Starman (1984): written by Bruce Evans and Raynold Gideon; directed by John Carpenter; starring Jeff Bridges (Starman/Scott Hayden), Karen Allen (Jenny Hayden), and Charles Martin Smith (Mark Shermin): Not normally known as a director of warm dramedies, John Carpenter took on Starman to ensure he could keep getting funding for the horror movies and thrillers (and one never-made supernatural Western, Diablo) he preferred. The result was Starman, a science-fiction movie that nabbed a rare major Oscar nomination for an sf film -- a Best Actor nom for Jeff Bridges.
And Bridges is great as an alien being pretending to be human so he can make his way to a rendezvous in Arizona with his mother-ship. He takes on the appearance (and, thanks to a lock of hair, the DNA) of the dead husband of Karen Allen. Having watched the alien's rapid growth in her living-room, Allen knows he is an alien. Their relationship drives the rest of the film, as they drive to Arizona. Basically, it's ET meets Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.
As noted, Bridges does fine work as the alien, managing comedy and pathos when required and doing an awfully good job of suggesting a creature learning to use a body (and language) on the fly. Allen is also solid, as usual -- as in Raiders of the Lost Ark, she makes for a non-cookie-cutter leading woman. The government forces are, as always, bad. However, the lead scientist played by Charles Martin Smith is sympathetic. It's politicians and the military and not the forces of science who are the bad guys. In all, this is very good movie that's aged surprisingly well. Highly recommended.
The Blair Witch Project: written and directed by Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez; starring Heather Donahue (Heather), Joshua Leonard (Josh), and Michael C. Williams (Mike) (1999): Maryland: home of the Terrapins, the Ravens, The Wire, that weird state flag, and a homicidal witch. The Blair Witch Project is the most influential horror movie of the last 40 years, as it made the found-footage film the go-to vehicle for filmed horror pretty much up to the present day. It also suggested that less was more both in terms of putting graphic images on the screen and in terms of budget.
And despite a couple of verisimilitude-harming flubs (yes, it's those guys fishing in two inches of water again near the beginning), it's a fine piece of work. Of course, it's hard to separate the film from the hype surrounding it in 1999. But watching it for the first time in at least 15 years, I'm struck by what a fine piece of mounting suspense it represents.
The three actors we spend most of our time with, those three film-makers lost in the demon-haunted woods of Maryland back in 1994, are utterly credible. They're not all that good at camping or hiking. Their growing panic seems genuine -- The Blair Witch Project is a really fine study of how group harmony can disintegrate disastrously under pressure. There's even a tie-in to the 2016 presidential campaign, as the growing resentment directed towards director/group leader Heather by her male partners-in-film-making seems at least partially a result of sexism towards female leaders. And there's that witch, of course, that deadly metaphor for hidden female power revealed and aimed at the patriarchy.
There are problems, but forgivable ones, especially in a movie that cost about $10 to make. I'd have liked more scenes shot in thicker portions of the woods during the day-time to add some atmosphere and menace to those day-time hiking excursions. That they're traipsing through some very thin growth isn't a plot problem -- it's not like witchcraft is contingent on Old-Growth forests. But there is a dearth of mood in some of those day-time scenes.
The night-time scenes are well-imagined, though. I especially like how the sounds that terrify the campers on the first three nights all seem to involve massive, unseen beings crashing through unseen trees. It gives an almost Lovecraftian feel to those moments, an idea of something much larger and much worse than a witch walking somewhere behind the trees.
And so we leave our campers, forever stranded in woods they can't seem to walk out of, no matter how long and how straight a bee-line they make in any one direction. Oh, sure, it's hard to believe that someone doesn't put down a camera (or pick up a weapon) as things get closer and closer to that much-discussed ending. So it goes. And those little hand-prints on the walls, when they come, are as awful as anything gory one could depict. Highly recommended.
