Grendel: Black, White, and Red/ Red, White, and Black (Mostly 1998-2002) (Collected in Grendel Omnibus Volume 2 (2013): written by Matt Wagner; illustrated by Matt Wagner, Duncan Fegredo, Kelley Jones, Ashley Wood, Michael Zulli, Mike Allred, David Mack, and many others: Writer-artist Matt Wagner would return several times to the first incarnation of his villain-hero Grendel over the decades, early 1980's crime boss and novelist Hunter Rose. This made a lot of sense, as the initial story devoted to Rose was only about 60 pages long.
And yes, these stories are black, white, and red: those are the only 'colours' used, and the effect is mostly smashing.
Black, White, and Red and Red, White, and Black saw Wagner writing short tales of the early Grendelverse for an astonishing list of artists. Even if one doesn't like the writing, one can find a lot to love here in these often wildly disparate artistic takes on the world of Hunter Rose.
Me, I like the writing fine for the most part, though a couple of Wagner's forays into poetry and doggerel fall pretty flat. Helping things is Wagner's decision to focus most of the individual tales on the supporting cast. A little of Hunter Rose's glib, smug nihilism goes an awfully long way. But Grendel as instead a terrifying secondary character in most of these stories works very well indeed.
I wouldn't recommend reading the two collections in one sitting. Grendel's world is a grim one, albeit often laced through with gallows humour. With the sharp writing and art here, the whole thing is highly recommended. Look for it in-print in the first Grendel omnibus from Dark Horse.
Grendel: God and the Devil (1988-89/ Collected 2013 in Grendel Omnibus 3): written by Matt Wagner; illustrated by John K. Snyder III, Jay Geldhof, Joe Matt, and Bernie Mireault: Matt Wagner re-situates the epic Grendel narrative in early 26th-century America in this ambitious work of dystopian science-fantasy. I think it's swell.
Climate change and a limited nuclear exchange have left large stretches of North America uninhabitable, with most of the continent's population now living in the Western states. That's also where the newish North American Vatican, Vatican Ouest, is located -- in New Mexico. The various levels of government in North America have been replaced by corporations which battle for dominance with the Vatican and the Confederacy of Police (C.O.P.).
Wagner and artists John K. Snyder III and Jay Geldhof make this installment of Grendel a dense work of science fiction and political satire. But they also manage to stage fine, sometimes harrowing sequences of action and horror.
What's changed in the Grendelverse is that now the body-hopping demonic entity finds itself fighting on the side of life itself. The Pope -- who will quickly be revealed to be an old nemesis of Grendel -- has a plan that's not going to do humanity any good. And so the new Grendel and Orion Assante, an ambitious but principled corporate type, find themselves extremely unlikely allies, with the full power of Vatican Ouest against them.
There's action and horror and world-building galore in what was originally published in ten issues of defunct Comico's Grendel back in the late 1980's. It's an interesting case study in how Wagner saw the future back then, or at least the future as a metaphor for the present. His world pits the mercenary private police of C.O.P. against anyone they're paid to deal with. And the 'commmisioner' of C.O.P., the brutal and pragmatic Pellon Cross, becomes the fourth side of the triangle of Grendel, Orion, and the Pope.
Oh, and there are animal metaphors galore, including a running joke about an extremely hard-to-kill rat. You'll be reminded of Wagner's Canadian-ness when 1980's Canadian band Jerry Jerry and the Sons of the Rhythm Orchestra make a guest appearance. And you'll laugh at some of Wagner's inspiration for names (his new Grendel is named for Margaret Thatcher, for one).
This is dense storytelling -- perhaps a bit too dense on some pages for the reduced page size of the Grendel Omnibus series. So dig out your magnifying glass. This is one of the great comic-book narratives of the 1980's and 1990's. It can stand beside Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns without suffering by comparison. Highly recommended.
The Purge: Anarchy: written and directed by James DeMonaco; starring Frank Grillo (Sergeant), Carmen Ejogo (Eva), Zach Gilford (Shane), Kiele Sanchez (Liz), Zoe Soul (Cali) and Justina Machado (Tanya) (2014): The second Purge movie ditches the name actors and heads to the streets for the near-future America's favourite annual pastime: raping and killing without consequence for one night of the year.
Instead of one somewhat unlikable upper-middle-class family under siege, we get the tried-and-true Stagecoach formula of disparate strangers bonded by shared danger. It works beautifully. There's nothing subtle about the Purge movies, in which the poor are victims of violence and the State loves it. But there is something bracing about this movie, something very early John Carpenter in its angry protagonist, known only as Sergeant (for his former rank as a police officer).
Frank Grillo nails the frustrations of a man who doesn't want to be a hero but is forced to because of his own morality. The four people he leads on this little night-sea journey are appealing. We even get periodic left-wing civics lectures from Zoe Soul's Cali. The allegory is paper-thin but surprisingly sturdy: it all seems like a brand that's built to last, a similarly agit-proppy successor to Carpenter's Escape from New York and They Live. Recommended.
