Yuki 7: Looks That Kill

It's Labor Day in the US, so I'll just post this. It's more awesome than anything else I'll likely post all week anyway.


Looks That Kill - HD from Yuki 7 on Vimeo.

The Marvel 52, Part One: Marvel Pulp

I've kept pretty quiet about DC's whole New 52 deal up to now. For better or worse, I don't form opinions quickly, so I gave DC some time to get all their announcements out and respond to the first couple of waves of concerns. I will say that my initial reaction was positive though. I haven't followed DC comics for a couple of years now, so it doesn't affect me personally that they're cancelling everything and starting over. If anything, some of their new series sound really interesting. Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang on Wonder Woman, for instance. Barbara Gordon as Batgirl again, as another example.

My main criticism is that DC seems to be hoping to eat its cake and have it too in regards to balancing current fans with potential, new readers. The New 52's been promoted as an "all-in" approach to reinvigorating the line, while at the same time refusing to call itself a reboot and insisting that fan-favorite stories (an extremely loosely defined category) still count. That's not very "all-in" at all and I suspect that their wishy-washiness will cost them some of those potential, new readers they're wanting.

I don't expect that they'll lose many readers though. As much complaining as fans have been doing, they're still fans. They've stuck with DC through Countdown to Final Crisis; I expect that they'll stick around through this. And it's not like Marvel's got anything especially exciting going on to compete. Yeah, yeah, Marvel still routinely beats DC in sales; all I'm saying is that I don't expect current DC readers to suddenly start switching to Marvel as a result of the "non"-reboot. Whatever you think of DCnU, it's certainly interesting. Marvel, on the other hand, continues to publish the same kind of crossover stuff they've been doing for the last five years. I'm not saying that none of it's good, 'cause some of it really is, but seriously...their section of Previews the last couple of months hasn't been nearly as exciting and expectant as DC's.

I wish I'd thought of this myself, but it was Comics Should Be Good (Robot 6's sister blog at CBR) that came up with the idea of developing your own Marvel 52. I like DC's idea of creating smaller imprints within the DCU (JLA, Batman, Superman, Dark, Edge, etc.). so I used that for my Marvel list too. Not that DC came up with it. Marvel's done the same thing before with Marvel Knights, Tsunami, Marvel MAX, and whatnot. I even used some of those in my list.

Because this could get long, I'm going to divide this up into a series of five posts going into September when DC launches their stuff. That'll give me some room to talk about why I picked the concepts I did as well as the creators I'd love to see work on them. We'll start with a category I call...

Marvel Pulp



The idea behind this "imprint" is to focus on some of the great, not-quite-superhero concepts that Marvel's had over the years: Westerns, jungle adventures, period heroes, spies, and space opera. We'll do this in countdown format, so:

52. Gamora by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Sam Hiti

Gamora's got a lot of history in Marvel's cosmic comics, but the focus on this would be her traveling the universe as an intergalactic bounty hunter. Gamora's extremely hard to kill and has a wicked sense of humor. Kelly Sue DeConnick (Osborn, Supergirl) can deliver the goods on funny (and excitement) while Sam Hiti (Tiempos Finales, Death-Day) knows everything about drawing beautiful women and exotic, alien landscapes.

51. Guardians of the Galaxy by Roger Langridge and Shaun Tan

As fun as a Gamora solo-title would be, we also need a book that can capture the rest of Marvel's cosmic characters like Silver Surfer, Thanos, and Rocket Raccoon. Roger Langridge (Thor: The Mighty Avenger, Snarked!) has the imagination to make that incredible, while Shaun Tan (The Arrival, Tales from Outer Suburbia) has the ability to mix the real and the odd in a unique, believable way. He's not known for action sequences, so I'd be interested to see how he tackled that, but I can already imagine his depiction of the arrival of Galactus and it's mind-blowing.

