More Comic Book Recommendations for My University Library

Last summer, one of the head librarians and a fellow comics aficionado asked my advice concerning which comics the university library should purchase in the near future. I gave her my list and was ecstatic to learn a few weeks later that they took all of my suggestions! Now, with the looming task of preparing the budget for next fall, and because I've been offered a new position here at the university (more on that later; the details are actually still a little fuzzy), she's asked for another five or so recommendations to begin considering over the coming weeks. I have to admit, I'm flattered, but also a little at a loss. My last list included what I considered to be the most important/influential works of comics/in comics theory. So adding another five is feeling strangely difficult. So I thought I'd put it to the regular readers of The Daily Pugle--after giving some of my ideas that is.

1) Alan Moore's V for Vendetta or From Hell: We already have Watchmen and the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, but I for one believe in reading as much Moore as I can get my hands on/wrap my head around at a time. My wife suggested I recommend Lost Girls, but I'm a little squeamish about the reputation that might cultivate :-)

2 & 3) Will Eisner's A Life Force and Dropsie Avenue: I just recently finished A Contract with God (review forthcoming) and, upon learning that it was the first work in a trilogy, am desperate to read more. And these graphic novels aren't usually in book stores (comic or otherwise).

4 & 5) Frank Miller's 300 and/or ???: I can't, in good conscious, recommend more Moore and not recommend more Miller! Trouble is, besides 300 (which I consider to be an important book), I'm not sure how to narrow down his work enough. Do I suggest the first Sin City or another more important volume? The University of Memphis library (the model for what I'd like this library to be before I leave here) had Hard Boiled, so should I recommend that? What about his work on Electra and Daredevil (I'm actually very unfamiliar with it)? What about Ronin? Argh!

6) Mike Mignola's Hellboy Library Edition Volume 1: I'm actually not sure why I didn't put this as number one. We currently have none of Mignola's work, and this guy's brilliant! Plus, it has Library in the title!

In any event, those are some of my ideas, but I really want to put this to you, the readers.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

UPDATE 4-1-09: I was talking with my librarian the other day about some of the comics she's requesting. She has a few I've never heard of (we have very different tastes in comics), but Batman: Year One is on there. I think that makes Miller covered for now.

Zombie Spring Break!

Well, Sunday was the last day of Spring Break '09, and I daresay it was one of the best Spring Breaks I've ever had. And if I had to pinpoint a theme (per se) of the break, I'd have to go with "zombies." Coincidence? I think not!

First my wife spent the first half or so of the break in Washington, DC, on a school trip. But I watched and rewatched zombie movies, played a zombie video game, and consequently spent a lot of time just thinking about the inevitable zombie apocalypse. And while I was sad about the former, it did allow me to spend an obscene amount of time on the latter.

For starters, I dropped my wife off for her carpool to the airport before daybreak, did some work in my office until the gym opened, worked out until the video game store opened, and bought Resident Evil 5! I then proceeded to play said zombie video game for the rest of the weekend. An awesome start to the break despite not being able to spend it with my wife? Indeed it was. Even better when my wife came home and proceeded to play the game with me through my second run? You betcha! Review to come!

But I also had put a bunch of zombie movies I heard about at that conference a few weeks back on our Netflix , and was waiting for my wife's trip to move them to the front of the queue. So I finally got to see the zombie parodies ZA: Zombies Anonymous, Fido, and the zombie-esque, sci-fi remake of The Invasion (someone during my conference presentation recommended it because it had a lot to do with my topic). I also rewatched the silly Resident Evil: Extinction and still-creepy 28 Days Later. Because it's unlikely I'll get around to reviewing more than one of them (trying to choose between Fido and The Invasion...), I recommend them all!

But Spring Break wasn't only about zombies. After I picked up my wife from the airport, we spent the rest of the day shopping for nothing in particular, just glad we were able to hang out again. We spent another day on Santa Fe's Canyon Road stepping into art galleries galore (sometimes laughing at pretentious contemporary art, sometimes excited by surrealism, and sometimes just wishing we had the money to put up work like that in our own home). I also spent a lot of time grading midterms, enjoying walks around town, doing some spring cleaning here and there, and taking breaks to finally read Will Eisner's A Contract with God (I took my time, savouring it). And there will definitely be some thoughts posted on "the first graphic novel!"

