Vertigo’s Prince of Cats by Ron Wimberly flew under the radar a bit when it was released this fall, though I did see it on a few year-end “Best of 2012″ lists, and deservedly so. I had the pleasure of reading it recently, and it’s a shame the book didn’t get more attention. The premise is fantastic: It’s Romeo and Juliet set in Brooklyn in the 1980s with the Montagues and Capulets as rival gangs who duel with samurai swords, with Tybalt as the central character. Awesome, right?
Plus, the book is in iambic pentameter. But it’s not just duplicating the original Shakespearean text. There’s a lot of new stuff, with some very modernized tweaks of the play too. It’s quite cool. Also, it’s gorgeously drawn and the sword battles are fantastic and you should definitely check it out.
On top of it being a great book, there’s also a lot of Wonder Woman in it!! Juliet seems pretty into Wonder Woman. Early in the story, she tells Tybalt a joke she’d heard from Petruchio. It’s that classic dirty joke about Superman trying to have a quickie with a naked Wonder Woman, but he instead ends up buggering the Invisible Man who was actually having sex with Wonder Woman. It’s a dumb joke, but it’s a bit more fun in loose iambic pentameter:
…So Superman was exceedingly randy
and too lame to get any panty
so he took off and flew to see friends that
he knew but Batman and Robin weren’t handy.
Flying high his libido was ravin’
He saw Wond’r Woman naked sunbathin’
so he flew in and smashed then off he dashed
too fast to be caught misbehavin’.
Wonder Woman did politely inquire
What the hell did just transpire
The invisible man said, rubbing his can,
“I don’t know, but my ass is afire!”
Now, it’s been a while since I’ve read Romeo and Juliet, but I don’t think that was in the original play.
Later on, at a street party where everyone wears costumes, Romeo and Juliet meet for the first time. He dressed like a clown, but check out Juliet’s costume:
Wonder Woman again!! I like this Juliet. She’s got good taste.
Prince of Cats by Ron Wimberley is a great book if you love comics that are awesome, and then doubly great if you love random and fun Wonder Woman references. It just came out this fall, so look for it at your local comic shop or bookstore!!
Both inside and outside of comics, female superheroes don’t get a lot of attention. There are a lot of them, sure, but their numbers pale in comparison to male superheroes. They’re usually in team books, or are derivatives of established male heroes. Even Wonder Woman, the most famous female superhero, gets lost in the shuffle. Yeah, she stars in one book a month, but Batman stars in TEN. So it’s extremely refreshing to see two brand new superheroines co-starring in Kelly Thompson’s debut novel, The Girl Who Would Be King.
You probably know Kelly Thompson from somewhere on the internet. She writes for several sites, including the always insightful “She Has No Head!” column at Comic Book Resources, and this book was the result of a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign last year. Thompson spends a lot of time talking about other people’s female superheroes, which seems to have prepared her well for creating her own.
The Girl Who Would Be King is about two young women linked through their special abilities. Both orphans (one by accident and one by choice) with the same superpowers, the nature of their power shapes them each in different ways. Bonnie Braverman is stalwart and good, an agent of order, while Lola LeFever is troubled and evil, an agent of chaos. They are two sides of the same coin, and things quickly get out of hand when their paths cross.
I don’t want to spoil anything so I’ll spare you the details, but the book is absolutely bonkers. The Girl Who Would Be King is a young adult novel, but a REALLY dark one with some crazy turns. Thompson doesn’t hold back at all in depicting how super-strong, super-fast, near invulnerable beings could easily wreak havoc in the real world. The collateral damage is high, both materially and emotionally. Nothing and no one is safe, and Thompson keeps you perpetually on your toes. The story never goes where you think it’s going to; it’s always darker and more exciting than you’d expect.
