Transporter, More than Meets the Eye….

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I saw “The Transporter” recently, an action-adventure kung fu, things-blow up kind of movie — one of the best examples of the genre I’ve seen actually. The direction by Hong Kong cinema’s Corey Yuen is very slick and the plotting quick and smart; it effortlessly achieves the kind of seamless Eurosophistication which James Bond movies try for and achieve only very rarely. The fight scenes had an almost Jackie Chan level of inventiveness — my favorite was a fight in oil ooze, with everybody slipping and sliding around; our hero, Frank (a very hot Jason Statham) achieves victory by breaking the foot holds off a bicycle and donning them so he can stand while nobody else can. There was also a great scene where the protagonist doffs his shirt in order to wrap his enemies up in it: perhaps the best excuse for getting bare abs on screen I’ve witnessed. In fact, one of the most entertaining parts of the movie is Statham’s demeanor during the fight sequences; he’s always looking around carefully before he bursts into action, so you can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he tries to figure out how he’s going to take out *these* fifteen guys. It makes him seem both dangerous and vulnerable — and really lets you see how much you lose when you saddle your lead with a mask throughout most of the film (on which more in a moment.)

Transporter is also to be lauded for its resolute refusal to cater to action narrative cliches. Despite a couple of feints (a box of photographs, dark references to the past) the film never saddles Frank with a Tragic Backstory; there’s no wife whose express purpose is to be killed to provide our hero with motivation, no unreconciled father figure to add a stupid and easy poignancy. This seems to be the main reason the movie was critically panned — most reviewers whined about the lack of story. I, on the contrary, was almost absurdly grateful. Among other things, the decision to avoid bathetic self-righteous vengeance gave the movie a chance to actually give Frank something akin to characterization — he’s businesslike, fussy bachelor, adverse to mess in a neurotic and endearing way. Not an unfamiliar type, but well-played, and fun to see layered on top of the super-competent martial arts hero schtick.

I also quite liked the female lead, Lai Kei (Shu Qui.) She’s neither a fetishized action heroine nor a wet mop; she doesn’t know karate, but instead gets by on gumption, smarts, computer skills, and the occasional outright falsehood. She totally plays Frank, but retains our sympathy, and certainly isn’t punished for it (as she would be in a James Bond movie). Often in action movies you’re left wondering why (beyond the obvious physical appeal) the two leads would want anything to do with each other, but here the characters are both charismatic and charming; you can totally see why they’d be attracted to each other. And yes, Lai does have an unreconciled father; but the movie is content to just treat him as a big jerk, rather than as, for example, a sexual abuser.

The dialogue is also suprisingly snappy and clever; a discussion of Proust’s qualifications to be a police inspector had me laughing out loud, and the first sex scene between the protagonists (in which Frank seems positively exasperated) is both romantic and extremely funny. The whole movie is just a gem; a criminally underrated classic.

In contrast — I also saw Batman Begins recently, or as much of it as I could stomach. Ugly, whiny, dumb, with some quite decent actors wasted on a wretched script, the whole thing blighted by Liam Neeson’s tiresome and remorseless self-regard. Also, as my wife pointed out, putting ninjas in Tibet is clueless enough to actually border on racism — “Well, gee, it’s all Asia isn’t it? Hyuk hyuk!” The self-actualizing mumbo-jumbo (overcome your fear by dressing as a bat! That makes sense!) is really just embarrassing for everyone. There was a decent movie in there struggling to breathe free (featuring, perhaps, a lot more screentime for the very creepy Scarecrow) but it got buried under stupid New Age philosophy, the exigencies of a monumentally idiotic plot (Asian justice cult dedicated to the mercy killings of civilizations — I mean come on. What ever happened to good old-fashioned world domination? Isn’t that a good enough motivation anymore?), and the inevitable Tragic Backstory. It really makes you appreciate Heath Ledger even more; that he could turn Dark Knight into a decent movie rather than a repetition of this fiasco is an impressive testament to his talent.

Kim Deitch: What Is the Appeal, Exactly?

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Kim Deitch is sort of a second-tier comics alterna-Deity. He’s not as famous as Art Spiegelman or Dan Clowes, or Chris Ware or R. Crumb — and his work isn’t as straight-up pretentious as any of those artists, either. As such, I’ve tended to try to ignore his stuff; it’s boring and nostalgic and generally leaves me saying, “who cares?” but it could certainly be a lot more irritating than it is.

I’ve gotta say, though, that Deitch’s cover for the latest Comics Journal is pretty fucking godawful. (It’s reproduced below: copyright Deitch himself, or the Comics Journal, or some combination of the two, presumably.)

How does it suck? Let us count the ways….

1. Butt-Ugly Drawing
I’ve never been a huge fan of Deitch’s draftsmanship, but seeing it in glossy four-color really pushes it from “eh” to “ergh.” The character designs are awkward and flat and generally unmemorable. Neither realistically detailed, nor cartoonishly amusing, nor beautifully stylized, they hit that particular sweet spot of aesthetic alterna-nullity. Really, it seems like he drew this in Toys R’Us while gazing at some particularly unappealing humanoid plastic detritus.

2.Massively Lame Layout
Yes it’s cluttered and awkward, but it’s the clichés which kill me. The ironized faux pulp action cover page with the exclamation points and little yellow Splash! Bang! panels — how many more thousands of times do we have to see this crap? I guess it was sort of funny when underground folks like Deitch did it in the 60s…but that was getting on 50 years ago now. Could we come up with another cutesy layout gag to cover for the fact that we have no idea how to organize a page? Please?

