Review - Strange: Beginnings & Endings

Strange: Beginnings & Endings
Written by J.M. Straczynski and Samm Barnes
Art by Brandon Peterson

Dr Stephen Strange is a curious character in the Marvel universe. Much loved, a useful cameo in stories concerning magic and counter-culture icon, yet unable to sustain his own series for substantial lengths of time. This mini-series is the latest attempt by Marvel to update him and make him more ‘palatable’ to the modern universe.

J.M. Straczynski is a big fan of Dr Strange, and is a celebrity in his own right, so was presumably given carte blanche to modify, make relevant and change aspects of this niche hero for the current Marvel world. With co-writer Barnes, he has set about redefining the position of the sorcerer supreme for the noughties.

Dr Strange is a cool character and I have enjoyed some of his own stories and his appearance in others in my time as a comic book fan. I have tried to read the classic Lee & Ditko stories but found them hard going, personally. (I hope that I don’t bring about the wrath of Neilalien by saying that, or he’ll destroy this blog with the massive powers at his disposal). I found the old stories very formulaic; Strange discovers a magical problem, a chase or extended fight occurs leading to Strange nearly being destroyed, only for him to win out in the end, sometimes bizarrely.

Take, for example, Strange Tales #122, where Nightmare has him trapped in the Nightmare World, and he is powerless in this form, only for him to win by hypnotising Nightmare into believing that the Gulgol, the one foe Nightmare cannot defeat, has entered his domain – how can a presumably astral projection hypnotise anything, let alone the master of the Nightmare World in his own dimension?

Some of the logic involved in those old stories can make me nutty, and I can’t stand reading more than one 8-page story at a time due to the presence of exclamation marks at the end of every sentence and the garish writing of Stan Lee. (I will state, however, that Ditko produces some very impressive work, which I think is where most of the love for Dr Strange heralds.)

Anyway, I’m digressing. Basically, I’m not an expert on Strange, so do not know the full extent to which this story veers away from the original. What I do know is that this is a very good modernising of Strange and I would love to see more stories set in this re-imagining.

The story sees Strange in Tibet as a medical student on an exchange programme, who meets an old man on a steep walk to a disused monastery after helping an orphan called Wong, who talks cryptically with him before suddenly vanishing. Strange vows to return to Tibet after graduating, only for him to become a plastic surgeon to the rich and famous and forget his promise. He has an accident while skiing at night, which destroys his hands. He becomes embittered as he tries to find someone to fix his hands, losing his money in the process, only to discover that Wong has become a specialist in alternative medicine, now living in New York. When he turns up late, he decides to go to a bar, where a woman called Clea, whom we have seen on the periphery of Strange’s life, rescues him from an attack by Walkers, out to kill him. She then takes him to meet The Ancient One, who believes that Strange is The One, the next Nexus, ‘the guardian at the gate between the worlds’. However, Strange doesn’t believe him …

The original Dr Strange stories weren’t really big on back story, which is an obsession in these continuity days, so this version sees an enriching of the fabric that makes up the origin story. The Ancient One, Wong, Clea, Mordo and Dormammu are integrated into the narrative chronicling of Strange assuming the mantle of ‘Master of Mystic Arts’ (as he is described in the blurb on the back of the trade paperback). This feels more cohesive for someone like myself who has limited dealings with the Strange mythos, but might cause offence to long-term fans, depending on how much has changed.

However, as a jumping on point for new readers, this book is accessible and enjoyable and gives a sense of the breadth of the world in which the character inhabits. The only problems I have with the story are the overly strong echoing of The Matrix (there is an old mentor, the Ancient One like Morpheus, using a talented female, Clea like Trinity, to search for the One, Strange like Neo, and initiating him into a world he didn’t know existed and refuses to acknowledge, but he is all powerful within once he accepts his gift) and the turning point for Strange, where he goes from cynic to believer – we might believe in the world already, being comic book fans, but the Strange character never makes the believable change into accepting it.

There are some nice lines throughout the book that elevates the yarn (Clea tells Strange: 'You won’t find any of them tattooed on my ass.') and the dialogue has a fun flow to it to counter some of the heavier parts, trying to explain the dilemmas behind becoming Sorcerer Supreme.