Underneath all of the epic spectacle, though, is the story of two young women grappling with their destinies and trying to find where they fit in the world. Their powers, and the impulses that come with them, dictate their lives to a certain extent, and make it impossible to lead a normal life. But at the same time, their powers don’t render them powerless to destiny. Both Bonnie and Lola have to decide what to do with the cards they’ve been dealt, and that’s what really drives the story.
The book ends with an epilogue that is both unexpected and then, in retrospect, the only way it could end. Plus it sets up the next book, The God Killer, which is hopefully coming soon. Thompson has created interesting characters with a cool mythology, and I’m excited to see where it’s going next.
Yesterday, IGN announced that DC is launching a new digital series featuring notable comic book creators telling non-continuity (and non-New 52) stories about Superman. In the vein of their current Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, the new Adventures of Superman will come out weekly digitally and then be collected in comic book form a few weeks later as a regular monthly series.
This is an absolutely fantastic idea. Not only do we get back the red shorts Superman, we also get awesome creators telling their own stories. There are some great names attached already, including Giuseppe Camuncoli, Jeff Lemire, Michael Avon Oeming, Bruce Timm, and many more. Plus check out that Chris Samnee cover above!! Chris Samnee is drawing a story written by Jeff Parker, so that’s going to be great.
The only problem is that the opening two issues are written by Orson Scott Card and Aaron Johnston, with art by Chris Sprouse and Karl Story. I’ve got no problem with Johnston, and I quite enjoy Sprouse and Story, but Orson Scott Card is a bigot.
Card is best known as the writer of Ender’s Game, a science fiction novel that won all sorts of awards and is considered by some to be one of the best SF books of all time. However, his stance against homosexuality and gay marriage was at one point worrisomely militant (“those who flagrantly violate society’s regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society”) and hasn’t toned down all that much. He is vehemently opposed to gay marriage, and is a member of the board of directors for the National Organization for Marriage. He’s also one of those idiots that likes to frequently link homosexuality with rape, molestation, and pedophilia, despite such links being widely debunked by every reputable study. In short, he’s a bigot, and a vocal one.
Now, I’m not saying let’s go burn down Orson Scott Card’s house and throw all his books in the blaze. The man can say whatever he wants, as much as I may disagree with it. What I am saying is that he is a TERRIBLE choice for launching a new Superman book. Superman is the ultimate outsider, an alien from another world who lives in a place where the vast majority of people are not like him. Superman cares about the marginalized, and understands those who are different, whether they be confident in their difference or conflicted. He’s been there, and he gets it. Orson Scott Card does not.
Furthermore, as much as Ender’s Game gets a lot of praise, there are some substantive critiques of the book and it’s sequels in terms of it’s apologetic approach to genocide, and Nazism specifically. The ties between Ender and Hitler are rather blatant, and in trying to understand Ender and his motivations behind killing an entire species the book thus paints Hitler in a more sympathetic light. This is not to say that Card is a Nazi or an anti-semite (he’s just a homophobe), but rather that his most famous work examines how far we can push forgiveness and understanding through the guise of a Hitler analogue. This brings up several points:
Card strongly denies all of this, despite the VERY clear connections. He’s either being disengenuous or, as some suspect based on his lack of knowledge of his own book in its defense, he didn’t actually write it.
This type of narrative, trying to justify the actions of powerful, terrible men, is just so damn cliche. As Elaine Radford puts it, “our society already focuses too much on telling the powerless to forgive and forget.”
Superman’s Jewish roots are very well-known, and it just seems absolutely bizarre to have the man who wrote what is basically an apologia for Hitler now write Superman.
On the basis of Card’s anti-homosexuality bigotry alone, this is an awful choice by DC. In light of the problematic messages of his most famous work, it seems beyond ridiculous to have this man write Superman.
But this is DC Comics, and nothing is beyond ridiculous anymore. I’m very curious to know if they considered any of this when they chose him to launch the book. My bet is that they thought “OH!! Famous author!!” and saw that the Ender’s Game movie was coming out this year, and went with Card on star power alone.
