From Russia With Expected James Bond Reference: Black Widow #1

So it's been nine years since Scarlett Johansson took on the role of Black Widow. Finally, it's been announced that a solo movie is in the works. It only took most of a decade. Ant-Man got two solo movies in that time. So why does the world hate this Russian operative so much?

When I look back at Johansson's time in the role, I can only think of one memorable scene. It was that market fight in Civil War.  That was the absolute shit. That alone should have greenlit a solo movie and two sequels. But other than that, I come up short. I think she  jumped off a bridge in Winter Soldier. I mean, I know she's had fight scenes, but most of the time Black Widow just seems to stand off to the side, looking concerned.

Black Widow has fared somewhat better in the comics, but still hasn't managed to maintain an ongoing series for more than a couple of years. It's difficult to understand why. She is as classic a Marvel character as you can expect, forged deep in the Cold War by Stan Lee. She's like the Punisher but with more class and brains. She's beautiful, and is connected to most of the major players in the Marvel Universe, either through her connections to SHIELD, the Avengers, or just being there whenever she's needed. Scratch any Marvel fan, and you'll find some love for Natasha Romanov. So what gives?

So Marvel is trying to right this wrong again with Black Widow #1.

To their credit, Marvel went outside the usual stable of expected writers, entrusting the Widow's adventures to twin Canadian horror film directors, Jen and Sylvia Soska. This is the point in a review where most people will point out that their film catalogue includes a movie called Dead Hooker In A Trunk. They are also doing a Rabid re-make, bringing back a classic Canadian horror movie. So they can bring the edge, but can they write a decent comic?

Well, yes, they can. Black Widow is clearly written by people who love the character. In this first issue, Widow and Captain America team up to take down some douchebag terrorists. Widow has a more final way of dealing with them that causes a small rift between herself and the good Captain. Fed  up with him and with the fuckery she has endured over the past few years (namely the Secret Empire mini-series), Widow packs her bags and heads to Madripoor to blow off steam.

Madripoor is where most tough heroes go to blow off steam, apparently. I think Wolverine books a week there every year or so. Since this Southeast Asia country is lawless and corrupt, Widow finds people to piss off and punch, and exploited people who clearly need her help.

I am becoming the world's Number One expert on Number One comic books.  As Number Ones go, this isn't the cookie cutter formula realized. It is my much respected opinion that the Soska Sisters are more focused on giving us a great adventure story with fights and great dialogue than explaining just who Black Widow is. And that's fine. I think the only people who pick up the cursed Black Widow ongoings are the sad souls who love her already.

(They also give us a scene where it looks like Captain America is checking out Widow's ass, which may make my Best of 2019 in my much awaited Year In Review.)

Flaviano brings the art to this book, and while I was initially skeptical, I was in love with it by the end of the issue. It's a rougher pencil than I usually like, but the motion and page construction are just spot on. Veronica Gandini's colours really help to pop the pages, especially in the many night time cityscape scenes. The initial shot of Madripoor is also quite impressive as well.

So Black Widow #1 is a pretty good book, setting Natasha Romanov off on another attempt at an ongoing. Let's hope this one breaks the curse.

Guilt, Regret and Punches: Daredevil #1

Daredevil is Marvel's most human character because he's a goddamn mess.  He can't win, at least not for very long. He is, at times, his worst enemy. And he can't sin even a little bit without it coming around to bite him on the ass. Yes, he's a goddamn mess, and it can be argued that he may even be a bit God-damned.

Blessed/cursed with yet another #1, this time Daredevil's descent into hell is written by Chip Zdarksy and drawn by Marco Checchetto, with brilliant colours by Sunny Gho. It's a beautiful book, although unnecessarily expensive. And yes, I know how capitalism works, but here in Canada we get bit hard by the exchange, and even a dollar extra is something that will make me put a book back on the shelf.

Still, Daredevil!

This time around, the hard rules for a Number One (introduce the character, explain a bit of back story, end on a cliffhanger) are thankfully shaken up. The origin is left to a line of dialogue and visual cues. The references to Charles Soule's run form the launching point for this series, so that's back story dealt with. And the cliffhanger is the best one thus far in 2019.

As is to be expected, Matt's not in a good place. He's recovering from the deep physical trauma inflicted at the end of the previous writer's run. (It's a thing for Daredevil writers to leave Matt Murdock in a tough spot for the next writer to deal with. Writers are dicks.) For a good Catholic boy, Matt is hitting the booze, picking up strange women in bars, and exacting bone breaking vengeance on scumbags who cheat the legal system. Zdarsky questions why exactly Matt is exacting vengeance: is it because he believes in justice? Or is it something darker? More addictive?  Just what is going on with Daredevil now?

