead to Captain Elliott Spencer before killing him. To save their sibling, the character would seek occult knowledge and we could use that to bring in concepts from the Hellraiser comics like the Harrowers, human warriors chosen by the hell-god Leviathan's sister-goddess to fight him. Subsequent films can get into the "war of the gods" angle with all-new Cenobites and human characters, much like the comics did.

Both My Supervillain-Protagonist Stories Are Now "Wide"

Back in 2013 when I was in graduate school, I wrote two short stories featuring Indian-American supervillain Andrew Patel as the protagonist, "Ubermensch" and "Needs Must." Although I would consider myself a political conservative, I do agree with the concept of more minority representation in speculative fiction, not just on the grounds of giving children the chance to see themselves as superheroes but also because members of these groups have money to spend. Look at the success of Miles Morales, the Afro-Latino hero of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse or the Muslim Miss Marvel who will be getting her own Disney show soon. When I first tweeted them out, none other than Muslim fantasy writer Saladin Ahmed retweeted the links for me.

Although I had plans to write more stories featuring Patel, there wasn't a whole lot of reader interest compared to my alternate history and straight science fiction and fantasy projects. I've got a draft of a third story that actually links Andrew and his world with The Thing in the Woods in a Stephen King fashion (I got the idea from my friend Nic, overlord of Myopia: Defend Your Childhood), which I might include in a collection someday. However, that's likely all we'll ever see of Andrew Patel until we get to that future Thing sequel where he makes an appearance.

In the meantime, although I do make sales now and again (I sold a copy each yesterday, for example), the Kindle Unlimited borrows really dried up. According to one of the writing podcasts I listen to, one should stay in KU until the borrows stop coming in and then one should go wide on outlets like Kobo, Barnes and Noble, etc.

To that end, the two tales of supervillain Andrew Patel are now "wide" on non-Amazon markets. "Ubermensch" can be found on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble, and Apple here and "Needs Must" can be found in these markets here. They are also various library markets like Overdrive, but they're not live there yet.

So if you're interested in the tales of an Indian-American biomedical engineer who read a little too much Nietzsche in college and has transformed himself into a cyborg to achieve transcendence, enjoy!

Gun Show Mk. 2.0 Results

In May 2018, I sold books--The Thing in the Woods and The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2--at a large Eastman Gun Shows event held at the Infinite Energy Center, formerly known as the Gwinnett Arena. Although given the themes of my work and the general demographics of the gun-enthusiasts crowd a visit to the gun show made sense, in terms of profitability the event itself was a bust ($10 profit on 16 hours or so of work, less than a dollar an hour). This was due to my failure to anticipate the participants' preference to use cash rather than credit cards and not yet knowing that events made the perfect place to collect e-mail addresses for my newsletter for making one-off readers into fans.

(That said, the event eventually proved profitable in the long run because it allowed me to re-establish contact with Nightmarescape author T. S. Dann, with whom I split tables at Days of the Dead this past January and the event I'm discussing in the post, increasing my profit margins at both quite a bit.)

So I digested what I learned--lots of cash, actually try to talk to passers-by, and don't bother with a candy tray--and applied the lessons to the Gem Capitol gun show held this past weekend at the Atlanta Farmers' market. Although I sold 15 books to last year's 20, the splitting the table cut my fixed costs to $30 and not needing to drive so far meant gas was negligible. I made around $80-85 profit on around 14.5 hours of work (this is only slightly less profitable than my March visit to the Atlanta Science Fiction and Fantasy Expo in which I profited $98), translating to around $6.50 per hour. I also got 20 e-mail addresses for my newsletter, although four bounced the welcome message. Some people in the crowd seemed interested in my upcoming novella Little People, Big Guns from Deadite Press slated for this November and my probable-indie sci-fi novel Blood on the Border slated for the summer or fall. I also re-established contact with Bob Burden, creator of Flaming Carrot and Mystery Men, who intends some prose fiction in the near future and whom I'd met at a couple previous events in Atlanta but kept losing his contact information.

