Jackson's Journal

Frequent writing about music, movies, comics, games, books, or whatever else I happen to be consuming. Mostly for my own writing practice, updated every other day, Follows back from @sadpeate

[oldjepperpack]

A Study in Marvel Ep. 1: Howard The Duck - No Nerds Allowed!

In a new series from superstar podcast maker Jackson McMurray, Jackson slogs through every marvel movie ever made, one by one. Even the shitty ones. Especial...

[gonebynow]

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[oldjepperpack]

The Incredibles 2

In 2018 the superhero genre is bananas, we all know this. Love it or not, and God knows I do, between 4 major studios pumping out big-name comic book adaptations we can get between 5 and 8 every year from just Marvel and DC properties alone. We need the Incredibles. We need something genuinely different, something wholly unique to cut through it and put things in perspective like The Incredibles did in 2004. I was beyond excited, if there was ever a time for this movie it was now. I was dismayed to discover, however, that The Incredibles 2 is first and foremost a superhero movie. There’s nothing really wrong with it on its own, It’s colorful, it’s got great action setpieces, fun new characters, a handful of solid jokes, and some above average character work. That’s all great, those are the things that made The Avengers such a great time, I have no problem with these things on principle. But where the Incredibles was so contradictory in its storytelling, Incredibles 2 does almost precisely the same thing that superhero cinema has been doing now since 2008.

Okay, let’s back up and talk about the Incredibles.

In 2004 we were in the midst of the first wave of superhero movies. X-Men had been successful for a few years already, Spider-Man broke box office records, and Batman, Daredevil, Ghost Rider, Hulk, Hellboy, and the Fantastic Four were all either in theaters or soon going to be. This was before superhero movies were, well, good. The Incredibles was a direct response to this, an inherently contrarian statement where the colorful, action-packed, and over-the-top, superhero world had consequences. Incredbles wasn’t really any of the things that defined superhero movies at the time. It was restrained, it was grounded, and it was honestly pretty drab, visually; It told stories of superheroes who had to face direct consequences for their actions, facing real-world problems along with their comic book ones. It dealt first and foremost with family drama before any action could take place. It’s a brilliant movie, it’s tight, well-paced, and has genius ways of dealing with exposition, and somehow manages to get through its entire runtime without ever being goofy or pandering to a children’s audience. These are the things that make The Incredibles great, and the sequel has, well,  none of it.

Okay maybe that’s not quite fair. There are glimpses of what the movie should have been in the scenes between Bob and the kids, between bob and helen early on, but the main conflict is completely unrelated. It makes the character studies and genuine family conflicts secondary, a side-plot to whatever Katherine Keener’s evil plot was I don’t even remember. Bob being home on his own and in over his head and Violet being bitter and embarrassed about being a superhero should have been what the movie was about, period.  There was a glimpse of something truly incredible in the scene in which Bob is talking to Helen on the phone after her first mission. It’s a hugely complex and fascinating character-driven scene that feels grounded and real and, to me, it’s the high point of the movie, but also a galvanizing one, it puts the rest of the movie in such stark contrast that I couldn’t help but be upset with everything that came after.

Also I didn’t have any smooth way to work into this but the scene where Jack Jack gets into a fight with a cartoon raccoon made me want to be dead.

Incredibles 2 had something. There were some ingots of pure gold in this one for sure, but they were so deeply encased in what amounts to standard blockbuster superhero fare that it’s hard to be excited about it. It’s a competently produced, even above-average action movie on its own, but it all but completely fails as a sequel to the Incredibles. If this were Marvel’s new Fantastic Four film I would have loved it, just totally eaten it up, but The Incredibles is about so much more than spectacle and action setpieces and cartoon animal-based slapstick humor and a villain that makes just enough sense to not ruin the movie. As an Incredibles movie, hell, even as just a Pixar movie, it’s missing a core emotional arc and it fills the void with something that looks good and goes down smooth.

[oldjepperpack]

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Solo is honestly a very odd movie. There’s not a lot being said about it because, well, there’s really not that much to say. In a post-star wars world it’s hard to imagine a Star Wars movie that just falls flat, that doesn’t break box office records and immediately become the only thing anybody wants to talk about. It’s just like... Honestly it would have been unthinkable to me two months ago. I want to blame it mostly on the lack of marketing, it feels like Disney spent so much money basically reshooting the whole movie they decided to pretty much skip that part of production, figuring that Star Wars would market itself. But on top of that it was also just a pretty lackluster movie that told a story that nobody really was asking to hear. It wasn’t too bad though, it didn’t make a splash in a negative way either, so it just kind of came and went, drowned out by this year’s underwhelming summer blockbuster season.

Here’s the thing: it’s really not bad. We all know it could have been worse, we all know it could have been so much worse, so it’s hard to be too disappointed. It’s a charming and well-paced story, and even though it never really does anything too exciting it still goes down pretty smooth. The performances stand out here, the imitative and the original alike. Paul Bettany’s character is a real highlight, he’s got an incredible command of his scenes and every time I started to wander it was him that sucked me back in. Ehrenreich and Glover both do a wonderful job channeling the actors that came before them, and uh, yeah I guess everyone else did okay too.