Matt's need to be Daredevil--is it to do good or just to beat the living shit out of people?--is a big question in this comic. As a result, this need--could it be a sin?--has consequences. Big consequences.

Zdarsky has set up an interesting premise for the first story arc, one that genuinely surprised me, that had me going back and re-reading pages and feeling that horrific dawn of realization. I appreciated that. I also liked the little comic at the end of the book, written and drawn by Zdarsky himself. It was a nice bit of comic book craft.

Daredevil #1 is a good comic about a messed up hero. But it didn't need to be a Number One, and it didn't need to be this expensive.

NAGASH!!!

Well, this was something.

I know a bit about the world of Warhammer 40K, which oddly does nothing for me at parties. I know even less about the world of Vanilla Warhammer, so I thought, "Son, it's time to rectify that.' Maybe then I won't spend so much time alone looking at record collections at the copious parties I attend.

Nagash The Sorcerer tells the tale of a young priest who thinks he's better than everyone else and how he becomes King and now thinks he's really better than everyone else. Along the way he commits atrocity after atrocity in his fist clenching quest for power, until neighbouring kingdoms say "Enough already' and try to murder him.

Nagash's chosen route for self realization is skipping along the cheerful path of necromancy. Along with the expected Harryhausen armies of skeletons, author Mike Lee comes up with a few other horrific applications of said art that had me turning the pages, muttering 'What the fuck next?"

Nagash The Sorcerer is more a horror novel than a fantasy novel, complete with a seemingly unstoppable serial killer (Nagash) and opposing kings and priests, who seem about as competent as the latest group of teen counselors at Crystal Lake. Set in a land that is very much modeled after Ancient Egypt, Lee spends a fair amount of time building up the land's culture and history without skrimping on the horror and action scenes. It's not surprising that since this based on a tabletop wargame, there are many pages dedicated to battle formations and movements of armies, for all the good it does them.

As lurid and dark as it is, I did enjoy Nagash The Sorcerer. I'm not sure how much I've actually learned about Vanilla Warhammer, but I just know enough not to go within twenty miles of where Nagash is.

The Tale of Two Spiders

In the wake of SPIDER-GEDDON!!!! there are now a few different flavours for the Spider-Man connoisseur if the Peter Parker version is just too mainstream for you.

Both Superior Spider-Man and Miles Morales: Spider-Man came out with brand new Number Ones recently. Both do what a first issue in a new series should do: they both explain who their hero is, what their current situation is, and what their relationship to the OG Spider-Man is at the present continuity moment. Both feature classic supervillians from the OG canon. But both seem headed in very different directions.

Superior Spider-Man features Doctor Octopus as a Spider-Man, currently inhabiting a cloned body made of both his own and Peter Parker's DNA, making him look like an older, more severe Parker. He calls himself  Ellitot Tolliver, and has a sweet university gig as a lecturer when he isn't out swinging around San Francisco doing a better job as a vigilante than that layabout Parker ever could.

Miles Morales: Spider-Man focuses on a teenage boy who spends  his weeks at an upscale private school, worrying about things adolescents worry about when he isn't out swinging around the same city as his hero, Peter Parker.

Where these two books diverge is in tone. Christos Cage and artist Mike Hawthorne give Superior a feeling of a goofy time bomb. Doc Ock's haughty sniffiness and sky high superiority complex seems destined to ruin something, sooner or later. As well, this first issue sets the tone by having the ridiculous Stilt Man as an initial enemy. This tone is continued as we see Spider-Man teaming up with the Night Shift, which includes a Frankenstein monster that speaks in Stan Lee like publicity bubbles. If that isn't enough for your wacky bone, a giant clanking robot shows up later. It even whirrs and clicks.

Under writer Saladin Ahmend and artist Javier Garron, Miles Morales takes a more earnest tone. Using the framework of Miles having to keep a journal for his creative writing class, Ahmed has Miles narrate this issue, giving us front row seats as Miles reflects on his happy family life, great friends, his maybe girlfriend, and the wrongs he perceives in the world.

Where Gage centres Superior clearly in the Marvel Universe and superhero problems, Ahmed includes references to migrant children being taken from their parents, as well as poverty in New York. This is a time honoured tradition of Marvel Comics--referencing current social and political problems--but as been proven before, there's not much you can really do with that, narrative wise. Ahmed clearly wants to have Miles be more socially conscious, but there's a hard wall for that, editorially. Ahmed seems to understand this, because after Miles is swinging through the city, considering social problems, he encounters a robbery being perpetuated by robot like beings. You can almost hear him sigh as he says "Well. This, at least, I understand."