Brandon Peterson does a good job on art duties. A slightly different style to accentuate the panels of flashback, the detail in earlier pages to contrast the reality of the world with the surreality of the magical, to the use of the clock as motif while Strange is in hospital. There’s a nice use of splash pages in Chapter 4, where Clea is fighting an agent on one side of the page and when you turn over, she and the agent are in their magical forms but in the same poses so, if you hold it up to the light, you can see their normal aspects through the outlines. He’s not perfect, however; there is a lack of facial detail in characters when in medium or long shot, that makes them look like cartoons compared to the detailed linework of close-ups. Also, some transitions are awkward and the ‘camera’ doesn’t move around, giving a limited visual range, but not enough to detract from enjoying the story.

I normally wouldn’t have got this book if it hadn’t been for my girlfriend’s interest in Dr Strange. I’m glad I bought it now, as I enjoyed this reworking immensely and would be glad if Marvel would get their act together and sort out a Dr Strange ongoing series.

Grade: A-

Blame it on this comic

The Uncanny X-Men #201
'Duel'

Chris Claremont writes, Rick Leonardi guest pencils with inks by Whilce Portacio and letters by the inesteemable Tom Orzechowski. Ann Nocenti edits.

This is where it all started for me.

I don't know what made me go into the newsagent that day or pick up this book. It probably wasn't the cover – a man with eyebeams (eyebeams!) is trying to kill a defenceless black woman; how suspect an image is that? – or the line on the cover 'Who will lead them?', because it only made sense if you knew what was going on in the first place.

The cover says January and the inside says 1986 but comics had the date three months in advance, so this would have been November of 1985. You could still get comics in newsagents in the UK and they were only 30 pence. Those were the days, eh?

This wasn't the first comic I bought, however. I vaguely recall buying some Legion of Super Heroes when on holiday, figuring that you got more super heroes for your 30p if their was an entire legion of them. I was also buying 2000AD as well, which is practically a law in Britain but, even then, I preferred Grant Morrison's Zenith to the majority of the other stories. We also used to get comics bought for us by family friends to shut us up when they came round to visit, mostly DC oddities like The Adventures of the Outsiders.

One comic used to quieten us had a reprint of a black and white X-Men story by Dennis O'Neil and Neal Adams, where they saved the world from an alien invasion by the power of love. Which is incredibly stupid and a bit Star Trek (Is this the emotion you humans call … love?) but it stuck with me and popped to the forefront of my brain when I was scanning the racks, looking for something to spend the money earned from some stupid job like delivering newspapers.

Now, there was no magical reading event where I can remember with specific detail everything about this first dip into the world of mutants. But I did go out the next day and by The New Mutants #35 because I had seen them in the book and noticed that there was book with that title on the racks. And I never looked back. Claremont got his claws into my soul and I became a mutant junkie. I bought them from the newsagents each month, waiting for the next one to come out, not knowing when this would happen, completely absorbed. It would be a while before I was told the dirty secret of the comic book shop (Forbidden Planet, then a dingy shop, back when it was in Denmark Street, before it moved to New Oxford Street and then to Shaftesbury Avenue and became the huge shop it is now) so my collection wouldn't go crazy for a while. So I had to make do with what I had.

I read somewhere a lovely quote along the lines of 'The Golden Age of science fiction was when you were 12.' I think this applies here; comics were never so good as when you first discovered them. It's a great time, when you aren't concerned about the industry or writing a blog about them or finding out about women in refrigerators or which longtime DC character is being killed, raped or both. I thought I'd revisit that time by looking at the book which started me on it.

The basic story sees the X-Men come back after the events of issue 200, with Xavier with Lilandra in space and Magneto in charge of the school. Madelyne Pryor has given birth to a son with Cyclops (the child would eventually become Cable – does that make this his first appearance? Is this comic a collector's item? :) ) and a powerless Storm challenge Cyclops to a duel to determine the leadership of the X-Men.

Now, I'm not going to Dave's Long Box this book because (a) I'm nowhere near as good as Dave Campbell and (b) I'm far too emotionally attached to be able to assess it critically, but I thought I'd have a look at it, for old time's sake.

