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All-New All-Different Comics Reviews (June 15th, 2016)

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From worst to best of what I read, with books that I wasn’t willing to pay money for.

Lazarus #22

I may be putting this at the bottom for my own failings as opposed to the book’s, given that I discovered an entire plotline I’d apparently completely failed to understand in the recap pages. (I’d been parsing the scenes of the second Forever as flashbacks for some reason.) Anyway, this is a fine issue of Lazarus, but I have to admit, there’s not a lot that’s fresh in this book at this point, and not only on the level of “what happens all feels pretty standard and expected,” but on the level of “it is difficult to even imagine how the book could surprise me.” Which I suppose is an odd question to ask, as it wouldn’t be a surprise, but all the same, this just isn’t a book I’ve got much excitement for right now and is becoming a bit of a loyalty read.

Spider-Gwen #9

I have a much easier time with Spider-Gwen when she’s in conversation with the rest of the Marvel Universe, as opposed to when she’s doing stories in her own bubble, and started this book mildly annoyed and a bit underwhelmed by it and wondering if I was going to keep going. I ended the book much more enthused and interested, after some good character notes. There’s a mild impatience for the silly and obviously temporary “Gwen only has a finite number of doses of power left” status quo to go away so that the book can get back to its actual premise – it’s exactly the sort of plot superhero comics are slightly crap at. But for the most part, fun superheroics.

Mercury Heat #10

Missed that this came out and just snagged it. A very “gets the job done” sort of issue, the job being a pseudo-conclusion that gives way to a nice big cliffhanger that will presumably close out this arc. There’s not a lot new to introduce, though, and most of the intriguing questions left by previous issues have resolved into answers that, while perfectly fine and good storytelling, are, as is often the case, somewhat less interesting than the open-ended questions. So nothing wrong with it, but not an exceptionally gripping issue either.

Klaus #6

The Morrisonia really hits in full, with the sort of symbolism-infused vision quest you expect from Morrison. On the one hand this is a bit sad, the book seeming to give up most of what made it feel fresh and innovative in favor of predictability. On the other hand, this book has been wheel-spinning, and even if Morrison is leaning hard on old favorites here, it’s still providing the book with a new momentum that it hasn’t really had since issue #2 or so, making me at least a bit interested in the conclusion, even as it’s pretty clear how everything is going to shake out. This remains Morrison’s best work in a couple years, for better and for worse.…

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E3 2016: Nintendo Treehouse Live

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Almost every year, I like to digitally “attend” the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. Since I started blogging regularly six years ago, I’ve tried to provide readers some written coverage of the show’s numerous press conferences for the benefit of anyone interested in my raw thoughts on the week of product reveals and announcements. This year, I’m pleased to be able to bring my E3 coverage, such as it is, to Eruditorum Press. The following is a part of a series I’m writing on E3 2016, looking at the press conferences and events of three major players in the industry: Bethesda Softworks, Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo.
 
I was happy to learn Nintendo were the last on the docket for the big media events this week. Nintendo were the first company to usher in the modern video game industry as we know it, and Nintendo remain to this day one of the only publishers/development houses in the AAA space who retain a link to the artistic philosophy and sense of creative energy that at least seemed to guide the medium at one time. No matter what else happens at E3, I can always count on Nintendo to give me at least one thing to leave the week feeling charmed and inspired by. The one show I deliberately skipped in recent history out of my abject disgust for the direction the industry has taken, E3 2014, was also the year I sorely regret skipping because Nintendo dominated the show with a suite of bombshell reveals that reminded everyone what video games actually should be about and once stood for. Among them was Hyrule Warriors, Koei Tecmo’s Dynasty Warriors spinoff set in the Legend of Zelda universe, which earlier this year spawned what’s become my single favourite game in recent memory and current obsession: Hyrule Warriors Legends. Legends joins an incredibly select group of games that have left a lasting, personally meaningful impression on me and that will stay with me forever. The Elder Scrolls V is on that list, and the rest are mostly other Nintendo games.
 
