Shut Up, Crime!

Super (2010): written and directed by James Gunn; starring Rainn Wilson (Frank Darbo), Ellen Page (Libby), Liv Tyler (Sarah), and Kevin Bacon (Jacques): Super pretty much asks and answers the question, 'What if Travis Bickle had wanted to be a superhero?' 

The answer is a bleak, bloody satire that does everything well except stick the landing. Frustrated, mentally ill fry cook Rainn Wilson loses his recovering addict wife (Liv Tyler, way too good-looking for the movie, especially when she's supposed to be in the throes of drug use) to drug kingpin Kevin Bacon. Inspired by a Christian TV show superhero (Nathan Fillion under a hilarious Jesus wig), Wilson sets out to fight crime as the pipe-wrench wielding Crimson Bolt!

Let me tell you, writer-director James Gunn (in his pre-Guardians of the Galaxy days) is on to something here -- a massive pipe-wrench really is a good weapon!

Gunn maintains a certain tone for much of the movie -- violent, satiric, but weirdly weightless -- that only collapses in the coda. One could interpret that coda as yet another delusion by Wilson's character, though there aren't really any cues that is meant to be a delusion and not a curiously sentimental summation. 

A similar problem occurred with the unearned (and anomalous) treacle at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy 2, meaning that I'd say that the very similar Defendor is a better version of almost the same movie, by a smidgen, because its ending supports more ambiguous interpretations as to the worth (or lack thereof) of superheroes. Actually, Hobo With a Shotgun might be the best version of this story in recent years.

Ant-Man (2015): based on the character created by Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, and Jack Kirby; written by Edgar Wright, Joe Cornish, Adam McKay, and Paul Rudd; directed by Peyton Reed; starring Paul Rudd (Scott Lang), Michael Douglas (Hank Pym), Evangeline Lilly (Hope van Dyne), Corey Stoll (Darren Cross), Bobby Cannavale (Paxton), Anthony Mackie (The Falcon), and Michael Pena (Luis) (2015): Still the greatest pilot ever for a superhero TV show that was never intended to be made and never will be made. If only Edgar Wright had been allowed to stay onboard as writer and director, this might have been an all-time great superhero movie. As is, still refreshingly zippy and fun, with a cast up to the hijinks. Recommended.

Retreads

Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 (2017): based on characters created and/or developed by Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Steve Gerber, Bill Mantlo, Jim Starlin, and many others; written by James Gunn; directed by James Gunn; starring Chris Pratt (Peter Quill/Star-Lord), Zoe Saldana (Gamora), Dave Bautista (Drax), Vin Diesel (Voice of Groot), Bradley Cooper (Voice of Rocket Raccoon), Michael Rooker (Yondu), Karen Gillan (Nebula), Pom Klementieff (Mantis), and Kurt Russell (Ego the Living Planet): Family, family, family, family, family is great. Mawkish bathos and bathetic mawkishness provide about 20 minutes of dreadful slop that stalls this sequel dead at certain points, all of written, I assume, by the Universal Plot Overlay Generator. 

There's still some cosmic fun to be had, but this is really the sort of comic-book movie that needs to be lean and trim. An initially clever opening credits action sequence rapidly devolves into an ad for Baby Groot merchandise. I was entertained for the most part, but I'm not sure how much more of this Marvel shit I can handle. The actors do a thoroughly solid job of standing in front of green screens and looking surprised. Kurt Russell looks good, but he's totally miscast as Ego, a character who really needs the plummy pomposity of an older English actor. Lightly recommended.

The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956): adapted by John Michael Hayes from a story by Charles Bennett and D.B. Wyndham-Lewis; directed by Alfred Hitchcock; starring Jimmy Stewart (Dr. Benjamin McKenna) and Doris Day (Josephine Conway McKenna): Relatively late-Hollywood-spectacle Hitchcock has sprung rhythms that derail its thriller momentum throughout. I'm not entirely sure this is unintentional -- the movie does seem more like a critique of Ugly Americans Abroad than anything else, with Jimmy Stewart as the ugliest and stupidest of all. 

A much-longer remake of a 1930's Hitchcock film that was superior (especially insofar as the 1930's The Man Who Knew Too Much had Peter Lorre as the Anarchist villain). Doris Day sings "Que Sera Sera" and it's actually relevant to the plot. The Albert Hall assassination sequence is a marvel. Jimmy Stewart is about ten years too old for his character, a fact that Hitchcock would put to much more effective use in the subsequent Vertigo. A sequence set in a Marrakesh restaurant is extremely funny. Too long by 20 minutes, but boy, when it ends, it just ends. Lightly recommended.