(Maybe he'd be willing to split a table with me at future comic events? That crowd loves print books and he's a comic celebrity.)

In my last post on selling books at gun shows, I figured this event would be the deciding factor in whether to sell at gun shows in the summer and fall (i.e. before Little People Big Guns). As referenced by my profit margins it's a significant improvement over the first visit to the gun show and more profitable than some of my lower-performing bookstore events and appearances at community festivals. Although Atlanta hosts lots of gun shows (including a bunch this coming summer that promise to be a lot better-attended than this one), I'll need to make sure I don't overdo it. At the SFF Expo I ran into people who'd bought The Thing in the Woods when I visited the year before and I didn't have anything new to sell them and some people at this gun show recognized me from the Eastman show. If one visits the same event more than once without new items to sell, diminishing returns starts to kick in.

Fortunately both Gem Capitol and Eastman have gun shows in December, when I'll have LPBG ready to go. :)

2018 Accomplishments and 2019 Goals

I've taken a page from fellow blogger and writer Matt Stienberg and decided to post about what I accomplished in 2018 and what I intend to do during 2019.

So let's start with what I've done:

*I sold my bizarro comedy-horror novella Little People, Big Guns, which is slated for publication sometime in 2019. I owe the success for this one to my father Terry Quinn, who through a client learned that the 2015 World Horror Convention in Atlanta needed volunteers, and Anya Martin, who actually arranged for me to become a volunteer. Volunteering gained me access to a pitch session, where I pitched the concept to Jeff Burk, who thought it was hilarious. Once I expanded and revised the novella, I sent it to Mr. Burk when Deadite Press re-opened to submissions and voila!

*I learned more deeply the importance of conventions and what the most profitable ones would be. I sold an entire print run of thirty copies of The Thing in the Woods at the Atlanta Sci-Fi and Fantasy Expo in March for a little over $155 profit, in July profited nearly $400 thanks to splitting a table at The Atlanta Comic-Con with C.S. Johnson, and made roughly $100 profit splitting a table at the quarterly Atlanta Comic Convention in December with Robert Jeffrey. In contrast, I straight-up lost money on a fall festival in Snellville, the emerging authors' tent at the Decatur Book Festival, and a twofer book signing and small-town comic-con in Augusta, GA and Bishopville, SC respectively over the summer and made only a nominal profit on a gun show in May.

(I would have probably made more money at the gun show if I had more cash to make change--many patrons of the gun show didn't want to use their credit cards, I'm assuming for privacy reasons, and so I had to underprice--and if I had a more explicitly gun-focused product. Given the success of Larry Correia selling books on the gun circuit, I'll probably give gun shows another spin once Little People, Big Guns is ready and especially once Thing sequel The Atlanta Incursion is available.)

*Speaking of The Atlanta Incursion, I finished that and submitted it at the end of September. Hopefully that'll be accepted and published sometime in 2019. I can't speak for the publisher, but he did seem interested and I'm one of his more aggressive sellers.

*I started writing Blood on the Border, the first work of fiction set in my Federated Worlds universe. This is a project I intend to go full independent on, and it'll hopefully open the door to making lots of money at more explicitly science-fiction conventions like Treklanta and SphinxCon.

Now, onto my goals for 2019:

*Make a killing (heh) at the Atlanta Days of the Dead, which I will be attending with T.S. Dann at the end of January. I still have between 60 and 100 copies of Thing and a few copies of The Best of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly Vol. 2 and this is a horror-focused event, so this has the potential to be extremely lucrative.

*Finish Blood, run it through writing group, and get paperback editions available for Treklanta and SphinxCon. Assuming SphinxCon is the same time as it was last year (early November) that won't be a problem, but Treklanta is Memorial Day Weekend. That could be the tricky part. Treklanta might not be as lucrative as I'm hoping because FW is intended to be a critique of Star Trek in some ways--rather than "we don't have money in the 24th Century," it's an automated economy where most people don't need to work and one species' equivalent to Surak is more like Josef Stalin than Jesus Christ--but SphinxCon is a general military SF/fantasy convention.

