This Week in Comics: October 11, 2017

Let's dive in, kids.

We're looking at Oz Effect, A Lonely Place of Living, The Secret History of Task Force X, Bizarro Reborn, Manslaughter, and Metal this week.

So I'm reading SHATTERED

I'm not entirely sure who the book was written for. You can tell the authors have no love for the Republican Party or the current president. But at the same time, they're up-front about the fact that Hillary was her own worst enemy and her inability to convey why she was running was a huge handicap.

I do think the authors are both Hillary fans who are upset over her defeat, but, like the campaign itself, they can't really come up with a reason for her to have run aside from "it's her time." But there is a fair amount of interesting information in there, despite their pretty evident bias.

One thing the book doesn't touch on at all is the death of Justice Scalia and the role that played in the race. I remain convinced that if McConnell had folded on Garland, Trump would not have won. A great many traditional Republican voters would have stayed home, rather than reluctantly pull the lever for Trump on the off chance he could win.

Something I hadn't considered that the book touched on was the role Black Lives Matter played in Hillary's defeat. It was in part her pandering to that group that alienated working-class whites.

Bernie wasn't robbed: a theory

The theory goes that if only that Nasty Woman Hillary hadn't locked down the superdelegates, Comrade Bernito would have sailed easily to victory over Der Trumpenfuhrer.

This theory is... well, problematic. But let's leave that for another day. What I want to focus on is the argument, apparently, that Hillary locking down the superdelegates was some sort of foul underhanded play.

It assumes that this was cheating? I guess? Like the Electoral College, which apparently nobody knew about prior to Election Night 2016. The Democrat primary system was this arcane thing that nobody bothered to study.

Only... Bernie Sanders was running for the Democratic nomination. If he didn't study the rules, then he didn't, you know, do his homework.

WONDER WOMAN

So as longtime readers know, my favorite James Bond film, and one of my favorite movies ever, is On Her Majesty's Secret Service, a 140-minute opus that features an athletic lead whose acting abilities received some criticism, begins with a fight on the beach, features an obviously doomed relationship, and has a story wherein a spy and his band of unconventional allies must stop a plot involving chemical/biological weapons.

Since Wonder Woman is a 140-minute opus that features an athletic lead whose acting abilities received some criticism, begins with a fight on the beach, features an obviously doomed relationship, and has a story wherein a spy and his band of unconventional allies must stop a plot involving chemical/biological weapons, it has some really, really big shoes to fill.

It mostly succeeds, although it did kind of lose its stakes when Diana got buried under a building and walked it off during the final fight. A-.

It's also, before I get to the spoiler section, astonishingly conservative. Consider that Wonder Woman was invented by a BDSM enthusiast who used his swimsuit-clad heroine as a siren song for the matriarchy, and then consider that this film sees Diana leave her liberal feminist (hinted lesbian) paradise to go fight a war against an enemy her mother/queen insists does not actually exist (he does), using enhanced interrogation techniques and a massive sense of gung-ho interventionism along the way.

Oh - and I couldn't place him while I was watching the movie, but Field Marshal Haig, the guy in charge of the British war effort, is Lord Commander Jeor Mormont. Just throwing that out there.

Spoilers below.

Zack Snyder steps back from JUSTICE LEAGUE

Zack Snyder has decided not to finish the Justice League film after a family tragedy. The film will be finished (by that I mean, pick-up scenes will be written and shot by, and the final editing will be overseen) by Joss Whedon.

Originally, Warner Brothers wanted to push the release date back, but Snyder refused, soldiering on for another two months before realizing that he just couldn't finish the job.

Here are some observations.

1. The stakes for Wonder Woman are now enormous.
When Avengers director Joss Whedon was tapped for Batgirl, my thought was, "oh, no, if Batgirl's the first good DC film, it's going to look like the Snyder/Johns retool didn't work at all and now they've brought in Marvel's most famous director to clean up their mess." Now that Whedon is finishing Justice League, inevitably, anything good about that film is going to be laid at his feet by anti-DC/anti-Snyder folks.

2. Why Whedon? 
Whedon and Snyder have entirely different storytelling methods. I literally cannot imagine Joss Whedon's Watchmen or Zack Snyder's The Avengers. Apparently Whedon was Snyder's choice, which is what makes this tolerable to me, but between this and the studio politicking above, I can't help but feel like now, no matter what happens, Snyder's gonna get nudged aside in the future.

Which is, frankly, a shame. Snyder's not the most popular man in Hollywood, of course, but he has a vision, and Warner needs to either get behind that vision or get a new visionary (undercutting Snyder with the BvS theatrical cut was the single dumbest thing in this entire attempt at a cinematic universe). Now it looks like they're going to go with the latter option by default. Which is sad; if I wanted the Whedon approach, I'd watch Marvel movies.

On an unrelated note, Guardians of the Galaxy 2 is awesome. Wait, I already did that review.

Sir Roger Moore, 1927-2017

Sir Roger Moore was, of course, best known for playing a remorseless alcoholic sociopath in seven films, increasingly flabbergasted after each successive one that he hadn't been fired yet. (He was fifty-eight when he finally gave it up.) Also, despite the character's quintessential Britishness, Moore was in fact the first Englishman to play him - his predecessors being an Aussie and a Scot.

