Bound for Glory

I’d posted a bit back about Alan Moore’s proposal for Glory. Basically I argued that for the most part Moore didn’t seem to understand what made the Marston/Peter run great; in his proposal he tended to take weird, absurd ideas (like the invisible plane), note that they were weird and absurd, and then go on to suggest changing them in ways that made them more conventional and boring (turning the invisible plane into a more mythologically appropriate, and therefore less goofy, transforming chariot thingee, for example.)

Well, my brother very kindly sent me the three issues of Glory that Moore actually wrote (numbered 0, 1, 2) — and I was pleasantly surprised. I think the actual book is a good bit better than the proposal.

Not that Moore has suddenly figured out the Marston/Peter run. There’s no particular evidence that he has. Rather, it’s that, despite some lip service to the WW history and mythos, he really largely manages to ignore Marston and get on with his own ideas. For instance, I noted that the most interesting part of the proposal seemed to be Moore’s ideas about Glory’s secret identity. WW did have a secret identity in the Marston run, of course, but it always seemed tacked on — there because super-heroes were supposed to have secret identities rather than because it was an integral part of Marston’s politics or fetishes. WW always seemed to be slumming as Diana Prince — presumably because she wanted to be near Steve Trevor…but since WW always hung out with Steve Trevor anyway, the motivation didn’t seem especially coherent.

For Moore, however, the secret identity expands and becomes essentially the entire point of the book (or of the couple of issue he wrote anyway). Glory wants to know what it’s like to be human — which isn’t an original trope, exactly. But the trick is that the person she chooses to become/inhabit, Gloria, is a waitress who’s a schizophrenic. She’s Gloria’s secret identity, and Glory is her fantasy. The tension between those two perspectives is funny and poignant and even a little disturbing, especially at the cliff-hanger ending (never resolved), where the gap between Glory and Gloria, or between imagination and reality, swallows both of them up.

In the proposal, Moore suggested that the comic should be “disingenuous” and “coy” in its portrayal of cheesecake, lesbian subtext, sex, and so forth. I felt that this was really a fundamental misunderstanding of Marston, and overall just not a good way to go. And, indeed, the moments where the series goes that direction are, in general, not of the best. In issue #0, for example, there’s a flashback/retelling of Glory’s history which includes a lot of badly-rendered gratuitous cheesecake which is irritating and dull. And then there’s the cameo by a female comic reader in a half-shirt who a skeevy old book-retailer keeps refers to as “child”, and who behaves more or less like a kid (deferential to old skeevy guy, eager for new book,…she’s an analogue to that comic-reading kid in Watchmen, actually), but who has the hard-bodied, half-shirted, butt-falling-out-of-her-bottoms look of a poorly-drawn pin-up.

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On the other hand, the retro-bondage flashback story in issue #2 with cross-dressing, serious butch-femme play, and tongue-in-cheek parodically second-wave sneering at the bonds of matrimony was quite entertaining…though its knowing satire, its exploitation, and its clever plotting with the twist ending is world’s away from Marston/Peter (it reads much more like Moore’s own efforts for 2000 AD, actually, albeit with less explicit violence and more implicit sex.)

In any case, the point is, these are largely aberrations; the bulk of the series doesn’t go for coy or disingenuous or cheesecake especially. Instead, it treats sex and love in an above-board, respectful manner. Gloria the waitress sleeps with a marginal drifter character, and its sweet and sexy and cute (“I like his name and how he talks,” Glory thinks, “I like his bottom.”) Similarly, Hermione, Glory’s companion, has an unrequited crush on her…Moore threatened to mine that for titillation in the proposal, but in the actual comic it’s played almost entirely for bittersweet pathos. Maybe Moore wrote the proposal figuring that Liefield wanted coy cheesecake? In any case, there’s much less of it in the comic than he promised, which is all to the good.