Orson Scott Card is a terrible choice for Superman. Orson Scott Card is a terrible choice generally, really. I wouldn’t buy him on anything, and I can’t believe he’s launching this series. That being said, I’m very much looking forward to Adventures of Superman #3 and beyond. Unless DC goes and hires Fred Phelps for an arc.
Much like with my best of comics list, “things” is vague, but it’s a good way to look at everything at once. Plus this is a comics blog!! You don’t need my Top 10 of everything in the universe. So we’ll stick with the vague listing.
I liked a lot of things this year, but this list is the things I absolutely loved. Let’s get to it!!
10. J.K. Rowling
I read ALL of Harry Potter for the first time ever this year, in about three weeks, and it was absolutely spectacular. Reading Harry Potter for the first time was my favourite thing of 2012 that didn’t come out in 2012. But then, J.K. Rowling had a new book, The Casual Vacancy, written for adults and without a single wizard. It was really quite good, as well as impressively dark and depressing, and was the complete opposite of Harry Potter in almost every way. It takes guts to do something so different from the bestselling book franchise in the world, and skill to make small town politics as engrossing as the Tri-Wizard Tournament.
9. Elf on an Elk
The best of The Hobbit happened about five minutes in after Smaug took over the Lonely Mountain and the dwarves looked to the elf king, Thranduil, for assistance. Thranduil stared them down and then dismissively looked away, all while riding an elk with HUGE antlers. It was amazing, and lasted all of six seconds. It was so brief and majestic, I can’t even find a good picture of it online. It was the best, most random thing I saw all year.
8. Nate Silver
Obama winning the presidential election was great and all, but the best part of election night was watching the results come in and seeing that Nate Silver had called EVERY single state. Pundits on both sides had predicted 12 billion different outcomes, and the absolutely asinine media coverage of the campaign tried to make the race look like it was too close to call, but Nate Silver got it ALL right. With math. It was awesome. I sincerely hope that in four years, when the media tries to create ratings-boosting narratives instead of reporting facts, everyone ignores them and listens to the guy who’s actually using his brain.
7. Louie
Louis CK’s been killing it for the past few years now, and Louie remains one of the most enjoyable and fascinating TV shows on the air. It was weird to begin with, but each year he takes it further from traditional comedy and story structures and makes it more and more bizarre. It’s hilarious and surprisingly touching, and just amazingly cast. The young actresses that play his daughters are particularly excellent. You never know what’s going to happen when you tune in to Louie, and that’s what makes it great.
6. Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson
I’ve enjoyed G. Willow Wilson’s for years. Cairo was fantastic, and her recent Mystic mini-series at Marvel was super enjoyable. Her first novel, Alif the Unseen, combines Islamic mythology with modern technology, and the result is a fascinating and great read. I don’t know a lot about Islamic mythology, like djinns and such, so it was really interesting to be immersed in this world. And also useful to enter it through the modern computer hacking world, which I’ve got a better grasp on. Alif the Unseen is a unique and exciting novel, and I highly recommend it.
5. Sherlock
It’s a testament to how great Sherlock is that the two leads are so busy with other projects that the next season keeps getting delayed. Martin Freeman was busy with The Hobbit, while Benedict Cumberbatch is just in everything now. Cumberbatch gets most of the Sherlock love, but it’s the duo that makes the show so enjoyable. They just ARE Holmes and Watson, and their chemistry is perfect. That their cases are exciting is a bonus; I’d watch just to see the two of them sit around and chat.
4. Kate McKinnon on Saturday Night Live
As always, Saturday Night Live was hit and miss this year. There was also a lot of cast turnover, with some big names leaving the show. By far, my favourite new cast member is Kate McKinnon, who does great impressions (her Ann Romney was spectacular) and who starred in my absolute favourite sketch of the year. As the Spanish woman who infamously repainted Ecce Homo, McKinnon KILLED me with lines about Jesus’ “enormous round monkey face.” I could watch that bit on a loop forever.