Snowpiercer: adapted by Joon-ho Bong and Kelly Masterson from Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand, and Jean-Marc Rochette; directed by Joon-ho Bong; starring Chris Evans (Curtis), Kang-ho Song (Namgoong Minsoo), Ed Harris (Wilford), John Hurt (Gilliam), Tilda Swinton (Mason), and Octavia Spencer (Tanya) (2013): Visually startling and dumb as a post. 17 years after a 2014 attempt to stop global warming freezes the Earth, humanity's survivors live on a train that never stops chugging along through an icy landscape that stretches throughout every continent on Earth (well, except Australia -- the train doesn't go there). Mad billionaire Wilford connected nearly 500,000 kilometers of railway track some time before everything got really chilly and then got a bunch of people together on his train.
At the front of the train, the engine and the rich people. At the back of the train, the poor. Captain America Chris Evans leads a rag-tag group of poor people towards the front of the train in hopes of overthrowing the existing social order. Shenanigans ensue, many of them very cleverly staged. Characterization and subtlety (not to mention science and engineering) aren't parts of the program. It's not science fiction. It's barely allegory. The dialogue thuds along. Tilda Swinton plays Tilda Swinton playing a Tilda Swinton character.
If Michael Bay had directed this rather than the critically beloved Joon-ho Bong, I think the movie would be reviled for being stupid eye candy. It's a movie that gets small, detailed things right within a much larger framework of gross unbelievability: those 500,000+ kilometres of track, for example, are needed so that it takes exactly a year for the train to complete one circuit while traveling at a relatively constant 75 kph. Why? Um, so they can celebrate New Year's Day every year at the completion of the circuit? So it goes. Lightly recommended.
Mad Max: Fury Road: written by George Miller, Brendan McCarthy, and Nick Lathouris; directed by George Miller; starring Tom Hardy (Max Rockatansky), Charlize Theron (Imperator Furiosa), Nicholas Hoult (Nux), Hugh Keays-Byrne (Immortan Joe), Zoe Kravitz (Toast the Knowing), Rosie Huntington-Whiteley (The Splendid Angharad), Riley Keough (Capable), Abbey Lee (The Dag), and Courtney Eaton (Cheedo the Fragile) (2015):
Gigantic in a way that the previous three Mad Max movies couldn't be because of budgetary restraints, Mad Max: Fury Road puts that money on the screen, and does an amazing number of things without CGI. When CGI does stroll in to dominate, it actually does so in a sublime way, as a dust super-storm that seems more true to Dune than anything that's ever been put on the screen as Dune.
A sort of soft reboot of the original Mad Max films, this one slots in after the original Mad Max, though some of Max's flashbacks suggest that the original film doesn't supply quite the same origin narrative for the series. Tom Hardy's Max, a former police officer, does have his familiar Interceptor from the first two movies, though. For awhile, anyway.
Hardy is a much quieter presence than the young Mel Gibson, though at least some of that seems to be by design: Charlize Theron's Imperator Furiosa is the movie's hero, and a very compelling one. Max is along to learn to be heroic again.
Of the 110 story minutes of the film, about 80 involve various iterations of a car chase. Here in the post-apocalypse, the cars have been assembled from anything that works and engineered to be as dangerous to others as possible. Along the way, Miller throws in a visual homage to fellow Aussie Peter Weir's early film, The Cars That Ate Paris. And a nod to one of the iconic stunts in Raiders of the Lost Ark. And a guy playing a flame-throwing guitar while chained to the front of a truck. There's a lot going on.
The chase, or The Chase, or whatever you want to call it, is dizzying at times but fully comprehensible. Miller and his storyboard people, including comic-book writer/artist Brendan McCarthy, who's co-credited on the script, have figured out everything and where everything needs to go. And go it does.
Is this a feminist film? Well, when compared to pretty much every other blockbuster movie of the last 25 years, yes. The main plot riffs on Boko Haram and its kidnapping of young girls to be brides, on arranged marriages and institutionalized rape, and on the utter cruddiness of many men with power.
The main antagonist, Immortan Joe, is a wheezing blob of a dictator who needs to be poured and prodded into a suit that makes him look fearsome. He keeps young women to produce offspring in the reproductively challenged future. Imperator Furiosa, who has worked for Joe for years, has hatched a plan to get the women and herself to safety. Max finds himself along for the ride, acted upon for about the first 40 minutes of the movie before he finally starts to act.
Visually impressive and kinetic as hell, Mad Max: Fury Road also offers some clever twists and some nicely observed flashes of characterization and world-building along the way. It's a great action movie that doesn't insult the eye or the brain. Highly recommended.