The first page is weird – there's a bunch of strange of looking people oohing and aahing over a baby; what the hell is going on here? What kind of splash page is that? This sort of thing wasn't exactly what I had been anticipating (and the issue itself doesn't exactly bristle with the four-colour action you would expect – I didn't realise that this was a breather issue, coming off the double-sized #200, the climax of a big storyline, which took me ages to finally get a hold of, but I digress …).

The second page shows people in colourful costumes standing around, and a blue furry creature with two fingers instead of four and a tail who teleports and tickles someone, before there's several pages of women talking about babies and 'emotional' stuff, ending with Cyclops carefully explaining about his eyes for people like me who had never read an issue before – no waiting for the trade then.

But page 6 and we're in space! Now that's more like it. There's a glowing woman flying in the void and there's a big green lizard with a space ferret on his shoulder. Cool. They're only talking but, still, they're in a space ship!

From space, the story turns to the Claremont trademark – the X-Men playing baseball! I've always thought this was weird, in hindsight; a group of people including an African goddess, a German circus performer, a Russian farmer and his sister, a Canadian secret agent and a Native American don't sound like the sort of people who would particularly care to play the rather dull sport that is baseball. But what do I know? Having seen a man turn into living steel in the middle of hitting a pitch into orbit, at least this isn't an ordinary game of baseball. (I have a soft spot for the odd, angular art of Rick Leonardi. There is a strange contradiction of slimness and long-limbedness with excessive musculature that is oddly appealing. From his unusual camera angles to the way he makes his characters stand, there is something distinctive that my lack of an art appreciation class disqualifies me from specifying. But I would look out for his art and still have the Marvel Comics Presents Colossus story drawn by Leonardi, who I always thought just 'got' Peter, and written by Nocenti.)

The plot advancing aspect is the leadership duel. However, it is the casual discovery of the New Mutants, already in the danger room that meant more to me. Kids with cool super powers, learning to be heroes? How great is that? It's not a crossover or anything special, just an aside to give you the integrated feel that Marvel books used to have (but I hadn't encountered at that time; this sense of connection to the Marvel universe, which would affect the storytelling of Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, was both cool and evil, as it caused me to buy more books that I didn't need but felt that I should …) It helps that I always thought the depiction of Sunspot's powers looked cool, with the little black specks around the silhouetted Bobby DaCosta, but that could be just me. Which is how I ended up back at the newsagent, buying The New Mutants #35, which had Sam Guthrie and his cool Cannonball visual effect. Ahh, nostalgasm …

Back to the point of the title of the comic. The fight itself didn't mean anything to me, not understanding the emotions behind it. Then again, the fighting has never been the big draw of superheroes; just seeing the mad, wonderful super powers being used was enough for me. But at least this fight is based on character and conflicting emotions. That's what gives it an impact. It was only by reading previous issues that I got the full depth of the story on Scott, a character I have always liked (and was glad that Grant Morrison did as well for his recent arc on the title).

The book finishes with a bit of Rachel Summers business which I had no understanding of at all (she's the daughter of Cyclops and Phoenix from an alternate future timeline that won't happen? WTF?). She was never a character I really found as engaging as Claremont did but I have a low tolerance for the whiny-but-powerful character – the last few seasons of Buffy suffered from that, with Buffy always bitching and moaning about everything that drove me crazy.

However, with this book I became an X-fan, particularly enjoying Chris Claremont's writing and love of stories. I even met him once, at a UKCAC, where he was signing. I was so star-struck, I mumbled something incoherent at him, stared at the ground, waited for him to sign my convention book and practically ran away in shame. Pathetic, I know, but I was young (or, at least, younger …)

Looking back, it's a little peculiar. There is nothing obviously special about this book that should start a love affair with comics. I think it is the small details that make it special. Kitty casually airwalking to her room. Scott looking away from the baby in the first page. Logan holding his nose when Kurt teleports. Rachel psilinking so that you can hear baby thoughts. The lettering of Orz (I love page 12 where Sam's 'love' for Kitty stepping in to save his project is done with hearts in the speech bubbles - do they do stuff like that anymore?) The word 'ZRAK' for the sound effect of Scott's eyebeams actually being drawn into the beams as they come out of his eyes. It might have been cranked out to meet the deadline, I don't know, but it didn't feel like it. There was something special about it all that had me hooked. I needed more.

I still need more, perhaps not as much as I did then, but a good creative team with believable characters in stories that resonate will always work their magic on me.

