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shadowkatFeeling better - so decided to do laundry, I managed to duck in between people.
12:30 pm turns out to be a good time for laundry, regardless of the day of the week.
Thanksgiving was a quiet affair. I'm not crazy about the holiday to begin with -- mainly because I don't like the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (blasphemy, I know). I didn't like prior to being diagnosed ceiliac. Do like a good pie though. Bought myself a gluten free apple pie -- which has a light crumb topping. Most gluten-free pies don't bother with the top layer, and tend to be open. Which begs the question - why don't they make gluten-free pecan pies? You'd think it would be easier than the fruit pies? No top needed.
Maybe they do and I just can't find them? Or is there flour in the filling that I don't know about?
Anyhow, because of the inability to do a good crust topping -- I normally get the pumpkin. But chose the apple this year for a change of pace, also a new brand. (It was pre-made, I don't enjoy baking.) It was a good pie, which I admittedly spiced up by pouring brandy on top and coconut whipped cream. Unfortunately, it gave me heartburn, so not doing it again any time soon.
Saw some stuff...
1. US by Jordan Peele - this is the psychological thriller that came out last year and I skipped in the movie theater because the trailer freaked me out. The movie is more of a psychological sci-fi thriller than horror. Reminds me a little bit of "Get-Out" or similar concept, except "Get-Out" was better and the metaphors a bit more deft and understandable. I'm not quite sure where Peele was going with "US" nor apparently were 90% of the critics and audience.
Wales got me curious about it -- when she said it was more of a puzzle than a horror movie.
I'd agree. Although I figured it out more or less before the ending. And it has some interesting echoes towards "slavery" or how people take their lives for granted, while others are living forgotten beneath the surface.
It's quite violent, and satirical in places, although unlike "Get-Out" the satire is a bit muddled in execution. I felt the director was being a tad overly self-indulgent with his metaphorical symbolism and lost me as a result.
I wouldn't call it "scary" so much creepy "jump-scares".
The film opens with the statement that there are a lot of unused and abandoned passages beneath towns and cities across the country. (Reminding me a little of the Underground Railroad). Then we're shown a lot of rabbit cages, and the camera slowly rolls back to show a classroom beyond it.
The lead character or protagonist, Adelaide, had a traumatic experience as a child in a fun house, we don't quite know what happened at the beginning -- that's the puzzle. She basically runs through a fun house, tries to get out and one of the mirror images of herself - isn't a reflection. Right after this sequence, we're told that we are in 1986, when the big "Hands Across America" campaign happened, and shown a classroom with cages of bunny rabbits. Over twenty years later she's with her family traveling back to the same resort she'd visited with her parents way back then. But she doesn't want to visit it and is on edge. Nor does she want to hang out with the couple that they've hung out with there in the past. While on the beach with their friends, who aren't really friends so much as people they are friendly with and in competition with, they pass a prophet with the sign Jeremiah 11:11. There's lots of references to mirrors, dulaity, doubleness including the twin girls of the rich family that Adelaid's family has befriended. Also, material things, like boats, nice house, etc. Then Adelaid's family returns to their resort cabin, before dark, as she has insisted. But she's edgy and wants to leave immediately. There's something wrong. Her husband thinks she's being silly. Until her son spots a family out in the drive-way, all dressed in red, and standing like cardboard cutouts or shadows.
The family invades their house. They are almost perfect dopplegangers of Adelaid's family. Except for a few key things -- Adelaid's doppelganger is the only one who can talk -- in a halting English, and appears to be in control of the others. Each carries a pair of golden scissors. Each is in a red jump suit. And the doppleganger, after forcing Adelaid to chain herself to the table -- informs her that while she lived above, the doppleganger was forced to live her life below in almost perfect mimicry -- except her children were born monsters, and her husband can't speak. And when she was hungry she had to eat raw rabbit. And everything hurt. She was forced to Adelaid's shadow, unseen. When Adelaid took up dance, so did she. She hated Adelaid.
As the film rolls along, Adelaid's family is forced to fight off the dopplegangers.