*Continue with the comic conventions. The Atlanta Comic Convention is quarterly, while the big Atlanta Comic-Con is slated to return as well. I've done pretty well at these and once I have a greater variety of products to sell, I anticipate things will be even better. Having a table partner is particularly important, especially for the pricey conventions like Atlanta Comic-Con and Days of the Dead.

*The Decatur Book Festival has many other options besides the emerging-author tent, such as the Atlanta Writers' Club booth. I'll definitely sign up for a slot there with the AWC again.

*Assuming TAI is accepted and published sometime this year, I will begin working more intensely on the third book, The Walking Worm, which is more akin to the small-town Southern horror of Thing as opposed to the MIB/UFO stuff that TAI introduces. To make an X-Files analogy, TWW is more "monster of the week" while TAI introduces an overarching mythos. Not sure if I can get that manuscript done and submitted in 2019 given how I don't even have a full outline, but if I can keep my focus anything's possible.

*Battle for the Wastelands has been under consideration by a major publisher for some time, but they don't want it, it's time to self-publish. I have a prequel novella "Son of Grendel" centered on the villain's son already written and a prequel novella "Ruled in Rage" focused on the villain himself as a youth partially written. If I finish "Rage" I could put out Battle first and on the 90 and 180 day mark after that put out a novella. I don't have a lot of the second Wastelands book Escape written yet, which could be a problem.

Movie Review: VENOM (2018)

The other day I saw the movie Venom with a friend at Atlantic Station right here in Atlanta, GA. Although the reviews were for the most part not very good, it did look kind of cool and he wanted to see it. I've historically been a superhero fan, although X-Men was more my thing than Spider-Man (I think I only owned one Spider-Man comic--it was part of the Clone Saga I think), so I decided to give it a shot.

So how was it? Let's find out...

The Plot

Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a crusading journalist in San Francisco living with his fiancee Anne Weying (Michelle Williams) and covering stuff the local powers-that-be would rather not get discussed. His going off half-cocked after Elon Musk-esque Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed) with information he shouldn't have costs him his job and his relationship, leaving him living unemployed in a slum.

Then a whistle-blower at Drake's company Doctor Dora Skirth (Melora Walters) contacts him about some shenanigans going on at the laboratory. Eddie sneaks in and accidentally bonds with an alien Symbiote, becoming more than human and more than a little bit hungry for live prey. Now he has to evade Drake's men and figure out what's going on, but there's more than one Symbiote out there...

The Good

*The dynamic between the Venom Symbiote, an alien predator who initially views his human host as nothing more than a "ride," and act-before-thinking do-gooder Eddie is absolutely hilarious. Seriously, I spent the last half or so of the movie laughing my head off. I can tell because I suffered a compression fracture in my spine over the summer that hasn't fully healed and consequently that hurt. Seriously, that is absolutely the best part of the movie and I'm glad the film has made so much money that there has to be a sequel. I want to see more of that.

*I like Tom Hardy's portrayal of Eddie Brock. He clearly wants to do the right thing, but doesn't really have good judgement and it costs him. And then he has his hands full trying to manage an intelligent alien predator with a really sadistic sense of humor that's sharing his body.

*I like how they took elements from the different Venom storylines to put together this one, especially since for whatever reason (rights, contracts, etc) they couldn't have Spider-Man in it. I'm not going to go into a lot of details about which plots got used to avoid spoilers, but one is definitely "Lethal Protector", in which Venom decides to become a superhero.

*Ahmed is very good as Drake. He's charismatic and seems to generally have good intentions, but he's incredibly manipulative, amoral, and downright hissable in parts. Seriously, I was mad at him at times, and not a lot of movie villains straight-up anger me.

*Eddie's job situation rings true to me as a former newspaper reporter--if someone in the community has sufficient pull with the media owner, is a big enough advertiser, etc. they have an unhealthy amount of power over what gets covered and what doesn't. What happens with Eddie is what would happen if Elon Musk were to vindictively pursue a grudge against a local reporter who challenged him, especially if said reporter went off on him without evidence to back up his claims. And given how Eddie was "run out of New York" (an allusion to the comic plot in which Brock loses his job as a newspaper reporter, something he blamed Spider-Man for) and might not have a great reputation already, he's particularly vulnerable.