It’s just like... I don’t even know. It’s hard to even criticize, it’s so completely inoffensive and easy. There’s definitely a weirder, funnier, more exciting movie hidden beneath this easygoing Ron Howard one. Word on the street is that Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s vision didn’t just not mesh with Disney’s vision, but was genuinely not working, and made the production a nightmare, and that’s such a disappointment to me. There are glimpses of a Lord/Miller joint every once in a while, just tiny winks of offbeat individualism in this thoroughly Star Wars movie that make it a little bit bittersweet.

It’s alright. Let’s be real here, it’s hard to complain. We’ve all been through the worst of it, so even a 6/10 movie seems pretty exciting when we know what the alternative feels like.

[oldjepperpack]

Marvel #1’s roundup Pt. 1

Marvel comics, whose shit has not been particularly together the last year or so, seems to have finally figured themselves out. Despite the easily criticizable nature of this, their second publishing reboot initiative this year, every new #1 in this relaunch project so far has featured ingenious creative teams and marvelous stories, and I’m absolutely blown away at this sudden and long overdue spike in quality. Here’s a run-down of the first few debuts from the last month or so:

Avengers by Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness

Full disclosure here, Avengers #1 didn’t particularly grab me, it was a combination of #2 and the free comic book day story that really sold me on this series. #1 was a little overlong and not particularly eventful, but set some pieces in motion for some gorgeous things that panned out in the second issue. Not only does this series feature one of the most interesting Avengers line-ups in memory, it also features spectacular (and I mean that word in its purest sense) action sequences and off-beat character interactions that would seem to be completely unique to this book. As far as I know, we’ve never seen Black Panther and Odin, nor Ghost Rider and She-hulk interact in any capacity before, and it’s oodles of fun to see these things play out. I’ve seen some lukewarm reception to Avengers #1 online since its release, and I just gotta say, I was a little disappointed too, but check out the fight between Robbie Reyes and Jennifer Walter in issue 2 before you give up completely, it’s gorgeous.

Venom by Donny Cates and Ryan Stegman

Without going into too much detail, Ryan Stegman on a Venom title is a match made in heaven. Despite Eddie Brock being, in my opinion, the most uninteresting character in the whole Marvel canon Donny Cates manages to define the story of this series not by Eddie’s black-and-white “I only kill criminals” relationship with morality as many other venom titles have, but by the character of the symbiote itself instead. It deals much with a secret history of not only the Venom symbiote but other symbiotes like him both in the United States and in Asgard of all places in a fascinating juxtaposition. This is a run very much informed by Rick Remender’s run of Venom (read: the best run of Venom), and I’m supremely excited to see where this goes as a lifelong fan.

Black Panther by Ta-Nehisi Coates and Daniel Acuña

This is something I’ve already written about, but this semi-fresh team’s debut issue is magic. It’s somehow kinetic, challenging, insightful, and just plain beautiful all at once. It’s economical in its storytelling and cuts right to the point of things without much padding, unlike Coates’ earlier Panther work, and feels like him really leaning into the medium and genre for the first time, and doing it in a frankly masterful way. Definitely my new book favorite so far.

Doctor Strange by Mark Waid and Jesus Saiz

Mark Waid is a writer who is uniquely intentional about his approach to each story he writes. Doctor Strange is a slow burn by design, it’s wordy and narration-heavy, making it take a little bit longer to chew through than a lot of the other books in this post. It’s a fascinating story told almost entirely from the outside, with the writer’s narration being our main inlet to the action, and it somehow combines dramatic old-English wordsmithery with some genuine character moments that make this book especially fascinating. In addition, I wasn’t a huge fan of Saiz’s work on Steve Rogers, but damn if that guy can’t draw some eldritch horrors. Inspired choice of artist.

Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing and Joe Bennett

Al Ewing’s take on Hulk in this series is absolutely brilliant. Hulk is a character that people typically desperately want to see just for the action. He’s exciting, he’s muscley, and he’ll fuck shit up in a way that not many heroes in the Marvel pantheon will, but Ewing makes a decision in this first issue and flips things around. This is the first series in a long while that makes you afraid of the Hulk as a reader, makes you dread Bruce Banner’s transformation, and fear for the safety of the innocent bystanders around him. This is a horror story first and foremost, and you can feel it in Bennett’s art, it’s dark and any action in the issue happens completely off-screen. If you’re a digital comics reader please, please make an exception for this particular issue. I don’t want to shame those people or insinuate that physical stuff is somehow better because digital comics are not only much more affordable, but much more accessible, and I know not everybody can always get out to a store, but Joe Bennett makes incredible use of the comic book medium in some hugely creative ways, and the story just absolutely will not have the same punch in digital format. I don’t want to spoil it for new readers, but there’s a couple of specific pages in this issue that are completely and totally arresting, and I can’t overemphasize how worth it the trip to your comic book store will be.

