Six-Pack and Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroz

Six-Pack and Dogwelder: Hard-Travelin' Heroz (2016-2017/ Collected 2017): written by Garth Ennis; illustrated by Russ Braun with Steve Dillon and John Kalisz: From the pages of Garth Ennis and John McCrea's late and much-lamented HITMAN come... Six-Pack and Dogwelder and the other heroes of Section 8! Well, and from the pages of the earlier SECTION 8 miniseries!

Garth Ennis' hatred for superheroes other than Superman is at its most evident when he chronicles Six-Pack and Section 8, heroes with powers that range from the disgusting to the non-existent. But Six-Pack idolizes Superman and wants to do the right thing. That he may be dreaming all of this while he dies drunk and homeless and freezing in an alley is also a possibility. Or not. For once, in the pages of Hitman, Six-Pack saved the universe from an invasion of demons with his idealistic heroism. No joke!

The title riffs on the unlikely, socially relevant Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics of the early 1970's. The first issue gets Ennis' critique of socially relevant comics out of the way before plunging into the greatest mystery of the DC Universe: who is Dogwelder and why is he compelled to weld dogs to people?

Garth Ennis and sharp, pungent artist Russ Braun take the piss on superheroes past and present, from Starfire to the Flash, from the Justice League to Hellblazer. Ennis wrote a memorable run of John Constantine Hellblazer in the 1990's. Here, he brings John back to piss on DC's attempt to make Constantine more mainstream and conventionally superheroic. It's funny stuff, though really only if you're in on the joke.

DC's supernatural, God's vengeance hero The Spectre makes a memorable appearance to jumpstart the quest to discover the true nature of Dogwelder. John Constantine shows up on a very Silver-Surferesque flying board to help out and complain about what the corporate powers of DC have done to him, now that they've put him in a space helmet and given him a raygun dubbed Hellblazer.

Dogwelder will of course turn out to be from a long line of Dogwelders. Heck, this Dogwelder is the second one we've seen, the first having been blowed up during that hitherto mentioned battle with universe-ending demons. Dogwelder is dead. Long live Dogwelder! 

This is a lot of fun, though you may need some foreknowledge of DC Comics and superheroes in general to truly appreciate all the jokes. As a bittersweet bonus, the reprinted covers for the series are some of the late, great Steve (illustrator of Ennis' Hellblazer, Preacher, and Punisher work, among many other memorable moments) Dillon's work. Recommended.

Pearl Harbor: The Accused (2016)

Pearl Harbor: The Accused (2016) This HBO documentary does an awfully good job of absolving disgraced four-star admiral and Commander in Chief US Pacific Fleet Pearl Husband Edward Kimmel of responsibility for that Day of Infamy. Indeed, it does such a good job of doing so that the only explanation for the actions and inactions of US Naval Chief of Operations from 1939-1942 Harold Rainsford Stark is that Stark was a member of the time-altering lunatics of Rittenhouse on TV's Timeless. 

Kimmel's grand-children continue to fight for his official absolution, but while a Senate Resolution absolving him of responsibility was passed in 1999, Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama have refused to sign that Resolution, thus leaving Kimmel's honour in official limbo. It's really an astonishing story. Recommended.

Spider-Man 3 (2007)

Spider-Man 3 (2007): based on characters created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee; written by Sam Raimi, Ivan Raimi, and Alvin Sargent; directed by Sam Raimi; starring Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker/ Spider-Man), Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane Watson), James Franco (Harry Osborne), Thomas Haden Church (Flint Marko/ Sandman), Topher Grace (Eddie Brock/ Venom), Bryce Dallas Howard (Gwen Stacy), James Cromwell (Captain Stacy), Dylan Baker (Dr. Curt Connors), Rosemary Harris (Aunt May), and J.K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson):

11 more years of superhero movies have made Spider-Man 3 seem a lot more charming now than it did at the time. The studio forced director/co-writer Sam Raimi to shoehorn 1980's Spider-Man villain Venom into a story that already had Sandman and Harry Osborn as antagonists for Peter Parker's spidery alter ego. And oh boy, what a clumsy shoehorn it is!

The result does strongly suggest that Sam Raimi pretty much said 'To hell with you!' at this point, forced to give us a tale of Peter Parker briefly 'going bad' under the influence of the alien symbiote/black costume. While he's bad, Peter Parker looks and acts like a sort of Emo Beatnik. He dances. He snaps his fingers. He plays the piano. Wow!