3. Marvel’s The Avengers
I can’t recall ever having a better time at the movies than when I saw The Avengers. The action was crazy, the new cast members were great, and it perfectly brought together all of the existing Marvel movies while FINALLY making the Hulk work on the big screen. I’ve never heard a theatre of people erupt in laughter like they did when the Hulk picked up Loki and swung him around like a ragdoll. It was a fun, crazy movie that perfectly captured everything that’s great about superheroes.
2. HHhH by Laurent Binet
HHhH is a novel about the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, a top Nazi leader, during World War Two. Sort of. It’s half a novel, and half Laurent Binet’s ruminations on how you turn history into fiction and the various pitfalls that entails. Binet critiques other books and movies that tell the same story while saving the harshest critiques for himself, and wonders about how much we can actually know about historical events and how much is just speculation. It’s completely fascinating and engrossing, and serves as a brilliant lesson for how to approach history.
1. Happy Endings
There are a lot of great comedies on TV right now like Parks and Recreation, Archer, and Community, but I think the funniest show this year, and my favourite non-comic book thing of the year, is the criminally unwatched Happy Endings. This show is just wall to wall jokes, and you’ve got to watch it a few times to catch everything. It’s weirdly wonderful, and includes bits like Jane staging an elaborate Gallagher-esque watermelon smashing to amuse her dad, and Brad rediscovering his early 1990s love of ventriloquism with his stand-up comedian dummy, Sinbrad. It’s all SO ridiculously funny, and I laugh like crazy through every episode. It’s pure hilarity.
So there was some decent stuff in 2012, particularly of the funny and/or weird and/or fascinating variety. Hopefully we’ll get even more in 2013!!
First off, the Man of Steel trailer looked absolutely spectacular on the big screen!! All the chills and excitement I felt watching it online were magnified tenfold seeing it in a theater. I still have lots of reservations about Nolaning up Superman and having Zack Snyder direct it, but the trailer was amazing.
Second, I saw the 48 fps version so let’s talk about that now and deal with the movie on its own after. Peter Jackson shot The Hobbit at 48 frames per second instead of the standard 24, which gives you way more detail and a realistic feel. It was… odd. I don’t think it worked. Yeah, a lot of the scenes looked as real as I’ve ever seen a movie look, but that wasn’t exactly a good thing. It sometimes just looked like a guy standing outside in a wizard costume, and lacked the ambience and depth and feel that I was used to from the original trilogy. Plus, a lot of the movements felt jerky or sped up. There were occasional scenes where the detail was amazing and cool, and it’s certainly technology with a ton of potential, but it just didn’t work for me here. A lot of scenes just didn’t FEEL like being at the movies.
Now, the movie itself!! I liked it, but I didn’t love it. I’m a HUGE fan of the original trilogy, like ridiculously so. I’ve got nearly all of the action figures, I’ve seen the movies probably 30 or 40 times each, and when Fellowship of the Ring came out I ate untold numbers of Burger King kid’s meals to get all the toys. I love the books and I love the movies, and I was over the moon excited for The Hobbit. I enjoyed it, but it wasn’t great.
I think the main problem was that it wasn’t sure what it wanted to be. It was sort of like two movies jammed together. At times, it was broad and funny, but it also got pretty dark and violent too, with no real happy medium. For example, the dwarves were either being goofy and cartoonish or they were SUPER somber and decapitating goblins. There was so middle ground.
It felt like a conflict between design and execution. Some of the dwarves were clearly designed to look comical, and there were elaborate bits meant to be funny, like a weird dish stacking song number near the beginning. But then maybe they thought they were being too broad with it, so the fight scenes became more violent and everyone turned very moody. It’s like they set out to make something tonally different from Lord of the Rings but chickened out halfway through and decided to try to capture the original formula for success, and they over-corrected.