I’m hoping to post Pt. 2 this same time next week with bits about Ant-Man and the Wasp, Deadpool, Thor, Sentry, and Cloak and Dagger, plus some future entries on some further-out comics at a much later date. I’m hugely excited about all these comics and I you can check them out if you haven’t, these are all top-tier works from top-tier creative professionals, and I’m just blown away by the quality of some of these fresh series.

[oldjepperpack]

Megaman Legacy Collection

(long post with no pictures you’ve been warned)

I never knew much about megaman until I picked up this same legacy collection on a whim for the PS4. I found it on sale, took it home and sat down with it for an hour or so, and while I was very much impressed with it, it just wasn’t the kind of game that held my attention sitting down at a console. It was just too difficult and I found myself getting frustrated after not too long. I played it on and off for a while, and even though I was shocked at how smooth and easy to pick up it was for an NES game, I was never able to make my way through any of the games presented to conclusion. This switch release got me excited because it would be easier to pick up and put down, and maybe with that little bit of distance, I’d be able to keep my cool and muscle through Megaman 2 at least. It turns out I was able to keep my cool for another reason too.

In what is, I’ve gathered, a not un-controversial move, Capcom have added a new feature exclusive to the Switch version wherein you can turn back time and try tricky spots in hard levels as many times as needed to succeed. I’ve got a complicated relationship with this idea.

It raises some very interesting questions about difficulty in video games. How hard is too hard? Where does the line exist between difficult and frustrating? Why do hard games need to be toned down for a modern release?

To me, the key difference is context. In the 80’s when the NES Megaman titles were first being released, the average household had only one video game console and about 3 to 5 video games. There wasn’t much competition for your attention on the gaming front, so games could afford to be esoteric or overly difficult because not only were they aimed and marketed towards kids with oodles of free time, but because there weren’t many, if any, other video games in your house to play. When you’re completely enraptured by the very idea of being in control of this little guy on the TV, what else even matters? It’s not like you’re gonna stop playing video games. So, as a result, you spent hours and hours perfecting the skills necessary to beat your favorite games, finding secrets by sheer chance and brute force and memorizing every nook and cranny. The difference in the modern day is that if you start to get frustrated by a video game you can just play something else, or else just get something done because you’re more likely an adult with responsibilities. Video games in the modern era need to be able to hook you quickly and keep you hooked or else you’ll find something else to do, and a game being too hard or too frustrating is a great way to lose somebody.

It’s almost hard for me to come out as anti-rewind button, because I’ve seen a lot of people thinking that’s a very elitist,“You actually have to be pretty smart to understand Rick and Morty” kind of thing to say, but I stand by it. My problem is not with the decrease in difficulty, in fact I’m all for it. I can’t spend 6 hours playing Megaman every day after I get home from 5th grade, throw me a bone here. I’m against the rewind button because it’s a poorly-implemented and clumsy way to reduce difficulty.

The rewind button doesn’t reduce the difficulty, it practically eliminates it. You can rewind for as long as you want as many times as you want, through game overs and even menu screens. It’s completely unrestricted and playing through a game, even one as fiendishly difficult as Megaman 3, with nigh omnipotence at your fingertips greatly diminishes the experience of a platformer like this. It’s still not exactly breezy, but it still takes absolutely no practice to get through any difficult level. It completely robs you of the feeling of learning and progressing in the game.

“Jackson, you hypocrite douchebag,” you may say, “why not just have some self-control and not use the feature?” Because I think having the rewind button is still better than not having it, but there are other, even simpler solutions that would be much better. The rewind button allows you to experience the wonderful and charming levels and enemies without putting them behind a paywall where the cost is hours and hours of practice. It’s like taking a fun tour of Megaman without actually having to be any good at it. I think even something as simple as giving you unlimited lives would be a more elegant solution to this difficulty problem. You still have to toil through every section of every level in real time but without the threat of a frustrating game over screen. You could have two modes, a standard mode where you have unlimited lives and maybe a slightly more restricted rewind, and a hard mode, which is just the original game. Hell, even just giving you a finite amount of rewind would probably fix the problem pretty well.

In the end these games are charming and creative enough that even when they’re nerfed so thoroughly they’re still wildly enjoyable, but I think a little more finesse and a little more choice in your game experience would go a long way with collections like these. The Legacy Collection is wonderful and the Megaman games are some of the only NES titles that still feel playable and genuinely fun in the modern era, but I can’t help but feel like the rewind function is a half-measure and a missed opportunity.

[oldjepperpack]

Game Night

I was interested in this movie from the first trailer, but then again I always am with movies like this, and I’m usually disappointed. While watching the trailer in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think “yeah okay, but you also wanted to go see The House and Fist Fight last year so...” I’m always hopeful with studio comedies like this, and it’s often misplaced, but when one like this comes along and proves that it’s a category of film that doesn’t have to be based on TV shows from the 80′s in order to be successful, it makes me excited for whatever shitty movie is coming out next month all over again.