Spy: written and directed by Paul Feig; starring Melissa McCarthy (Susan Cooper), Jessica Chaffin (Sharon), Jude Law (Bradley Fine), Miranda Hart (Nancy), Jason Statham (Rick Ford), Bobby Cannavale (Sergio De Luca), Rose Byrne (Rayna Boyanov), Alison Janney (Elaine Crocker), and 50 Cent (Himself) (2015): Hilarious spy spoof takes full advantage of Melissa McCarthy's outsized comic talents by making her hyper-competent, if occasionally a bit over-matched.
The supporting cast is pretty much uniformly well-served as well, whether it's Jason Statham spoofing Jason Statham or 50 Cent supplying a winning cameo. Paul Feig, who did similar writing/directing duties on previous McCarthy movies The Heat and Bridesmaids, has become a gifted comic voice with a particularly appealing manner with women. If the new Ghostbusters is this good, people will be happy. Highly recommended.
The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 1 featuring Shade the Changing Man: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010); The Steve Ditko Omnibus Volume 2 featuring Hawk and Dove: all stories plotted and illustrated by Steve Ditko with additional writing by a cast of thousands (Collected 2010):
Writer-artist Steve Ditko's quixotic nature was only amplified by the cruddy state of mainstream comic books for the people who actually created characters for the companies. His two most notable co-creations for Marvel Comics were Spider-man and Dr. Strange, though he also did character-defining work on Iron Man and the Hulk. Tired of Stan Lee's scripting and editing choices, Ditko left Marvel for more than a decade in the late 1960's. For the last 15 years, he's pretty much done his own, self-published thing, with very occasional short work for DC. He's famously reclusive.
Prior to his fame-creating Marvel superhero work, Ditko did thousands of pages of horror and monster work for many companies, honing his skills until he'd pretty much reached his impressive peak in the 1960's at Marvel and on B&W horror stories for Warren, and superhero work for DC and Charlton in the late 1960's.
These two omnibuses collect all of Ditko's output for DC other than his work on The Creeper in the 1960's and 1970's. In total, the collection spans several decades, offering the great, the good, and the very occasional indifferent sides of Ditko. He plotted many of the stories here (though not all), wrote a few, and either fully illustrated or pencilled the rest. It's a really great, broad look at one of the most important, influential, and fascinating American comic-book creators.
Ditko's unique ability to depict ordinary looking people in fantastical environments was at its best in Dr. Strange, but the Shade stories reprinted here are a very, very close second. They're utterly bizarre and engaging, and Ditko finds in dialogue-writer Michael Fleisher a kindred spirit when it comes to odd dialogue and description. Many of the pieces fully scripted by others take advantage of Ditko's strengths as well.
The pieces penciled but not inked by Ditko offer a fascinating look at how different artists approached Ditko's art. Romeo Tanghal, an excellent inker of George Perez on New Teen Titans in the 1980's, does a really solid job on the Starman adventures reprinted herein. The masterful Wally Wood doesn't always completely work on the four issues of Stalker he and Ditko did together, sometimes overpowering Ditko's distinctive faces, but it's still worth looking at.
There are a few duds in the inking department, but they're few and far between. And while Ditko's Legion of Super-heroes stories aren't an artistic high-point for him, they do accomplish something that a lot of artists on LSH failed at: they make the characters look like teen-agers.
The peaks collected here are really high, and the valleys (mostly horror shorts) still offer some of that Ditko magic. One also gets the only time Ditko drew Batman in a comic-book story (albeit as a guest-star in the first issue of the short-lived Manbat series), and Ditko's crouching, weirdly endearing take on Jack Kirby's Demon. Highly recommended.
Starman: Grand Guignol: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Paul Smith, Tony Harris, and Andrew Robinson (2000): The career of second-generation Starman Jack Knight moves towards its close as his Opal City plunges into darkness at the hands of frenemy The Shade. Or is it The Shade? Writer Robinson takes 13 issues to tell the story of what is Jack Knight's greatest battle, as he and his allies must face a veritable army of criminals, super-criminals, and whatever it is that the mystically powered Shade has become.
While there's a certain amount of violence and death in this tale, Robinson manages to keep things from becoming overwhelmingly grim and gritty throughout. Peter Snejberg really delivers some fine superhero art here, clean and almost minimalist at times, with a lovely fluid line.
