The Critic Is In
Mar. 29th, 2004 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteToday, it's a trade paperback comic collection, a novel, and a TV show.
Crisis on Infinite Earths: This semi-classic 1985 comic book, which served to partially streamline and update DC Comics's shared universe, is something I knew a huge amount about but which I only read parts of when it came out. Happily, the TPB of the story makes it accessible to anyone who wants to see just what "The Crisis" is, and available in many libraries.
As a groundbreaking epic miniseries, Crisis has earned its place. Nothing quite like it was ever attempted by either DC or Marvel, and to a large degree, DC succeeded in using Crisis as a springboard for the creative successes of the following decade. It's no coincidence that the same DC willing to start make famous comics over from scratch was also willing to produce Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen at almost the same time.
But as a standalone story, as opposed to an event, Crisis is not that good. Basically, the heroes of the DC Universe - expanded to forever include the characters bought from Quality, Fawcett and Charlton Comics - fight against the all-powerful Anti-Monitor, who plans to destroy the "multiverse" of parellel dimensions and replace it with his home, the anti-matter universe. To stop him, the heroes are caught up in all sorts of silly schemes, even as Anti-Monitor contrives plots designed, I believe, to use every character who ever appeared in a DC comic, including the ones from the future and the Stone Age.
The schemes get larger and larger, and sillier and sillier, till history itself is undone and the multiple universes that defined the DC canon from 1960 to 1985 are replaced with asingle timeline. While this would serve to create a stronger timeline for the DC Universe, allowing three generations of Flashes to race side by side on special occasions and so forth, it was within the story just another stop along the way to yet one more big, repetitive battle in the final issue.
While artist George Perez probably did his best work on this book, working hard to draw the hundreds of heroes and villains accurately and bringing the epic battle to life, writer Marv Wolfman falls way short of bringing the heroes themselves to life. There are three or four stock personalities, making Firestorm indistinguishable from Changeling and Blue Beetle, making the Earth-1 and Earth-2 Supermean the same hero (perhpas justifying the need to have only one Superman in the DC canon), making almost every female in the story the same pretty, hypercompetent stock player. Wolfman did some great comics in his career, but his skill for character play is totally absent here.
The one place where we do see character play that works is with the villains. Sometimes, they are helping fight the Anti-Monitor because they don't want to die. Sometimes, they are busy being villains. But their ruthless self-interest and their contempt for the heroes makes them a lot more intriguing than the heroes ever get. And I really miss the pre-Crisis Lex Luthor, an unrepentant bad guy who almost wins the reader over to his side through his raw charm and his honest dishonesty.
Crisis is famous for the death scenes of Supergirl and the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen. Supergirl's death is a bit talky, but it works for me, as she sacrifices her life so that Superman - in this timeline her first cousin - can live. It is even a bit moving. The Flash dies stops some sort of anti-matter cannon, but as he dies alone in hard-to-understand circumstances, his death feels hollow. Interestingly, a retelling of his death some years later by Robert Loren Fleming (a writer long out of the comics field) succeeds in adding emotional impact, so I prefer that version to the original.
If you are DC fanatic, you should probably read this once, to see what the commotion was about, and to see what DC was like before the Multiverse became the single "original universe." But if you are used to the more mature writing styles of today, where heroes talk less in fight scenes and there are more shades of gray in the story, you might be disappointed.
The Manchurian Candidate: There's a pretty good chance you have seen the classic film with Frank Sinatra based on this novel. It's one of my all-time favorite films. But the novel by Richrd Condon came first, and while the film improved on the book, the book is a worthwhile read, mainly as a glimpse at some authentic 1950s cynical paranoia.
The book, like the film, follows the life of poor Raymond Shaw, who is both the son of a harsh political wife and the victim of a cruel effort by the Soviets to make a Korean War soldier into a brainwashed assassin. The arc of Shaw's tragic life, and that of his former commanding officer (the Sinatra role in the film) is interesting, and virtually the same as in the movie. But the tale of Shaw's mother and of his stepfather, a crass and crude small town politico who Shaw's mother turns into a senator, is much longer. And much stranger. Where the film was dark, the book is harsh, even while also being paranoid about Communist menace.