Game Night is not perfect, but it’s so refreshing as a comedy that it’s really hard for me to care. The actors all have great chemistry, the jokes feel like they were written by a professional rather than just made up on the spot by the actors, and to me most importantly it was visually interesting and supremely well-directed. Typically the directorial mission statement for comedy movies is “Go to the set and if someone is saying something funny then point the camera at them,” but this movie feels choreographed in the best possible way. It’s planned, the camera is just as important a player in a scene as the actors, and it’s visually dynamic both colorfully and compositionally. That’s the thing that makes this movie feel special more than anything else, is the planning involved, it doesn’t feel slapped together or made up on the spot, it took real, human, premeditated thought to produce.

And on top of all of that it’s damn funny.  It straddles the line of not being low-brow and not being too high-brow either very expertly, and the result is a movie that feels guilt-free in a lot of ways. You can tell your friends you really like it without feeling like having to explain yourself. It’s not full of nudity, there’s absolutely no diarrhea content, it’s not weirdly trying to appeal to a stoner demographic in a half-assed way, it’s just witty and fun in the purest possible way.

On the negative side though, just because it’s fun and intelligent and broadly appealing doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Not every joke lands precisely the way it's meant too, and sometimes the running gags overstay their welcome a little bit. It’s got some character beats that don’t really do anything to enhance the movie, they feel oddly obligatory, and frankly I think we could have just gone without. It’s just slightly clumsy, but it sticks its landings most of the time, and there are plenty of landings to stick so it all works out in its favor in the end.

Game Night is just a breath of fresh air, and very cool surprise in the wholly sub-par year of movies we’ve been having. It’s no masterpiece but it’s a great movie for a night off and wonderfully funny choice for a large group. It’s broadly appealing but never offensive to the viewer, and it’s intelligent and well-put-together even by non-comedy standards.

[oldjepperpack]

01 January (Inciting Incident)- Jackson McMurray

Track one on my album Copyright Do Not Steal Band Camp: https://jacksonmcmurray.bandcamp.com/album/copyright-do-not-steal Cover by Anna Maguire: https://www....

I’ve got an album! I made it all by myself and I’m very proud of it, check it out on Youtube, Bandcamp, and soundcloud!

Album cover made by @tanfasticanna

[oldjepperpack]

Black Panther #1 (173?)

Marvel’s seemingly constant stream of relaunches and rebranding has been a pretty hot-button issue in Marvel comics’ readership the last few years. I’ve never much minded it, the way I look at it it’s like seasons on a television network. Every fall Marvel goes through and starts some new shit, finishes off some stuff that was coming to an end, and engineers a jumping on point for the things that are continuing as they were. I think it makes comic books more accessible to new readers and discourages writers from padding out their comics with too much fluff. But even I was skeptical when Marvel’s Fresh Start initiative was announced an unprecedented 5 months after the most recent re-launch. It seemed like Marvel’s frenzied attempt at course correction after losing many writers and a lot of readership in the last year or so, and now that we’re in the thick of it I can confirm that that’s precisely the case. There was a twist to my expectations though, which was that it’s actually awesome, and so far all of their relaunched titles seem exciting and creatively unique. Avengers is action-packed and has a refreshing superhero team, Venom is a fascinating re-imagining of the history of the symbiote, and the Free Comic Book Day issues of Nick Spencer’s Amazing Spider-Man and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Captain America look extremely promising.

The one I want to talk about in particular right now though is Ta-Nehisi Coates and Daniel Acuña’s new Black Panther #1, which came out yesterday.

Here’s the premise: In the ancient past a troop of Wakandan citizens set up a colony on the outer edges of the solar system. They were eventually lost in space and cut all ties with the Wakandan motherland. In the following years, unbeknownst to the earthbound citizens, Wakandans set up an intergalactic empire by conquering world after world and building a civilization on the backs of slave laborers.

Black Panther #1 starts in media res, as an enslaved T’challa wrestles his way out of servitude in the mines of the aforementioned empire. There’s a lot of ambiguity and not a lot is very much spelled out in this particular issue, but the message is clear: our Wakanda’s in deep shit. There’s a special kind of dynamicity to the action sequences in this issue coming from Daniel Acuña, an artist I’ve praised on this blog before and probably will again, who worked on Sam Wilson and Uncanny Avengers previously and never ceases to impress me. The story is told so much with action and so little with words that I couldn’t help but associate it with the first issue of Waid and Samnee’s Black Widow, a comic book issue that I personally regard as one of the greatest of all time.

This is a great jumping on point if, like me, you’ve found Coates’ run previously to be a touch dull. typically his story has been marked by a lot of Wakandan politics, a lot of dense dialogue, and while the action sequences are often pretty to look at, they’re sparse. This issue finally feels like Coates shaking off his novelist background and fully embracing the visual nature of a comic book as a storytelling vehicle. It’s just as interesting as anything he’s put out before, it brings up a lot of fascinating questions about imperialism in a really creative way and without being heavy-handed, and it’s viscerally exciting and stunning to look at. It’s really got it all, and I’m so excited to track this story over the next few months.