*I liked how the film handles the relationship between Eddie, Anne, and Anne's new boyfriend Dr. Dan Lewis (Reid Scott), who happens to be a gigantic fan of Eddie's news show. Their interactions are pretty funny and it show the essential decency of all three characters. Anne still cares about Eddie despite what happened earlier (seriously, even an alien monster takes her side on the issue), Eddie respects Anne enough not to resent her new boyfriend and never once thinks about letting his alien "friend" cause him harm, and Dan sincerely tries to help Eddie (whom he thinks has some kind of conventional illness) rather than get territorial. And Anne has some surprisingly bad-ass moments for someone not really established as an Action Girl.

*An alien monster has a character arc. Seriously, he (it?) does.

The Bad

*The movie takes awhile to get going. Things don't really start getting fun until around 1/4 to 1/3 into the film. They could have tightened things up a little bit, although I have no specific suggestions about what to cut.

*As David pointed out after the movie, some of Dr. Skirth's actions in regards to helping Eddie get the dirt on Drake don't make a lot of sense. For starters, Drake's lab is probably full of security cameras, so sneaking him in isn't going end well.

The Verdict

I'll give this an 8.0, barely. The sheer hilarity of the Venom-Eddie interactions outweighs a lot of the issues the movie has.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: V for Vendetta (2005)

The movie V for Vendetta and I have a long history. I don't remember seeing it in theaters when it came out, but I do remember using it as the basis for an opinion column I wrote for the University of Georgia student newspaper The Red and Black about the dangers of government surveillance and overreach in the age of terrorism.

It got a lot more personal when I studied abroad in Great Britain in 2006. I, like many other tourists, got caught up in the liquid-bomb scare, which broke out the night before we were going to leave to return home. My flight home had to wait for several hours on the tarmac at one of the London airports while we were all being background-checked. I had to pack up the books I'd bought in Oxford for the trip home rather than bring them on the plane. I could have bought new books at the airport bookstore, but at the time I thought the ban on all carry-on items not bought at the airport was a scam to make people buy all-new products and unnecessary to protect the security of the flights, so I didn't. Fortunately the airplane's televisions were on and I watched V for Vendetta as well as a significant chunk of The Wind that Shakes the Barley and at least one Doctor Who episode dealing with the Cybermen. I ended up watching the movie at least twice.

Now 12 years later, Myopia: Defend Your Childhood is doing a series on films people thought were So Profound when we were in college, to see if they still hold up. V for Vendetta was one of the films, and I made sure to appear on it. I may have mellowed out a little on politics since college, but governmental overreach in the name of fighting terrorism, a war, etc. is still a personal bugbear. Here's the podcast. Now for the review...

The Plot

Evey Hammond (Natalie Portman) works for the British Television Network, a successor to the British Broadcasting Corporation in Great Britain. In an age of peril--the United States has fallen into civil war and there's been at least one global pandemic--Britain has turned into a police state under the rule of a "High Chancellor" Adam Sutler (John Hurt) and his Nazi-like Norsefire Party.

Sutler's regime, however, is challenged by the mysterious V (Hugo Weaving), a terrorist with near-supernatural fighting abilities who disguises himself as Guy Fawkes. V blows up Old Bailey on November 5 and vows, a year later, to blow up Parliament itself. Evey finds herself mixed up in the whole situation when V rescues her from some rape-inclined "Fingermen" (secret police) and ends up staying with him for an extended period. Meanwhile, some ordinary British police assigned to help investigate V find themselves stumbling onto a conspiracy dating back all the way to the founding of the Norsefire regime.

The Good

*There's actually quite a bit of intertextuality in the story, some overt and some more subtle. V's campaign against Sutler's dictatorship, though driven by the ideological belief that governments should fear their people and not the other way around, also has a strong element of personal revenge. The Count of Monte Cristo shows up repeatedly throughout the film. I also noticed a strong resemblance to the story of The Phantom of the Opera, especially the more Phantom-sympathetic interpretations--a pretty young woman falls under the thrall of an older disfigured genius and it's not completely non-consensual on her part. I can appreciate thoughtfulness.

