Seven Soldiers of Victory (2005-2006)
by Grant Morrison, various artists
7 4-part mini-series and one 2-parter framing device
Sometimes minor or average pieces, when taken together to form something bigger, somehow can transcend the flaws in their singular form and make something grander. Sadly, for this mega-series, the opposite is true. I didn’t liked everything, Klarion, Frankenstein and Bulleteer were my favorites, while The Guardian, Shining Knight and Zatanna were average and Mister Miracle was awful, but on the whole the singular series were more interesting on their own than as pieces of a bigger puzzle. In truth, the revelation about what the Sheeda were or would be, was interesting, but the central concept of every one of the seven revamped superheroes taking part in the downfall of the Sheeda never worked in the end.
Another thing is, so far everything I’ve read by Morrison has more than just one layer, there always seems to be something more going on, from impenetrable but brilliant stuff like the Invisibles or the Filth to superhero fare like New X-Men. I always felt that Morrison’s stuff had more meaningful things to say than just what you see on the surface. And some tiny pieces of that are there in some of the mini-series. But overall, with the whole unifying structure a complete failure, there never emerges anything more meaningful. Which makes Seven Soldiers feel strangely hollow when seen as a whole.
Which isn’t to say it’s not entertaining, as I said the mini-series can be quite good on their own. Just don’t expect a big and grand finish, since the final chapter of Seven Soldiers is the least interesting thing of this whole mega-series.
Cosmic Odyssey (1992)
by Jim Starlin, Art by Mike Mignola
collects Cosmic Odyssey 1-4 (1988 )
These days, I generally hate crossovers in comics. What started out as a tool to strengthen continuity and to write big, epic stories involving as many characters of a shared universe as possible, has become the bane of the two big comic houses and the lesser ones as well, disrupting the ongoing stories of the monthly series and making big, stupid changes that actually do more harm than good. That’s not to say that they can be fun when done right.
Cosmic Odyssey is that, an early crossover that tells an epic story with some of the biggest guns of the DC Universe involved, yet one that is self-contained and told in four issues. Part of the appeal to me is that the all the art is done by Mike Mignola, who, along with Walter Simonson, another favorite of mine, started out with channeling Kirby but refined his style until it became completely his own. Kirby’s influence is not only felt in the art, the story takes many of his fourth world ideas and tells the story of the real nature of the anti-life equation and explains the origins of the New Gods.
If I remember right, Cosmic Odyssey is not completely canon anymore, but I never cared for such a thing. I create my own canon by reading the stories I like. It’s all fiction after all. But what a glorious creation. It’s pompous and downright stupid at times (why arrive the heroes always in the nick of time to stop the doomsday bombs or the whole concept of destroying the galaxy by destroying four solar systems is just hilariously bad), but also a non-stop action fest with convincing characters and a plot with some excellent twists and turns. When it comes down to it, it’s everything the title promises, an exhilarating cosmic adventure.
The Magnificent Kevin (2006)
by Garth Ennis, Art by Carlos Ezquerra
collects The Magnificent Kevin 1-5 (2005)
More of the same stuff. This time the Authority has been defeated by some really weird creature and only Kev seems to be able to help the last man standing, the Midnighter. In this series it becomes obvious to even the most dense reader that Garth isn’t interested at all in writing Authority superhero stuff, but rather trace the life of an SAS employee who realizes just how fucked up the life he is living is. This makes at times for an uneasy balance between the down to earth elements of Kev’s world and the craziness of the Authority’s world. All in all it’s a good read, but I think the inclusion of the superhero stuff weakens the series to some extend.
Nanboku Shounen Papuwa-kun (1994)
by Enix
fan-translated by F.H. . (Download Patch)
A conversion of a rather weird anime (if the strange characters that turn up are any indication) into a platformer. The game is rather nice: good controls, very varied and good looking stages, even if each stage is far too short and the mechanics are typical platformer fare. The early bosses are easily defeated, the later ones are a bit harder. I’ve come as far as some giant octopus, which I think is the final boss, but I can’t say for sure, as I haven’t found a way to beat him (if anyone knows how to do that I would be thankful for any tip). It’s nothing outstanding, far too short and despite quite good looking too generic to leave a bigger impression, but it’s good to pass some time and have fun.
Swamp Thing (1991)
This is the kind of series I watched as a kid on TV with overwhelming glee. These days there’s not so enthusiasm for that kind of entertainment left. Taking elements from the comic series but remixing it too look and feel a bit like Captain Planet, one of these worst animation series to ever have grazed television screens. Gone is the brooding and dark atmosphere of the comic, instead we get a Swamp Thing with a cheerful attitude, annoying sidekicks, a seriously dumbed down Arcane as a megalomaniac villain and his evil and stupid henchmen. All in all it’s quite dumb, the dialog is wooden and ridiculous, the characters are cardboard and the plots can be summarized in one-liners. Basically Arcane is trying to become immortal through various means and Swamp Thing has to stop him in every episode. Thankfully they only made five.
Eureka S2 (2007)
Not much has changed with season two of Eureka. The same basic structure, with a bit more emphasis on developing a bigger story arc about the ongoing events around the artifact and due to last season’s finish Henry’s obsession with Kim’s death. The rest is the same old same old. Carter has to solve a mystery involving superscience every week. I think Eureka, despite not a show I would really call good, has become something of a guilty pleasure for me. I find most bits involving science annoying, but I like the characters and the show entertains me. I just wish someone would make an Eureka-like show involving real science.