All in all, it was a fantastic break, and served the exact purpose of a break. I did tons of things I've been wanting to do but simply did not have the time for, relaxed, and now feel completely recharged and ready for what's ahead. Indeed, I feel ready to face the rest of the semester, zombie-ridden or not.

"ZA: Zombies Anonymous"

A few weeks ago, I attended a Pop Culture conference where I sat in on a panel of professors and graduate students talking entirely about zombies! The chair of the panel, Dr. Sara Sutler-Cohen, presented on "Zombie Sociology and the Politics of Survival," in which she discussed the independent film, ZA: Zombies Anonymous. She showed a clip of the C movie (I wouldn't even call it a B movie, though that isn't an insult), and I left that conference determined to put it on my Netflix and wait until my wife Veronica was away long enough to watch it without forcing her to see it too (I try to spare her my most nerdy impulses).

I finally saw it this past weekend, and I gotta say, I wasn't disappointed. If you haven't heard of the film, don't beat yourself up--it's still listed on imdb.com by it's old title, Last Rites of the Dead. The premise, to put it briefly and without giving too much away, is that suddenly, everyone who dies becomes a zombie. Seems cliché enough, right? Well, here's the twist. These zombies retain all of their consciousness, personality, intelligence, and whatever physical activity they're capable of after dying. Seen as a burden on society, their rights as citizens are revoked (because, after all, they're legally dead), no one will give them jobs, and they're generally looked down upon. The story follows the recently murdered Angela who, as luck would have it, was shot in the back of the head and therefore, can hide the wound with her hair and doesn't look like your typical zombie (save for the fact that she is very slowly decomposing (as the film progresses, her skin mainly just becomes more and more pale). But she's still coming to grips with being a zombie (weeks go by and she can't bring herself to even tell her mom), so she joins the Zombies Anonymous support group, where zombies can accept themselves for who they are and attempt to live out their afterlives in peace. Of course, they still crave raw flesh, but any will do--Angela prefers ground beef right out of the packaging. Still, they seem to stay away from the social taboo of cannibalism.

And that's about the only social taboo the film stays away from. As any fan of zombie films (or even horror films in general) can tell you, the zombie has long been a tool for social criticism. Even as early as George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), racial issues were a sub-text of the film: a black film hero slapping the white protagonist when she won't calm down? This was unheard of, yet it was necessary within the context of the film--they're about to be overrun by zombies, and she's screaming her head off, for Pete's sake! The film's ending, where the black hero is the only survivor but is shot by his redneck rescuers (it's intentionally left open to interpretation as to whether they actually thought he was a zombie or not) is even discussed in ZA.

But ZA goes one step further. It includes allusions to every form of racial, cultural, generational, and even class difference in history. Segregation? Check. Apartheid and detention camps? Check. Euthanasia? Check. Inter-racial and gender relationships? Check. Genocide? Check. Where all this is done brilliantly, however, is that it applies zombies to all of these. In America, zombies lose their rights as citizens. There are centers where zombies can go to be euthanized "peacefully" (though it's later discovered these centers are just meat lockers where some guys with a shot gun shoot the zombies in the head). One of central conflicts involves that with a rogue group of KKK-like vigilantes, killing zombies and "zombie sympathizers." One scene shows them video taping the brutal beating of a living man and his undead girlfriend. They talk about cutting of the zombie's head and then making her watch as they destroy her boy and torture and kill her boyfriend. And this is in America! Other countries have zombies sent to camps to either be contained or executed.