Also introduced at that fateful E3 event in 2014 was the game we now know as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which was the big topic du jour. Nintendo didn’t hold a traditional press conference this year, and in fact seem to have stopped doing so entirely. Unlike a traditional stage show or the “Nintendo Direct” digital events the company has relied on to communicate with their fans recently (which Nintendo seem to be slowly phasing out following the tragic death of former president Satoru Iwata last year), Nintendo this time opted to present what they called a “Nintendo Treehouse Live”, an all-day series of scripted interviews and gameplay demos with a succession of PR representatives and developers. And when they said all day, they meant all day: The stream started at 12 PM my time and didn’t stop until around 6 or 7 at night.
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You’re a Beautiful Woman, Probably

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I’ve been thinking about doing another essay on monstering in Doctor Who, especially with regards to Amy Pond, but it occurs to me that this would really benefit in hindsight of a full survey on the show’s conception of beauty.  Which is to say, I think the process of “monstering” is part and parcel of the modern show’s aesthetics, and what better way to explore those aesthetics than to come to some sort of understanding of the place where the Beautiful stands within it?  Well, there’s probably several other better ways, but when it comes to Amy Pond, I think “beauty” isn’t a bad place to start.  Not because Karen Gillan is classically beautiful, but because the character she plays actually articulates a philosophy of beauty that I find altogether more interesting:

WARRIOR AMY: All those boys chasing me, but it was only ever Rory. Why was that?
AMY: You know when sometimes you meet someone so beautiful, and then you actually talk to them, and five minutes later they’re as dull as a brick? Then there’s other people, and you meet them and think, “Not bad, they’re okay.” And then you get to know them, and their face just sort of becomes them, like their personality’s written all over it. And they just turn into something so beautiful.
BOTH: Rory’s the most beautiful man I’ve ever met.

Which kind of gets where I’m going with this idea, namely that we have multiple conceptions of beauty, which we can roughly bifurcate into those predicated on appearances, and those predicated on interiority.  This is actually a false dichotomy, which we’ll get to later on, but for now this represents the axis I want to explore, especially when we get to the Revival.  Anyways, what I’ve done is look for instances of the word “beautiful” and its variants within the show’s dialogue.  This was done using a blanket google site search on Chrissie’s Doctor Who transcripts at chakoteya.com, coupled with individual searches of all the remaining Revival episodes, plus City of Death, for as it turns out google site search isn’t as thorough as I’d hoped.  As such, I’ve haven’t thoroughly surveyed all the Classic stories, so if you remember any pertinent lines from something not covered here, please say so in the comments.

Now obviously this isn’t going to fully capture what the show actually finds beautiful. Dialogue, after all, is more reflective of the characters speaking it, and as such certainly can’t represent the implied authors of Doctor Who. Still, for a character to conceive of something as being beautiful, the implied authors have to conceive of it too, even if they might disagree.  Which is to say, there’s still an acknowledgment of a kind of beauty that someone can behold.  Furthermore, it’s much more difficult to pin down an acknowledgement of  “beauty” without being explicitly told.  Not impossible, no – for example, the production cues of Doomsday, when Rose is finally torn from the Doctor through their last moments on the beach, clearly flag an understanding of tragic beauty, whether it’s from the score or the location design or just from the story itself. …

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E3 2016: Sony Press Conference

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Almost every year, I like to digitally “attend” the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. Since I started blogging regularly six years ago, I’ve tried to provide readers some written coverage of the show’s numerous press conferences for the benefit of anyone interested in my raw thoughts on the week of product reveals and announcements. This year, I’m pleased to be able to bring my E3 coverage, such as it is, to Eruditorum Press. The following is a part of a series I’m writing on E3 2016, looking at the press conferences and events of three major players in the industry: Bethesda Softworks, Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo.
 