The Epic of Gilgamesh (2003)
translated by Andrew George
The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the first literary works of humankind preserved to this day, albeit in fragmented form. Looking at it with modern day sensibilities is not the smartest thing to do, the people who created and read or heard it thousands of years ago were different in so many ways to us today, that the right approach to this material would probably to study them and their culture, become a historian and try a translation of the original clay tablets yourself. Albeit, as I have not that much time or even the incentive, I’ll go the less smart way.
Reading this stuff, Gilgamesh comes of as a glory hound who goes off to kill some beast in a faraway forest for his own fame. His friend Enkidu is a whiner, who has much narrative potential, but all he does in life is follow Gilgamesh until it’s his time to die by degree of the gods. He becomes a whiner, after his death Gilgamesh becomes emo. That’s one way of reading it.
As I said, it’s a very fragmented text, even to this day. The book by Andrew George is as much about the epic as it’s about the work that went and still goes into reconstructing this old text and what the present situation is of this reconstruction. Parts are missing and each new part surfacing can shift the meaning of entire passages. What we see before us is incomplete, so every reading might miss important aspects. So far, the epic of Gilgamesh feels to me like a story skeleton that implies more than can be seen in the available text. It might be like what I said above or I might be completely off. Maybe there were good reasons for killing the ogre of the Cedar Forest. At times it feels like parts and a massive amount of detail is missing, in more than the obvious sense of missing fragments. The original titles of the epic, He who Saw the Deep and Surpassing All Other Kings, evoke images in my mind that the plain reconstructed text doesn’t do justice. Maybe what we have are just scribbled down stories of a much richer and expansive oral tradition that hasn’t survived.
So, while I wasn’t too enamored from the Gilgamesh epic, I’m still glad that so much work has been done to unearth one of the earliest stories and preserve it. Because storytelling and fiction grows from building on other stuff, taking elements from what came before and the most diverse these source are the better for all fiction. Maybe one day I’ll read a retelling or an influenced work by someone that blows my mind.
Dreamwaver’s Dilemma (1996)
by Lois McMaster Bujold
A neat collection of stories and essays by Lois McMaster Bujold that shows that she’s even good at the short form. There’s an excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiche, an excellent Miles Vorkosigan story and some other good pieces. There’s a unobtrusive, but warm humor in many of them, a kindness that pervades most of Bujold’s fiction. Even her non-fiction pieces give you the image of someone who enjoys life, enjoys writing and communicating with other people. She’s a writer who makes reading easy and fun.
This collection is also an image of Bujold’s growth as a writer. If you compare the last fiction piece in the collection, The Mountains of Mourning to the other stories, you can see how she has retained all the enjoyable elements of her earlier stories and yet has gained a depth previously unseen. Most writers seem to lose a certain lightness in their fiction when they try themselves on heavier topics. Bujold hasn’t, which might explain her great success.
Rating: 5/5
Reaper S1 (2007-2008)
I think part of why I enjoy Reaper so much is that does what I wanted from Dead Like Me, but didn’t got. Dead Like Me was about a girl that got herself killed and ended up as a grim reaper, escorting souls to their afterlife. I thought the show had so much possibilities, but as it went on, the supernatural aspect became downplayed more and more, as if the makers were embarrassed of those aspects. It became a mildly entertaining slice-of-life show that meandered aimlessly around until it was cut down. There were so many chances to build on the idea of the grim reapers, to built a complex and interesting mythology. Never happened.
Reaper on the other hand completely embraces its supernatural elements. The show is about a guy whose soul has been sold to the devil by his parents and who has to work for him as reaper, bringing back escaped souls. There are demons everywhere, the devil is a regular character and the souls that escape from hell are quite fantastic too.
I like the show because it takes one concept and explores it from every angle, building an ever more complex mythology in the process. It doesn’t try to be something else than what it is, which is light and fun entertainment most of the time. But when it needs to be it, can be quite serious, without losing all the elements that make it fun too. It’s one of those rare shows that can do both, comedy and drama, well, sometimes at the same time, by using its supernatural elements to the fullest instead of forgetting them.
Rating: 5/5
Eureka S1 (2006)
Eureka is about a small, secret town that is stuffed full of brilliant scientists who work at building at better tomorrow. While this is a neat concept, its also the main reason that on one level Eureka is a completely failure. There is so much you could do with such a high concept, but since obviously no one making this series cares about real science or has a clue what science actually is, all we get is comic book science and a show that follows a monster of the week formula, which monster substituted by some technological gizmo.
First and foremost, science and technology is used interchangeable. In reality they are not. Second, nothing made in Eureka seems partially useful for bettering the world. A show that would have dealt with some more realistic advances like future data storage devices or brain-driven prosthetics or a realistic depiction of nanotech (not the magic dust that turned up in one episode) could have been fascinating and still left room for interesting stories.
And yet, it’s still fun to watch. It’s not the show I wanted it to be, there was potential for it to be much more. But I like most of the characters and following them dealing with magic-science gizmos can be fun to watch.
Rating: 4/5