If any of this sounds like it might be uncomfortable to watch, don't worry; it is. Aside from being an extremely gory film (which is actually impressive when one considers how small this indie-film's budget must have been), the situations are very "What would you do? How would you feel?" In one scene, some guys pull over to the first zombie they see while driving, kidnap him, and then proceed to beat him up with baseball bats (these zombies still feel pain). Yes, the film is all kinds of uncomfortable. Another example is the female zombies. For starters, there seem to be way more of these than the male variety in the film. They are all fairly attractive, and not one of them seems to be wearing a bra. As zombie films are generally catered to the "fanboy audience," we're clearly meant to look at these women, remember they're zombies, then kind of wonder whether it's "okay" to find them attractive (a throw-back to the cusp of the pre-inter-racial couple era). One of the deleted scenes even features some undead prostitutes.

Is this sick? Absolutely. But what it does very well, is put us in the shoes of both the persecutors and persecuted throughout history. And if zombie films are meant to be social commentary, then this one is the best I've ever seen.

Of course, where the message shines, the rest must suffer. The story is completely slave to the that message. The film's like a zombie itself--it just won't die! It just keeps on going, and several sub-plots are suddenly introduced then hastily wrapped up near the end, leaving me to wonder if they were really necessary. Of course, the ending is very "shoot 'em up," so it's possible the filmmakers were going for a traditional, zombie movie ending. The acting and filming are okay (certainly no Academy Awards here), but my wife's student films made with small town university equipment have better lighting and sound.

All in all, if you're a fan of zombie films, I'd highly recommend this one. It's certainly the best out there with a message. Of course, if you prefer to have Ving Rhames bustin' in with a 12-gauge, you might be disappointed here.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

The Daily Pugle to visit the Green Light to Write Project!

A few weeks ago, I was asked to present, along with a couple of grad students, on Special Topics in College English at our community's first literacy fair. There, I met the children's librarian from the town library. She told me about a program the library has established called the Green Light to Write Project that allows nine to twelve year old kids to practice writing in a non-academic setting. They try to get local writers and teachers to run the weekly workshop, and since I teach writing through comics, she thought I might be a nice change of pace for the kids. Excited about any opportunity to talk about comics, naturally, I said I'd love to do it. We exchanged scheduling information, and I'm all set head down there this Thursday.

I'm crazy psyched for the opportunity to teach comics to little kids but also because I haven't instructed kids of that age since the last time I taught swimming lessons two years ago. But I'm a little at odds about what activities I should plan for them. I only have an hour, but this is what I have so far.

I thought I might have the kids start by writing a short story, then share some of my comics with them. Lastly, I was planning on having them adapt their short stories into comics. That might be a bit much for them to do in an hour, I realize. And I suppose I could have them jump straight to reading and making comics instead of writing a story first. But since writing is supposed to be the focus, I wasn't sure how the parents might feel about that. As for the comic-making process, I have some nifty handouts with panels already drawn-out for them.

That's what I have planned so far, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

"X-Men: Magneto Testament" Review: Trying to Build a Better "Maus" Trap

See what I did there?

I've been meaning to review the X-Men: Magneto Testament mini-series ever since I finally got around to finishing it a couple weeks ago. Reading it was a very delayed process, as the issues were monthly, I was lucky to make into my local comic book store every other month, and finding time to read the individual issues was difficult to say the least.

But I wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't thought the series merited some attention up front: A Magneto origin story set in the Holocaust? I was hooked to the idea despite that, most often, superhero comic origin stories have gotten really repetitive since they came about in the '80s. But I picked up the first issue and was floored! I was amazed. It was provocative, it rang true to the historical accounts I've read and seen, and the art (especially the cover art) was excellent!

But (there has to be a "but") I found it impossible to ignore that not only have Holocaust comics been done before, but one of them (Maus) became the poster child for the movement of comics appreciation nearly immediately after it debuted twenty-three years ago (it won the Pullizer for Pete's sake!). As such, for me, it's nearly impossible to read another Holocaust comic (or even experience another Holocaust story in any medium) without comparing the work to Maus: the visuals, the writing, the story/stories of the characters, etc.

