Pirates!; Killer Seizure Robots!; Superman; MArvel Vs. DC; Matrix Explained; Hellboy; Optimus Rhyme 8/31/04

8/31/2004

Pirate King: I was reflecting on pirates. I love em. Give me pirates, robots, monkeys, and ninjas, and I'm all set. Someone else had this idea:
Robot Pirate Monkey. Long-time M+R readers will recall this site from last year, when we declared them a Wrongrobot's Wrong Site of the Week. Well, we're just waiting for ninjas to be represented and then we'll bow down to their mighty might. They already have the one two punch of more cohesive topical content, and the bonus addition of...pirates.

Speaking of Pirates, take a moment to read my review of Pirate Hunter (available in the index to the left) and then go buy it and read it and love it. I still do.

Oh, what the hell:

KING: Well, it's the top of the tide, and we must be off. Farewell, Frederic. When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them.

FREDERIC: I will! By the love I have for you, I swear it! Would that you could render this extermination unnecessary by accompanying me back to civilization!

KING: No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don't think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest. No, Frederic, I shall live and die a Pirate King.

SONG -- PIRATE KING

KING: Oh, better far to live and die
Under the brave black flag I fly,
Than play a sanctimonious part
With a pirate head and a pirate heart.
Away to the cheating world go you,
Where pirates all are well-to-do;
But I'll be true to the song I sing,
And live and die a Pirate King.
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
I am a Pirate King!

ALL: You are!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!

KING: And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.

ALL: It is!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!

KING: When I sally forth to seek my prey
I help myself in a royal way.
I sink a few more ships, it's true,
Than a well-bred monarch ought to do;
But many a king on a first-class throne,
If he wants to call his crown his own,
Must manage somehow to get through
More dirty work than ever I do,
For I am a Pirate King!
And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King!
I am a Pirate King!

ALL: You are!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!

KING: And it is, it is a glorious thing
To be a Pirate King.

ALL: It is!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!
Hurrah for the Pirate King!

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Killer!Seizure!Robots!: Speaking of, well, robots, this is the bestest link on the aforementioned spider-site: and yes, it's got epileptic seizure-inducements abounding, and yes, it's brightly colored, so don't do it during a staff meeting, and yes, it has riotous sound, so throw the headphones on, and low...
Killer! Seizure! Robots!

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[SOMEBODY's gonna need a muscle-suit!]

Superman: from CBR's Comic Reel, the most concise round-up of the latest Superman rumors:

" Mark Millar, rumor monger? The comics superstar wrote on his official website a bit of casting news that's almost heavenly: "My same good buddy has informed me that, as of last Thursday night, Mister Jim Caviezel is officially the new man of steel and what a perfect choice he is. Expect an announcement shortly. Also, this 'Superman Returns' thing was just for the press release. The movie itself is called 'SUPERMAN' (Reeve's was called 'SUPERMAN THE MOVIE') and it's starting everything from scratch. Brainiac. Krypton. Robots. Alien super-cities. There's so much we can do now that they couldn't in 78. I cannot WAIT for this."
Superman-V.com notes that two of Singer's "X-Men" cohorts, Louise Mingenbach and Newton Thomas Sigel have signed on as costume designer and director of photography respectively. They'll join Lawrence Hubbs as the art director. The site also contacted the "Batman Begins" production office to clarify whether or not Tom Welling is cameoing in the new "Batman" as rumors last week suggested. A publicist for the department said: 'As far as I know he isn't." Colossus himself, Daniel Cudmore ("X2"), auditioned for the Superman role in Vancouver. His rep confirmed the test for the six foot eight inch tall buff actor. Singer and producer Gil Adler were in Sydney last week scouting locations and checking out a group of stylish buildings, that our source believes may end up being the Daily Planet and Lexcorp Tower buildings."

:::

Borderline: a Brief History of Marvel Vs. DC: This entry comes from Phil Hall's entertaining reincarnated journal, Borderline, which is a blast... if you aren't reading it, you're silly and weird.