I Love a Mystery! (1945): adapted by Charles O'Neal from the radio program created by Carlton E. Morse; directed by Henry Levin; starring Jim Bannon (Jack), Barton Yarborough (Doc), Nina Foch (Ellen Monk), and George Macready (Jefferson Monk): B-movie ports popular 40's radio show to the big screen, with loopy results. There's Orientalism, decapitation, prophecy, and comic-relief Southernisms from 'Doc,' sidekick to private detective Jack. Apartment mate too -- they sleep in separate beds in the same room. 

This film contains some of the funniest 'slow pursuit' material played straight in movie history, as a one-legged man repeatedly catches up to his two-footed prey despite clealry walking much, much slower than they. Extremely odd and, as with B-movies of the time, incredibly short. Lightly recommended.

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016)

Florence Foster Jenkins (2016): based on a true story; written by Nicholas Martin; directed by Stephen Frears; starring Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins), Hugh Grant (St Clair Bayfield), Simon Helberg (Cosme McMoon), and Rebecca Ferguson (Kathleen): Delightful comic drama about the world's worst singer, New York socialite and philanthropist Florence Foster Jenkins. She thinks she can sing. Husband Hugh Grant humours her because he loves her. Actually, pretty much everyone humours her because she's a nice person who throws a lot of money around. 

This movie isn't quite the laugh riot it was advertised as -- it's also a bittersweet movie about folly and sacrifice. The cast is terrific throughout, Stephen Frears directs with unforced elegance, and the singing... boy oh boy that singing. Meryl Streep nails Jenkins' dementedly above-range 'coloratura,' as recordings of the actual singer played under the end credits demonstrate. Recommended.

The Inhuman Condition

The Inhumans: The Origin of the Inhumans: written by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Joe Sinnott, and others (1965-68/ Collected 2013): Fun, 400-page collection of the first four years of Marvel appearances of the Inhumans by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee. The mainstays of the Inhumans are here, the characters who would become the Royal Family of the group -- Black Bolt, Medusa, Gorgon, Karnak, Triton, Crystal, and super-giant-teleporting dog Lockjaw.

Medusa, with her crazy stretching prehensile hair, first appeared as a villain in Fantastic Four. Bigger things awaited, as she was eventually revealed to be an Inhuman and one of the good guys. What's an Inhuman? The result of an ancient attempt by the alien Kree Empire to mess with human genetics in the interest of... well, as presented here, simply because. Later retcons would make the Inhumans a weapons experiment, an idea that persisted on the TV show Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this season. But here, the Kree are basically interested in the science of genetic engineering for its own sake,

So are born the Inhumans, who form a highly advanced society of super-powered beings while humanity still lives in caves. They'd eventually hide from the rest of humanity until they encountered the Fantastic Four and gradually came out of that hiding.

Ideas and characters come bursting out of Jack Kirby here, most of them still in use by Marvel today in comics and other media. Some issues of Fantastic Four have been carved up so that just the Inhumans sequences are reprinted. That's a good idea in this case -- in several cases, the Inhumans material is a B-plot that only gets a couple of pages in a comic.

Kirby's storytelling is action-packed and occasionally poignant. Two of the great under-rated Lee/Kirby superhero battles appear here, as the Fantastic Four battles two of the Kree, first the long-slumbering Sentry and then the 'public executioner,' Ronan the Accuser. Ronan got burned off in somewhat altered form in the Guardians of the Galaxy movie. Too bad -- he's a much more interesting character when he's not Cuckoo.

If one owns a collected Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four in some form, this volume isn't necessary (though it also includes Inhumans stories from the back pages of Thor). But even then, this is a pretty good way to encounter the Inhumans, who are sorta like mutants except that they're not. And as always with the Fantastic Four under Lee and Kirby's direction, there's a pleasing and almost unique blend of low comedy, soap opera, action, and cosmic moments. Highly recommended.

Epic

The Korvac Saga: written by Roger Stern, Jim Shooter, Bill Mantlo, and David Micheline; illustrated by George Perez, David Wenzel, Sal Buscema, Klaus Janson, Pablo Marcos, and many others (1977-78; collected 2011): Enjoyable, sometimes absurdly wordy 1970's Avengers epic that introduced the nigh-omnipotent and nigh-omniscient Michael Korvac to the 20th century. A man-machine hybrid from the 31st century, where he was an enemy of the original Guardians of the Galaxy (the ones without a raccoon or a talking tree in their ranks), Korvac would give the Avengers fits. 

And it may have all been in a good cause, as Korvac has reformed by the time he gets to the 20th century (and has absorbed all the knowledge in Galactus' computer banks). He just wants to make the universe a better place. Or maybe he wants to eliminate all free will. As knowledge is power in this story-line, Korvac is seemingly all-powerful. A surprisingly equivocal ending to the epic is somewhat undone by an odd epilogue added nearly 20 years later for an earlier reprint edition than this. 