[draconian62]

Doctor Strange #390

[zdarsky-deactivated20200105]

oh hey I got to jam with Donny in this week’s DOCTOR STRANGE, his final issue of the title. The whole series has been great, so getting to be a part of it was crazy fun!

[oldjepperpack]

Moon

I watched this movie on Netflix, which honestly, is how this movie was meant to be seen. Moon is maybe the perfect movie for streaming because it’s slightly obscure without being low quality, it’s intellectual without being too challenging, engaging, but you can still check your phone without getting lost, it’s short, it’s got a clickable premise, and it’s all-in-all really a pretty solid movie. It’s the ideal for sitting down after work and putting something on that won’t eat up too much of your evening, and that makes you feel smart while watching it and cool for having seen it afterward. It’s perfectly digestible and recommendable as an “underrated movie,” and that’s all praise from me.

Moon is a movie that’s hard to find fault in, it’s got a great performance from Sam Rockwell, it doesn’t drag hardly at all, it’s got a fun script and a solid set, and it’s got an internal logic that’s consistent and followable. Shooting a whole movie wherein the same actor has to talk to himself and making it feel believable and natural is a huge achievement, especially when there’s such a makeup discrepancy between the two characters, but just due to the law of large numbers there are some slight slip-ups here and there. Every once in a while the two Sam Rockwells will talk over each other in a slightly awkward way, and they try to pass it off as naturalistic dialogue, but really you can tell they probably just fucked up the timing a little bit.

Solid movie. It’s on Netflix, so give it a shot, as I said before it’s easy to watch and perfectly bite-sized as an entertainment experience. Honestly, there’s not much more to say about it. In my opinion it’s a masterpiece in the zeitgeist of casual filmgoing and I think that’s a really commendable achievement. It’s refreshing to see a small-budget movie that’s not trying to convince me of something or teach me a lesson, it’s just a good story that’s worth telling and worth watching.

[oldjepperpack]

Deadpool 2

So I know my blog has been 100% Marvel stuff for the last few weeks, but this should be my last one for the next little bit.

So it’s going to sound like I didn’t like this movie, because I have a lot of critiques to get off my chest, but I really want to stress that I did. It delivered on the promises of irreverent humor, fun characters, and brutal action that the first outing made, and overall made for a whale of a time at the movies, but it’s still mostly forgettable, and ultimately doesn’t live up to the original in a lot of very specific ways.

Deadpool, to me, was a great and refreshing superhero movie for 3 reasons, all of which were absent in the sequel.

First of all, Deadpool 1 was short, simple, and succinct in an era where superhero movies are getting longer, more complicated, and more overcrowded by the year. Deadpool was lean and easy to follow, at the most liberal of estimates it had 8 substantial characters, and the plot was simple and linear with an easy-to-follow structure that didn’t require too much from the viewer. Deadpool 2 is still not as complex as the likes of Infinity War or Days of Future Past, but it’s definitely not as straightforward as its predecessor. It took the original cast and piled on character after character, while also holding onto characters that didn’t necessarily need to make a reappearance. Like let’s be honest, I love NSTW and Blind Al as much as the next guy, but were either of them really crucial to the experience of that movie?

Pulling from the previous idea, Deadpool 1 went out of its way to subvert the tropes of the superhero genre in really quantifiable ways. Superhero movies are long. Deadpool was short. Superhero movies have a lot of characters and feature big names from the comic book source material. Deadpool only included 2 characters I had ever heard of from my own comic book experience, and the rest were either completely original or else deep cuts that you didn’t need to be familiar with going in. Superhero movies like to tackle complicated issues in ham-fisted ways, Deadpool was content with a straightforward revenge story. So really, when you’ve got a Deadpool movie with a stacked superhero cast that uses mutants as a stand-in for an oppressed minority group and clocks in at longer than 2 hours, what’s the difference between that and an X-Men Movie?

Deadpool was a masterclass in blending comedy and tragedy, it juggled serious stakes and emotional weight with a non-stop stream of gags and an irreverent attitude more skillfully than any other movie I’ve ever seen. Deadpool 2 doesn’t pull this off nearly as well. It feels less like a sliding scale and more like an on/off switch. When something intense would happen all jokes would cease and they would play sad music until they decided it was time for funny again. This is more of a quibble of execution than a divergence in the whole spirit of the movie, but it’s still substantial, and it’s one of the biggest things that keeps this movie from really sharing the same real estate as the original.

As well as all that, I was also just excited to have Terry Crews and Bill Skarsgard onboard a Marvel movie. I know that was kind of the gag, to set you up and knock you down like that, but it’s the kind of gag that’s really only funny if it’s not happening to you. Killing their characters so nonchalantly was a weirdly transgressive move on behalf of the movie, as if they wanted to punish me for being excited about well-known actors playing beloved characters. It’s like I was sitting on the floor playing with my toys, having a great time, and then Fox and Ryan Reynolds just came through and kicked them all over and tried to tell me how funny it was that they did that.