I won’t be buying a PlayStaton 4.
 
Announced last week ahead of E3 by publisher Square-Enix (who don’t have a press conference this year), Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age is an expanded re-release of another of my favourite games-The one non-Pokémon JRPG to ever truly capture my heart. To date, it’s only been confirmed for a PlayStation 4 release, but every Final Fantasy reissue has found its way to other platforms eventually, and I have confidence this one won’t be any different. The whole reason I watched Sony’s press conference, which I otherwise had zero interest in, was to see if they would have some more to say about the re-release, particularly if it was going to be a platform exclusive or not, but Zodiac Age was a no-show. That, along with the at that point unnamed and unannounced The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim: Special Edition, was really going to be the deciding factor in whether or not I would bite the bullet and buy a PlayStation 4. But with TESV coming to PC and no more word on Zodiac Age at the big Sony song-and-dance (…literally, as last night’s show was no bullshit fully scored by a live orchestra) I’ve no reason to get a PS4, especially considering how incensed I still am by their subscriber-only online multiplayer service PSN Plus.
 
But I’m not just not buying the system. After last night, in fact, I feel like actively boycotting it. This was one of the most offensive and insulting press conferences I’ve seen in all my years doing this show.
 

 
After a preposterously long and ponderously self-indulgent orchestrated introduction, Sony literally lifted the curtain to show off its first big reveal: A reboot of the fan favourite sixth generation franchise God of War. In this series you play Kratos, a cartoonishly overmuscled he-man who, feeling betrayed by his gods after the death of his family, goes out on a mission to personally brutally murder and dismember each and every one of them. I would argue it is a series that is, to use the language of the hip SJWs these days, “problematic”. The gameplay demo, set this time in a world inspired by Norse mythology instead of the classical Greek and Roman mythology of the original series, shows the new Kratos being a stern hardass with his son, a prospective hunter.
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E3 2016: Bethesda Press Conference

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Almost every year, I like to digitally “attend” the Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, the biggest trade show in the video game industry. Since I started blogging regularly six years ago, I’ve tried to provide readers some written coverage of the show’s numerous press conferences for the benefit of anyone interested in my raw thoughts on the week of product reveals and announcements. This year, I’m pleased to be able to bring my E3 coverage, such as it is, to Eruditorum Press. The following is a part of a series I’m writing on E3 2016, looking at the press conferences and events of three major players in the industry: Bethesda Softworks, Sony Computer Entertainment and Nintendo.
 
Last year, Bethesda gave its debut press conference at E3. It was a symbolic move indicating that the company, long known for its quality output, ethical business practices and loyal fanbase, had become a major enough player in the industry that it deserved to stand alongside the biggest names in the game like EA, Ubisoft and Microsoft. And though they didn’t actually reveal a ton of new stuff, they revealed enough to keep people talking all throughout the show: Fallout 4 and Fallout Shelter stole the spotlight, while Doom and Dishonored 2 were pleasant surprises. This year was much of the same-Not a whole lot of “new” information per se, but enough (including one bombshell announcement I literally cannot wait to talk about, let alone play) to leave us with a good feeling. Over the past five years Bethesda has established themselves as my absolute favourite non-Nintendo AAA development studio and publishing house (basically meaning the only one I can still even remotely tolerate, though that does undersell them), and they sure didn’t disappoint last night.
 