50. Sabra by Carla Jablonsky and Laurenn McCubbin

Sabra isn't a well-known character, but I've been fascinated by her since I first saw her in The Incredible Hulk #256. Maybe because she took her Israeli heritage so seriously, yet didn't seem to have been created specifically to fill a slot as Israel's Superhero for Contest of Champions or something. She eventually became just another of the many, international mutants running around the X-Men's corner of the Marvel Universe, but I've always thought she was better than that. I'd love to see her in a series that focused on the issues of the Middle East in a thoughtful, objective way. Not that Sabra herself should be objective about them, but that the series could explore the region and its history in a way that educates as well as entertains. Carla Jablonsky's done something similar with Nazi-occupied France in her Resistance series, so I picked her to write.  Laurenn McCubbin has a great, realistic style that would complement that kind of story beautifully.

49. Black Widow by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Amanda Conner



I don't know if this was the right thing to do, but though I picked 52 visual artists for my list, I only picked 26 writers and gave them each two books. That was partly because most writers can handle multiple books in a month, but it was also partly to make list-making easier on myself. I'm sure I'll regret it later when I realize I've forgotten one of my favorite writers.

At any rate, this is the second book I'd give Kelly Sue. I promise that I didn't purposely match up women creators with women characters, but it worked out that way in Kelly Sue's case. I'd love to see her write Black Widow. As for Amanda Conner: I love seeing anything she draws, but one look at her variant cover from Secret Avengers #6 above and you'll get why I want her on a Black Widow comic so badly.

48. Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD by James Turner and Luc Jacamon

If you've read James Turner's Rex Libris or Warlord of IO, you know how insanely, awesomely inventive he is. Just the guy to put the "super" back into super spy. And Luc Jacamon (The Killer) knows all about drawing deadly people in diverse settings, both urban and exotic.

47. Mystery Men by Susan Kim and Guy Davis

I really hate not to have David Liss and Patrick Zircher continue the concept they started, but one of the criteria I wanted for my list was to have as many women as possible on it. So I'm giving this '30s-set heroic pulp series to Susan Kim, who did such a great job with her adventurous City of Spies set in a similar time period. And I'm aching to see Guy Davis do some more stuff like he did on Sandman Mystery Theatre.

46. Tigra by Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, and Kerry Callen



The inspiration for this book is two-fold. First, I wanted a jungle comic and Tigra would work great in that setting. She wouldn't have to stay only in that setting, but it would be a great homebase for her.The second inspiration was this description by Kerry Callen of what he wanted in a Tigra series: "a fun-loving character whose cat-like curiosity gets her into interesting predicaments." Pak and Van Lente would be perfect for that and one look at Callen's blog and you know he's the only guy for the visual part of the job.

45. The Savage Land by Joshua Fialkov and Jeremy Bastian

It's another jungle comic, but this one's different from Tigra. Her comic would be much more versatile with lots of guest-stars from other Marvel characters. The Savage Land of course would be set exclusively in the prehistoric world beneath Antarctica. At first I thought I'd call it Ka-Zar and Shanna (the first of several two-character comics you'll see in my Marvel 52), but then I remembered the temptation to take those two out of the Savage Land to interact with the rest of the Marvel Universe. Renaming it The Savage Land (which is a much cooler title anyway) removes that temptation.There's a whole world to explore there and as long as I'm fantasizing about my dream comics (as opposed to worrying about sales), I want to keep these characters out of the rest of the Marvel Universe. I don't care if other Marvel characters stop by for a visit, but I want the setting to stay consistent.

Josh Fialkov (Elk's Run, Tumor) does really well with setting and small casts of characters, so I pick him to write. Jeremy Bastian (Cursed Pirate Girl) draws lavishly and I'd love to see the creatures and landscapes he could fill the Savage Land with.

44. The Rangers by Alan Moore and J Bone

Based on another group of characters I once read about in The Incredible Hulk (#265 this time). The Rangers were a goofy team created by Bill Mantlo, but I liked their modern-Western concept and the sheer zaniness of it would be a great playground for Alan Moore. The team included Firebird (probably the most famous character to come out of the team) as well as modern versions of Red Wolf and the original Ghost Rider (renamed Phantom Rider to avoid confusion) and a couple of very Mantlo characters: Shooting Star (her gun shoots stars!) and Texas Twister (tornado powers). In keeping with making the series fun and versatile, J Bone can draw absolutely anything and make it look wonderful.

43. Gunslingers by John Ostrander and Leonardo Manco



Counterpoint to The Rangers, this would be a real Western set in the late 1800s. Really it's just a continuation of Ostrander and Manco's two mini-series, Blaze of Glory and Apache Skies in which they updated Marvel's classic, Western heroes for modern fans of Westerns.