But only Winston Duke (Abraham) kills his. He uses a boat to do it. Obsessed with owning a boat as a status symbol early on -- it's turned on him. And his small boat is a shadow of the bigger boat that he envies. Just as his house is a shadow of the bigger house, and his car a shadow of the bigger better car. As his house, boat, and car are no longer available he moves to the other ones, taking them over.
He's able to do so, because it turns out that the dopplegangers aren't limited to Adeliade's family, but seem to be reflective of everyone. And are killing the people who represent them on the surface all over the place. With no voice, but howling, and with monsterous rage. After they are finished they line up in a hands across america parody of the previous one in 1986 -- the year that Adelaid had her traumatic experience.
Each member of Adelaid's family takes out their doppelganger - but in different ways. Ways that are foreshadowed earlier. Until Adelaid confronts her own and this is when we learn what they are -- and what has happened. Turns out the dopplegangers are the result of bizarre psychological experiment gone wrong. The government had created copies of the human body with the hopes of using these copies to control people like puppets, but it didn't work -- they were only able to create a copy of the body, not the soul with in. So both share one soul -- but the dopplegangers below don't have a soul -- they are the puppets, their strings pulled by what lies above. And in each generation it got worse. Until Adelaid came along, and in her the other's saw a way to be saved to get free. Adelaid plotted it out, came up with a plan, and saw what God intended for her -- that her role was to free them, not only free them and untether them from those who lived above the surface but to make a statement about it. Hands Across America -- to show that they were linked. They were all Americans. They were US.
At this point, I began to realize that my earlier suspicion was correct, Adeliade's reflection in the Fun House Mirror knocked her out and pulled her into the world beneath the earth. Changing places with her way back then. The protagonist is in reality the shadow girl or tethered, and Adeliad is the one making the statement.
The Twist -- is basically the theme in a way of the film. Or the whole nurture over nature argument. Both are copies, but the one raised above ground with love, education, and hope -- can speak and is the stronger one, the kinder one, while the one tortured and mistreated below becomes the monster. Losing her soul. Filled with hate and resentment.
It's a somewhat satiric commentary on what lies beneath the happy capitalistic lives we are living. The happy television shows, and feel-good moments like Hands Across America. At the end of the film, we see the line of people in red jump suits with their linked hands all across the US, and the helicopters watching above, with smoke in the air, while Adelaid and her family drive off in a red ambulance.
The pain and suffering that lie beneath the surface, that what we have comes at the cost of well US. Our self before all else. It's a disturbing, if rather muddy commentary on human selfishness. A bit grim but not really scary.
2. Chris Claremount's X-men - a documentary on Amazon Prime. I rather enjoyed this because it basically examined the history of the X-men comics that I fell in love with in the 1980s. Chris Claremount (the writer and creator of the 1970s-1990s comics), Jim Shooter, Louise Simonson, Anna Nociente, Marc Silverstri, Rob Liefield, and various others are interviewed. Although the focus was on the first four mentioned. It also explained a lot of the politics involved.
Jim Shooter became a comic book writer at the age of 14. He didn't go to school or college. And graduated to editor-in-chief of the X-men around the age of 22. Chris Claremount jumped pretty much directly into comics right out of high school. Shooter explains that what he did at the age of 12 is examine all the books written by DC and Marvel to figure out why Marvel was better -- because if he could figure out why it was better and how to write for it, he could write for those guys. Marvel, Claremount and Shooter stated made the characters more real. It focused on Spiderman needing to make it back to class in time to finish his finale. The lives of the characters not just the bad guy of the week.
Louise Simonson was the top female writer/ editor and among the first. And had realized it was what she loved most -- comics, and that she wanted to write for them. She had the ability of getting Clarmount to think through his ideas and pull out the best ones.
The difficulty Claremount had -- was he became married to his characters and story, and he wanted to retire old characters and create new ones. Have Cyclops retire and raise a family in Alaska. Storm go off and do her own thing. Bring in someone new. Constantly change the team and build new characters, so that new readers would have characters to call their own and old readers would not feel the story was repeating itself. Unfortunately the books got really popular, and the more popular and more they sold, the less control Claremount had over his creations. He didn't own them, someone else did. Also he didn't really like playing that much with Stan Lee's creations as much as his own, which caused friction.