I enjoyed both issues, with perhaps a lean towards Superior because of the off in left field characters. As with all new comics, I just hope both titles will be given the time to find their audiences and their writers to do something memorable with these characters, before the appeal of a new Number One!!! sways Marvel to cut them off at the knees.

Spider-Geddon-It? Are You Geddon It?

Remember when only DC Comics did alternate universe stories? Yeah, me, too. Now it's all this.

Spider-Geddon is a five issue series from Marvel 'We're All About Alternate Universes Now' Comics. Once again, there is a crisis that requires several alternate universe versions of Spider-Man to team up and punch at said crisis. And punch they do. And make quips. And hang out with one another. Even for a Spider-Man comic, there is a lot of hanging out.

The crisis this time is (once again) the Inheritors, a collection of goth douchebag vampires that subsist on incarnations of the Spider-Totem. Brought back to life accidentally by Otto Octavius (who is now the Superior Spider-Man), they are ready to feed once more.

I love alternate universe stories. I also love Spider-Man. I may not have loved this, but I did really enjoy it. Just as long as I didn't think about it too much.

What I liked: all the various versions of Spider-Man. From all the variations on a theme that exist on Earth 616 alone (Scarlet Spider, Miles Morales Spider-Man, Silk, Spider-Girl, Spider-Woman, Superior Spider-Man) to the alternate Earths that are apparently slacking and only provide one Spider-Man, (for the most part--there is a husband and wife team of Spider-Family, and an uncle and nephew version, and, oh, you get the idea), I enjoy them all.

The story is ridiculous. If the all the alternate Spider-Men weren't enough to draw you in---(the Japanese Spider-Man and his giant robot? Check. The hero from the recent Sony video game? Double check.) the story also digs deep into Marvel lore, pulling something that premiered way back in Micronauts to help with the final battle. I'm surprised that a kitchen sink wasn't seen flying in the background at some point.

Spider-Geddon also quietly lets you know that if you want THE FULL STORY you should pick up all the additional titles that spun out of this. So, even though I passed on picking up the tie in issues of Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, Spider-Girls, Spider-Force, and Vault of Spiders, I did pick  up one issue of Spider-Gwen: Ghost Spider. It was fun, but didn't really add much to what was going in the main title. I don't think my enjoyment of the main story suffered that much by exercising financial restraint.

The only thing I remain ambivalent about, really, is just this multiversal approach to Spider-Man. I liked the idea that a one in a million thing happened to some nerdy student, and that he decided to use his newfound powers for good. The idea that this is a universal constant takes away a lot of that magic. The idea that all across the uncounted dimensions different versions of the same person all gain spider-powers and lose a loved one--and usually have names and relatives that correspond to Parker and his family's names--is something I applaud for its sheer comic book dumbness. But when you consider this part of the Spider-Man mythos--along with Webs of Destiny tied to the workings of the cosmos-I'm not sure that it really hangs together that well. The Spider-Man narrative framework can't hold that much weight.

And I think the writers may realize that. At the end of Spider-Geddon, when all the dimension hopping has come to an end, Spider-Gwen says:

"To be honest, it's probably better to put some brakes on it for awhile."

Then she adds:

"Unless there's a crisis."

I smiled at that.

Spider-Geddon was good at providing smiles. Overall, it was a fun comic, but like Gwen says, it's best to leave this idea alone for a while.

Zombies, Manga, and Body Horror: I Am A Hero

One of the tropes of zombie stories I had never noticed before was that the main protagonists in most of these stories are sane.

Part of the narrative arc of many zombie stories is just how the main character--usually an everyday person with a dull job and comfortable life--deals with the horror and unreality of the dead rising and feasting on the living. From Resident Evil, the remake of Dawn of The Dead and the small, rarely heard about comic and television show The Walking Dead, the trope remains the same.

But imagine if the hero wasn't sane? Kengo Hanazawa did,  and illustrated that idea with the lead character in the thrilling and very disturbing I Am A Hero.

Hideo Suzuki is a failed manga artist who messed up his one chance at the spotlight and now gets by doing support work on another artist's manga.  He suffers from a cacophony of mental disturbances, including OCD and auditory and visual hallucinations. He's in a troubled relationship with another artist, living in a cramped bachelor apartment and putting in long hours on another creator's work. He can barely get through a single day without a crisis. Every single hour for him is a struggle.

And then the dead begin to rise.