(Note: there were supposed to be more images with this post, but Blogger is playing silly buggers, so you'll just have to imagine …)
(Edit: Images are working again. Huzzah.)

Comics in my near and not-so-near future

Books I want this week:

Strangehaven #18
When was the last time this came out? Always a pleasure to see this appear on the New Comics List.

Jack Cross #2
I never watched 24, so the comparisons some have made mean nothing to me. Even if Erskine isn't at his best, the first issue was taut stuff, so looking forward to more.

Legion of Super-Heroes #10
Hopefully, Kitson is back on art duties, as we see what happens next in this interesting take on the LSH.

PvP #19
I've read the entirety of the online comics so this is my way of paying Mr. Kurtz back.

Daredevil #77
Bendis & Maleev have had a great run on DD and this last arc looks like it will be no different.

And now, a few comments on the solicitations by the big three companies for December.

Image try their best to be different and interesting but someone should have told them that the phone conversation thing was not funny. Really. Marc Silvestri wimps out on Hunter-Killer, with Eric Basaldua providing the interior pencils for issue 8. Wasn't this supposed to be his return to drawing regularly? Or perhaps I'm being too harsh. After 3 issues (has #1 come out yet?), V.I.C.E. is, apparently, already an 'ongoing hit series!', which I'm sure is news to the rest of the world. And I'll avoid the easy joke in Best of Michael Turner being a very small book. Damn.

DC has lost a lot of the goodwill I felt for it with most things seemingly crossing over with Infinitely Long Build Up and Continuity Clean Up, which makes me gloss over most of the books on the list. Apart from Seven Soldiers, the one thing that brought a smile to my face was the title of the Batgirl TP, Kicking Assassins, but I guess that depends on your sense of humour. Although it smacks of cashing in, Crisis on Multiple Earths: The Team-Ups Vol. 1 TP will give those people, like myself, the opportunity to read some interesting old comics. The same can be said for Showcase Presents: Justice League of America Vol. 1 TP, with the innate suggestion that there is more to come. The only addition to my usual suspects will be the last issue of Tom Strong, as Alan Moore and Chris Sprouse come back to finish things off in style. I haven't been reading it since Moore left, because that's the kind of chap I am, so I'm looking forward to the finale. Question – why are the TPs for Vimanarama and We3 $12.99 (more than the individual issues) when Seaguy is $9.95? Am I being dense but aren't the point of TPs to be cheaper than the comics, more accessible to the non-comic reading public?

Marvel have fostered very little goodwill with me and their strategy of late (throw enough shit at the wall and see what sticks) makes going through their solicitations very wearisome. It must be the silly season with all these 'Specials' to drain people's bank accounts, and do we really need six more What Ifs? The art of Leinil Francis Yu will probably be wasted on Ultimate Wolverine v Hulk, which seems a shame for his first project under exclusive contract. Kevin Smith sees fit to finish off his Spider-Man series after being constantly guilted into it by Joe Quesada, who only gives him slack because of the media attention he can bring to a project. The curiosity value of two Punisher one-shots make for the most interesting Marvel projects; Andy Diggle does the Xmas comedy, while Garth Ennis does Pre-Pubescent Punisher, which seems utterly bizarre but should be a good read nonetheless.

I don't know; it's enough to make someone write an article about how they are bored with comic book NEWS and then see the internet crack in half when people misinterpret what was written …

So, to finish more positively, here are my favourite covers from each of the three companies. James Jean was a strong contender, but these won for the way they stood out from the rest or, in the case of Punisher/Bullseye, because it made me laugh.

Charting trends

Need to know what's hip and what's not? Can't be bothered to keep up with all those news sites and blogs? Then you've come to the right place. Your one-stop, handy chart to keep you up to date on what's going up and what's going down:
From Clandestine Critic - caring about crap so you don't have to...

Film review - Revolver

I don't even know where to start. I am constantly editing my thoughts on this film as there is probably not enough space to discuss it. The question is, how did Guy Ritchie end up making this film? And what went wrong?