"I was at a Los Angeles party about ten years ago to this very month and in the company of some fine exponents of 1970s comics editing – Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, and Roy Thomas were all in attendance and they were joined by Don Glut, Mike Barr and a couple of other stalwarts of kitsch ‘70s classics (or in Barr’s case, comics about men who turn into women!). I was told about the first Marvel/DC crossover in 1976. Thomas and Wolfman told me that when the idea was first put forward, it was DC that was keen to cash in on the success of Spider-Man (which had usurped Superman in the monthly sales figures).

Logistics aside, the project was dogged with problems rarely reported. I was told that at one joint editorial meeting none of the senior Marvel people were taking it particularly seriously, severely pissing off the far more conservative DC people. Half the meeting was taken up with DC trying to curb Marvel’s silly Seventies attitudes – ironic considering both companies were responsible for some utterly stinky characters from that era.

I heard tales of pranks pulled on counterparts. Bogus scripts sent in, Mike Esposito (Ross Andru’s long-time inker and friend) copied Andru’s style and mocked up a page of questionable taste, which was sent through to Carmine Infantino (at DC) who apparently threatened to pull the plug on the whole team-up. At one point, although DC actually needed the deal more than Marvel, it was on the edge of complete collapse, with DC not talking to Marvel, but as one of the old-timers told me, “It was just a bit of fun. Marvel was about people turning up at the office in shorts and Hawaiian shirts, while at DC it was all suits and ties and ‘this is a serious business’. Funny though, it was a merry-go-round, all of us ended up working for each other anyway.”

The thing was Superman vs Spider-Man was a huge hit, prompting the companies to work with each other three more times over the next decade and the rivalry, which had always existed, was brought more to the front. Whenever a top Marvel artist defected to DC, or someone new and fresh was poached by Marvel, it brought back images of this feud between the two publishers – a feud that appeared to be humorous and good natured on the surface, but seemed to have a dark side, one which resonated with a genuine dislike.

During the 1980s and the first third of the 1990s, the rivalry barriers between the two companies dissolved, mainly down to the relationship between Marvel’s bright young head of marketing Lou Bank and DC’s erudite and dry Bob Wayne. It was a little like watching an old-time comedy duo, with Lou as the funny guy and Bob as the long-suffering sidekick. The thing was, as Lou said to me once, “You spend so long on the road with this guy, you might work for only competition in town, but the only constant you have for weeks on end is each other – you become friends and because we’re friends we work well together at these joint presentations.” It was clear that the two of them liked each other and for a while the relationship between Marvel and DC was better than it had ever been. The ‘Distinguished Competition’ and the young pretender worked harmoniously when the market was buoyant.

Then they spoiled it all by saying something stupid like, “let’s do another comic together”…

Amalgam Comics was the clincher in terms of all-time low working relationships. One of DC’s top people in Direct Sales told me that it was a joke from start to finish – and the joke was the same joke that was pulled 20 years earlier. DC was taking it all very seriously (it had to, yet again), while Marvel was treating the entire thing like a week away at Butlins. “They acted like assholes!” I was told. They treated deadlines with disdain, editors didn’t return calls, pages were left lying around the office, some artwork was returned with coffee rings on them asking for DC to clean the pages up and the joint editorial meetings turned into slanging matches between editors who had more interest in pissing competitions than sitting down and making a good comics event. Amalgam was something of a commercial hit, nonetheless, so the chances of the two working with each other again and again was increasingly likely.

So now we have a similar situation, except the dark side of the relationship is far more prominent than anything else. We now have a situation where the ‘off-screen’ relationship is so bad it has overtaken actual comics news in its importance.

I think it’s all hype!

Yeah, there may be no love lost between certain individuals at the two companies, but ‘all publicity is good publicity’ and nothing sticks in peoples’ minds better than a bitter argument and Joe Quesada knows this. Stan Lee once said, “I don’t care if they talk about nothing but comics as long as they’re talking about my comics” and that is an ethos Quesada has embraced with gusto. He knows how important it is to keep Marvel’s profile as high as possible in as many arenas as possible and if it means upsetting people to do it, so be it.