At the end of the day though that’s all quibbles because as I said in the beginning, it was just a riot. I could pick it apart all day, and construct logical arguments to explain to anyone who will hear why it wasn’t as good as the original, but it will never change the fact that I was laughing and cheering right along with everyone else in the theater. It’s an absolute blast of a movie as long as you can tolerate the Rick and Morty crowd proving to everyone that they got the references by laughing the loudest.

[oldjepperpack]

Avengers: Infinity War

((SPOILERS))

Usually, when I say I’ve seen a movie multiple times in theaters, it’s more of a gauge of the people around me’s interest in it than my own. Typically it means that the people around me invited me to see it after my initial viewing and I tagged along. I saw Infinity War on opening night with my sister, and I’ve gone back two times since all on my own, not because I wanted to hang out with my friends, not because my family still needed to see it, but because I really just wanted to.

It took me three viewings to really gather my thoughts about this movie, and I’m going to start with the flaws to get it out of the way.

This movie is pretty explicitly designed as a first-viewing experience. Any repeat viewings will never ever live up to the initial event, when the whole movie is an adrenaline ride built on not knowing how things are going to turn out. This could be said for almost all movies I suppose, but this movie especially so, knowing precisely how it turns out ends up kind of draining the blood from some of the earlier fight scenes. When you’re not viscerally afraid for the safety of anyone and everyone you’ve grown so attached to over the last ten years,  some of the fights in this one start to feel a little long.

Coming from this though is my greatest compliment for the film: On first viewing Avengers: Infinity War is a completely incomparable movie experience. Not only is it truly the unprecedented crossover event it was advertised as, It’s an unprecedented crossover event that makes you genuinely fear for everything and everyone you loved about the disparate parts that make it up. Killing Loki and Heimdall in the very first scene of this movie is the precise thing that makes it work. It’s the one moment that defines the entire experience because it sends a clear message: “We’re not fucking around.” From that scene forward nothing and no one is safe, and the emotional stakes are suddenly blown sky-high.

A lot of blockbuster movies have problems with this, and it almost always either comes from assuredness that the person in danger will survive or ambivalence as to whether they do or not. If a movie’s called Black Panther, Black Panther’s not going to be killed in the first hour, so really the action stakes are just naturally pretty low. Movies like Black Panther have a lot of ways to work around this though, making lesser characters the butt of attacks more often, or making the consequences of the battle be more than just the well-being of the combatants for example. Infinity War works around this in a lot of ways, much of which is more on behalf of the marketing team that the filmmakers, but it’s just as important. First of all, it has no singular protagonist. There is no one character whose death would completely halt the conflict of this movie, so by nature of the story everyone is in some way expendable without grinding the movie to a halt. In addition to this, the film doesn’t have to set up emotional stakes, we carry them with us into the theater. The heavy lifting has already been done in regards to attachment, so the Russos don’t have to worry about it, they can just hit the ground running. There’s already at least one full movie of character development behind every character in this movie, which is something no other movie or franchise has ever really been able to pull off before, and when you’re already familiar and invested in so many characters just the sheer number of emotional connection points is enough to get your blood pumping in any action sequence. I will never ever forget the fear and anxiety present in that first opening night screening I saw on a Thursday night, people holding their breath when Peter pointed his blaster at Gamora, people cheering when Steve approached from the shadows to save Vision and Wanda, people gasping audibly all around me when Thanos ran a hunk of Tony’s armor through his stomach, so so sure that he was done for.

I want to add as well that I was worried that this movie being set so much in space and juggling so many characters would mean that the Russos would have to tone down their keen eye for action that made Winter Soldier and Civil War so exciting to watch, and this was not the case at all. The Russos’ action is so grounded and kinetic in all three of their Marvel outings and I think it’s just wonderful, and they also seem very committed to long shots that let you see everything that’s happening instead of too many jumpy cuts. It really stood out to me right at the beginning where Thanos and Hulk get into a physical altercation on a ruined spaceship, maybe the ultimate setup for a throwaway, muddy action sequence, but what happened instead was a well-choreographed single shot fist fight that made sense and was easy and fun to follow. I honestly could not be happier with the Russo Brothers and their ability to really hold on to their directorial voice even in a movie like this that could so easily become just like every other blockbuster.

Honestly, I could talk about this movie forever, but I’ll cap it off here. It’s really a triumph of a movie, and I think this is going to be Empire Strikes Back for my generation for a lot of reasons. It’s so tightly constructed, so beautiful to look at, so emotionally effective, so funny, and so balls-to-the-wall spectacular that I just can’t imagine a movie ever feeling like a bigger deal than this. Long live the MCU and long live the Russo Brothers.

[joequesada]

Today Marks a Historic Day In The World of Comics.

Not only does the newest issue of Iron Man commemorates 600 issues of ol’ Shell Head, more importantly it celebrates the incredible eighteen plus year career of Brian Michael Bendis at Marvel. 

Yes, this is his finally Marvel Comics story for the foreseeable future and while it would be very easy for me feel sad today, instead what I feel is an incredible sense of awe and pride. For nearly two decades Brian has given Marvel fans his heart, blood and soul and that’s manifested itself in some of the greatest Marvel stories told of this generation. 