Dark Horse has collected two Japanese collections for this initial volume, and it's a wise decision, since Hanazawa spends several chapters detailing Suzuki's life without any undead horror. Which isn't to say there isn't plenty of horror in those chapters. Aside from the internal tribulations Suzuki endures, he's surrounded by people who seem just as mentally precarious as he is. In fact, everyone in this story is dealing with something.

All the time spent showing Suzuki's life makes the impact of the zombie aspect of the story all the more horrifying. Since Suzuki is so introverted--and the people he works with are equally so--the realization that something is wrong is slow to dawn on them. From small snippets on quickly ignored newscasts to strange figures glimpsed at night,  it's clear that the supernatural horror is present from the first chapter, but no one really notices until it's far, far too late.

As for the zombies, Hanazawa changes the expected trope here as well. Yes, they attack the living, but there is another degree of horror, one that gives each confrontation an added  depth of sadness. These are not anonymous monsters, but horrifically ravaged victims.

I Am A Hero Volume One is disturbing and horrific, but with a hero that makes you just sit back and go, "Oh, no. Not him." The sad truth is that Hideo Suzuki was a hero long before this story began, simply because he got through a single day.

My Favourite Film of 2018

Always late to any game, I felt the need to post the films I enjoyed the most in 2018. Which was almost two weeks ago, so my adherence to deadlines continues.

Random thoughts on those I saw:

Aquaman was pretty and technically impressive, but had a script that felt so stupid it had to be deliberate. It was the second James Wan film I saw last year--the other being The Conjuring 2--which again showed Wan's technical prowess with spinning cameras and methodically thought out scenes, but also had a script that seemed more functional than emotionally engaging. 

The Ritual was another horror film that started off so well, focusing on the after effects of a man's cowardice and the impact it had on his friendships before quickly degrading into a Viking cover of The Hills Have Eyes. It's almost as if there's a studio memo that says films can start off original and thought provoking, but they'd better heel over to something audiences have seen a thousand times before by the time the movie hits the seventy minute mark.

The Girl With All The Gifts was a good take on the please-let-it-end zombie genre that stayed true to its themes and didn't lie to the audience with a happy ending. 

Happy Death Day was a superb low budget horror movie, taking the premise of Groundhog Day and applying a serial (?) killer storyline to it. It had an engaging heroine (Jessica Rothe) and a script that allowed her to figure things out fairly quickly. A minimum of gore, a fun script, and a low budget can still make a very good horror film. Here's the proof.

Annihilation may have come across as a more powerful film if I hadn't read the novel it was based on. As it was, I still enjoyed this film very much, outside of the ending. It's not so much based on the Jeff Vandermeer novel as it picks and chooses what elements to take from it and from the second novel in the Southern Reach Trilogy, Authority. I like Natalie Portman, and she is very good in this. I think I would have enjoyed a second film in this universe if Hollywood wasn't so determined to smother intelligent films.

Mission Impossible: Fallout was just exhausting. I am a genuine fan of Tom Cruise and of this series, and this is clearly the most bold and challenging in the franchise. I still think Ghost Protocol is my favourite, but Fallout does it's damnedest to push it from the dais. Cruise just never stops in this film, and the stunts and chases are so magnificent the studio should have provided an intermission and a cool drink to let the audience gather itself before the next onslaught. A well crafted film with a script that assumes you're paying attention--when you're not wincing at the ordeals Cruise is enduring for your entertainment dollar.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse is that rarest of things--a superhero film that acknowledges that someone in the audience may have read the comics. There are so many well placed nods towards comic book fans in this film that they made me smile as much as the movie did. Even despite legal contracts, Sony placing this story in an alternate universe where other alternate universe versions of Spider-Man arrive was bold, as was making Spider-Gwen the main supporting character, if not shared lead. This was a well written, well crafted, just damn fun movie that glories in the joy of the Spider-Man character. 

Bohemian Rhapsody had a bravado performance by Rami Malek and a family friendly history of one of rock's greatest bands. I enjoyed it, but it was not the cinematic masterpiece that awards shows seems to think it was. It was serviceable and gave audiences a great night out and a chance to hum along to some beloved music. 

So having said all that,  my favourite film of 2018 was Mandy.

Mandy felt like a spiritual sequel to 1981's Heavy Metal, kinda. It was also a strange movie that exists in a universe where weird, horrific supernatural shit just happens, where cults drive around dark woods in vans, and where taking revenge first means making an axe that looks like it belongs on the cover of a Dungeons and Dragons manual. Mandy was just so weird and disturbing and sad that I simply could not look away. It was such a rare creature that not to celebrate it is to let something precious fade away. It is definitely not for everyone, and that isn't to say I have some higher cultural appreciation, because I surely don't. It just hit me like no other film did this year, and that's why it's my favourite film of the year.