Lord of the Rings was very condensed while The Hobbit is stretched out, and the former worked much better than the latter. In trying to turn The Hobbit into a trilogy and seemingly trying to capture the vibe of the first trilogy, they lost what’s unique about The Hobbit. The stakes are so much lower and it’s mostly just a fun adventure, but the movie tries to make the dwarves quest to reclaim the Lonely Mountain as epic as the quest to destroy the ring of power. It’s just not. They played up the Sauron/Necromancer thing with mixed results. It could lead to something cool in later movies, but things felt a little muddled and inconsistent in this first one.
However, there was a lot that was great. Martin Freeman is PERFECT as Bilbo, and really made the movie. He saved some dodgy scenes, especially in the beginning, and I really missed him later on when he and the dwarves were separated. His scene with Gollum, who looked fantastic, was one of the highlights of the film, and his general fish out of water bewilderment was enjoyable the whole way through.
It was great to have Ian McKellen back as Gandalf again, and to see Elrond and Galadriel too. Elrond was more light-hearted this time, which was fun. The dwarves were well cast as well, but it’s hard to keep them all straight. Several of them got good character moments, though, and I think they were handled as well as 13 characters could be.
The style of the film picks up where the Lord of the Rings left off, and Jackson’s version of Middle Earth looks as amazing as ever. The costumes, locations, and sets were all gorgeous. And the score!! One of my absolute favourite things about the original trilogy is how each region and/or race has their own musical theme, and The Hobbit’s new dwarf theme fits in seamlessly with the existing musical style.
There were also lots of little moments that I loved. The absolute coolest moment in the movie was at the beginning when Smaug has taken over the Lonely Mountain and Thranduil stares down the dwarves, turns around, and leaves without helping WHILE RIDING AN ELK!! Elf on an elk!! It was so much fun. I can’t wait for more Thranduil in the next movie. Lee Pace was an inspired choice. Other great bits included:
Bret McKenzie of Flight of the Conchords back as an elf, but with lines this time.
Gandalf busting the dwarves out of the goblin town. It’s always fun when Gandalf throws it down.
It was a change from the book, but I liked Thorin doubting Bilbo and Bilbo proving himself. It gave the movie an arc that it needed.
The goblin king was weird and gross and fun.
I think they upped the role of the mountain giants from the book, but it looked pretty awesome. I enjoyed the massive rock giants’ battle immensely.
That one dwarf who’s super into chamomile tea. He was amusing.
All in all, I liked The Hobbit. While it had its problems and it wasn’t the mind-blowing opening that Fellowship of the Ring was, that’s a high bar to match. Sure, they could have cut a half hour and sorted out a more consistent tone and vision, but how can you not enjoy Martin Freeman tromping his way through Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth? The world he’s created is astounding, and it’s so much fun to see Bilbo Baggins explore it. Plus, elf on an elk!! I really hope he rides it in the Battle of Five Armies. So yeah, it was good but not great. I enjoyed it, and I’m definitely going to see it again.
Dudes, I saw this MENTIONED on Twitter. I had to go google it myself!! How is everyone not flipping about how awesome this is? The first pictures of Lee Pace as Thranduil are out and he’s SUPER bad ass!! I’m posting this as a public service announcement because there is a serious lack of excitement out there right now. I mean, let’s zoom in:
COME ON!! How great is this? Check out that crown. And that snazzy jacket. And the eyebrows!! Lee Pace has the most impressive eyebrows in the world, really. Thranduil is also really into rings apparently. He looks so cool!!!
To be fair, I may be biased because I LOVE Lee Pace. He’s Ned the pie maker!! Oh, Pushing Daisies… you left us too soon. But yeah, I think he looks awesome. I especially love the crown. It’s all woodsy and such, and a different style then what we’ve seen with Elrond and Galadriel, which is fun. I like that the Mirkwood elves have their own sort of thing going on.
Anyway, I can’t wait for The Hobbit!! All 47 parts of it. I don’t know whether Thranduil will show up in the first part, but at least now we know what he looks like, and he looks AWESOME. Show us Smaug next, please!!