Last point – I feel sorry for Bob Wayne and his team at DC. In fact I feel quite sorry for DC in general. If you strip away all the personality from these two comics companies and just leave the product, then DC wins the battle by miles. It is a professionally run publishing house, with a system in place that has allowed it to produce effectively for a long time and with great diversity and experimentalism. The company doesn’t court controversy, it isn’t the DC way, and yet now, with circulations dwindling again and the threat of real change to the comics industry in the air, it might have to change."

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Matrix Explained Maybe: I've been reading Fling93's continuously evolving explanation on the Matrix films for several months. It's really kind of an earnest, rationale stab at rationalizing a franchise he didn't even particularly gushover in the first place, so for that alone, I'm impressed. Here at M+R we will rant for hours on bad movies, but we only actually spend about seventeed seconds, CUMULATIVELY, on what it all means. ANyway, just pop onto the Yahoo or IMDB movie message board forums to get a taste of the fracturing, chaos-theory-in-action petri dish that is the online movie fan community trying desperately to make sense of these films. It's understandable: after the promise of the first one, simplistic as it may have been to any viewers actually versed in Cyberpunk genre concepts, we all pretty much crossed our fingers and hoped that the sequels would both 'splain some of the real-deal conceits, and kick general ass. While Reloaded offered that fab chase scene and those seriously fly white dread twins, it confounded us with the inexplicably muddy CGI fight sequences, and opened up a chasm deep into voodoo-philosophy territory that was so inexcusably convoluted and yet naively enthusiastic about lofting entire paradigms from different contemporary religions it was like watching a guy in a liquor store smiling at the vendor while pocketing candy bars...in front of him... and Revolutions just felt like a can of smashed assholes to me: Aliens vs. Star Wars right? I mean, what, did I miss something? I am a robot after all.

Anyway, here's his latest update to his Unification Theory of the Matrix Movies:
Fling93- Explaining the Matrix

Oh, and make sure to read the comments at the bottom. One guy needs to, like, stop chewing on other people's cacti...

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[Young Hellboy Sketch from Unknown Artist, Not Related to Article Below]

Hellboy: here's a long lost interview in french and english, with Matt and Chad of Hellboy FX fame. Bad news: Jar-Jar Binks is evident. Good news: SO is a trailer for Zombies Attack! - a Cops/Reality show/undead horror click project of mysterious origin and questionable content that remains funny regardless of intention...

Cinegenre: HEllboy F/X

And for MORE Hellboy Imagery Not Related to Article Above...

Here's a bad Hellboy scratch build:


[note the bad case of "Crabes!" and the fat thighs]

And here's a good one.



:::



Best Band Name of the Week: Optimus Rhyme

These guys should be supported on the virtue of their name alone.
You can buy their album on CDBaby if you like the sample tracks on their home site.

CD Baby Review:



"The year was 2000. The Wackacons had invaded the Emerald City. Parties grew listless and nightclubs suffered greatly under the Wackacons' ever-growing influence. Repetitive loop manufacturers, lackluster DJs
and angst-filled metal pushers aligned with the Wackacons and quickly flourished in our once-great city.

It was later that year when fate brought five independently minded Autobeat technicians together. Instantly, their positronic brainpaths fused. Within weeks, laid-back progressive hiphop beats were mixed with brutally brain-teasing rhymes.

It is the primary objective of Optimus Rhyme to rid the world of Wackacon oppressors.

Optimus Rhyme blends live beats with interstellar rhymes creating a sound that can most closely be compared to the music of Deltron 3030 and Kool Keith. MCs Wheelie Cyberman and Broken English trade off rhymes which weave personal experiences into the fictitious lives and adventures of the AutoBeat robots. The lyrical and vocal skills of these master storytellers combine with Optimus Rhyme's live instrumentation (featuring guitar, bass, drums and a taste of turntables) to transport the listener to very different world, one which you will not want to leave."



So says...Wrongrobot!








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