The other problem was that Marvel began to hire superstar artists who had their own vision for the characters and own story ideas. The writer would write it out, and the artists would often draw their own thing -- forcing the writer to go back and make sense of it. Also, the readers were more interested in the art than the writing -- it's more visible, so the writer lost control. This is what happened to Claremount when the superstar artist Jim Lee popped up. And to Louise Simonson, when Rob Liefield popped up. Money talked and the comics changed. Gone was the fun bullpen environment of the 1970s and 80s, where the writers could do whatever they wanted, and people worked as a collaborative team. Someone would come up with an idea and the other writers would want to play too -- and they'd have a cross-over event. Which took off and sold millions of copies, so the editors wanted to do it again and again.
The documentary really shows how popularity can often hurt the creative process. And the play between an artist's ego and the readership/collaboration. The egos of these writers and artists are huge -- in part because the industry they worked in fluffed them up, only to tear them down. Claremount was a superstar, only to be pushed to the side in favor of the next superstar.
He however was responsible for creating the X-men, and in charge of the title for the longest period of time. Claremount created Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Majick, Rahne, Sunspot, Cannonball, Kitty Pryde, among others.
He added the most women characters and as a result the comics sold more because women bought them. He also changed the character of Magneto and actually gave him a backstory as a holocaust survivor. Prior to that Magneto was just a one-dimensional villian. Claremount made him complicated and tried to redeem him.
The documentary also shows how as one writer, Jason Aaron, puts it -- you are at the end of the day playing with someone else's toys. And when you leave, someone else will get to play with them. They aren't yours. It's best to push the ego to the side.
At the start of film, I felt an odd regret that I never got to write or work in comics, I envied Louise Simonson and Claremount and Shooter -- but towards the end of the film, I no longer did. They had the most fun when they were flying beneath the radar and poor. Not making a ton of money, and not overly successful. It's when they took off and became the number one comic -- the best-seller, that things were less fun and more dictated from above. It was temporary.
Also, at one point, the all point out that they were proud of the stories they told and the people they touched. Claremount tells a story of a Mormon woman who thanked him for writing the comics, that the characters had become her friends -- that she identified with their outsider status and she could relate to them. Her husband who did not share her love, tolerated her comic book habit until their kids got older -- then he didn't want them in the house because he felt they were inappropriate for the children. She was in tears, because she was losing her friends, she didn't get to see what happened next in her friends lives. She saw the characters as more than just characters on a page, but her friends, symbolic of her own frustrations and dreams.
The story made me cry. As it did Claremount, who with tears in his eyes states that it made him realize he was giving people something. That it wasn't meaningless or pointless, but actually helped others. Simonson and Noncenti say at one point -- that they wrote comics with stories that couldn't just be written off as comic, as nothing. (And they are correct, the Life-Death series with Storm, Days of Future Past, among others.)
When the movies came about -- Fox asked Claremount for his input. So he wrote a memo to the filmmakers --stating that the movies aren't about a team of heroes fighting bad-guys, but about racism and being the outsider or discrimination. And they thanked him, stating that this gave them a direction to go in that worked. As a result the X-men movie changed superhero movies, before that time they didn't think you could do a movie about a little to unknown superhero or a team.
It's an interesting documentary about the process and what it is like to be a comic book writer/editor. I recommend.
It's late, I'll write the rest up in another post tomorrow.
12:30 pm turns out to be a good time for laundry, regardless of the day of the week.
Thanksgiving was a quiet affair. I'm not crazy about the holiday to begin with -- mainly because I don't like the traditional Thanksgiving dinner (blasphemy, I know). I didn't like prior to being diagnosed ceiliac. Do like a good pie though. Bought myself a gluten free apple pie -- which has a light crumb topping. Most gluten-free pies don't bother with the top layer, and tend to be open. Which begs the question - why don't they make gluten-free pecan pies? You'd think it would be easier than the fruit pies? No top needed.
Maybe they do and I just can't find them? Or is there flour in the filling that I don't know about?