His favorite of these films was The Spy Who Loved Me, which happens to be awesome.

Anyway, here are some choice quotes from his book, Bond on Bond:

"When I handed in my licence to kill I was constantly asked who should replace me. No! I lie. I was asked that question after about my third film, which, of course, gives an insecure actor a great feeling of being wanted. In fact, I did make a number of suggestions to Cubby - always names of really bad actors so I looked good by comparison. In the end, I was forced to abandon that idea as I couldn't find any actors worse than me."

"Sometimes [to help Desmond Llewelyn, 'Q,' remember his lines] we had 'idiot boards' on set, with his technical dialogue written in large text. As he glanced up to remind himself of the next line, the cards were peeled back one after the other. I helpfully rewrote some of those too. I like being helpful."

"[Director] Terence Young and [editor] Peter Hunt decided to have a bit of fun with [the explosive attache case from From Russia With Love] when some United Artists executives were visiting Pinewood. They ran the first couple of reels of the movie, and when it reached the scene where Bond opens the attache case, Peter cut to the huge explosion from the end of Dr. No and ran the closing titles. The end."

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

Every once in a blue moon, there's a sequel to a decent film that takes everything that was good about the first and elevates it to an art form. From Russia With Love. The Empire Strikes Back. Aliens.

Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2

As you may recall, I had some rather... unkind things to say about the original. Basically I refused to put it on a pedestal. When you consider that Guardians 1 came out around the same time as The Winter Soldier, you're going to have to forgive me for declaring GoldenEye With Superheroes the undisputed victor of that particular bout.

There's one thing I want to mention that I apparently didn't put into either review, and that's that I was confused in the first film as to just how competent Star-Lord was supposed to be. I had assumed from the marketing and the early scenes that he was a fish-out-of-water guy with way too big an estimation of his own competence, but he actually knows what he's doing. In Guardians 2, I never had any doubts as to the film's tone or what the characters are capable of. The opening credits capture the tone of the film perfectly (I will not spoil this if you have not seen it yet).

Now, one of the big problems I had with the first film - its struggle in introducing the setting - is taken care of here because, you know, there was a first film. Yay! Another problem that I had with the first film was that it spent too much time yammering about Thanos and the MacGuffin Mitten. This one does not. Thanos is relegated to being something for Karen Gillan to seethe about. Another complaint I had was that Karen Gillan was wasted in G1. Not so here. It is like somebody got a direct line to my brain and sorted out every single nitpick I had about this first film. Villains whose characterization and motivations made sense! New characters who didn't feel pointlessly shoehorned in! Baby Groot! Sylvester Stallone is in this movie for some reason! (Okay, I did have to read les interwebs to figure out what that was about.)

And let the record show that this film featured what is without a doubt the most quintessentially perfect use of "Come a Little Bit Closer" by Jay & the Americans. That is all.

This week's comics (that I read) April 12

Spoilers

Space, the Communist Frontier

I cannot lie: the Soviet Union kinda fascinates me. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't wanna live there, but the whole Soviet Superscience aesthetic...

Anyway, I stumbled across these artworks today. First one's really cute, little girl playing with a rocketship while looking at an old propaganda poster. At first I thought she was actually on a space station, watching multiple Soviet rockets take to the heavens, but no. Interesting detail that the ground is wet - it rained recently - and the poster's muddied. "Our dream, our reality."

Second one is - HEY, DON'T STAND THAT CLOSE TO A ROCKET LAUNCH YOU WILL LITERALLY DIE OF A HEART ATTACK where was I? Also, don't we know better than to launch rockets in the cold? Ah, but you underestimate the Russians, both their engineering capabilities and their willingness to give their lives for the cause, Comrade!

Third one's just stark and awful. Also, those trees are getting, what, two hours of sunlight a day?

Legends of Tomorrow 2.17 "Aruba"

Season finale. Hrm.

Spoilers.

Legends of Tomorrow 2.15: "Fellowship of the Spear"

So you might remember that I did a rant earlier about how every time-travel show eventually does the HG Wells episode. And Legends of Tomorrow brilliantly played with this by doing a George Lucas episode.

Well now they're back, with a frickin' J.R.R. Tolkien episode.

See, our heroes have finally acquired the One Ring Spear of Destiny, an artifact of untold power that corrupts the minds of anyone nearby, tempting them to use its power, which - supposedly - they can't control. It glows when magic stuff is nearby. Normal fire reveals writing on it, and it can only be destroyed by being flung into a huge fiery pit (okay, that's the next episode). Well, it can also be destroyed with the blood of Christ, and JRR happens to know where we can get some. So it's off to World War One - you know, Mordor - for wacky fun adventures in the middle of Hell on Earth.

Oh - they can't go to the Crucifixion itself because the CW doesn't want to insult unbelievers there are some points in history that even the Legends simply Do. Not. Want. to f*ck with. Possibly getting Tolkien killed in the middle of one of the stupidest wars in history? Eh, it will save everyone nine hours of their lives circa 2001-2003.

So obviously Lord of the Rings references abound. The quotes got a little excessive, but this was better than the George Lucas episode, if only because it didn't end on "clap your hands if you believe (in yourself)."