This of course isn’t the end for Brian as he moves on from us to our distinguished competition, but it does mark the end of an amazing era. That’s why I’d like to ask all of you within the sound of my social footprint, whether you buy Iron Man #600 or not (PLEASE buy Iron Man #600), if you were ever entertained, touched or inspired by any of Brian’s stories, to send a message of thanks his way. 

As for me, I’ll leave it at this: putting aside all the great stories, battling together in the trenches or that he made me I look like a much better Editor In Chief than I ever really was, I will always cherish of friendship and how much we accomplished in that time. Thanks for everything Brian from myself, everyone at Marvel and True Believers everywhere! 

Love ya brutha!

xoxo

JQ

[oldjepperpack]

Avengers by Jonathan Hickman

You can probably tell that I’ve got a favorite era of Marvel comics. Maybe it’s just my own nostalgia since that was when I first started reading comics, but between 2012 and 2015 there was an abundance of incredible things on the shelves. Fraction and Aja on Hawkeye, Waid and Samnee on Daredevil, Slott and Allred on Silver Surfer, Felipe Smith and Tradd Moore on Ghost Rider, I could go on, but it just seemed like there was more worth reading at that time than at any other time in memory. During that time though there was one series that Marvel put front and center, one that pulled from the tumultuous arcs of many of Marvel’s other books, and charted a continuous narrative for the entire Marvel Universe, and that was Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers.

I’ll start by saying that this is not a breezy read. It’s grim, it’s dense, it’s long, and it requires a lot of concentration or it's easy to get lost since the details become so important as it moves along. All said and done we’re looking at 44 issues of Avengers, 33 issues of New Avengers, 6 issues of Infinity, and 9 issues of Secret Wars for a total of 92 issues of this story, which deserves the description of “sprawling epic” more than any other comic I’ve ever read.  It’s the comic that came to mind the most often while watching Infinity War because not only does it juggle a ridiculous amount of characters extremely effectively, but it also deals with impossibly heavy stakes and brutally difficult circumstances in ways that feel almost completely insurmountable. Hickman has a way of cutting to the core of characters by putting them in seemingly no-win scenarios and seeing the decisions they make when the entire universe is on the line.

In this story, the multiverse is dying one reality at a time. In an event called an Incursion two universes collide, with Earth being the point of impact. In these events a second Earth appears in the sky, falling towards our own, and if they collide both universes are completely destroyed. If either Earth is destroyed completely, then the incursion is halted, and both universes survive. The Illuminati, consisting originally of Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Stephen Strange, Black Bolt, Namor, and Reed Richards are alone tasked with keeping realities alive. It’s a brutal idea that deals with complicated moral questions in really creative ways, it makes your favorite characters reckon with the question of whether it’s right to destroy billions of lives to save a virtually infinite number.

It’s a great story that does a lot of legwork to re-introduce some cool characters into the Marvel canon that were previously considered outside of it, characters like Starbrand, Nightmask, and Hyperion who were originally exclusive to outside continuities get their own 616 identities in the first issues of this story. He puts the spotlight on some otherwise underrated characters as well, with Sunspot, Cannonball, and Manifold taking center stage from time to time, as well as laying the groundwork for bringing the Inhumans back into the spotlight again in the modern era.  It’s an arc with a wonderful cast of rotating artists including Steve Epting, Jerome Opeña, Valerio Schiti, and Esad Ribic just to name a few, and they each bring their own spin on this epic story while keeping the tone and direction consistent, something that is often hard to pull off.

Just a tremendous comic book, it’s one of the most gloriously complex yet tightly written stories ever to come out of Marvel, and it juggles so much so expertly that it’s sometimes hard to believe it was all written by one guy. Avengers is without a doubt a masterwork of modern comics and is a story that has been and I think will be felt in Marvel comics and movies for a long, long time going forward, and I think it’s a great bet for anyone who wants a sneak peek into some things that might start getting adapted on the big screen in the next few years.

[oldjepperpack]

Superior Spider-Man

So this series of posts is meant to be recommendations based on Infinity War Characters, and that point is arguable with this series, but I’m gonna dive into it anyway because it’s a wonderful series that was one of the comics that got me into Marvel back in high school.

If you ask me a great comic book run doesn’t drag on forever. It’s got a specific character arc in mind that takes place over somewhere between 20 and 50 issues over a couple of years. Dan Slott seems to disagree though since he’s been the sole writer for Amazing Spider-Man for 8 years, and a sporadic contributor for another 2 before that, if there was ever a comic book run that seemed to drag on forever, it’s this one. Dan Slott’s had some hits and some misses in my book, but his best story is this, which manages to insert a tight 20-50 issue character arc within a seemingly never-ending comic book series.