Anyhow, because of the inability to do a good crust topping -- I normally get the pumpkin. But chose the apple this year for a change of pace, also a new brand. (It was pre-made, I don't enjoy baking.) It was a good pie, which I admittedly spiced up by pouring brandy on top and coconut whipped cream. Unfortunately, it gave me heartburn, so not doing it again any time soon.
Saw some stuff...
1. US by Jordan Peele - this is the psychological thriller that came out last year and I skipped in the movie theater because the trailer freaked me out. The movie is more of a psychological sci-fi thriller than horror. Reminds me a little bit of "Get-Out" or similar concept, except "Get-Out" was better and the metaphors a bit more deft and understandable. I'm not quite sure where Peele was going with "US" nor apparently were 90% of the critics and audience.
Wales got me curious about it -- when she said it was more of a puzzle than a horror movie.
I'd agree. Although I figured it out more or less before the ending. And it has some interesting echoes towards "slavery" or how people take their lives for granted, while others are living forgotten beneath the surface.
It's quite violent, and satirical in places, although unlike "Get-Out" the satire is a bit muddled in execution. I felt the director was being a tad overly self-indulgent with his metaphorical symbolism and lost me as a result.
I wouldn't call it "scary" so much creepy "jump-scares".
The film opens with the statement that there are a lot of unused and abandoned passages beneath towns and cities across the country. (Reminding me a little of the Underground Railroad). Then we're shown a lot of rabbit cages, and the camera slowly rolls back to show a classroom beyond it.
The lead character or protagonist, Adelaide, had a traumatic experience as a child in a fun house, we don't quite know what happened at the beginning -- that's the puzzle. She basically runs through a fun house, tries to get out and one of the mirror images of herself - isn't a reflection. Right after this sequence, we're told that we are in 1986, when the big "Hands Across America" campaign happened, and shown a classroom with cages of bunny rabbits. Over twenty years later she's with her family traveling back to the same resort she'd visited with her parents way back then. But she doesn't want to visit it and is on edge. Nor does she want to hang out with the couple that they've hung out with there in the past. While on the beach with their friends, who aren't really friends so much as people they are friendly with and in competition with, they pass a prophet with the sign Jeremiah 11:11. There's lots of references to mirrors, dulaity, doubleness including the twin girls of the rich family that Adelaid's family has befriended. Also, material things, like boats, nice house, etc. Then Adelaid's family returns to their resort cabin, before dark, as she has insisted. But she's edgy and wants to leave immediately. There's something wrong. Her husband thinks she's being silly. Until her son spots a family out in the drive-way, all dressed in red, and standing like cardboard cutouts or shadows.
The family invades their house. They are almost perfect dopplegangers of Adelaid's family. Except for a few key things -- Adelaid's doppelganger is the only one who can talk -- in a halting English, and appears to be in control of the others. Each carries a pair of golden scissors. Each is in a red jump suit. And the doppleganger, after forcing Adelaid to chain herself to the table -- informs her that while she lived above, the doppleganger was forced to live her life below in almost perfect mimicry -- except her children were born monsters, and her husband can't speak. And when she was hungry she had to eat raw rabbit. And everything hurt. She was forced to Adelaid's shadow, unseen. When Adelaid took up dance, so did she. She hated Adelaid.
As the film rolls along, Adelaid's family is forced to fight off the dopplegangers.
But only Winston Duke (Abraham) kills his. He uses a boat to do it. Obsessed with owning a boat as a status symbol early on -- it's turned on him. And his small boat is a shadow of the bigger boat that he envies. Just as his house is a shadow of the bigger house, and his car a shadow of the bigger better car. As his house, boat, and car are no longer available he moves to the other ones, taking them over.
He's able to do so, because it turns out that the dopplegangers aren't limited to Adeliade's family, but seem to be reflective of everyone. And are killing the people who represent them on the surface all over the place. With no voice, but howling, and with monsterous rage. After they are finished they line up in a hands across america parody of the previous one in 1986 -- the year that Adelaid had her traumatic experience.