Revolver, as a title, doesn't seem to refer to anything in the film, except perhaps how much Ritchie wants to put you in a spin with such a deliberately confusing film. Having made two films that were enjoyed by critics and the public alike (and myself), he made the disaster that was Swept Away, which just allowed people to get the knives out and have a go. Presumably, Guy is in a state; where does his career go now? He can't keep on making the same film but he has to return to safer ground to keep his career moving. However, he doesn't want to repeat himself. He has to do something grander to be seen as an artist, as well as a purveyor of enjoyable cinema. Hence, Revolver.

In Revolver, I think Ritchie has tried to make an existential gangster film. And failed. This is not his crime. Where he has gone wrong is making a film people can't enjoy on any level. Some unspecified length into the film (I can't really tell; it feels so much longer than it is because it is so bad, that time seems to lose all meaning), there is another one of the interminable and repetitive black screens with one of the mottoes that are reiterated throughout the film, something Ritchie believes makes his film have more weight. There is no music and the screen fades to black. I then heard a soft snoring noise. I would have sworn that someone behind me had fallen asleep and I wouldn't have blamed them.

I'll try and synopsise the film even though it doesn't want to be. Jason Statham is Jake Green, who has done 7 years solitary confinement for not grassing out the 'Mr. Big' (in this case, Mr. Dorothy Macha, played by Ray Liotta). He has come out of prison with a desire to gain revenge on Macha but also with a formula for winning cons, developed by the prisoners on either side of his cell, one a master chess player, the other a master con-man. After humiliating Macha into the loss of a large amount of money at his casino on the basis of the toss of a card chip, Macha orders him killed. However, he is rescued by two loan sharks, played by Vincent Pastore and Andre Benjamin, who then state they will protect him in return for all the vast amount of money that he has earned with the formula in the two years since his release. Then, to complicate matters further, these two, seemingly all-knowing loan sharks, steal from Macha as he is doing business with the ultimate 'Mr. Big', Mr. Gold, meaning he has to do business with the competition, only for the loan sharks to steal from both of them at the same time, escalating the problems. All the while, they are ordering around Jake Green and having bizarre conversations with him concerning the Rules of the Game, which are stated at the beginning of the film, repeated in dialogue throughout the film, as well as flashed up on the screen and presumably important moments, in case you had forgotten them or lost the will to live.

Reading other critics, I get the feeling that some were annoyed because they didn't get the film. I didn't have that feeling, as hopefully my attempted synopsis indicates, but I was annoyed by the feeling that I wasted two hours of my life. Bearing in mind, I saw this film for free with an other from the Evening Standard. The film is slow and dull a lot of the time, as Ritchie believes this will make him more serious than his previous tricksy cutting. There is very little humour to relieve the starched feel to the story and characters. Obviously offended that people thought he could only do pop videos, Ritchie doesn't use the perfectly appropriate tracks to score this film as before but uses a lot of classical music because he thinks it makes it more serious. Only it makes everything quite leaden.

This film isn't a contender for the worst film of all time because, although it is rubbish, not everything about it is crap. Ritchie does know how to make a glossy visual when he wants to. For example, there is a good scene where the oddball, balding, bespectacled assassin (played by Mark Strong) is walking through the old building, hunting down the gang out to kill him, that is put together expertly. The acting isn't appalling either. Andre acquits himself well, if not anything special, and Statham plays himself, although he does do well in the core scene in the elevator near the end that is at the crux of what Ritchie thinks the film is about, but mostly makes people want to snigger at its unintended silliness. Ray Liotta is on form but will probably look back on this and regret it, especially when Ritchie has him standing around in leopard skin briefs, in normal lighting and ultraviolet (for topping up the tan).

What is a mess (and made the viewing audience dislike it so intensely) is the story itself. There is a fine line between telling enough of a story for the audience to think for themselves and deliberate obscurity masquerading as intelligent storytelling. It seems that Ritchie had been watching The Usual Suspects, House of Games and his old films and then decided to write this one based on them but decided to leave out some essentials, like a point for the film in the first place. Not only are you left wondering what it was all for (the film ends rather abruptly, fading to black and some music, with no credits, as if everyone involved was embarrassed by the preceding two hours and only the cinema turning on their house lights to let you know that the torture was over) but you also feel cheated of an entertaining cinematic experience, which is the worse offence. Where Ritchie goes from now is anybody's guess but I hope he stops going round in circles, which is perhaps where the film title comes from in the first place.

Rating: D