Hat tip to Badass digest
Hey kids you all remember Voltron, don’t you? The old TV show about 5 robot lions that merged into a giant robot and flew through space fighting monsters–cool, wasn’t it? Well, would you be interested in knowing that there’s now a fan-made film about it that you can see on the internet right now?
Wow. That was depressing as all hell.
Make no mistake, this is completely a man thing and I think I know why. Nostalgia shows, along with comic books, video games and anything else that makes life more fun have become synonymous with the manchild label, and widely mocked and ridiculed by certain facets of the mainstream media (who still consider it unthinkable that women could like this stuff) and have become part of the “end of men” trope. This, I think, makes a lot of men insecure and feel like they need to prove that their interests are worthy of being taken seriously. So they take the wrong lessons from Alan Moore and early Frank Miller, and make these dark and disturbing reimaginings of their once-precious memories in an effort to show how manly and serious they are.
If this is the only way we can hold on to our childhoods, to pervert them and twist them until they’re just shadows of what they once were, then maybe we’re better off letting go entirely. Which would be a shame because I really don’t want to.
But there is hope, and it arrived yesterday courtesy of Joss Whedon by way of Marvel studios. Behold
Was it good for you? I mean you just saw a trailer that brought together a Viking warrior God with a boomerang hammer, a man dressed like the American flag and a millionaire playboy wearing a bright red suit of armour, set in a New York that seems to be constantly exploding. Doesn’t it look like the most unapologetic fun you will ever have in a goddamn movie theatre? Of course it does.
This is the best way to honour our childhoods: by presenting them as they are goofy, fun with lots of heart. They are nothing to be ashamed of.
Hey Marc, I was thinking about something while I was browsing the toy section for fun at a Wal-Mart xD A lot of things we claim to mean for kids nowadays, are mostly meant for ourselves (as adults): comics, the transformers movie as you said, even IGN seems to think that the Clone Wars TV series is meant for them b/c they critique each episode, and hate anything that’s “kiddy” about it… even Batman: Brave and the Bold is often reviewed by older comic geeks as if it’s meant for them and all the continuity porn hints that are in… Read more »
@ Monkey, Barry;
If you’re still interested, drop me a line at typhonblue at shaw dot ca. I’m just leery of starting a mud-slinging shit fest around my work.
“Pokemon: The First Movie” actually was a lot darker than the TV series.
There never was a Jem and the Holograms revival, but there was a Josie and the Pussycats movie back in 2001…
“I don’t think dark, depressing, dystopian, etc etc etc is any more realistic than happy superheroes who want to save ppl just for wanting to save ppl and that succeed in doing so :3” I don’t think it’s necessarily more realistic either. I call unrealistic when cartoon drawings make me think of something non-human when drawing people (with 1960s plastic hairstyles I never even saw except on old black-and-white TV stuff). It sounds utopian or dystopian then to me, and that’s not even seeing the story yet. It looks too plastic, too conformist, too “we killed the homeless, but we… Read more »
@barry warkentin Deutsch:
It’s not just “non-superhero.” Most of the non-superhero comics are autobiographical and personal stories, and, sadly, I find them mostly boring. I don’t see anything on the scale of the Great Novels in comics. Love & Rockets comes close. Maybe Strangers In Paradise. But Ware just seems like hipster misanthropy to me.
Personally, I like the magic realism of L&R and general weirdness of artists like Richard Sala. There’s another really cool one called The Last Sane Cowboy that I can never remember who wrote.
@Monkey — Glad we agree on the Watchmen movie. I love the two issues of Big Numbers that came out — if you ever have a chance to pick them up, they’re well worth it, even though the series was never completed.
Ware is hard to get into. But there are a whole lot of non-superhero comics out there besides Big Numbers and Chris Ware!
* * *
Agree with everyone who recommended Astro City. As far as superhero comics go, I’d also recommend Scott McCloud’s Zot!.
Hey Clarance I have heard of Kingdom Come but not read it might have to give it a look can I take that as a recommendation?
Monkey ditto Astro City
Too true Myoo I think Moore’s just an amazing writer all round really
I did still think it was an amazing achievement though Barry from a cinematic perspective
Hi Ami thanks for commenting, absolutely we can talk about this more, I can not wait to here your thoughts on this subject. I’m so happy right now ( :
AB yeah it sucks
@barry warkentin Deutsch: I’ve had that very same argument on countless forums. I agree, Watchmen the movie got the graphics right but not the spirit. One thing that really bothered me is the relegation of the secondary (I.E. non-superhero) characters to background status. The newstand owner and the kid are not important to the plot, but they are important to Moore’s general theme. It’s a shame that one of Moore’s post-Watchmen series Big Numbers was never completed, because it was probably the most high-profile example of telling a big, sprawling, “realistic” story. It could have brought comics in a whole… Read more »
@Ami Angelwings:
Definitely check out Astro City. It features an analogue to Wonder Woman who is explicitly feminist (to the point of being arguably separatist). Of course, it’s a male take on feminism, but I would be interested to hear a woman’s POV. In that vein, Alan Moore’s Promethea is worth looking at, although if you’re not open to occult Magick it’s probably not what you’d want.
@Myoo:
Moore’s take on Supreme was pretty good. The way he dealt with continuity as an actual continuum is brilliant.