*The script was well-done. I rather liked V's introductory speech and the vocabulary he uses. Very impressive.

*I also liked the acting in general. I don't think there's a bad delivery in the whole film. Hugo Weaving and Stephen Fry are particularly impressive.

*There's a really well-shot scene involving dominoes.

*V's strategy as a terrorist makes sense. Terrorist organizations often try to trick governments into overreacting and driving people who would otherwise not support the terrorists to do so. Some of V's schemes involve this.

*In the comic, the Norsefire government is able to seize control of Britain after the country abandons its nuclear weapons, causing it to avoid being nuked during World War III. Even without getting nuked, Britain would be cut off from world trade, inundated with massive flows of refugees, and subject to possible climactic disruption, and I could imagine that kind of crisis spawning a dictatorship. However questionable that proposition is in the first place--West Germany and other mainland European states part of the NATO alliance didn't have independent nuclear capability and they were going to get trashed regardless, plus the Soviet government has had a grudge against Britain from the beginning--that obviously needs to be updated. The descriptions of how the world and the United States in particular--which would not tolerate such a regime taking over one of its closest allies--are in a state of chaos are small and subtle, but they work for story purposes.

*Britain has an extensive security-camera surveillance system. The film shows how easy it could be used to track down enemies of the state (much like the film Enemy of the State, in which our own much less overbearing system is used for the same purpose) as well as stop crime.

*The subtleties of a British (or specifically English) fascism are well-done. The official action hero is named Storm Saxon and he's depicted as rescuing a British woman kidnapped and tortured by a caricature of an Islamic extremist, regime propaganda is delivered by something obviously based on the BBC, the Anglican Church is promoted heavily, etc.

The Bad

*Waaaay too much 9/11 Trutherism in the film. I'm not going to go into more detail for reasons of spoilers. It is entirely possible for a government to overreact to a legitimate danger rather than "there are no dangers and any 'dangers' are straw enemies to justify seizing power." The Japanese Internment doesn't mean the attack on Pearl Harbor didn't happen, the 1944 Sedition Trial doesn't mean the Nazis weren't dangerous, and McCarthy's excesses doesn't mean there weren't Soviet spies in the U.S. government. That was my single biggest beef with the film, as it undermines its credibility as a warning against government overreach.

*The movie drags a bit in the middle before things start ramping up toward V's endgame.

*We get a second "homosexual persecuted by the regime" story later in the narrative when we've already been given one, although to be fair, the second is more vivid than the first. Given how Norsefire is explicitly English-supremacist and a character having an Irish mother is brought up to threaten them, perhaps one of the two persecution narratives could be swapped out with a real or suspected IRA sympathizer? Even the democratic British government violated the rights of Catholics in Northern Ireland during the fight with the IRA, and I imagine Norsefire would be even uglier. Or to create an even more sympathetic victim, someone totally unconnected with terrorism who's a little too publicly proud of their Irish or Scottish heritage for the regime's taste?

(There's also a timing issue as to when homosexuals start getting persecuted that I'm not going to get into for reasons of spoilers. Making the second victim into someone falsely accused of being an IRA supporter for advocating for Catholics' rights in Northern Ireland and keeping the first victim as-is makes more sense chronologically, given the origins of the Norsefire regime, when it takes power, and when it starts persecuting different groups. Another alternative: Perhaps the second victim could be a Muslim falsely accused of being a terrorist? A prominent Norsefire official served in the military in various Middle Eastern places before the regime took power, so that's where he could have gotten his guinea pigs. Given how the film is a cautionary tale against anti-terrorist overreach, perhaps a Muslim victim would have been too on-the-nose, or the suits would have thought bigoted consumers wouldn't see the movie. I remember people complaining about a character having an illegal Koran, so that might've pushed them further along the boycott-denounce road.)

*The sense of time gets a little wonky toward the end. How long is Evey with V?