 
First up was Quake Champions. All we got to see was a reveal trailer, but that was enough to get me excited. I’ve always been more of a Quake person than a Doom person (though that’s not to say I’m anything like a master of either) because I prefer to take my first-person shooters as old-fashioned multiplayer arena affairs. Suffice to say I have fond memories of Quake III: Arena, and I’m really happy id Software and Bethesda seem to be trying to bring that scene back by filtering it through e-sports to update it for modern audiences, hopefully without losing what made the original concept great. They pulled off the balance with this year’s new Doom, so I’m confidant they can do it for Quake too. Interviews with the developers after the show seemed to indicate Bethesda/id are taking cues from recent games like Splatoon and Overwatch, where you find a character or class of weapon that fits your preferred playstyle and gain mastery in it, or jump between various classes as you see fit, which I think is a great way to utilize and update Quake’s cast of characters. I just really hope by the time it comes out I’ll have a gaming rig that can actually run it.
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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 4.03: Breaker of Chains

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I really find myself wondering what Jack Gleeson thought of that scene.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laud out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister

Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish

Roses of King’s Landing: Margaery Tyrell

Ships of Dragonstone: Davos Seaworth

Burning Heats of Dragonstone: Stannis Baratheon

Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark

The Direwolf, Arya Stark

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane

Flowers of the Wall: Gilly

Shields of King’s Landing: Brienne of Tarth

Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys

With the Bear of Meereen, Iain Glenn

The Dreadfort is abandoned.

The episode is in eight parts. The first part runs fourteen minutes and is in three sections. The first sections is four minutes long; the opening image is identical to the closing image of the previous episode. The second section is two minutes long. The transition is by implication, from one of Joffrey’s murderers to the other. The third section is six minutes  long. The transition is by dialogue, from Olenna talking about Joffrey to his corpse.

The second part runs six minutes and is set in the Riverlands. The transition is by hard cut, from Jaime raping Cersei to some hills.

The third runs three minutes and is set at the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Arya to the yard at Castle Black.

The fourth runs four minutes and is set on Dragonstone. The transition is by hard cut, from Sam to the table in Dragonstone.

The fifth runs two and is set in Molestown, just south of the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Princess Shireen writing to Sam and Gilly riding through a street.

The sixth runs eleven minutes and is in two sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is six minutes long; the transition is by image, from one brothel to another. The second section is five minutes long; the transition is by family, from Tywin to Tyrion Lannister, and by dialogue, with Tywin and Oberyn talking about Tyrion’s trial.

The seventh part runs five minutes and is set at and around the Wall. The transition is by hard cut, from Podrick departing to an babbling river.

The last runs eight minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Daenerys Targaryen. The final image is of a slave landing on a ladder as he looks at a broken collar.

Analysis

For the most part, “Breaker of Chains” is a standard-issue bit of transitional play, primarily concerned with placing the season on its forward course following the ridiculous fireworks of “The Lion and the Rose.” And yet look at that State of Play: eight parts. That’s insane. The only Season Three episode to have that few parts was “Valar Dohaeris.” All told, the only other episodes in the first three seasons to come in under ten are “Winter is Coming,” “The Wolf and the Lion,” and “Blackwater.”…

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No One

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Hm. I freely admit, this is a slightly tough and weird one for me to review. Not for anything having to do with the episode – just that I watched it twenty-four hours after moving house and socially instead of my previously standard Game of Thrones ritual of pizza and relative solitude. So I don’t know if my sense that it was an oddly disjointed and directionless thing was simply because I was disjointed, or because this was actually an odd and slightly off-kilter thing for an eighth episode. I suspect at least partially the latter – the odd structure of a Lannister-focused episode with a pair of Hound/Arya scenes bolted onto each end (via hard cut in each direction) harkens back to some of the weird and half-baked approaches of Season Three. And there’s a relative absence of driving and climactic momentum that jars for an eighth episode.

The most obvious thing to point to in that regard – and it’s a genuinely peculiar move – is that Jon and Sansa aren’t in it. The preview makes it pretty clear that we’re doing a single location battle episode for our penultimate one, which is good and exciting, but it’s positively bizarre not to include a scene along those lines that might gesture towards the sense of impending climax. Instead the plot leaves that out, which gives the episode an oddly hollow feel, especially since its only vague contribution to that plot is the thoroughly anticlimactic killing of the Blackfish, a move that both departs somewhat abruptly from the books and that raises the question of why the hell we set out on this particular plot line in the first place. He just turns a corner after a dumb line about how Brienne will serve Sansa better than him (as though it’s an either-or choice), and that’s apparently that for a character we went to great length to bring back after three years.