I think it’s unfortunate that the standard name for porn-like depictions of sex and violence is ‘mature’. I think most of it is quite childish.
On a related note, I remember hearing about a controversy over a re-telling The Three Little Pigs where the wolf was just a misunderstood vegetarian. Even though no-one appeared to have forbidden children from reading the original story and no censorship took place, people were outraged that someone dared to make a re-telling which was lighter instead of darker. Pretty sad.
I don’t think Snyder was very faithful to Watchmen at all. He was faithful to much of the plot, but — either because he didn’t like the tone of the original comic, or because he isn’t a good enough reader to understand it — he completely went against the aesthetic of the graphic novel. Where the graphic novel was low-key and showed the characters as human, Snyder made everything shiny and glamorous. Watchmen was notable (among other reasons) because it was anti-trendy. In a time of big, splashy layouts and characters jumping out of panel borders etc, it used a… Read more »
monkey says:
October 16, 2011 at 7:53 pm (Edit)
Actually, the best “realistic” superhero comic I’ve read is Astro CIty.
I’ve heard good things about that! And it seems like my kinda thing 😀 I am currently getting it from the library. It sounds like the kind of “reailsm” that I like 😀
And this is why we have the Ami-verse 😀 Also, while I have no problem w/ grim-and-gritty, just like I have no problem w/ horror as a genre, or nething else… i dun understand this defense that it’s “more realistic”… it reminds me of when ppl were complaining about the terrible writing of Supergirl back in the Loeb/Kelly/Churchill/Turner run that brought back Kara Zor-El, and she was defended as “realistic” of a teen girl and that that’s how teen girls are. No they’re not. Not every teen girl is Snooki, just like Superman isn’t a beer-drinking, football watching, uncaring dude… Read more »
People seem to only remember Alan Moore for his grimdark stuff, but he has done lots of fun upbeat comics. “1963” was an homage to the early marvel comics, with stuff you’d swear was written by Stan Lee/Jack Kirby/Steve Ditko; His work on America’s Best Comics had some awesome characters like Tom Strong, who had a talking gorilla sidekick and a steam-powered robot buttler. His run on Supreme, which was originally a Superman ripoff by Rob Leifeld, was an awesome homage to silver age superman. Alan Moore may do some very depressing stuff, but I think he genuinely likes the… Read more »
Actually, the best “realistic” superhero comic I’ve read is Astro CIty.
I’ve read both Kingdom Come and Watchmen and I honestly think Kingdom Come does it better and is even more realistic about the Superheros in some ways, less so in others.
Maybe that’s blasphemy, whatever. I still liked the Watchmen movie and felt it got the spirit of Moore’s work right, even if the ending was ultimately less powerful.
That’s cool I was just pointing out that Snyder has proved with Watchmen that he can stay faithful to source material, hopefully he will be able to deliver a classic Superman film
Well, I really didn’t like Watchmen, but that’s just me.
I have faith in Zach Snyder actually he did such an awesome job bringing Watchmen to the big screen as I pointed out at the top of the comment thread I like Watchmen because Alan Moore was the first to do the whole deconstruct the superhero thing and he did it well, so well in fact that part of me really thinks its pointless for anyone else to do it. Everything that came after Watchmen with some notable exceptions just seems like it was trying to ape what Moore did. Snyder stuck to his guns and was determined to translate… Read more »
Oh sorry, I messed up there.
What I was going to say is that I’m not confident about Zach Snyder doing Superman. He seems far too cynical and dark.
@Simon J. Broome:
Which is exactly why I
Actually, and be forewarned that this is really, really grose:
In Superman and Batman Vs. Alien and Predator (or something like that), the Alien tries to deposit a baby Xenomorph in Superman’s stomach. When it tries to burst out, the Alien dies when it hits Superman’s Kryptonian ribs.
@Monkey: Amen to that. Superman is the shining man of Tomorrow! No way should he be put into Darker situations. Hell, on a daytime planet he could even punch out Xenomorphs without hurting himself!
And that’d make for an awesome poster. 🙂
Let me put it this way: before Burton’s Batman, the gold standard for superhero movies was the first Superman, which was made at the height of an incredibly cynical decade and still managed to be totally innocent and true to the gee-whiz aspects of the character.
What I’m opposed to is grim and gritty when *it doesn’t fit the material.* Batman is arguably a little bit dark (although the dark aspects of the comics pre-1980s have been exaggerated), but there is no reason why Spider-Man or Superman has to be grim and gritty.
“As a few folks have pointed out in other places, it’s rather telling that only the childhood stuff sold to boys is considered nostalgically important enough to get big-screen releases, gritty or otherwise. Ain’t no trailer going ‘This summer… let them eat SHORTCAKE.’ No deep voice is intoning ‘In a world… where Misfits ruled… one woman… was truly… truly… TRULY… outrageous.’”
Dammit, Noah, now my life will be incomplete until Hollywood makes a My Little Pony movie. :'( Or a She-Ra movie!
I’m with Marc2020 on this. Grim and gritty can be fun, even inspirational, in a sufficiently researched and realistic situation, but the combination of grim, gritty, and fairy-story implausible always tends to strike me as dumb and pretentious at the same time. Maybe I have more faith in human nature than most, but the venial and stupid decision making common in grim and gritty added to the implausible scenario breaks my willing suspension of disbelief. Maybe if I watched Jerry Springer I’d feel differently.