Condon is not a man who likes very much. His comments about 1950s New York are brutal, his attitudes about motherhood hard to take even from our less rigid times. The only thing that retains any patina of decency, oddly, is the military, perhaps because someone had to be the hero, perhaps because Condon really did have some respect for them. (If you really take the Communists as a legitimate threat, maybe you also have to accept the Army as legitimate heroes.)
Condon's writing style is fast-paced and breezy, and the overall effect of the book is that of a potboiler. It's a tribute to John Frankenheimer and his crew on the film that they made something artistic out of the book. Also, the book ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly, where the film has one of the greatest endings I've ever seen. I'd recommend the film before the book, but the book makes a good read for a weekend.
The Simpsons: I only watched last night because Sarah Michlle Gellar was a guest voice. And alas, my hopes that maybe there'd be a funny episode of The Simpsons was dashed from the start. The story was dull, hackneyed and dumb, and Sarah Michelle offered a lousy performance to boot.
I've been saying this for ages, but now I mean it. I'm done with The Simpsons. The somewhat well-rounded characters have now de-evolved past caricatures to stick figures, the jokes have become vulgar and obvious, and the stories are unengaging. When compared with the sheer brilliance of the show's earlier years, the new episodes look that much duller. And while for a good number of years I would say "well, at least it's still funnier than most shows," I cannot say that I find it funny at all now.
So goodbye, Springfield, goodbye. I'll see in you the past.
Crisis on Infinite Earths: This semi-classic 1985 comic book, which served to partially streamline and update DC Comics's shared universe, is something I knew a huge amount about but which I only read parts of when it came out. Happily, the TPB of the story makes it accessible to anyone who wants to see just what "The Crisis" is, and available in many libraries.
As a groundbreaking epic miniseries, Crisis has earned its place. Nothing quite like it was ever attempted by either DC or Marvel, and to a large degree, DC succeeded in using Crisis as a springboard for the creative successes of the following decade. It's no coincidence that the same DC willing to start make famous comics over from scratch was also willing to produce Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen at almost the same time.
But as a standalone story, as opposed to an event, Crisis is not that good. Basically, the heroes of the DC Universe - expanded to forever include the characters bought from Quality, Fawcett and Charlton Comics - fight against the all-powerful Anti-Monitor, who plans to destroy the "multiverse" of parellel dimensions and replace it with his home, the anti-matter universe. To stop him, the heroes are caught up in all sorts of silly schemes, even as Anti-Monitor contrives plots designed, I believe, to use every character who ever appeared in a DC comic, including the ones from the future and the Stone Age.
The schemes get larger and larger, and sillier and sillier, till history itself is undone and the multiple universes that defined the DC canon from 1960 to 1985 are replaced with asingle timeline. While this would serve to create a stronger timeline for the DC Universe, allowing three generations of Flashes to race side by side on special occasions and so forth, it was within the story just another stop along the way to yet one more big, repetitive battle in the final issue.
While artist George Perez probably did his best work on this book, working hard to draw the hundreds of heroes and villains accurately and bringing the epic battle to life, writer Marv Wolfman falls way short of bringing the heroes themselves to life. There are three or four stock personalities, making Firestorm indistinguishable from Changeling and Blue Beetle, making the Earth-1 and Earth-2 Supermean the same hero (perhpas justifying the need to have only one Superman in the DC canon), making almost every female in the story the same pretty, hypercompetent stock player. Wolfman did some great comics in his career, but his skill for character play is totally absent here.
The one place where we do see character play that works is with the villains. Sometimes, they are helping fight the Anti-Monitor because they don't want to die. Sometimes, they are busy being villains. But their ruthless self-interest and their contempt for the heroes makes them a lot more intriguing than the heroes ever get. And I really miss the pre-Crisis Lex Luthor, an unrepentant bad guy who almost wins the reader over to his side through his raw charm and his honest dishonesty.
Crisis is famous for the death scenes of Supergirl and the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen. Supergirl's death is a bit talky, but it works for me, as she sacrifices her life so that Superman - in this timeline her first cousin - can live. It is even a bit moving. The Flash dies stops some sort of anti-matter cannon, but as he dies alone in hard-to-understand circumstances, his death feels hollow. Interestingly, a retelling of his death some years later by Robert Loren Fleming (a writer long out of the comics field) succeeds in adding emotional impact, so I prefer that version to the original.