The battle for Opal City draws in a number of DC's lesser-known heroes whom Robinson pretty much has carte blanche to play with. The space-faring Adam Strange may be the most welcome odd appearance, though Robinson also places a couple of DC's long-ago Quality Comics purchases, Phantom Lady and the Black Condor, into Opal City.
Robinson even manages to make good use of DC's company-wide crossover event of that time, Underworld Unleashed, to explain the return of some of the Golden-Age Starman's (Jack's still-living father) greatest foes. In all, this is a fine penultimate chapter to the Starman series. Highly recommended.
Starman: Sons of the Father: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Tony Harris, and Andrew Robinson (2001): The saga of Starman Jack Knight comes to an end as loose ends are tidied up and a long-simmering mystery (Who was the Starman of 1951?) is finally solved. Obviously, the final Starman arc is best read by someone who's already read the rest of the series. Snejberg's art shines throughout, as do Robinson's grasp of character and love of Golden-Age superheroes. Highly recommended.
Hellboy: Masks and Monsters: written by Mike Mignola and James Robinson; illustrated by Mike Mignola, Scott Benefiel, and Jasen Rodriguez (Collected 2009): Short volume collects two Hellboy miniseries team-ups with three other characters -- DC's Batman and Starman in one adventure and Dark Horse's own Ghost in the other.
A good time is pretty much had by all. Though I'm not familiar with Ghost -- a two-gunned female ghost fighting crime -- Hellboy's adventure with her makes a certain amount of sense given their supernatural backgrounds. Mignola's script presents an interesting mix of mythology and the mundane as organized crime gets mixed up with ancient gods who want Hellboy's giant hand for something nefarious. The art by Scott Benefiel, from Mignola's layouts, is fairly smooth, though perhaps a bit too representational for Mignola's blocky, occasionally impressionistic Hellboy.
The Starman/Batman team-up, plotted by Mignola and scripted by Starman's James Robinson, is really serious fun, with Mignola handling the art. Batman and Hellboy team up to fight magical Aryan Nation types in Gotham. With Batman temporaily sidelined by a re-appearance of the Joker, it's then up to Hellboy and second-generation Starman Jack Knight to rescue the Golden-Age Starman (who's also Jack's father Ted Knight) from a Nazi base in South America. There, the Nazis have supernaturally coerced Ted into helping them bring a very large, evil God back to Earth.
Oh, Nazis! Mignola's Batman is shadowy and bulky, while his Starman is quite a change from the more representational art generally seen in Jack Knight's own title. The whole volume goes down nicely, and is also an enjoyable break from the increasingly labyrinthine continuity of Hellboy's own adventures. Recommended.
The Sandman Volume 5: A Game of You: written by Neil Gaiman; illustrated by Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, George Pratt, Stan Woch, Dick Giordano, and Bryan Talbot (1991-92): The fifth volume of Gaiman's now twenty-year-old+ Sandman adventures presents a mostly self-contained tale concerned with gender, identity, race, and childhood dreams. Minor characters from previous story arcs do reappear here, along with the Lord of Dreams and his attendant (wise)-talking raven Matthew.
The six issues focus on one minor character from an earlier story arc, Barbie, whose previous encounter with the world of the Dreaming destabilized her marriage to Ken (!), along with her own carefully constructed self-image, and sent her to New York to figure out who she is. That previous interaction with the world of Dreams also had an unintended consequence. She's stopped dreaming.
However, somewhere in dreams, a ragtag group of talking and sometimes imaginary animals continue to search for the vanished Princess Barbara, who is the only person who can defeat the all-devouring Cuckoo and its conquering hordes. But she's going to need the help of her neighbours -- the lesbian couple Hazel and Foxglove, the transvestite Wanda, and the mysterious Thessaly -- to negotiate an increasingly unstable fantasy world.
The real world and the dream world are, of course, connected, in both obvious and less-than-obvious ways. Things do not necessarily go well for everyone involved in this adventure, with its echoes of Narnia and Tolkien and The Wizard of Oz's game-changing tornado. We also learn an awful lot about the life-cycle of the cuckoo bird. Why did someone put these awful things in clocks to begin with? Recommended.