*Given some of the stuff that happens to Evey in the film I would expect her to be a lot more screaming-angry than she ends up being. Her reaction comes off as really understated. Natalie Portman can do better angry than that. Hell, she sounds angrier here when she's rapping on Saturday Night Live.

*Per the above, what happens to her would realistically require multiple people to pull off, not just one. Not going into more detail for reasons of spoilers.

*The back-story for the Norsefire regime on the level of Britain itself starts breaking down once we get deeper into it. Sutler is depicted as being a powerful Conservative politician with Nazi-esque banners, marching paramilitaries, etc. even before the St. Mary's plague that threw society into crisis and swept Norsefire into power. That he'd even get that far seems extremely unlikely--the British National Party suffered quite a bit when they got prominent enough for their then-leader Nick Griffin to get a spot on the BBC show Question Time, where he showed himself to be an idiot. And the BNP was trying to avoid looking like a bunch of Nazis. Sutler's crew is even more overtly evil than the BNP--they would have been marginalized (and potentially outlawed if they did more than prance around) and Sutler would never get into the position he was in before the St. Mary plague breaks out. And if he's not part of the British government (no more details for reasons of spoilers), the whole story doesn't work.

*Historical accuracy problem: Guy Fawkes was not a freedom fighter trying to overthrow an oppressive regime. He was part of a scheme by some English Catholics to re-impose the Catholic monarchy on an increasingly Protestant country. Yes, the British government was persecuting Catholics and that's not cool, but assuming the plan even succeeded--rather than provoking an even more extreme anti-Catholic backlash--the resulting government would have had to become oppressive simply to stay in power and keep its conspirators alive. We're talking Inquisition-level stuff here. Fawkes has more in common with Osama bin Laden than with V, even if V is borrowing his aesthetic.

The Verdict

Good, but could be better. I'd have liked it a lot better without the 9/11 Trutherism. 8.0 out of 10.

Movie Review: Avengers: Infinity War (2018)

At long last, the event initiated in the post-credits sequence of the original Avengers film, helped along by the post-credits scenes in Avengers: Age of Ultron and Thor: Ragnarok and a glimpse of the tyrant's machinations in the first Guardians of the Galaxy has come. The Mad Titan Thanos has come to Earth. The Infinity War has begun.

The Plot

Mere minutes after the ending of Thor Ragnarok, Thanos makes his big move. Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) manages to escape to Earth, arriving not long before the first of Thanos's generals. Thanos has already captured several of the Infinity Stones, super-powerful elements forged in the Big Bang, and now he intends to get the rest of them. Ranged against him are the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, and the survivors of Asgard, but that might not be enough...

The Good

*The movie moves along quickly and brings in the various characters from the previous films in an organic and intelligent way. Although some of the early reviews I've read claimed the movie was "overstuffed," I never got that vibe at all. It all made sense.

*Thanos's motivation are pared down and less silly than in the comics. Not going to go into detail for reasons of spoilers.

*Thanos (Josh Brolin) in general is a very impressive character, rather than merely being a monster sitting on his throne and getting failed by minions repeatedly as he was in the earlier films. He's as strong (or stronger) than the Hulk, as clever as Loki, and utterly ruthless and driven. He's also capable of quite a lot of pathos for a genocidal space god.

*I liked Vision's (Paul Bettany's) interactions with Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen). He's a genius-level AI, but he's also two or three years old. Some social clumsiness is to be expected.

*We visit Nidavellir, a world of space dwarfs who forged the Asgardians' weapons. That's a nice nod to Norse mythology.

*A character who has been away for quite some time makes a return appearance and has a major role to play in the story. Again, not going into detail for reasons of spoilers.

*There are some well-done fight scenes. Not going to go into details for reasons of spoilers, but my favorite is a battle on Titan.

(There's a theme going here, in case you haven't noticed.)

*Peter Dinklage plays a minor role and I liked it.