As seems to have been the case with The Avengers for long stretches of their history, a regular artist is hard to come by, and the art on the book varies wildly: George Perez is great, Sal Buscema is perfectly fine, and David Wenzel seems to have been dropped into the deep end without warning. Occasionally shaggy but highly enjoyable. The inclusion of the apocalyptic early 1980's What If? story that pondered a different ending to the saga would have welcome. Recommended.

Multiversity: written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Ivan Reis, Frank Quitely, Chris Sprouse, Cam Stewart, Jim Lee, and others (2014-2015): From the metafictional mind of Grant Morrison comes the DC miniseries Multiversity, a multiverse-spanning adventure with an Ultimate Villain who may be a nigh-omnipotent Hollywood Executive charged with turning fun superhero comics into dreary but popular superhero movies. I'm not kidding.

DC's then-ostensibly-52-universe-large Multiverse (and by 'then, I mean, 'from about 2006 to just last month') comes under attack from a mysterious group of hyper-powerful monsters who call themselves the Gentry. And they want to Gentrify all the universes of the multiverse. They are not fun. Instead, they bring madness, despair, and destruction to the universes they attack.

And so called into action is Nix Uotan, last of the Multiverse-defending Monitors, and his trusty partner Stubbs the Talking Chimpanzee. Worlds will live. Worlds will die. Specifically, Morrison's thinly veiled version of Marvel's Ultimate Universe will die, to have all but one of its heroes resurrected by the Gentry to fight against the forces of Good.

Morrison creates an unusual structure for this 9-issue comic-book epic. The main storyline starts in Multiversity #1, is touched upon midway through the overall narrative in the Multiversity Handbook, and concludes with Multiversity #2. Along the way, we get six comic books set in six different universes under siege by terrible forces. These single issues tie into the overall storyline, but they also stand alone. 

In them we see a world of super-heroes conquered by super-Nazis; the world of Shazam's original Captain Marvel; a riff on Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen involving the original Charlton Comics superheroes whom Watchmen was originally supposed to involve; a pulpy world protected by Doc Fate and the Society of Superheroes; a world of disaffected, millennial offspring of the original superheroes; and our world, a world protected by a superhero who is himself a comic book. Not a comic-book hero. A comic book. Ultra Comics.

Yes, comic books. They also allow for communication between multiverses. And they may carry a thought-virus that is destroying the Multiverse, thanks to the nefarious Gentry and their terrible hidden master. Or they may also carry the key to defeating the Gentry. 

And so superheroes from dozens of Earths must team up to beat back the invasion. But not everyone is what she or he or it seems. And I'd also say that the redesign of Captain Carrot is sort of awful. Now drawn as the world's tallest and most muscly super-rabbit, his cartoony charms have been subsumed by the contemporary, non-cartoony super-marketplace. Or is this too part of the commentary on the pollution of superhero comics by the modern multi-media-platform marketplace? I don't know. But it was fun getting there in yet another cosmic-comic Grant Morrison extravaganzapalooza. 

And kudos to the artists on the various chapters. The different worlds are well-matched with their artists. Chris Sprouse's pulp world of Doc Fate and Cam Stewart's Captain Marvel and friends are especially pleasing and refreshingly, suitably Old School. Ivan Reis does solid work on the frame tale, with its army of superheroes from dozens of different realities. Though I'm still not happy with that weirdly muscled, 8-foot-tall Captain Carrot. Highly recommended.

Talking Heads in Space

 Jim Starlin's Warlock: written by Jim Starlin with Bill Mantlo; illustrated by Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, Steve Leialoha, Josef Rubenstein, and others (1974-1983; reprinted 1992): Writer-artist Jim Starlin's relatively brief run on Warlock represents one of a handful of the weirdest mainstream superhero comics of the 1970's, in an era when virtually all superhero comics were mainstream -- they were all sold on the newsstands, and all held to sales standards of more than 150,000 copies sold a month, at least.

By sales standards, Starlin's Warlock was a dud -- his entire run spanned about two years, with intermittent later appearances in other titles finishing the initial Warlock saga. But what a weird, ambitious, purple-prosed epic this was. DC and Marvel were a lot more inclined to allow for weird projects in their mainstream universes back then. It's impossible to imagine a story and a hero this odd crossing over with Spider-man, the Thing, and the Avengers today.