And Magneto Testament, while still a good comic, fails in at least two of those areas. For starters, as mentioned above, the art is really quite good. And I simply love the cover art for each issue. Each is of Max Eisenhardt (the young Magneto) in shades of gray with either red or yellow accents. And the first two feature foreboding images of Magneto in a puddle of water and wisps of cloud, respectively. Inside, the graphic depiction of events and conditions during the Holocaust is spot on, and it's clear the artists studied photography and accounts of the period.

And while being able to visually represent such a tragedy is paramount (for me, as a kid, the most moving exhibit of the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC, was that of hundreds of pre-Holocaust photographs of those who lost their lives), when a story is also trying to be told, that story and the writing must be equally compelling. This story is real enough: young Jewish boy Max Eisenhardt is accused of cheating in his school's javellin throw competition and expelled the day after the Nuremburg Laws are passed. His father, a German-Jew war hero, tries to better the lives of his family by seeking help from a friend (who rejects him) before the family flees to Poland on the eve of Kristallnacht. Unfortunately, they arrive too late, as the German invasion of Poland seems to follow them. Max's family is killed, and he's sent to Auschwitz-Berkenau, where he tries to keep himself and his girlfriend alive long enough for either the American army to liberate the camps or bomb the dreaded crematoriums. Indeed, it rings true to Jewish experience during the Holocaust, and actually follows the story of Vladek Spiegelman in Maus pretty closely. The key difference, however, is pacing. Where Maus takes it time telling a very personal and real story (two books spanning close to 300 pages), Magneto Testament rushes through a disconnected, five issue mini-series.

Granted, this doesn't mean I have problems with a fictional account of a historic period. However, if it's done, I have to care about a character who is not real. I have a hard time connecting with Max, mainly because most of his experiences seemed to be skimmed over. Where the first issue and the first half of the second issue slowly develop an excellent plot and dynamic characters, the rest of the issue leap frogs through different events, bringing in new characters or returning minor ones. For example, the last two issues are entirely about Max's survival in the concentration camps. We are shown what it must have been like to "show up" at the camps (the separation between strong and weak, the degradation of shaving and showering, and the welcome into a terrible place). But suddenly, a few months pass. Then a few years go by from one page to the next. Instead of personal experience, we get historical facts: "From this year to this year, this many people were murdered in this and this facility."

Granted, this may be a personal hang-up; I've always believed that if you want to make a tragedy really hit home, you can't simply throw numbers at people. It does no good to say "three million Jews were killed in this many months," because my mind simply cannot comprehend that figure. It's too big! But if you show me one person, one experience, and I feel like I go through that experience with that one person, and something bad happens to them, then I'm angry, sad, frustrated. Returning to my experience with the National Holocaust Museum, at one point on the tour, I was given a small piece of paper. On the front was the photograph of a Jewish child. On the back was his story, (much like Max's) from the outset of persecution until he met his end in the camps. And I am not ashamed to say that I bawled my eyes out. I cried at the end of Maus too. But I didn't shed a tear for Max's parents, or his sister, or his Jewish school teacher who looked out for him both at his German finishing school and in the camps.

The writing itself (the dialogue, narration, presentation of historical facts, etc.) is a minor quibble but a quibble nonetheless. Mainly, I have a problem with foreign characters speaking like Americans. It just doesn't ring true. At least give them an accent. One of my favorite parts about the dialogue in Maus is that Art Spiegelman writes his father's broken English as is. And yes, at times, I have to reread what Vladek says, but at least it feels like he's there, telling me the story. Even Mignola puts foreign language dialogue in angle-brackets with an asterix letting the reader know that these characters are speaking a language other than English. And personally, I don't mind if some untranslated text is throw in for verisimilitude; I don't speak Hebrew, but when I read Maus, I simply found someone who could translate those bits for me. And if the writer's done a really great job for his English speaking audience, those parts can be understood without translation.