Sam Raimi's desire to be done with superhero movies also seems to be in full evidence. Spider-Man 3 opens and closes with a musical number. The motivations of villain Sandman are murky. A retcon of the murder of Peter's Uncle Ben has been inserted because everything has to be personal for superheroes. The Sandman himself generally looks and acts a lot like the sandstorms in the first two Brendan Fraser Mummy movies.

Oh, well. Tobey Maguire is still mopey and perky as Peter and Spidey. Kirsten Dunst's Mary Jane is now a thankless wet blanket of a role. James Franco just looks stoned all the time as Harry Osborn. As in Spider-Man 2, the action climax ends on a note of forgiveness rather than all-out punchiness. In today's superhero world, that last choice still seems fresh and important, and the makers of Spider-Man: Homecoming seem to have realized that with the ending of their NuSpider-man movie. In all, lightly recommended yet almost incongruously entertaining.

I Am Sam Kinison (2017)

I Am Sam Kinison (2017): written by Adrian Buitenhuis and John Barbisan; directed by Adrian Buitenhuis: Sam Kinison became America's most popular stand-up comic in the late 1980's, eventually selling out stadiums and living like a rock star. This documentary, part of the 'I Am' series that also includes I Am Chris Farley, shares certain problems with the other I Am features -- a tendency towards hagiography, over-statement, and avoidance of certain negative features of the subject. 

Kinison, startling and innovative in his screaming stage presence, looks pretty familiar now: he's the aggrieved heterosexual white man, enraged by women and gays. There's a reason Kinison became so popular for a short time -- much of his act seems like a blueprint for today's Republican Party. Only way more public about the rampant drug and alcohol use. 

He's definitely an important and influential figure. But the various defenses of some of his now nigh-unwatchable rants ("Everything's OK if it's funny!") misses the basic fact that Kinison spent a lot of his vitriol punching down at people and groups who had far less power in the world of 1989 than heterosexual white men. That is to say, gays, women, starving Africans... the list could go on. 

That Kinison died in 1992 clean and sober (so far as we know) crashing into a car driven by a drunk seems almost impossibly ironic. A fascinating but immensely flawed documentary, much like the man and the comic. Lightly recommended.

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017)

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017): based on the comic strip written by Pierre Christin and illustrated by Jean-Claude Mezieres; written and directed by Luc Besson; starring Dane DeHaan (Major Valerian), Cara Delevinge (Sergeant Laureline), Rihanna (Bubble), and Clive Owen (Commander Arun Filitt):

Last summer's hot mess of a box-office bomb is this summer's... well, it's not a hot mess. It's not exactly good, either.

Valerian (also known as Valerian and Laureline) was an immensely popular French comic strip that began life in the late 1960's. It offered (emulating an earlier French strip, Barbarella) a combination of space opera and spies, a sort of Flash Gordon of Her Majesty's Secret Service. The strip was set hundreds of years in the future, but because of time-travel technology, agents Valerian (a guy) and Laureline (a woman) could operate throughout time and space so as to protect the future Earth alliance's interests.

The strip gradually elevated the spunky Laureline to the level of co-equal with Valerian. Indeed, in the story arc that writer-director Luc Besson based much of this movie upon, Ambassador of Shadows, Laureline is the protagonist while Valerian spends much of the story imprisoned off-panel.

No such luck here. Perversely, Besson's movie is a tone-deaf 'Love Story' in which Laureline and Valerian's relationship must end in the marriage Valerian wants because, you know, whatever. Of course, Valerian is a Major and Laureline is a Sergeant. No problem there! Valerian's courtship of Laureline throughout the movie runs the gamut from sexual harassment to assault to stalking. What larks! Of course Laureline, often incompetent (as is Valerian) falls for him in the end because LURV!

Of the other three major female characters, two are dead by the end of the movie. Whee!

Luc Besson professes to a life-long love of Valerian and Laureline. Boy, I'd hate to see the movie he would have made if he hated the source material!

There are sections of visual grandeur and cleverness. The movie comes out squarely against genocide, which is awesome. Rihanna is good as a shape-changing hooker with a heart of gold and the underwhelming name 'Bubble.' The score by Alexander Desplat is solid. 