Adam Warlock's curious origins began in Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's Fantastic Four in the 1960's, as a genetically engineered superman who ultimately destroys his power-hungry creators and takes to the stars. Back then, he was known only as Him. Guest shots in Thor led to his own book, written by Roy Thomas, in which Warlock became a Christic figure, trying to save Counter-Earth (oh, look it up) from the Satanic machinations of the malevolent Man-Beast. That book was soon cancelled, with the Man-Beast saga wrapping up in the Hulk's book.

Then along came Starlin, fresh off an odd and abortive run on Marvel's Captain Marvel title, to resurrect Warlock in the pages of Strange Tales. The resurrection would lead to another resurrection, of Warlock's own book. That lasted another 6 issues. It would take seven years for what seemed to be the final stages of Warlock's story to be told in other superhero comics, culminating in a battle alongside the Avengers against the mad space-god Thanos and his plot to extinguish all the stars in the universe. As Thanos is now the lurking villain in The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy movies, I'd guess Warlock won't be far behind. His iconic cocoon has already showed up in Guardians of the Galaxy and one of the Thor movies.

Starlin's Warlock is a cosmically subterranean work, obsessed with death and the self-doubt of a somewhat pompous, cosmic man-child who wants to save the universe but isn't entirely sure how. Warlock is also compromised by the Soul Gem embedded in his forehead, a stone of strange power which can suck the souls out of people. Fun times!

Various cosmic shenanigans occur, along with more hand-wringing and soul-searching than you can shake the saddest Spider-man in the world at. There are points at which Starlin seems to be going for My Dinner with Warlock, as talking heads and lengthy conversations dominate the proceedings. Warlock's consciousness seems to be constantly under attack, as is his sense of self. The comic-relief companion Pip the Troll lightens things up for awhile, but this is Jim Starlin's world: Death is the only constant. Well, and resurrection. Possibly followed quickly by more death, more resurrection, and possibly some lengthy conversations about death and resurrection.

Starlin's writing can be painfully clunky and overblown at times, but he's still the best person to write his own stuff. The art, with all its tics, nonetheless strives for, and sometimes achieves, a weird grandeur not often found in superhero comics of any era. Introduced herein is Gamora, Zoe Saldana's green-skinned warrior in Guardians of the Galaxy. Can Warlock and Pip be far behind? And how boring will Marvel Studios make them? I'm guessing we're not getting a Warlock movie in which the characters talk, to themselves and others, for 2 1/2 hours. More's the pity. Recommended.

Planetary Bodies

The Guardians of the Galaxy: The Power of Starhawk: written by Steve Gerber, Roger Stern, and Stan Lee; illustrated by Al Milgrom, John Buscema, and others (1975-77; collected 2011): Marvel's original Guardians of the Galaxy hailed from the 31st century, something I'm pretty sure the movie is going to avoid in favour of the more contemporary version of the team. Oh, well. This volume collects some of the grooviest science fantasy comics of my youth, most of them written by the inimitable Steve Gerber and pencilled by Al Milgrom.

Chronologically, this is the second collection of the team, picking up the story after they've liberated the solar system from Marvel's most underwhelming interstellar empire, the Brotherhood of the Badoon, with the help of the 20th century's Defenders. After quickly winning the peace by striking a bargain with the Sisterhood of the Badoon (the lizard-like Badoon having split into two competing cosmic empires along gender lines; the women are a lot nicer), the Guardians find themselves out of place on Earth.

This anomie makes sense as the team comprises a genetically engineered pair of men who are the last survivors of the Jupiter and Pluto colonies; the mysterious space-faring Starhawk; Major Vance Astro, a thousand-year-old American astronaut condemned to life inside a metal shell so that he doesn't disintegrate; the last survivor of the dominant species of the Alpha Centauri system; and, almost immediately, the last surviving genetically engineered woman from the Mercury colony.

Under the direction of Starhawk, they take to space in the starship Captain America to travel to the centre of the galaxy and confront a nihilistic super-planet shaped like a person and dubbed The Topographical Man. It's several light years across and has suns about to go supernova at each wrist. Along the way, they fight one of the Topographical Man's energy-gathering animalcules, a planet-sized, energy-eating space frog. And then things really get weird. Steve Gerber was fucking bananas in the best possible way.

Steve Gerber's ability to write really, really weird stories seems even more remarkable given the context -- this was the mid-1970's, after all. A story arc that involves the giant astral projection of a woman having sex with the possessed body of the Topographical Man...well, it's not something that would happen with any other writer. Roger Stern takes over for the last couple of issues collected here and does a pretty good job of following Gerber's lead. All in all, this really is a weird and enjoyable comic book. Though I'm still not sure how people settled on Jupiter, genetic engineering or not. Gerber didn't come up with that implausibility; he just has to deal with it. Recommended.