3.Boring, Insular Content
We know you’re being interviewed, Kim. But couldn’t you maybe come up with something a little more interesting than just a picture of yourself and your relatives talking on the phone with Gary Groth? I know that would require a modicum of imagination, but it is a goddamn four-color cover — a showcase, you know? And no, putting that lame cat who’s in all your comics on the page doesn’t qualify as whimsy — it’s just another way of saying that you only have, like, the two ideas. (Incidentally, I did peel off the cover sticker; there is Additional Secret Content under there which, I am pleased to report, is just as boring and clichéd as the plainly visible content. Points for consistency, I suppose.)

I don’t know…maybe Deitch was having trouble meeting the deadline or something? As I said, I’m not a fan of his art in general, but this does seem a cut below his usual standard. In any case, it’s kind of embarrassing for a magazine devoted to comics to have such a thoroughly crappy cover. To say nothing of the embarrassment to the alterna-fanboys who worship this stuff (and yes, that includes you, Chris Ware.)

(To be fair, I thought last issue’s Tim Sale cover was beautiful. I guess they can’t all be gems…)

Update: Through the bizarrely instantaneous power of the Internet, there’s already a thread on the TCJ message board about this post. Ben Towle very politely suggests that I have crossed the line into personal attack, which certainly was not my intent. He also posted this image from Deitch’s Alias the Cat:

I quite like that, actually. It’s got a very nice Winsor McCay feel with the clean design and the manipulation of scale. He’s actually using the fact that his figures look like stiff, creepy dolls, too — and I really like details such as the smoke belching out of the castle. The colors are beautiful too, again in a McCay/art deco style. I can certainly see what Chris Ware loves about him here. So obviously Deitch can do imaginative, exciting work…. I don’t know, maybe there really was a deadline problem? Or maybe TCJ just brings out the insular hack in all of us?

Better Off Dead

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I just read this really entertaining column by Tucker Stone about the much ridiculed Justice League of Detroit — a continuity blip when all the A-list leaguers wandered off and the title was left with Aquaman and a bunch of newbies.

I can’t remember if I had all those issues,but I certainly remember the sequence where (as Tucker describes) the newbies were killed off. It was extremely brutal and cold and quite sad. Tucker seems ambivalent about it, but I think those were actually excellent stories; as is so often the case, the only time the series really seemed to figure out what it was doing was when it terminated. A lot of that was, I think, because those last stories were written by J.M. DeMatteis. I think he wrapped the Detroit series up as a prelude to his goofy run with Keith Giffen — a run that also, actually, had a lot of suprising emotional depths.

So anyone know? Am I remembering right that DeMatteis penned those last few JL Detroit issue? Or am I just making that up?

Grant Morrison: The Fanboy Years

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This review first appeared in the Comics Journal.

“[S]uper-hero comic books…aren’t taken seriously in the critical community,” Timothy Callahan claims in the introduction to his monograph *Grant Morrison: The Early Years.* If that’s true, books like this are the reason. Instead of in depth analysis, Callahan provides his readers with lists of themes, like *chaos* and *sacrifice* (and yes, the themes are printed in italics.) Rather than synthesis, he gives us tedious, page by page plot summaries of every single damn issue. And rather than attempting to arrive at any complex conclusions, Callahan merely gushes out bland fanboy boosterism. As the final sentence states, “…Grant Morrison is, indeed, a master of the medium.” And then there’s this gem: “[*Arkham Asylum* is] a more fully realized combination of words and images than almost any comic-book story every published.” Or, translated, “Manga? Underground? Duuuh…what dose?”

The book is amateurish in every bad sense of the word. There’s no index. The proofreading gaffes are sometimes so overwhelming as to make the text difficult to read. And there are multiple errors of fact. Callahan claims, for example, that “the reader isn’t told” why Cliff Steele’s robot body explodes after a brain transplant in Doom Patrol #34 — but, in fact, Morrison takes a panel to tell the reader exactly that (the body wired itself to detonate in case of brain transplant.) In another instance, Callahan states that Morrison’s filching of older copyrighted characters has made it difficult to collect and distribute the Zenith comics in trade paperbacks. But in an interview at the end of the book, Morrison says that the problem is actually a rights dispute between him and the publisher over ownership of the Zenith comic itself.

This interview at least, is worthwhile. Callahan’s questions are sturdily innocuous, but Morrison is game, talking about his interest in magic, his time on the dole, his relationship with his artists. He also politely punctures several of Callahan’s pet theories, which (given the level of animosity I had worked up after trudging through all 200-odd pages) is quite satisfying. But overall, this book just made me embarrassed of my 12-year old self, who probably would have had enough sense not to enjoy reading it, but might well have written something like it if he’d had the chance.

*Grant Morrison: The Early Years* is supposed to be the first in a series from Sequart “devoted to the study and promotion of comic books as a legitimate art.” From now on, I plan to avoid them all: including the next one, entitled “Mutant Cinema: The X-Men Trilogy From Comics to Screen.” ‘Nuff said.

Update: Callahan and others have at me on a thread here. Callahan argues that I have a prejudice against super-hero books. As regular readers of this blog know, that is simply false. I hate everything indiscriminately.

Updeate 2: In comments, Julian Darius, the publisher of the book, notes that many of the errors I point out have been corrected for the recently released second edition. He also provides a lengthy rebuttal, and (politely) upbraids the Comics Journal for its lousy proofreading — a palpable hit.

Will Write for Food

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Blogs are all about self-promotion, so what the hey….

I’m currently looking around for freelance writing opportunities. If any blog readers have leads or ideas, let me know. My email is noahberlatsky at hotmail.

Thanks all.