Peter Parker can feel played out sometimes. As of the beginning of this story, there were 700 issues worth of Amazing Spider-man, as well as hundreds more of Spectacular Spider-Man, Ultimate Spider-Man, Web of Spider-man, Spider-Man Unlimited and just plain ol’ Spider-Man, and I imagine writing a new canon story about Peter Parker must be tremendously daunting. Where can you take it from there? What side of Spider-Man hasn’t already been explored? Dan Slott took an approach on this arc that is pure genius, which is just to fuckin get rid of him. 

In the final days of his life, Otto Octavius designs a device capable of switching two people’s minds. In Amazing Spider-Man #700 Peter Parker dies, his mind trapped inside the failing body of Dr. Octopus while Otto lives on in Peter’s body. Superior Spider-Man tells us that we’ve been taking Peter for granted by showing us the disastrous consequences of someone else trying to do what he does. It’s always uniquely satisfying when a series takes a typically flat, one-dimensional, archetypal character, especially a villain, and really puts them under a spotlight. Seeing Otto Octavius try to navigate his way through the life of Peter Parker is fascinating and engrossing to read, it’s a comedy of errors, a surprisingly thoughtful character study, and a wonderful tragic hero story all wrapped into one. Slott somehow manages to take Doctor Octopus, perhaps one of the most ill-conceived of Stan Lee’s late 60′s ramblings, and make you really feel for him, make you start to see him as a real person, someone you deeply understand even if you hope for his downfall. 

Dan Slott delivers his truly best work on the Spider-Man franchise in this 31 issue series, and rotating artists Ryan Stegman, Giuseppe Camuncoli, and Humberto Ramos make the art as dynamic and exciting as the story is. Often funny, always tragic, and most of all just plain wonderful to read, this is one of the more affecting comic books that I’ve ever read and it’s something I’ll recommend to anyone who will listen.

[oldjepperpack]

Sam Wilson: Captain America

Next in my Infinity War-inspired comic book recommendations is a series that’s very important to me that I don’t think really got the attention it deserved while it was happening.

Nick Spencer’s run on Captain America was a controversial one for sure, and almost definitely by design. The only comic that got more news coverage in 2015 than his Sam Wilson #1 was his Steve Rogers #1, which kicked off the infamous HydraCap storyline. I’ll spare you all my full-throated defense of that story, which I truly believe to be one of the most intelligent and well-executed political satires in recent history, but whatever whatever I’ll move on. Sam Wilson is my favorite comic book run since Waid’s Daredevil came to a close the previous fall, it’s beautiful, it’s heartfelt, and it’s one of the deeper character studies in recent Marvel memory, and it’s so worth checking out.

One of the most powerful “Life Imitates Art” moment I’ve ever experienced was the month that Sam Wilson #1 hit shelves. In the story, Sam Wilson, still fresh in the Captain America costume, rescues some illegal Mexican immigrants from a predatory cult leader, thus in the eyes of the world taking a partisan political stance. In the context of the story, it results in a media shitstorm, a call for Sam Wilson to give the shield to someone else (someone white?) and stop being so political #notmycaptainamerica. As if on cue, real-world media outlets started covering this comic book, claiming that Captain America’s new supervillain nemesis was conservatives and that politics should stay out of comic books, like the good old days. I think Trevor Noah said it best when he said: “You know Captain America was punching Hitler because of his fascist policies, right?” There’s something so wonderful to me about people opposing a piece of art so strongly and so slipshodly, clearly only hearing about the piece, not actually experiencing it or themselves, that they end up perfectly illustrating the point the piece was meant to make. It’s what makes Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky’s Sex Criminals so fun to follow.

Captain America: Sam Wilson perfectly illustrates the stress and anxiety of trying to do the right thing in a world where nobody can seem to agree on what the right thing is. When some people are telling you that you’re doing great things while others are saying you’re part of the problem who do you listen to? It’s a story about deciding for yourself how to behave in a world where anyone can make their stance on your behavior known, about staying true to yourself in the face of complicated issues and making tough decisions and sticking with them. It’s an inspiring and deeply political story that feels real and captures the experience of existing in the social media era in a strikingly accurate way.

It’s still a Marvel comic at the end of the day though. It’s surprisingly funny when it wants to be and it’s got a great and well-defined cast of characters including Misty Knight, Rage, D-Man, and a new Falcon, a teenage Mexican immigrant named Joaquin Torres who is easily the most underrated new Marvel character in the last decade. It’s got action and some romance, all the fun stuff, but it’s got the real shit all mixed in. It’s a wonderful story that I think is going to stick with me for a long time.

I have to point out the beautiful art as well, Sam Wilson has a great rotating cast of artists including Paul Renaud, Angel Unzueta, and my personal favorite Daniel Acuña, who draws with a warm soft style that gives the series a very distinct vibe. Acuña is taking over artist duties on Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Black Panther this summer and I couldn’t be more excited about it.

Sam Wilson is a wonderful story for anyone who ever feels lost, confused, and tired of always having to pick a side. It’s beautiful, funny, thought-provoking, and exciting, everything you could ever ask for in a comic book. It’s one of my favorite comic arcs of all time, and I really hope it gets the attention it deserves looking back.