Starman Volume 4: Times Past: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen, Craig Hamilton, John Watkiss, Russ Heath, Matt Smith, J.H. Williams III, Lee Weeks, Phil Jiminez and others (1995-2000; collected 2001): Robinson and company tell tales of the history of the various Starmen who've borne that name over the decades, from Golden Age hero Ted Knight to his son, and eponymous current Starman, Jack Knight. Amoral occasional hero, occasional villain The Shade narrates in a series of prose pieces. A nice gateway volume for the series, and an eclectic mix of artists. Recommended.
Starman Volume 5: Infernal Devices: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris, Mark Buckingham, Steve Yeowell, Wade Von Grawbadger, and others (1997-98; collected 2001): Starman Jack Knight must save Opal City from a truly mad bomber and a couple of super-villain henchmen. And he's got a new girlfriend, Sadie, whom he's totally in love with -- and who has her own secret reasons for first meeting him. Thankfully, new heroes are rising in Opal City to help out. Or new-old heroes, anyway. And the mystery of eternally resurrecting monster Solomon Grundy, who's been a great guy in this incarnation, is finally revealed in all its weirdness. Recommended.
Starman Volume 6: To Reach the Stars: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Gary Erskine, Gene Ha, Peter Krause, Steve Yeowell, and Tony Harris (1998; collected 2001): With his girlfriend Sadie's secret revealed, Jack Knight contemplates a trip into space in search of a lost and until now presumed dead hero of the 1980's and early 1990's. But first, we get a team-up of Starmen now and during World War Two with Fawcett Comics heroes Captain Marvel and Bulletman. And Bulletman is awesome. Also, he must have an incredibly hard head beneath that bullet-shaped helmet. Recommended.
Starman Volume 7: A Starry Knight: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Keith Champagne, and Tony Harris (1998-99; collected 2002): Starman Jack Knight and former Starman Mikaal, a blue-skinned alien who fought crime during the disco era, take to outer space with the help of anti-hero The Shade and the Justice League on the basis of Starman's fiancee Sadie's belief that her brother, another hero formerly known as Starman, still lives somewhere out there, despite having been seen dying in battle with the dark god Eclipso several years earlier. Along the way, Mikaal and Jack will meet up with DC's space-faring heroes such as Adam Strange, old frenemies like Solomon Grundy, and an entire planet terraformed by a space-travelling Swamp Thing back during the 1980's. Meanwhile, back home in Opal City, something dark is rising. Recommended.
Starman Volume 8: The Stars My Destination: written by James Robinson and David S. Goyer; illustrated by Peter Snejberg, Keith Champagne, Stephen Sadowski, John McCrea, and Tony Harris (1999; collected 2003): Starmen new and old team up with assorted science-fictional comic heroes to overthrow a murderous dictator -- and solve the mystery of whether or not fallen Starman Will Payton still lives. Meanwhile, back in Opal City, things are starting to look very, very bad for everybody. Opal needs Starman Jack Knight back! Recommended.
Starman Volume 1: Sins of the Fathers: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger (1994): James Robinson and Tony Harris's extremely enjoyable take on 'Legacy' heroes, as the younger son of the Golden-Age superhero Starman reluctantly takes up the heroic mantle after his older brother dies on the first day on the job.
New Starman Jack Knight, son of Ted, eschews the red costume and finned head of the hero's traditional garb for a leather jacket and smoked-glass goggles. And he'd generally rather be working on his "real" life as a buyer and seller of collectibles. But his brother's murderer(s) must be caught, and his father really is too old for this stuff.
Starman was one of DC Comics' most acclaimed superhero series when it ran from 1994-2001. It's a humourous, heartfelt delight with a healthy helping of Father Issues. Starman's home base of Opal City, another one of DC's fictional cities for heroes, is an eclectic place. It's proud of its resident hero Starman.
Jack Knight, like his super-scientist father, has no superpowers of his own. He fights crime with the Cosmic Rod, an invention of his father's that store all sorts of cosmic radiation that can then be applied by the rod in various ways, though most usually to allow Starman to fly or to hit a villain with a blast of energy.