Lastly, in a very strange move by the editors, the final issue of Magneto Testament includes a short comic biography about Dina Gottliebova, a Jewish artist who was made to paint portraits of Jews for Dr. Josef Mengele (the infamous war criminal who performed experiments on Jews in the camps to further perpetuate the propaganda of Aryan superiority). Dina survives the Holocaust but dismissed her portraits, expecting them destroyed. However, years later, someone living in the area found and sold the portraits to the Auschwitz State Museum. When she tried to reclaim them, she was denied and has been fighting to get them back ever since. It's really a heartbreaking story; Dina would paint as painstakingly slowly as possible, trying to delay her subjects being killed, or worse, immediately following the completion of their portraits. The comic is meant to create awareness of her cause. And I have to wonder, if Marvel was truly behind this cause, why didn't they just make their Holocaust comic about her?

Indeed, Magneto Testament could have functioned entirely without knowing that Max will become a superhero/villain (depending on your outlook, I suppose). His mutant powers are not even mentioned or even overtly evident. The first issue has the scene of him throwing a metal javelin on the school field, and we are meant to know he's able to throw it so far because of his powers. Similarly, we're meant to know that it's because of those same powers that he's able to find random coins beneath the mud in the ghettos, "see" SS and Gestapo agents in the distance when his family is trying to run through the wilderness, and intuitively find which of the dead Jews have gold fillings before burning them in the camps. But even without these powers, Max may have just been a good javelin thrower, had exceptional eyesight, and carefully search every mouth, knowing that despite the horror, the gold could mean the difference between life and death through bribes. The only scene in the story in which his "powers" come up in any "real" form is that in which he and his family are placed in a firing line. The Nazis shoot, and the proceeding panel clearly suggests that Max can see each bullet. The bullets hit their marks, but Max mysteriously wakes up in a ditch among his dead family members hours later. He crawls out, is caught, and sent to Auschwitz. He's covered in blood, but it's never explained whether or not it's his, whether or not he was even shot. He arrives at the camp appearing uninjured, so maybe the Nazis missed him and he just passed out. Or maybe he slowed the bullet intended for him just enough to keep it from killing him but not enough that it didn't knock him out. Regardless, it's so vague that, again, Max could just be another poor Jew whose story is being told in a comic. So why attach the X-Men tag to it? To sell more issues? If that's the case, then that really bothers me.

Why am I ranting about this? I'm not really sure. Perhaps it's because that when I finished the fifth issue, my immediate thought was a terrible one: "It's pretty good for a superhero comic." I couldn't help the thought, and immediately, I regretted it. I wrote my Master's Thesis parading the argument that not only should superhero stories be held up to the standards of literature, but that literature should accept them should they stand up to those standards. And here I was making an excuse for one! I think I'm ranting because I'm afraid others will have the same reaction to the series. Indeed, so far, I've read nothing but ridiculously positive things about it. And if I hadn't read Maus, I'd be all for this series being uses in a high school classroom. But I have read Maus, and it's finding itself in an increasing number of high school classrooms already.

So what's the use in Magneto Testament? Well, contrary to my ranting, I actually like the series a lot for what it tried, and succeeded, in doing. These creators have made the definitive origin story for one of the most dynamic comic book superhero characters in existence. Now, maybe in a few more years, someone will take this outline and a make an the definitive, fictional, Holocaust story.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

"Zombies and Academics?"--"La Mecha" Mar. 6, 2009

Note: This is the original version of this article.

Last week, I gave  first presentation at an academic conference. I'd be lying if I said I had been looking forward to it. I've never bothered with conferences before. They've never been my thing--standing up in front of a bunch of academics talking about my ideas on movies, books, comics, teaching, whatever; then listening to them doing the same? Lame!

But a colleague encouraged me to submit a paper for the Southwest Texas Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association Conference in Albuquerque, and I had an idea I'd been kicking around. So I did. And the committee liked it, so the invited me to present it.

My first impression upon walking into the Hyatt Regency was, "Holy crap! I'm surrounded by nerds!" Indeed, I was. After all, what are professors and grad. students if not nerds? But I remembered that I'm a nerd too, and after the initial shock of being amongst such a strong concentration of them, I felt pretty comfortable: a couple people talking about pulp magazine covers from the '40s over here; some teachers discussing their worst students ever over there; a professor admitting to some students that he really does love zombie movies. So I grabbed some coffee, an apple for later, and headed to a panel about comic books.