The two leads are a bit perplexing. Dane DeHaan is utterly miscast as Valerian unless the point was to satirize the typical male action hero, in which case I guess he's perfectly cast. As Laureline, Cara Delevinge is dismayingly underweight in a bathing suit and dismaying gaunt and hollow-eyed throughout. She spends about two-thirds of the movie in a padded spacesuit. I don't normally worry about the health of an actress based solely on her physical appearance on-screen, but here, yeah -- it's frankly a bit creepy.

There's certainly enough here to be interesting, so long as one doesn't try to watch its 2 1/2 hours in one sitting. It may actually be better than Besson's over-praised The Fifth Element, and it's certainly better than his equally over-praised Lucy, which to me came across as some sort of racist parable, intentional or not. Lightly recommended.

Wonder Woman: Godwatch

Wonder Woman: Rebirth: Volume 4: Godwatch (2017): written by Greg Rucka; illustrated by Bilquis Evely, Nicola Scott, and others; collects Wonder Woman: Rebirth #16, 18, 20, 22, 24, and part of Wonder Woman: Rebirth Annual 1:

Writer Rucka's second run on Wonder Woman ends in this volume, possibly due to exhaustion. Since the Rebirth relaunch, Wonder Woman has appeared twice a month. And the stories alternate every issue, switching between time periods.

Chronologically, the order of the four tpb Rebirth volumes is 2, 4, 1, and 3. But the past history stuff would spoil material in the present day, so preferred reading order is 1-4. But you may need to refresh your memory with 1 and 3 before reading 4, as 4 bridges the gap between Volume 2 (Wonder Woman: Rebirth: Year One) and the 'present-day' material in volumes 1 and 3. Got it? I'm not sure I do...

Rucka is a great Wonder Woman writer so long as one wants a Wonder Woman who skews a bit adult in terms of her 'jobs.' Yes, she's an icon of hope and a super-warrior. But she's also an ambassador to Man's World from the Amazon island of Themyscira. And a best-selling writer. And a capable administrator! Truly she is a Wonder Woman!

Various threads are tied off here, or more fully explained. A corporate nemesis Rucka created for Wonder Woman back in the early oughts, Veronica Cale, is explained more fully here, as are the origins of Cale's computerized attack dog Dr. Cyber and some back story involving Ares, Phobos, and Deimos that would have spoiled several reveals in Volume 3.

It's enjoyable stuff, though definitely not a standalone volume. Bilquis Evely takes over as full-time penciller on the even-number WW issues in this volume. Evely is not as strong a penciller as Nicola Scott, but the art is still engaging and strong in terms of composition and panel-to-panel contiuity. In all, recommended.

Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol Volume 3

Robotman talks to Crazy Jane

Doom Patrol Vol 3 (1992-93/Collected 2017): written by Grant Morrison; illustrated by Richard Case, Scott Hanna, Stan Woch, Ken Steacy, Philip Bond, and others: Grant Morrison's great run on Doom Patrol rolls to its conclusion. Credit to primary penciller Richard Case, too, for a straightforward cartooning style that made the weirdness weirder, in the tradition of Steve Ditko on Dr. Strange.

The Brotherhood of Dada is up first, taking their Magic Bus across America in order to get Mr. Nobody elected President. Then the interlocking arc of The Doom Patrol's Real Enemy and The Candlemaker finishes Morrison's run with horror, humour, and an emotional coda that still brings manly tears from my eyes. All this and The Empire of Chairs!

A bonus here is the ridiculous Doom Force Special being reprinted here, a rare one-off that I missed at the time, and every time after until now. Morrison parodies the Marvel Mutant Madness of the early 1990's, something relevant to anyone who's seen Deadpool 2 and its use of X-Force. Morrison takes the piss on Marvel's mutants, to the extent that it's a bit shocking that he would become a writer of X-Men in 2001. What are the special powers of X-Force? THEY'RE NOT MUTANTS!!!!

As weird as Morrison can be, he wears his heart on his sleeve when it comes to Cliff 'Robotman' Steele's heroic effort to save a world that, as a doctor says to Cliff, "he doesn't believe is worth saving." 

And when it comes to Crazy Jane and Cliff's quest to find her in a multiverse of awful Earths. And when it comes to Danny the Street's efforts to create a world of magic and mystery for all the outcasts and 'losers' to live, safe from the horrors of the late Bush years. Read them all and see why I say Highly Recommended.

Review of Volume 1
Review of Volume 2