The Bad

*The Black Order (who in the films refer to themselves as "the Children of Thanos") don't really have distinct personalities. I didn't even get their names--the wizardy one that Tony refers to as "Squidward" I think is referred to by Thanos later as "Ebony Maw," but that's it. I like the idea of a villain having his own personal posse (in TVTropes they call this the Quirky Miniboss Squad, although that's a little too goofy for this crew) of actual characters, but this was a failed opportunity. They'd be better-developed if Marvel had used some of its previous baddies instead of killing off all but Loki and Baron Zemo--say a single Ultron-bot survived, Thanos' underlings rescued/captured him, and instead of those demon-beast things, it's an army of Ultrons in Wakanda complete with a smart-alecky James Spader voicing them all.

*There's a lot of telling and not showing with the nasty things Thanos does before the movie begins. It might have been better to make Infinity War a trilogy instead of a duology, with the events on Xandar, Knowhere, and Nidavellir as the first movie (there might be ways to get the major characters involved there--say the Guardians are on Xandar and the Asgardian refugees at Nidavellir when Thanos does his thing), this as the second, and the events of the upcoming second film as the third. This would make it especially clear Thanos is the biggest and baddest of them all and ironically make this film, probably one of the darkest MCU films, a Hope Spot. Here's how I would have done it, but beware spoilers.

*The whole thing I felt was kind of underwhelming. Maybe I went in with overblown expectations, having read reviews or spoiler-free comments describing people shrieking in the theaters and the like, but still.

*The film has a pretty significant body-count of major characters, but I can sense a major cop-out coming in the second film.

The Verdict

Don't get your expectations inflated and you'll enjoy it better than I did. 7.5 out of 10.

Blast from the Past Movie Review: Highlander (1986)

When I was in middle school, I enjoyed watching Sci-Fi Channel re-runs of Highlander: The Series. The show features Adrian Paul as Duncan MacLeod, an immortal Scotsman who must battle other immortals for "The Prize." Highlander: The Series is actually a sequel to the 1986 film Highlander, in which Christopher Lambert plays Connor MacLeod, a similar character.

(Connor is from the same family, but from a couple generations back. The opening episode of the television series features him intervening on behalf of Duncan when the latter, who has abandoned pursuit of "The Prize" to live a quiet and normal life, is attacked by the evil immortal Slan Quince.)

I also taped (yes, on a VHS tape) Highlander on USA Network's Joe Bob Briggs' MonsterVision program and enjoyed it, even though Briggs mocked the movie's ponderous terminology ("the Quickening and the Gathering and the roaming and the gloaming"). The medieval incarnation of the villainous Kurgan (Clancy Brown) is the inspiration for the appearance of Grendel, the first lord of the Northlands and antagonist of my steampunk-Western novel Battle for the Wastelands. And of course, the opening song by Queen is awesome. So when the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood picked the movie, I was eager to participate.

Here's the podcast. Now for the review...

The Plot

Connor MacLeod is a young man in medieval Scotland who is mortally wounded on the battlefield by a barbarian mercenary known only as the Kurgan. He recovers miraculously, but is cast out by his superstitious kinsmen. He soon encounters the Spaniard Ramirez (Sean Connery), who was actually born thousands of years before in ancient Egypt. Ramirez introduces him to the secret world of the immortals, who are destined to someday be called to "a distant land" for the time of "The Gathering," where they will behead each other until one wins "The Prize."

Mishaps ensue, and we catch up to Connor years later in 1980s New York City. His taking the head of another immortal attracts the attention of police forensic scientist Brenda Wyatt (Roxanne Hart). Unfortunately, it is also the time of the Gathering, and the Kurgan is still alive and ready to claim the Prize.

The Good

*The movie is never boring. I watched it on my Kindle (via an Amazon "movie rental") on the elliptical at my gym (much like I did with Tomb Raider for an earlier episode) and an hour went by pretty quickly.

*The aging and death of Connor's medieval wife Heather while he stays young, all set to "Who Wants to Live Forever," is legitimately poignant. No wonder Ramirez advises him to leave her for her own sake, especially since she seems to blame herself for their not having children. For the record, it's part of the mythology that immortals are sterile.