For those who've never been to a conference, most put presenters discussing the same topic on one panel. Each presents, and the panel is opened to questions from and with the audience. Everyone presents differently. Most presenters read straight from a prepared paper. Some combine that with a Power Point presentation or (like me) video clips. A few present on the fly with no paper or notes, getting up, walking around, discussing slides being projected, etc.

All in all, I have to admit, it was fun, and I'm already planning for my next conference. My panel was excellent. I presented on post-9/11 paranoia in films such as War of the Worlds and Cloverfield, along with a biological anthropologist explaining why Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull bombed, and a literature professor discussing the subject of surveillance in radio and television shows such as The Shadow and CSI. We had a full conference room, and everyone from graduate students to aged professors asked us a range of questions. At this point, I realized why academics come to these conferences. It's not simply to talk about how smart they are (okay, well for some it is). Academics present at these conferences to educate themselves. I've always believed that the best teachers are the ones who never stop trying to learn, and most of the presenters were soon-to-be or current educators.

For starters, the act of presenting a paper is a practise in research and collaboration of findings, a throwback to what we do as students. If anything, that aspect reminded me what my students go through putting together their research papers. But sitting in on others' presentations is akin to being a student again. Panels ran from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. Without breaks! Imagine going to class for fifteen hours straight! I had to skip a couple of panels I wanted to go to so that I could have diner, and at the end of the day, I was exhausted.

But I learned about how to organize a successful online course. I learned how to employ blogging into my composition classroom (something I've been interested in for a while). I learned about the difference between post-9/11 comics produced immediately in the wake of the tragedy and those that were published later. I learned about the societal and cultural implications of zombie films, and how Alien continues to play a huge role in science-fiction film and television.

Yes, these are nerds who where "I ♥ Zombies" T-shirts and talk about their latest binge on World of Warcraft, but they're also educators, bettering themselves, making themselves better teachers. And that was inspiring.

"Who Watches the Watchmen?" The Daily Pugle Does!

Few things have influenced not only me but popular culture as much as Alan Moore's timeless comicWatchmen. Personally, it (along with Miller'sBatman: The Dark Knight Returns and Spiegelman's Maus) gave me a field of study when I went from being just a college student to an academic. It planted the seeds of "doing something new with superheroes" that lead to my Creative Writing Master's Thesis about a budding vigilante. Indeed, it changed the very way I look at heroism.

It has unfluenced us as a culture in a way most people don't even recognize, working it's narrative style and ideas into facets of film (cited as influential to the directors of The Incredibles,Donnie Darko, and π), television (its storytelling style seen in Lost and deconstructionist tendencies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer), and of course, comics trying to mimic its portrayal of superheroes.

With so much built on the work's foundation, it's hard to go into a theatre to see the movie without loaded expectations. But I tried. I dragged my poor wife to the midnight showing so that my expectations of the film would not be coloured by the opinions of everyone who'd already seen it and reviewed (or even just talked about) it. It was no easy task to ignore that this was an adaptation and judge the film as simply a film. But this is what I've come up with:

Enh...

Now allow me to back up my claim. First off, as far as movies go, there have been, and likely will be much better ones. Anyone expecting some Oscars (or even nominations) tossed this film's way will be disappointed. As far as superhero movies go, it doesn't fair much better (I'd put it somewhere between Spiderman 3 and last summer's The Incredible Hulk). And there are a slew of reasons. Acting, pacing of the story, and character development are the main weak points.

Most of the performances (Jeffrey Dean Morgan/The Comedian and Jackie Earle Haley/Rorschach being happy exceptions) left something to be desired. Billy Crudup/Dr. Manhattan sounds at every turn just like his Mastercard/"priceless" persona. Matthew Goode/Ozymandias seems to be portraying a suave teen from 90210 or Gossip Girl. Even veteran Carla Gugino/Silk Spectre delivers her lines as if she might laugh out loud at them.