Coming Monday: Midnight Sons!

10 movies I loved in 2010

So here they are. My ten favorite films from last year. Not necessarily the "best" in any objective way, but the ten I unabashedly dug the most.

Number 10



The other Leonardo DiCaprio movie that invites more than one possible interpretation. I like this one more though because though everything wasn't spelled out, it didn't need to cut away just before a crucial moment to deliver the ambiguity. We got the complete story. How we interpret it is up to us.

Number 9



Iron Man 2 got a lot of flack for not being Iron Man. And its critics are right that it isn't as tight a movie as the first one and feels like it spends a lot of time setting up The Avengers. But it was very entertaining in the process and though I never felt like Tony was actually going to die, I was engaged by the mystery of how he was going to survive. Which really, is as much as any adventure series with a recurring character can do. Besides, if nothing else, the film brought Scarlett Johannson as Black Widow and that's Top Ten worthy all by itself.


Number 8



Way too much energy gets spent on trying to figure out if this is scripted or a true documentary. It doesn't matter. It's brilliant and it's timely and it needs to be seen. I saw it spoiler-free and recommend that anyone else do the same. I'm not sure it would have the same impact if you knew what to expect.

Number 7



Like Iron Man 2, this is another one that drew heavy criticism. Mostly for not being familiar enough as a Robin Hood movie. I'm typically impatient with origin stories, but this kept my attention all the way through. I don't know that it's a great version of Robin Hood (though it had enough of those elements to keep me happy), but it's a very cool Ridley Scott medieval adventure film and I love Russell Crowe and Cate Blanchett.

Number 6



Best seen as a romance with a spy twist rather than a spy movie with a romantic element. There's some action, but not a lot and the two leads aren't butt-kickers. I also figured out the mystery early on, but that spoiled nothing for me. I enjoyed watching to see if Depp could win Jolie over. I wanted him to.

I just read a disparaging comment about Jolie's acting in this, but I thought she did a fine job as the Mysterious European Woman. Then again, I tend to like her, so maybe I'm being lenient. I stand by the comment I made on Facebook or Twitter or someplace though: the hardest role Johnny Depp has ever had to play was Man Intimidated by Angelina Jolie. It took me a couple of scenes to get past his Johnny Deppness, but I thought he pulled it off admirably.

Number 5



Everything that The Expendables was supposed to be. Just the right amount of over-the-top without going into cheesy territory.

Number 4



I'm the only person I know who loved this movie. Maybe I was just in the mood for a fun, Arabian Nights adventure, but I don't have any of the problems with Prince of Persia that everyone else seems to.

Number 3



I can't stand Will Ferrell and I'm prejudiced against superhero parody, so I went to this somewhat begrudgingly. I was surprised to find it not only funny, but really touching. I fully expect Dreamworks to kill it with excessive sequels, but it's new enough that I haven't let that get to me yet.

Number 2



Perhaps the least controversial item on this list. Everyone loved Easy A and for good reason. It's hilarious, it's charming, Emma Stone is wonderful in it, and it transparently displays its John Hughes influence while perfectly capturing what made Hughes' movies so great.

Number 1



While it's true that the Futterwacken was anticlimactic after the build-up it got earlier in the film, I loved everything else about this movie. (Especially when I took off the dark 3D glasses and saw it a second time in 2D.) I could go over again why it's so great, but I'll save the space and instead direct you to my original review. I haven't changed my mind about any of it.

So that's it for me. What were your favorite films of last year?

10 movies I liked a lot in 2010

Now we're getting into the good stuff. These ten films were almost perfect, but for some minor detail that kept me from loving them forever.

Number 20



The dialogue, the setting, the acting, and the mood are all as great as everyone says they are. I loved it right up until the "25 Years Later" jump, which is where it lost me. I know people who appreciated that closure, but I would've preferred it another way.

Number 19



A powerful and moving love story, but I couldn't get behind the couple, as I've said before. And even though I suspect that was exactly the reaction I was supposed to have, it kept me from fully embracing this movie.