It’s not a total loss – the Jaime and Brienne scene is delightful, and the Jaime/Edmure scene is quite good as well (especially the use of the “things we do for love” line) – but the Riverrun material this week is at once lengthy and mostly tedious. Even Bronn and Podrick don’t really work. And yet a huge chunk of the episode is spent there. Not only that, a huge chunk of work across the season has been spent making it so that we actually remember who the hell Edmure and Brynden Tully are. And yet it seems for the most part to amount to nothing. It’s possible that the tenth episode will manage to find something to do with this plot that redeems it, but right now it seems utterly pointless.

And this isn’t the only moment that plays out weirdly. Daenerys’s return to Meereen is inexplicably limp, coming as it does after a two minute “and now the Masters welch on the deal from four episodes ago” siege that, while a fair amount of money was spent making it look nice, still feels ridiculously perfunctory.…

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How Many Times Can I Use the Word “Eviscerating?”

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Those of you who aren’t already listening to Oi! Spaceman, despite Jack’s constant prodding, may not know that while we started out as a weekly Doctor Who podcast, we’ve recently gone dynamic, with various threads representing different podcasts pitched at different audiences. Did I just outright steal the idea from Pex Lives? Maybe….

Anyway, Phil has asked me to take the Saturday spot and promote the stuff we’ve produced in a given week. These will vary a bit as we’re not on a specific schedule, but we produce at least two podcasts of roughly ninety minutes each week, and often more than that, so you should have plenty of time-wasting audio in your life going forward. 

Over on Oi! Spaceman proper, or The Mothership as I sometimes think of it from the old Law & Order Usenet groups I frequented in years past, Shana and I discussed Horror of Fang Rock with recent Pex Lives guest Kit Gonzo, and as you can tell from the podcast title, things got pretty violent pretty fast. The prospect of Richard Dawkins being brutally murdered by Leela and the connection between Skinsale and Bill O’Reilly are discussed. Also lots of conversation about Leela’s racial encoding, and hints of what I’d end up writing about in my recent post about Four/Leela D/s. 

Shana and I also ended up doing a bonus episode looking at Quentin Tarantino’s 2012 film Django Unchained, which ended up spending less time looking at the film itself than pop culture icons, subverting narratives, and the ugly legacy of slavery in America. This episode will no-doubt be controversial, as it’s fairly aggressive in terms of language and depressing content than even our fans (few as they may be) might expect. 

Another member of the Oi! Spaceman family is They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, a weekly movie podcast I do with my buddy Lee that often ends up being half drunken-hangout and half in-depth film discussion. Jack showed up a couple of months ago to help chat about Blood Simple and Blue Velvet, and much amusement was had by all. Also a vigorous rant from yours truly about the use of BDSM in Lynch’s film, with specific examination of Rossellini’s performance. 

This week on TMBDOS, Lee and I looked at James Gunn’s 2006 film Slither, in particular its use of horror/comedy tropes and compared it with the works of Kevin Anderson from the late nineties. We also discussed a long piece of internet analysis about 2001, which we covered recently. 

All in all, a very bloody week for the Oi! Spaceman family. I hope we continue to live up to the high expectations the Eruditorum Press audience will undoubtedly bring. By which I mean, we’ll keep doing exactly what we’ve been doing until Phil decides he doesn’t want us around anymore. 

Next week we’re planning to do a Season Five Troughton story (whose identity I will leave for everyone to guess), and hopefully pick back up on the Red Dwarf thread with Waiting for God.…

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Shabcast 21, Part 2 – The Stern Section

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Join me and Josh once again for the back half of our huge natterfest. 

Find out why the Titanic sank! 