Overall, I think the fact that this isn’t actually Wonder Woman helped Moore a good bit. Glory’s costume is no great shakes, but it’s not the dreaded swimsuit of Americana. She isn’t tricked out with bondage gear. She doesn’t have tons of baggage about, for example, the mission of peace (Moore basically has her going to man’s world initially because Hitler pisses Demeter off by being a jerk, and later just because she feels like it), or feminism (which Moore uses as an off-hand joke a couple of times, but doesn’t otherwise bother with.) There isn’t any need to make any homage to the idea that she’s an icon of any sort. Though he takes some things from the WW mythos, Glory ends up as much less WW than Supreme was Superman. Instead of fetish and feminism, Moore uses the title to talk about magic, imagination, and relationships — his obsessions, not Marston’s at all.

Maybe this is clearest in the retelling of Glory’s origin, illustrated by Melinda Gebbie. The first image of the story is this:

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This reminded me of the Ms. cover image where WW is shown as a giant. Here, though, the sexualizing effects of manipulating body size are much more thought through and under control; the children’s book stylized whimsy, the girly outfit, the fashion pose, the skin, and the tiny figures showering her with adulation; she’s powerful, but also a sexual object in a whimsical way. I mean, Marston wasn’t exactly whimsical, I don’t think — more cracked. But this seems like a nice nod to his themes; a way to point to them without pretending to take them as seriously as the man himself did. It is coy, I guess, but almost nostalgically or poignantly so — especially as those very elliptically suggested themes of sexual power and submission don’t really play out in the following narrative at all. Instead, the story Moore tells is actually much more like a Neil Gaiman Sandman tale than like a Marston fever dream — it’s a reworking of the Persephone myth, with Demeter impregnated by a demon in the form of a silver rain about halfway thorugh. There’s no bondage or purple healing rays or caricatured masculine stereotypes anywhere in sight. Gebbie’s artwork does share some traits in common with Peter — a somewhat simplified cartoony style, some frilly filigree, a penchant for stiff poses creating frieze-like compositions. Her faces, though, are much more expressive, and her linework less so. The feel ends up being more conventional and sentimental, as in the image below:

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I really like that panel, with the diamond patterns in the back and the demon thinking in Lichtenstein melodrama. We get love and mystery and magic. It’s nothing like Marston/Peter, the putative object of the tribute. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

This isn’t to say that Glory is overall comparable in quality to the Marston/Peter WW run. In the first place, other than Gebbie’s eight-page cameo, the art is typical mainstream crap; ugly stylistic nullity mottled in that horrible computer coloring. Moore tries for a couple of Winsor McCay effects and you just want to tell him to stop, man; nobody here has the skill for that. You’re just embarrassing everyone. Give it up.

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Art problems aside, Moore’s authorial vision, in this title at least, isn’t nearly as weird, as funny, or, I’d argue, as thoughtful as Marston’s original. What with the flashbacks and the backstories and the diner drama and Glory running off to fight badness every so often…the characterization and plot are clever and fun, but they’re too diffuse to really seem urgent or to add up to all that much. As with Supreme, you get the sense that Moore (like Glory) is slumming; running along and entertaining himself without breaking too much of a sweat. The themes around imagination are things we’ve seen from him before…stories affecting the world, stories breaking into the world, etc. etc. In a couple of sequences, characters in the comic are reading comics, and then the comic within a comic turns around and breaks the fourth wall and talks to the character in the comic…and you think, yep, whatever, Alan — comics are a metaphor for existence. Can we move on now?

The thing is, since I don’t find these ideas that compelling in the first place, I’d just as soon see Moore treat them as toss offs; better that than Promethea, certainly. The air of improvisation doesn’t hurt the book;on the contrary, I like the breeziness of it, and there’s still enough depth to keep things engaging and even affecting. It’s not genius, but it is one of the few versions of WW that isn’t an aesthetic pratfall. Marston/Peter’s character is impossible to deal with, and so Moore, very reasonably, refuses to, and comes up with something else entirely.

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One complaint though; Moore puts an Etta Candy analogue in one of his flashback stories…and she’s thin and hot! What’s with that? Did Liefield decreed that there couldn’t be any fat women in his comics, no not even one?

Oh Christ. Just Fuck God in the Ass and Leave Him Bleeding

… a conscious effort to inscribe this “Trek” in the storytelling traditions popularized by Joseph Campbell, in which heroes must suffer loss and abandonment before they rise to the occasion. The filmmakers admit that this is a deliberate homage to their favorite films, like “Superman,” “Star Wars” and “The Godfather Part II.”