However, most of this is hardly the actors' faults. The majority of the characters have been developed so clumsily that it's evident director Zack Snyder assumes his audience is already familiar with them (so much so that a lot of bits are going to go completely over the general audience's heads). He therefore, has little need to develop them past their respective "origin" stories. But even these are week. The audience is never given the slightest reason why any of these characters decided to be vigilantes in the first place (except the aging Hollis Mason, who claims it made sense to get into costume once gangs of "pirates" and such did so), let alone why they did or did not do it for so long. It's therefore possible (and perhaps understandable) that most of the performances lacked if the actors were unsure of their character's motivation; it's no coincidence that the aforementioned exceptional performances belonged to actors playing the most fleshed out characters.

But even this "fleshing out" was not done particularly well. The pacing of the story is incredibly awkward. At times, exposition can be stretched along several minutes, only to be interrupted by largely random, over the top fight scenes which  downplay the relevance of whatever reason the characters are fighting.

This is not to say the film does not have its redeeming qualities! It does have a lot going for it. For example, it's shot very well. The camera always seems to be in just the right place; only in a couple of slow-motion bits does it seem contrived. Otherwise, each shot flows beautifully.

Secondly, the music is amazing! This film stretches over several decades, and the soundtrack perfectly captures the zeitgeist of each one (I'm seriously considering picking up the album for being such a great compilation). It lends humour, dread, and often sadness at all the appropriate scenes.

Lastly, the opening credits of the film is one of the most brilliant opening sequences I've ever seen. As much of the story takes place in an alternate history of America, the credits sort of "catch you up" on the vigilante phenomenon of this parallel United States. Weird though it may sound, it's almost like walking through a museum of natural history, and looking at exhibits of man in different eras. Only these are superheroes and heroines, first saving America then being condemned by it. This is truly one of the best parts of the film, and it actually captures much of the film's message.

For all it's efforts, Snyder's Watchmen doesn't really do anything new, as either a film in general or a superhero film. Perhaps it works as a parody of the genre, but Miller's The Spiritmovie beat it to that punch last December (even if it was less successful). Even the ending (without spoiling anything) is similar to that of The Dark Knight. Even with those redeeming aspects working for the film, I don't see it pulling into the realm of "cinematic art."  And I highly doubt it will be half as influential as the work from which it is adapted.

Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?

Back to Blogging

I've been a bit absent from blogging lately. The week before last, I had probably the worst cold of my life that didn't turn into the flu or bronchitis. It pretty much laid me out flat. I came home from work early everyday and pretty much just slept, watched TV, and tried to grade papers and such. By the beginning of this past week, I felt a little better but was still pretty exhausted. But I had to catch up on all the work I hadn't gotten done the week before! And I had to finish preparing for the Southwest Texas PCA/ACA Conference in Albuquerque that I'd submitted and been asked to present a paper on post-9/11 paranoia in War of the Worlds and Cloverfield at. So there wasn't much time for blogging.

But I'm back home now, feeling better, and am mostly caught up on all the work I need to do (though I probably won't fully catch up until Spring Break in a couple of weeks). But since my only recent posts have been pretty much lazy collaborations of ideas, I thought I'd preview some of my upcoming (or at least planned posts). First off, this whole conference presentation experience was really something different for me, and I want to write about both the experience and the presentation (actually, I've already written about the experience for La Mecha but that won't come out until Friday).

Also, with Watchmen coming out Friday, and my wife and I are heading to the midnight showing, I'm sure I'll have some choice thoughts about the film--I'm going in expecting to be disappointed but really hoping I'm amazed. I've also, in a previous post, touched on not being sure how I feel about the commercialization of the film. Now, I'm sure how I feel about, and I think I have some pretty good reasons.

I'm also planning on finally getting to review X-Men: Magneto Testament!

Lastly, I've also got some other ideas swimming around, but those aren't quite concrete enough to put down just yet. Still, I'm glad to be back to blogging. It's the best way for me to get my ideas down. In any event, look for more posts in the coming days.