Find out what Josh and I think of The Dark Knight movies, and Jared Diamond, and narratives of the end of the world, and the sociology of disaster, and the relationship between the rise of agriculture and the rise of hierarchy/patriarchy!  (Form an orderly queue, kids!)

Hear Josh’s thoughts on the fall of the sacred feminine, and the Aesir/Vanir war, and dazzle ship-camouflage, and Mad Max Fury Road (here‘s my stuff about it… and more here) and loads of other nice things!

Here‘s a link to the article Josh mentions about resilience vs. collapse and paleolithic mysticism.

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And once again, some pertinent links about the Olympic liners:

Here‘s the website for the Titanic – Honor & Glory game project, complete with a chilling computer animated video of the ship sinking in real time.  And here‘s their Facebook page.  And here‘s their Tumblr.  And here‘s some info about the Olympic, Titanic’s sister ship, as a war ship.  And here are some more photos of Olympic.  (Thanks for Josh for sourcing all these links.)

And here is the website for Ken Marschall, an artist whose visions of the Titanic have inspired Josh and many others.

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Astonishingly, I haven’t intruded into anyone else’s podcast lately… so that’s yer lot.

 …

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Comics Reviews (June 8th, 2016)

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From worst to best of what I bought. At the end is a list of my planned purchases for next week. Anything you’re gutted to see absent from that list, take it up in comments.

Wonder Woman: Rebirth #1

A hot mess, but potentially a forgiveable one – certainly I’ll continue with the first issue or two of the actual Rucka run, as I have historically liked his Wonder Woman. But this barely deserves to be called a comic – the overwhelming majority of it is simply an internal monologue on Wonder Woman’s part. And not an internal monologue with tension and drive, nor, for that matter, with much artistry. It’s mostly just a restatement of the fact that Wonder Woman’s origin story is thoroughly and completely fucked. Then Wonder Woman punches a mirror and goes to Olympus for answers, only it’s apparently not really Olympus and there aren’t any answers given. Or, actually, questions asked. Seriously, I don’t think Marvel and DC have managed a feat of synchronized suckage as bad as Rebirth and Civil War II since Zero Hour and the Clone Saga were bowing at the same time twenty-two years ago.

New Avengers #12

There’s nothing particularly wrong with this issue, but there’s not much that’s massively compelling about it either. The character bits are fun – Ewing does some excellent Squirrel Girl bits, a great Hawkeye beat, and some nice setup (it’s good to see the Maker back, for instance). But on the whole, it’s kind of dismaying for this to already be caught up in another crossover I’m disinclined to read, and I suspect this’ll be my last issue barring reader intervention.

Darth Vader #21

Solid rising action, with the requisite things you expect from Darth Vader. Vader intimidates and kills people, Aphra and Triple-Zero are funny, everything moves inexorably towards a conclusion. but Gillen’s Darth Vader arcs have all been end-loaded, and his last one looks like no exception. 

The Wicked + The Divine #20

Hm. I can’t say I’m overly thrilled with this issue, mostly because it handles the “how Laura survived” issue in a way I generally dislike, which is to reveal that what we saw was presented in an actively misleading manner. It’s not a bad issue – the entire “Nergal” section is absolutely hilarious, Cassandra is consistently delightful, and Matthew Wilson is doing some really cool, weird stuff with the colors. But as big reveals go, this one is at the moment leaving me a bit cold. Although I’ve high hopes that it’ll work out, because it’s Gillen and WicDiv.

Injection #10

The second arc ends with lots of chilling, meaty stuff, beginning with Ellis doing the classic detective “bring everyone together to explain the plot” resolution, and ending with a nice, disturbing sequence of strange horrors inflicted upon the world by the Injection. In the middle is some fun discussion of money, magic, and religion, and also discussion of sex with ghosts. I hope the break before this comes back isn’t too brutally long, as it’s an utter delight.…

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