From the New York Times via The New Republic’s Plank blog. The article in question discusses what J.J. Abrams has in mind for his reboot of the Star Trek franchise.

The quote is stupid because, as the Plank item points out, Godfather II ends with Michael Corleone’s soul and family in ruins: he is corrupted and he is alone. The Godfather films aren’t about someone being tested and rising to the occasion; they’re about someone getting pulled in, just like it says in that goofy line from Godfather III  (you know, “they keep pulling me back in!”). Michael Corleone isn’t young Luke Skywalker or Clark. He isn’t callow and in need of challenge. From the start, he is a born leader, a paragon of competence and nerve, a decorated war hero and cool-headed tactician. He is the dream self-image of Mario Puzo, that poor shambling yutz who wanted to pretend he was hard, compact and capable. Corleone starts as a hero and always has the gifts of a hero, but he loses his way morally. This process begins, for all reasons, because he loves his father, who happens to be a Mafia chieftain. And that tragedy is the whole point of the Corleone story.

Doesn’t this matter? Can’t J.J. Abrams and the New York Times demonstrate some understanding of one of the most famous movies of our time? The story has nothing to do with Joseph Campbell. Nothing! If you want to feel important while talking about the Godfather films, just say “Shakespearean.” Go ahead, it feels good. You won’t be adding anything, but neither will you be demonstrating your ignorance.

UPDATE:  Another point.  Godfather II begins with Michael Corleone already in his father’s place, a man with wife, kids, and responsibilities. It’s in the first Godfather film that he’s a young man whose life is taking form. Mr. Abrams and the New York Times couldn’t even pick the right film to get confused about.

Two Things I Thought I Knew

I’ve been reading about Watchmen, the book and the movie. In the comic, I always thought the Gordian Knot Company was a bit of a stretch as names go. Yes, the Gordian knot was impossible to untie, but you don’t really think of untying locks,  just opening them; to my mind, rope and metal are too different for one to easily suggest the other. Additionally, the legend of the Gordian knot is known but not widely known, at least not in the U.S. Not a likely name for a small-time consumer service company.

I figured Moore wedged the name in there simply to further his Veidt-Alexander parallels. But no. He said in 1988 that he just thought the name would be funny and that it was only as the book went on that he realized how it dovetailed with Veidt’s monumental self-esteem.
Next, the movie gives us Dr. Manhattan always surrounded by an eye-repelling blue-white glow. I thought the glow was one further effect of the film’s deadly CGI blight. Again no.  Peter Aperlo’s Watchmen: The Movie Companion tells us the glow comes from the little bulbs on Billy Crudup’s motion-capture suit. It was, what do you call, actual-source light or something. Only the big blue muscles were CGI.

Mysteries of Young Women

I live in the section of Montreal near McGill University. There are lots of college kids around. Right now it’s finals and the 2nd Cup is jammed full of kids studying. I’m parked at my little table in a row of other little tables, all of them full except for the one to my left. It has a textbook placed on its far edge and a slim sheaf of papers placed atop the textbook. During the past hour four different people have tried to park themselves at the table. Each time the girl sitting one table over has told them no, “somebody’s sitting there.” But there isn’t. Her friend, who had been there, took off to print something at home and so far has not returned. As mentioned, the coffee shop is jammed and, like the missing girl, the people who want to sit down are students frantic to get ready for big tests.

It amazes me how young women feel entitled to pull stunts like this. I’ve seen them try it at the gym too: “I’ll just wrap my sweater around the handles of this elliptical machine and come back in 20 minutes, and meanwhile Monica will tell all comers ‘somebody’s using the machine.'” My theory is that men don’t go in for such wanton abuses of “saving” because they’re afraid someone will hit them. 
UPDATE:  A fifth character just got turned away. Agitated, I leaned over to the friend and said, “I’ve got to say, this is getting to be a bit unfair.”
The friend: “I know, I know. I agree. I’ll call her.” She gets out her cell phone. So maybe western civilization is safe after all.
UPDATE:  The girl is back. To her friend: “Sorrryyy. Oh, sorrryyyy.” She has one of those lockjaw drawls.