I’m a couple months behind, I know, but I finally got around to reading Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson and I loved it. I’m a big fan of Wilson generally, but I was a little bit nervous because novels are a tricky game. I really enjoyed Cairo (one of the best graphic novels Vertigo’s published in the last few years) and Mystic, and her memoir The Butterfly Mosque was fascinating, but the jump from comics or non-fiction to novels can be hard. But it was great!!
Alif the Unseen is about a computer hacker who goes by the handle Alif. He lives in an unspecified, oppressive Middle Eastern country, and is in love with an upper class girl that he’ll never get to be with. When the man the girl is forced to marry turns out to be the head of the state’s internet security forces, things just go from bad to worse for Alif. But then some djinns show up and the book gets awesome and bizarre.
What I liked best about the book was the seamless blend of the real world and the book’s many mystical elements. Alif the Unseen is very much about life in a modern Middle Eastern state, from the omnipresence of Islam and Islamic law to how technology can be a safe haven in these states to gender relations to secret prisons to the Arab Spring and the current wave of revolutions. That’s all there, and well-presented. Apart from a short, mystical prelude, the book starts out very mundane (not in a boring way, in a Fables-like, non-mystical, “mundy” way) and is just about a broken-hearted computer hacker for a while, and through that we learn a lot about the modern Middle East.
Then the djinns show up!! And not just djinns… there are demons and secret books and entire cities hidden to human eyes. It’s a magical world with its own logic and rules, and Wilson intertwines this with the real world beautifully.
Plus, the djinns are super cool. I feel like I have a decent grasp on the basics of Islam (the Five Pillars and all of that), but I don’t know much at all about the intricacies of its wider mythology. Actually, all I know about it might be what I learned reading Cairo!! So it’s fun to learn about a whole new branch of mythology that has roots in the Quran but also has grown through other legends and stories. Islamic folklore is a big mythological blindspot for me, and I enjoyed being introduced to it.
I also really liked that not only is the strongest and bravest character in the book a woman, but Dina’s a woman who’s chosen to wear the niqab, the black veil. Lately debates have raged about veiling and whether or not it should be outlawed, and most of these conversations seemed to ignore the issue of choice for a woman herself. The decision to veil or not became her father or husband forcing her to wear it OR the state forcing her not to. Now, of course many women are forced to wear a veil who don’t want to, but there are also women who DO want to. Dina chooses to wear the niqab even against the wishes of her family because it means something to her, and she’s no weak-willed wallflower. Being devout to Islamic law and being a strong woman aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, and Dina was a great character who walked that line.
SIDENOTE: Veiling is a super complex issue, even if you agree that it should be a matter of choice for the woman. For example, sure a woman might choose to wear a veil, but is the religion and culture that encourages veiling so inherently patriarchal and oppressive to women that choosing to wear the veil is actually just participating in your own subjugation? And even if it is, I suppose you should have the freedom to so subjugate yourself, right? I don’t have any answers… I just very much appreciated how Wilson addressed the issue in the novel and made it Dina’s choice.
Along with all of the mythological fun and interesting characters, Alif the Unseen is an all around great read. It’s very exciting, with lots of twists and turns. Alif and Dina are on the lam for most of the book, running from both the state and demonic forces with the help of their kick ass djinn pals. Plus the hacking is quite cool!! I thought it might be tricky to make sitting at a desk writing code seem exciting, but it’s actually super interesting both in terms of the technology itself and then later how the technology meshes with the Alf Yeom, the secret book of the djinns. It’s all very fun, though sporadically dark and freaky, which I also enjoyed.
All in all, I thought it was a fantastic novel and I highly recommend it, along with pretty much everything else G. Willow Wilson has written. You can pick up Alif the Unseen at any decent bookstore… I live in Halifax, which isn’t so great with getting in new and different books sometimes, and all of our major stores have it, so yours probably do too. Go check it out!!