*The version I saw seemed to be an extended version which included just who Rachel, who seems to be Connor's modern-day assistant, is. When I first saw the movie I thought he might be Connor's modern lover who he intends to leave for someone new as soon as she ages to the point the age difference starts getting noticeable (which would make Connor a gigantic asshole--per one of the graphic novels, even the dastardly Adam Monroe from Heroes pretended to be his wife's son and then grandson until she passed, and Connor himself did that for Heather), but the version I saw revealed that Rachel was a little girl he'd rescued from the Nazis and kind of adopted. It also makes it clearer that Heather's death has traumatized Connor so much that he's abandoned any effort at romantic relationships, as Ramirez had advised him to do.

*Brenda Wyatt is a very active female character--she becomes interested in Connor after the police investigate the opening battle in Madison Square Garden and investigates him on her own even though the police seem to give up on investigating Connor for the other immortal's death. She even sets up a date with him and sets up a tape recorder recording and stashes a gun just in case in order to find out more. She also searches the archives for information on Nash and the owner of his house. She's also very interested in ancient sword-making, which is what clued her into his immortal nature in the first place. Some shrinking violet she is not.

*The vile Kurgan gets some interesting character development in the modern day--he has a rather twisted sense of humor, which he gets to indulge in without consequence owing to his immortality.

The Bad

*One wonders if Christopher Lambert, born to French parents and having grown up in Switzerland (and thus having a very French-sounding accent), was the best choice to play the Scottish Connor. Although one could imagine him adopting a different accent and mannerisms over the course of centuries of life, he doesn't seem too different in medieval Scotland as he does in 1980s New York City.

Sean Connery's Ramirez, who was born in ancient Egypt but is living as a Spaniard in medieval times, is even more blatant. It's my understanding that ancient Egyptians were a Semitic people like Jews or Arabs; although there might be exceptional-looking individuals like Ramesses II who was apparently a fair-skinned redhead, I imagine Ramirez would be more Jewish or Arabic-looking than the Scottish Sean Connery. Omar Sharif might have been a more sensible and equally commercially-viable alternative--take a look at his character in the 1980 Chevy Chase film Oh Heavenly Dog or in the 1986 Peter the Great miniseries. He even kind of looks like Sean Connery.

*Lambert's delivery in many cases, especially when he seems to be trying to assume a Scottish accent, isn't very good.

*When Ramirez battles the Kurgan in medieval Scotland, he has several chances to take his head but doesn't do so. That weakens both characters--it makes the Kurgan seem less dangerous and makes Ramirez, who is over 2,000 years old and has been doing the whole "battle other immortals for their heads" thing the whole time, seem less competent. The filmmakers missed a chance to make the Kurgan seem truly deadly, as befitting the man whom Ramirez claims is the strongest immortal.

*Wyatt's discovery of Connor's immortality basically requires him to have been living in New York City continuously for over 200 years--or at the very least returning to the same house after years- or decades-long gaps. That doesn't reflect well on Connor's intelligence--even with the kind of turnover pre-modern disease-ridden cities had, surely someone might notice. And that assumes nobody pays too close attention to ownership records.

*I don't get the romance that develops between Connor and Brenda. Connor's will to never repeat what happened with Heather might be starting to crack after 400-odd years of not being in a serious relationship and he might glom onto an attractive woman pursuing him, but Brenda seems to be motivated more by intellectual curiosity than love or even desire.

*How on Earth can Brenda afford such a gigantic New York City apartment on the salary of a police forensics official, even with some extra income from her books on sword-making? At least in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it was made clear April was living above the store she inherited from her father and owned property outside of the city as well, which perhaps she made additional income renting out. Maybe Brenda's living in New Jersey or somewhere else outside of New York City proper, since it takes some time for her to get back into the city the last time we see her in it. This article from Cracked.com of all places shows that Hollywood often misrepresents just how expensive housing is.

*When an immortal character is killed, monsters and demons and what not appear in his Quickening. In previous Quickenings, it seems to be just lightning everywhere. Not really sure what was going on there.

The Verdict

A pretty good movie, but could be better in many ways. 8.0 out of 10, but barely.