The Week That Was

I think this has been our biggest week os blogging here at HU. In case you missed it in the flurry, we had a roundtable on Kyoko Okazaki’s Helter Skelter, a few more posts about Wonder Woman (one by Tom, even), the second installment of Gluey Tart: Adventures in Manporn by Kinukitty, this one about self-referential German pretty boys. Also Spider Man 2 and probably other things I’ve forgotten.

Also, if you’d like in comments, let us know if there’s something you’d like us to address or talk about. I’m going to do a post on Alan Moore’s Glory next week more or less by request; Tom did a post specially for a commenter last week; we are all about shameless pandering here at HU.

Nobody Much Is Watching the Watchmen

Thanks to patford at TCJ’s message board, we have a link to this box office status report by Simon Brew at the site loudly named Den of Geek! The news is mediocre:

Seven weeks after its release, however, and Watchmen‘s legs have all but buckled. For the weekend just gone, its seventh on release, the film brought home $199,114. More worryingly, that makes for a total take of $106,848,750 in America. It’s the 358th most successful film of all time in the US off the back of those numbers, and in 357th is Batman & Robin.

Oy!

The current international take for the film, and this has been petering out too[,] … currently sits at $74,207,581, for a total worldwide gross of $181,103,123. For the sake of comparison, Batman & Robin drew over $130m overseas, for a total of $238m.

Out of Watchmen‘s receipts has to come the exhibitors’ revenues, marketing costs, distribution expenses and such like. And then there’s the film’s budget, with the most conservative suggesting that it cost $120m to bring the film to the screen in the first place. Off the back of box office returns such as Watchmen‘s, it’s perhaps unsurprising that we’re not going to be seeing a mass market R-rated comic book movie for a long time to come.

Fortunately, for Watchmen its real money spinner is yet to come. … it’s a film that’s going to have legs for many years on the home market, and Warner Bros will no doubt keenly exploit it with special and collectors’ editions en masse over the coming decade or so. Watchmen will not, when the final numbers are totted up, be a business failure for the studio.
However, tomorrow – Friday April 24th – marks the film’s 50th day on release, and it’s just a shame that it won’t be playing for that much longer …
Well, no, there I cannot agree. Watchmen is not a good movie, especially when viewed in a  theater with a big sound system. There is much pain and tedium built into the Watchmen-viewing experience. Yet I do believe the predictions of a long home-theater afterlife are correct. I know I want a copy, as long as I don’t have to pay retail. The Watchmen movie is bizarre and unique, and I still love the credits sequence.
Oh yeah, this link will start you on a magical mystery tour thru the posts Noah and I did about the film’s many shortcomings and isolated virtues.

Sex and Fury

Japanese yakuza sexploitation; supposed to be a major influence on Tarantino’s Kill Bill. It was kind of disappointing; the swordfights are not especially well-choreographed, and Christina Lundbergh is pretty much a dud as a lovelorn American spy speaking painfully stilted English. The plot is more complicated than it needs to be, the revolutionary good guy is incredibly lame with a lameness matched only by the police who keep letting him escape after his botched assassination attempts (that’s pretty funny, actually). As you’d expect, there are a bunch of largely unmotivated sex scenes and a heaping helping of gratuitous violence, but none of it goes anywhere in particular, and the perversion and viciousness is all pretty rote (women on women whipping in front of a picture of Jesus while organ-music plays and a bunch of nuns look on…eh, okay.)

Still, it earns its reputation to some extent on the strength of the performance of the star, Reiko Ike as Ocho. The scene where she leaps out of the bathtub nude and cuts a swath of death through a passel of treacherous gamblers is probably the movie’s high point…though the climactic scene, where, again mostly nude, she again chops away at a phalanx of baddies, is also great. She never actually looks like she’s a master swordsman, necessarily, but she’s very charismatic and intense; she’s got the fluid stalking thing down, not to mention the deadly glare. There’s a sequel which I’m going to watch shortly, so obviously there was some appeal.