Number 18



I was shocked to like this as much as I did, but in some ways it's better than the original. Jackie Chan is no Pat Morita, but he acts his heart out in this thing and so does Jaden Smith. If it was an original story, it would've been a lot higher on this list.

Number 17



An enjoyable, light-hearted spy movie. Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz aren't my favorite actors, but they were perfect for this harmless bit of fun.

Number 16



A powerful character study combined with an intriguing mystery. Two things keep me from loving it though. One is the knowledge that the series will never be properly completed, but more than that: though I empathize with Lisbeth, I don't actually like her.

Number 15



If you have to adapt a cheesy action show from the '80s, this is exactly the way to do it. It had everything I liked about the show (the characters' ticks and relationships; the traps and plans; the explosions) and none of the stuff I didn't (guys stumbling away unscathed from airplane crashes). Like The Karate Kid, it loses points for being a remake, but not as many because unlike the other '80s remake, this one has an original plot.

Number 14



A solid action movie that proved you don't have to have a villain to keep the excitement level up. I'm not really sure why I didn't love it more. Maybe it was Chris Pine's relationship with his wife. I didn't really buy how that subplot played out.

Number 13



It was a pretty good year for action movies. This is another solid one that entertained me the whole way through. It was exciting and funny. There's one thing I didn't care for, but it's a spoiler, so I won't go into detail. Just something I thought wasn't resolved very well. Ask me in the comments if you're curious.

Number 12



A fun, funny movie about Vikings and dragons with some great 3D flying sequences.  My only beef (and I know this isn't fair to say) is that it kills me to know that Dreamwork's is going to drive this into the ground the way it did Shrek and Madagascar and plans to do with Kung Fu Panda. That takes a lot of the fun away for me. Not the movie's fault, but that's how it is.

Number 11



It's got a great, tightly woven story with awesome twists and revelations, some really nice acting, super special effects, and an unforgettable soundtrack. The only thing keeping it out of the Top Ten for me is the ambiguity of the ending. I don't have any doubt about what happened three seconds after the fade, but I really hate having to argue about it with other people.

10 movies I didn't care for in 2010

Unlike yesterday's list, these movies did have something positive about them. Not enough to make me like any of them, but enough to keep me from screaming that I wanted my two hours back right after.


Number 40



I appreciated that it made an attempt to fill in Fred Krueger's backstory and even played with the idea of turning him into a sympathetic character. But then it wussed out Big Time and just remade the original.

Number 39



I don't have a high tolerance for romantic comedies, but this had a couple of things going for it. I love movies with large casts and intertwining plots (Playing by Heart and Crash, for instance) and I like a lot of the people in this one (mostly folks from Alias and Grey's Anatomy, and Anne Hathaway and Queen Latifah). But there was an unfortunate, anthology-like feel to it where - even though the stories connected - they weren't consistent in tone or quality and I found myself wishing to skip past many of them, even when they featured a favorite actor.

Number 38



I knew what I was getting into by going to see this, but there was nothing else going on at the theater that week. Two years ago, I was a big Gerard Butler fan, but with The Ugly Truth, Gamer, and Law Abiding Citizen he's been working hard to fix that. On the other hand, while I don't like a lot of romantic comedies, I do like certain things about them and The Bounty Hunter managed to push a couple of those buttons. Not creatively,  mind you, but in that knee-jerk, "I like it when they do that" way. And Butler and Aniston are nice to look at. I have to take Jennifer Aniston in small doses, but this is the first thing I've seen her in since the last season of Friends.


Number 37



This was the movie that killed 3D for me. It was murky and thanks to the 3D's being added in post-production, those effects were lame and unnecessary. The story wasn't much better. The scenes with the gods could've been left out with no effect on the plot and none of the actors looked like they were trying very hard. Also, if you're going to throw in Bubo (not necessarily a great decision in the first place), don't throw him in just to laugh at him. You're only reminding us how silly this all is. What I did like though were the creature designs, some of the fights, and that Perseus didn't end up with Andromeda. Though that last one is because there was no chemistry between the two of them and forcing a marriage at the end would've made the movie lamer still. I also think that Gemma Arterton makes a much prettier Burgess Meredith than Burgess Meredith did.