Each member of Adelaid's family takes out their doppelganger - but in different ways. Ways that are foreshadowed earlier. Until Adelaid confronts her own and this is when we learn what they are -- and what has happened. Turns out the dopplegangers are the result of bizarre psychological experiment gone wrong. The government had created copies of the human body with the hopes of using these copies to control people like puppets, but it didn't work -- they were only able to create a copy of the body, not the soul with in. So both share one soul -- but the dopplegangers below don't have a soul -- they are the puppets, their strings pulled by what lies above. And in each generation it got worse. Until Adelaid came along, and in her the other's saw a way to be saved to get free. Adelaid plotted it out, came up with a plan, and saw what God intended for her -- that her role was to free them, not only free them and untether them from those who lived above the surface but to make a statement about it. Hands Across America -- to show that they were linked. They were all Americans. They were US.
At this point, I began to realize that my earlier suspicion was correct, Adeliade's reflection in the Fun House Mirror knocked her out and pulled her into the world beneath the earth. Changing places with her way back then. The protagonist is in reality the shadow girl or tethered, and Adeliad is the one making the statement.
The Twist -- is basically the theme in a way of the film. Or the whole nurture over nature argument. Both are copies, but the one raised above ground with love, education, and hope -- can speak and is the stronger one, the kinder one, while the one tortured and mistreated below becomes the monster. Losing her soul. Filled with hate and resentment.
It's a somewhat satiric commentary on what lies beneath the happy capitalistic lives we are living. The happy television shows, and feel-good moments like Hands Across America. At the end of the film, we see the line of people in red jump suits with their linked hands all across the US, and the helicopters watching above, with smoke in the air, while Adelaid and her family drive off in a red ambulance.
The pain and suffering that lie beneath the surface, that what we have comes at the cost of well US. Our self before all else. It's a disturbing, if rather muddy commentary on human selfishness. A bit grim but not really scary.
2. Chris Claremount's X-men - a documentary on Amazon Prime. I rather enjoyed this because it basically examined the history of the X-men comics that I fell in love with in the 1980s. Chris Claremount (the writer and creator of the 1970s-1990s comics), Jim Shooter, Louise Simonson, Anna Nociente, Marc Silverstri, Rob Liefield, and various others are interviewed. Although the focus was on the first four mentioned. It also explained a lot of the politics involved.
Jim Shooter became a comic book writer at the age of 14. He didn't go to school or college. And graduated to editor-in-chief of the X-men around the age of 22. Chris Claremount jumped pretty much directly into comics right out of high school. Shooter explains that what he did at the age of 12 is examine all the books written by DC and Marvel to figure out why Marvel was better -- because if he could figure out why it was better and how to write for it, he could write for those guys. Marvel, Claremount and Shooter stated made the characters more real. It focused on Spiderman needing to make it back to class in time to finish his finale. The lives of the characters not just the bad guy of the week.
Louise Simonson was the top female writer/ editor and among the first. And had realized it was what she loved most -- comics, and that she wanted to write for them. She had the ability of getting Clarmount to think through his ideas and pull out the best ones.
The difficulty Claremount had -- was he became married to his characters and story, and he wanted to retire old characters and create new ones. Have Cyclops retire and raise a family in Alaska. Storm go off and do her own thing. Bring in someone new. Constantly change the team and build new characters, so that new readers would have characters to call their own and old readers would not feel the story was repeating itself. Unfortunately the books got really popular, and the more popular and more they sold, the less control Claremount had over his creations. He didn't own them, someone else did. Also he didn't really like playing that much with Stan Lee's creations as much as his own, which caused friction.
The other problem was that Marvel began to hire superstar artists who had their own vision for the characters and own story ideas. The writer would write it out, and the artists would often draw their own thing -- forcing the writer to go back and make sense of it. Also, the readers were more interested in the art than the writing -- it's more visible, so the writer lost control. This is what happened to Claremount when the superstar artist Jim Lee popped up. And to Louise Simonson, when Rob Liefield popped up. Money talked and the comics changed. Gone was the fun bullpen environment of the 1970s and 80s, where the writers could do whatever they wanted, and people worked as a collaborative team. Someone would come up with an idea and the other writers would want to play too -- and they'd have a cross-over event. Which took off and sold millions of copies, so the editors wanted to do it again and again.
The documentary really shows how popularity can often hurt the creative process. And the play between an artist's ego and the readership/collaboration. The egos of these writers and artists are huge -- in part because the industry they worked in fluffed them up, only to tear them down. Claremount was a superstar, only to be pushed to the side in favor of the next superstar.