If you are DC fanatic, you should probably read this once, to see what the commotion was about, and to see what DC was like before the Multiverse became the single "original universe." But if you are used to the more mature writing styles of today, where heroes talk less in fight scenes and there are more shades of gray in the story, you might be disappointed.
The Manchurian Candidate: There's a pretty good chance you have seen the classic film with Frank Sinatra based on this novel. It's one of my all-time favorite films. But the novel by Richrd Condon came first, and while the film improved on the book, the book is a worthwhile read, mainly as a glimpse at some authentic 1950s cynical paranoia.
The book, like the film, follows the life of poor Raymond Shaw, who is both the son of a harsh political wife and the victim of a cruel effort by the Soviets to make a Korean War soldier into a brainwashed assassin. The arc of Shaw's tragic life, and that of his former commanding officer (the Sinatra role in the film) is interesting, and virtually the same as in the movie. But the tale of Shaw's mother and of his stepfather, a crass and crude small town politico who Shaw's mother turns into a senator, is much longer. And much stranger. Where the film was dark, the book is harsh, even while also being paranoid about Communist menace.
Condon is not a man who likes very much. His comments about 1950s New York are brutal, his attitudes about motherhood hard to take even from our less rigid times. The only thing that retains any patina of decency, oddly, is the military, perhaps because someone had to be the hero, perhaps because Condon really did have some respect for them. (If you really take the Communists as a legitimate threat, maybe you also have to accept the Army as legitimate heroes.)
Condon's writing style is fast-paced and breezy, and the overall effect of the book is that of a potboiler. It's a tribute to John Frankenheimer and his crew on the film that they made something artistic out of the book. Also, the book ends abruptly and unsatisfyingly, where the film has one of the greatest endings I've ever seen. I'd recommend the film before the book, but the book makes a good read for a weekend.
The Simpsons: I only watched last night because Sarah Michlle Gellar was a guest voice. And alas, my hopes that maybe there'd be a funny episode of The Simpsons was dashed from the start. The story was dull, hackneyed and dumb, and Sarah Michelle offered a lousy performance to boot.
I've been saying this for ages, but now I mean it. I'm done with The Simpsons. The somewhat well-rounded characters have now de-evolved past caricatures to stick figures, the jokes have become vulgar and obvious, and the stories are unengaging. When compared with the sheer brilliance of the show's earlier years, the new episodes look that much duller. And while for a good number of years I would say "well, at least it's still funnier than most shows," I cannot say that I find it funny at all now.
So goodbye, Springfield, goodbye. I'll see in you the past.
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(no subject)
Date: Mar. 29th, 2004 10:03 am (UTC)*hysterical laughter*
Sorry, I'm just teasing. I'm not trying to discourage you. It's just amusing. I've had shows I've announced my permanent rejection of, with little wavy energy lines behind me to emphasize how much I mean it...only to crawl back (Angel). Those outnumber the shows I've actually stuck to not watching, although I meant it and did it with the X-Files and so far, Everwood.
Currently I'm having problems with shows that do not suck, but are sort of boring and I'm hoping they pick up--but my quick and easy solution to that is to tape up the rest of the season and watch them back to back over the summer. (Alias, Gilmore Girls, Joan of Arcadia--all neat shows in their way but with no sense of urgency to watch).
The West Wing just went off the "one more wrong move and I drop it" list and back onto the "hell-oooo tv show!" list. And I must watch Angel each week because it's The End.
But as a standalone story, as opposed to an event, Crisis is not that good.
I agree with all the weaknesses you mention. There were too many characters for there to be satisfying characterization going on. The plot was very silly. At the same time, there are wonderful character *moments*--and not just the death scenes--and the *implications* of the plot are not silly and quite fascinating (the final panels, for example). So it's mixed. It's not a good place to start to get to know the characters (although it made me heart Wally West to a certain extent); but it's excellent if you know a lot of them and want to know more, or want the DCU sorted out (somewhat).
(no subject)
Date: Mar. 31st, 2004 01:26 pm (UTC)1. The one bit of the movie that rang false turns out to be a narrative passage about the Sinatra character that was placed in his mouth as dialogue (when he talks about what he likes to read).
2. The ending of the book is simultaneously exactly the same and completely different from the ending of the movie.