Number 36



I expected to hate this, so it's actually an upgrade to put it on today's list. Travolta was absolutely grating in the trailers, but I was surprised to find him kind of funny in the movie. The plot didn't make a whole lot of sense, but the movie tried some new things and I usually appreciate that.

Number 35



I went to see this for one reason: Timothy Olyphant. And on that level, it didn't disappoint. The rest of it though was a pretty trite - though effectively scary at times - horror movie with a lame ending.

Number 34



Speaking of lame endings. They had me right up until then though. Butt-kicking Denzel and any kind of Mila Kunis will do that for you.

Number 33



Yes, I liked this better than Clash of the Titans. What does that tell you? Well, for one thing, the 3D was infinitely better.

For another, Step Up 3D delivers exactly what it promises: hot people dancing and nothing else. It rips off the thousand other dance movies that came before it ("They're going to tear down our hangout spot! We have to win the dance contest so we can save it!"), but I can't decide if that's laziness or a charming homage. I have to give the movie credit for meeting all its goals; it's just that they set the bar so very, very low.

Number 32



This was going to be a fascinating update of Frankenstein. It was headed in that direction and I even appreciated the creepy, "oh-they-went-too-far" scene for what it said about the characters and the Wrongness of the whole situation. But then the third act started and it all fell apart.

Number 31



I laughed a lot harder at this one than I did at Dinner for Schmucks ("Hey, hey, yo, yo. I'll be down in a minute. I'm having sex.") and appreciated the Adventures in Babysitting-ness of it all, but I wanted to connect more with Steve Carell and Tina Fey's characters than I did. Their worries about their marriage felt forced, which undermined them as characters and the plot in general.

Art Show: Batman Resplendent

The Magnificent Bat-Man



By Fernando Lucas.

Secret Agent Apeman



By Laboratorio Frigofingers. [Art Jumble]

Pass the Comics: Those two freakish fish

Namora helps solve The Case of the Deep Sea Swindle



Namora and her famous cousin are sort of wasted in this adventure, because it all takes place on a boat. But it's still a fun espionage story with the most flamboyant, modern-day pirate you ever saw. [Pappy's Golden Age Comics Blogzine]

Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea to witness Monsters of the Moho



Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea is always cool. [Gold Key Comics!]

Why I'm not watching Undercovers

I gave Undercovers a shot, but it didn't grab me.

I'm watching a lot of spy shows right now. Chuck and Nikita are both airing new episodes, Burn Notice will be back shortly, and I'm re-watching Alias on DVD. It's not that I'm getting tired of spy shows, because I'm not. It's that if I'm going to add another one, it's going to have to be really, really good. And Undercovers isn't.

As the commercials indicated, the show's mainly about the relationship between the two leads. I've only watched the pilot, but the spy plot was so sloppy that I was convinced it was an afterthought. The show asks you to be attracted by these two people and oh, by the way, here's some guns and kicking and stuff.

I mean, Alias could sure string some goofy stuff together, but it always made sense, at least to the internal logic of the show's world. And it eased you into that world. It didn't lead with Rimbaldi or any other the other, wilder elements that it later became known for. In Undercovers, we're asked to believe that an encrypted flash drive can tell you the current location of the computer that it was last connected to. I have a hard time with that, especially in a pilot episode where I'm not yet invested in the characters or what they're doing. If Alias had tried to feed me that in Season Two, I would've groaned, but moved on, because I was already hooked.

Boris Kodjoe and Gugu Mbatha-Raw are extremely pretty people, there's no mistake about that. But as Tanner says over at Double O Section, the writers need to work a lot harder on Steven and Samantha Bloom's dialogue:

For this series to work, they will require some genuine banter, not lame jokes about “sexpionage” (a word that Abrams and his co-writer Josh Reims seem to think that they made up–and also seem to think is much funnier than it is–which, here, is not at all). “You look pretty hot yourself” simply doesn’t cut it as romantic repartee; the writers of Undercovers need to brush up on their Thin Mans if they want to figure out how to generate genuine romance between married adventurers.

As it is, I didn't hate the couple, but I also didn't like them nearly as much as I was being told I was supposed to. And with a lame, unbelievable plot on top of that, there's no reason for me to keep watching. I'll hold out for JJ Abrams' show about Locke and Ben Linus as former black ops agents.