Opal City also has an occasionally heroic guardian in the person of Golden-Age villain The Shade, who now makes his (immortal, non-aging) home in Opal City and hates to have his peace disturbed. The Shade would grow to rival Starman in fictional popularity. In this first volume, Jack must face an old villain of his father's, The Mist, one of DC's odder Golden-Age supervillains. I mean, he's basically a guy who can turn into a fogbank. A murderous old man with a grudge against Starman who can turn into a fog bank, that is.
Tony Harris's art is quirky and expressive, though the faces sometimes lack a certain continuity when it comes to characters. Jack especially takes awhile to settle down into a recognizably repeatable presence. But there's also real energy to Harris's layouts, and to his depiction of the quasi-mystical abilities of characters like The Mist and The Shade. This really seems like Robinson's labour of love, though, a comic book about a superhero who collects and sells comic books, among other things. Recommended.
Starman Volume 2: Night and Day: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Tony Harris and Wade Von Grawbadger and others (1994-95): More fun with Starman Jack Knight as he runs across a sinister carnival, receives career advice from sympathetic anti-hero The Shade, and faces his first Legacy villain, the now-mist-powered daughter of Golden-Age Starman villain The Mist. Apparently, she's just Mist. No definite article.
One of the numerous minor characters to also be called Starman also shows up here, as does bizarre, long-time Golden-Age Green Lantern villain Solomon Grundy, here in dire need of a haircut. Fun art, mostly fun (though somewhat bloody) stories. Recommended.
The Shade: written by James Robinson; illustrated by Cully Hamner, Jill Thompson, Javier Pulido, Fraser Irving, Tony Harris, and Gene Ha (2011-2012; collected 2013): A 12-issue limited series with five different story artists and Starman artist Tony Harris on covers, The Shade looks to have been in production before DC made the abrupt decision to reboot its superhero line in September 2011.
As there was never a WWII-era Golden Age of Superheroes in the Nu52DCU, the continued existence of Starman supporting character Shade seems pretty doubtful, as Starman (as also written by Shade writer James Robinson) was a reluctant "legacy" hero whose father fought crime in the 1940's and 1950's, also as Starman. So this series may be the last go-round for the pre-Nu52DCU. Until they bring it back, anyway. It's an infinite universe. I'm sure it's still out there somewhere, regardless of what DC editorial tells us.
Shade, a long-lived villain/thief who has gradually become somewhat heroic since he gained his powers in 1838, sets out in this series to find out who's trying to kill him, and why. The series also gives us more history for Shade than ever appeared in Robinson's Starman, including an origin in the final issue of this series.
Shade's an interesting, long-winded fellow with somewhat nebulous powers that involve control of a mystical shadow-force than can do almost anything, but generally functions like an extremely grumpy version of a Green Lantern power beam. Robinson takes the reader on a tour of both Shade's world and of the lower heroic and villainous levels of the DC Universe, as we meet heroes and villains in Spain, England, Australia, and France. It's all a lot of violent fun leading to a city-ravaging climax in London, England.
Robinson has always had a knack for imagining heroes and villains in a world that's a bit more realistic than that found in children's comic books without creating a book that's either too grim or too glib. Shade's more glib than grim, but even he has to get serious when confronted by supervillains and ordinary people with more of a penchant for harming the innocent than the Shade had on his worst days.
The roster of artists is a nice one, and Robinson seems to have structured the story to take advantage of their particular talents. Cully Hamner handles the more traditionally superheroic chapters, Javier Pulido the fantastic action ones, and Fraser Irving the almost psychedelic ones involving alien gods and weird hieroglyphics.
Jill Thompson and Gene Ha do great work on single chapters set entirely in the past -- the Decadent Age aptly for Thompson, and a photo-realistically depicted, gritty 1838 London (complete with Charles Dickens) for Ha on the final chapter. It may be the most interesting assembly of art styles DC has assembled on one 12-issue story since...I don't know. The DC Challenge? Robinson makes sure the story is intelligible to non-Starman readers -- one doesn't have to have read that title to enjoy this one. Recommended.