He however was responsible for creating the X-men, and in charge of the title for the longest period of time. Claremount created Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Majick, Rahne, Sunspot, Cannonball, Kitty Pryde, among others.
He added the most women characters and as a result the comics sold more because women bought them. He also changed the character of Magneto and actually gave him a backstory as a holocaust survivor. Prior to that Magneto was just a one-dimensional villian. Claremount made him complicated and tried to redeem him.
The documentary also shows how as one writer, Jason Aaron, puts it -- you are at the end of the day playing with someone else's toys. And when you leave, someone else will get to play with them. They aren't yours. It's best to push the ego to the side.
At the start of film, I felt an odd regret that I never got to write or work in comics, I envied Louise Simonson and Claremount and Shooter -- but towards the end of the film, I no longer did. They had the most fun when they were flying beneath the radar and poor. Not making a ton of money, and not overly successful. It's when they took off and became the number one comic -- the best-seller, that things were less fun and more dictated from above. It was temporary.
Also, at one point, the all point out that they were proud of the stories they told and the people they touched. Claremount tells a story of a Mormon woman who thanked him for writing the comics, that the characters had become her friends -- that she identified with their outsider status and she could relate to them. Her husband who did not share her love, tolerated her comic book habit until their kids got older -- then he didn't want them in the house because he felt they were inappropriate for the children. She was in tears, because she was losing her friends, she didn't get to see what happened next in her friends lives. She saw the characters as more than just characters on a page, but her friends, symbolic of her own frustrations and dreams.
The story made me cry. As it did Claremount, who with tears in his eyes states that it made him realize he was giving people something. That it wasn't meaningless or pointless, but actually helped others. Simonson and Noncenti say at one point -- that they wrote comics with stories that couldn't just be written off as comic, as nothing. (And they are correct, the Life-Death series with Storm, Days of Future Past, among others.)
When the movies came about -- Fox asked Claremount for his input. So he wrote a memo to the filmmakers --stating that the movies aren't about a team of heroes fighting bad-guys, but about racism and being the outsider or discrimination. And they thanked him, stating that this gave them a direction to go in that worked. As a result the X-men movie changed superhero movies, before that time they didn't think you could do a movie about a little to unknown superhero or a team.
It's an interesting documentary about the process and what it is like to be a comic book writer/editor. I recommend.
It's late, I'll write the rest up in another post tomorrow.
no subject
Date: 2019-11-30 06:36 pm (UTC)If Peele stripped away everything except the battle between the "normal" humans and the Tethered, and kept the explanations deliberately vague, the movie would have been a lot more powerful. Sometimes less is more.
************
Storytelling used to be told around campfires. Stories used to be passed down from generation to generation, each storyteller adding something new to the canon, enriching the traditions of the tribe.
In a way, modern comic books continue this tradition, each generation contributing something new that enriches the old stories. (Let's set aside the questionable ethics of "work for hire" contracts for this discussion...)
For example, Black Panther. Lee and Kirby created T'Challa and Wakanda in 1966. Don McGregor expanded the character's world in the 1970s; Christopher Priest updated him for the '90s, and Ta-Nehisi Coates revolutionized him for new century. All this set up Ryan Coogler and the movie, taking T'Challa from supporting character to international icon.
And the X-Men? Lee and Kirby again, starting it all with Charles and Jean and Scott, Magneto and the Brotherhood (including Mastermind), and the ever-potent metaphor for racism. Then came Roy Thomas and Neal Adams, complicating Scott's family tree and bringing in Sauron and the Savage Land.
After a long, fallow period, the next generation took over. Len Wein took the X-Men international. He brought in one of his greatest creations, Wolverine, from Canada; Wein and Dave Cockrum filled out the global roster with Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler and Thunderbird. (Jonathan Hickman owes Wein some serious thanks for Krakoa, the Living Island.)
Chris Claremont took this wonderful set of toys and turned it into the biggest thing in comics. He brought us Shadowkat and Bishop, the Hellfire Club, Legion and the Shi'ar... and the Phoenix. But whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was one link in the chain. Grant Morrison had his own ideas about the X-Men, and now, Hickman has made the merry mutants the biggest thing in comics. Again.
The great stories are often bigger than any one creator. Odysseus' journeys have been told and retold a million different ways. Sherlock Holmes and his descendants are still solving mysteries. We all gather around the campfire to listen...
no subject
Date: 2019-11-30 10:45 pm (UTC)I agree -- the movie was trying to be two things, and couldn't quite make up its mind between comedic social commentary satire and psychological thriller. I think it would have worked better if they'd peeled away the whole rabbit bit, the explanations, and the Hands Across America (which unless you remember it -- falls flat and is jarring. I vaguely remember it and not enough for the meaning to resonate at all.) It also would have been far scarier. Too much going on here.
___
The documentary sort of skipped over the people in between Lee and Claremont, giving Claremount the credit for creating Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Wolverine. Also Kraokoa. Which jarred and confused me, so thanks for the reminder. That's the flaw in the documentary -- it's a bit too much of an ode to Claremont. And I think Claremont is a little overrated. He did a great deal for the franchise, but as you point out, so have others.
But whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was one link in the chain.
I agree. Comics much like daytime soap operas and Doctor Who are long running serials that are the products of collaborative voices, and varied ones. That's the joy of them. Each new writer gives their own twist and adds their own ideas. Much like the campfire stories and oral tales handed down over time...mythology, the Bible, all of this falls into that category of stories that change as each new interpretation and voice is added.
In a way it's sort of like published or commercial fanfic. Is there continuity? Well, yes and no. And are the writers - work for hire? Yes, but the creativity is still there. And so too are television and screenwriters. I suppose you can say novelists aren't, but many appear to be -- at the mercy of a publisher's contract.
And it's a good thing to have new writers add their own twists to the world and characters. Hickman's take is so different than many who came before, yet it is clear that he grew up with the characters and in many ways is paying homage to the previous writers. As had Morrison, Whedon, Bendis, Aaron, Simonson, Gillen, Wein, Claremount, Lee before him.
The artists too had a great effect on the stories -- that's how comics differ from printed works, they are collaborations.
I liked what Jason Aaron states at the end of the documentary -- at the end of the day you are just being given the chance to play with someone else's toys and you have to let go, when it comes time for you to move on.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-01 12:21 am (UTC)I can't look at Nightcrawler or the Starjammers without seeing Dave Cockrum's heart and soul in every pixel. And Len Wein is one of the underrated great writers of modern comics. The new X-Men, the revival of Wonder Woman with George Perez, and creating Swamp Thing with Bernie Wrightson are just the top of the list of his accomplishments.
***********
You're the only Shadowkat that matters to me. Kitty's spelling is the "other" spelling.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-01 04:31 am (UTC)LOL! (Even if it predates me? Anom used to correct it all the time, and I'd say, no, I misspelled it deliberately. Also the "k" looks better.)
Just as long as you aren't confusing me with the X-rated and somewhat porny Shadowkat fanfic writer. (People have.) Or the role game player.
I can't look at Nightcrawler or the Starjammers without seeing Dave Cockrum's heart and soul in every pixel. And Len Wein is one of the underrated great writers of modern comics. The new X-Men, the revival of Wonder Woman with George Perez, and creating Swamp Thing with Bernie Wrightson are just the top of the list of his accomplishments.
Agreed. I liked a lot of Claremount's work, his Life/Death series with Storm, Kitty/Wolverine series, and 96-200 were brilliant in places and changed how comics were written. He turned the episodic fight the monster of the week format that predated him, into a relationship drama serial that examined racism and sexism on various levels. If you ever get a chance to see it? The documentary is worth a look. It really gives you a taste of the inner-workings of comics. (I was a little envious, because like every comic book fan on the planet, my dream job would have been writing and drawing comics. But alas, wasn't what the Universe wanted me to do. And I'm okay with that. I tried -- I sent in a writing sample and an application, but I didn't fit the bill. So much of life is just dumb luck.)
no subject
Date: 2019-11-30 10:49 pm (UTC)I'm not that creative with names apparently, and neither was my mother.