20 peso comics!

Comic geeks should definitely troop over to comic odyssey in robinson’s galleria, where they’ve got a bargain bin of crazy comics at 20 pesos each (and if you buy 5 they give you an extra one free!).  I’m kind of a cheap comic geek so I rarely pick up singles, especially since they’re a bitch to take care of.  I do indulge in a TPB or two every now and then, but 20 peso comics just call out to my frugal inner geek, so I couldn’t resist poring over the rows of comics to see if i could spot any gems amongst the copies of “badger” and “ferret”.

I got me Issues 2, 3 and 4 of Truth:Red, white and black and issues 1,3,and 4 of Jim Mahfood’s Grrl Scouts.  The basic idea behind “Truth” is that Americans would have never tested the super soldier serum on a white guy first, so it hypothesizes that like many dangerous ideas, the super soldier serum was first tested on a black man before the good ol’ Cap’n that we know and love came into the picture.

Grrl Scouts on the other hand is about…actually I had no idea what it was about, but I’ve been a longtime fan of Jim Mahfood’s art, and picking this swag up for 20 bucks apiece was a no brainer for me.

Also of interest for me were some Quantum and Woody issues, which I might come back for when I have more time on my hands.

The Golden Compass is OK

Not spectacular mind you, but good enough to merit dropping some coin to catch it in a theater. Unfortunately, it has some editing deficiencies that will leave most moviegoers a little confused about what’s going on, as there are numerous events that just “happen” out of the blue.

For example in one scene (not really a huge spoiler, don’t worry) a central character is kidnapped while on an expedition. After 45 minutes of shit happening, we are then quite matter of factly informed that he has since bribed his kidnappers and found/built a laboratory during all the time we were wondering had forgotten all about him.

Peter Jackson (and by extension the screenwriters of the LOTR movies)’s brilliance was in distilling everything that made the Trilogy awesome (ie the epic battles) and foregoing all the singing Tom Mombadil nonsense. They also set things up much better in the beginning, with the narration of the how the one ring came to be, Bilbo’s finding of the ring, etc. Of course Philip Pullman’s series might just be that more complex and difficult convert into a 2 hour movie, but an additional 15 minutes of narration would have helped to explain a lot of things.

Oh and I don’t understand the brouhaha over this being a rant against religion. I have been informed by Aissa that this is more apparent in the books, but anyone who watches this movie and comes to the conclusion that it’s anti-christian is a lunatic. It’s quite obviously anti-authority, but that authority could be the nazis, communists, or even the Marcos regime. A bit of advice for hardcore christians: Just because you treat the good book as fact, doesn’t mean you should take other people’s fiction just as seriously.

Crossgen Comics SALE at National Bookstore!

 

Crossgen comics was a shooting star in the comics industry.  In its brief history, it became the third largest american comics publisher in the world, was a shining light for comics professionals who wanted a steady job with benefits instead of freelancing, and in general made pretty damned good comic books that spanned the range from high fantasy, space opera, and victorian mystery.

But the dream that was Crossgen died when financial rot started to seep in, and most of its books weren’t picked up off the shelves.  The company filed for bankruptcy in 2004 and its assets were picked off by Disney for a paltry $1 million.

Fortunately for cheap thrifty comic geeks in the Philippines, good comics never really go out of style, and if you wait long enough, one bookstore or the other will let go of its old stock at bargain basement prices.  150 pesos per issue of EDGE, to be exact.  EDGE is an anthology that collects the best stories of 5 Crossgen comics, and while it’s (the stories) not neccesarily in chronological order, they are for the most part self contained, and for that price its a steal.  I was lucky enough to find EDGE 1-11 in my bookstore, but my friend’s told me that similar sales are going on in other National bookstores as well, so you all might find something worth buying.  Along with EDGE, Crossgen also released FORGE as a similar anthology, but the FORGE collection at my National was sorely lacking.

Anyway, what are you guys waiting for!??!?! Go out and buy some comics already!!!!

Linking this up…

Just cause I’m pretty proud of the damned comic strip.

Two movie reviews for you!

You know how sometimes you’ll get tired of watching movies for a few months, then one weekend you watch two movies almost in a row?

Annapolis- Take boxing and the naval academy, mix it with an up and coming Asian American director, and you’ll get the uninspired mess called Annapolis. The eternally wooden faced James Franco stars as a new recruit in the Naval Academy, hoping to earn his stripes to fulfill his late mother’s dream. But wait, there’s more! He’s also a boxer, and he’ll run into a tough as nails commanding officer who he’ll slug it out with in the final scenes of the movie.

Annapolis is one of those rare movies that almost doesn’t make you feel anything at all. You don’t feel for the characters, James Franco acts like a bratty 9 year old, and the only guy that stirred the pot up a bit, the class clown of the group, gets kicked out in the middle of the movie for not taking a shower. There is only one moment in the movie that’ll get a rise out of you, and after that it’s all downhill. This movie’s coming out soon in theaters, but I’d encourage you to avoid it at all costs, since this isn’t even worth a rental.

V for Vendetta- I think I know what people who watched Constantine without any knowledge of the comic book feel now. I have never read Alan Moore’s celebrated graphic novel, and so I wasn’t too disappointed when I watched the film version. When I watched Constantine, I wanted to kick Keanu in the balls to get some kind of reaction out his stoner face because he was horribly miscast as John Constantine. I’ll go so far as to say that perhaps Constantine isn’t as bad as I make it out to be, but it would have been much better with an Ewan McGregor or that guy from “The Full Monty” in the lead role.

Oh right, V for Vendetta. Good stuff, and very relevant in our day and age especially if you’re tuned in to the news and current events. If not, you’ll appreciate how hot Natalie Portman still is and to be careful around guys wearing masks.

Sorry Frank, but 300 just doesn’t cut it.

I am an avowed Frank Miller fan, and I love what he’s done to the comics medium and have the hardbound copy of “The Dark Knight Returns” in my mini library. That said, I’m not too excited at the prospect of hearing the new movie based on his graphic novel, “300″. Why hear, you say, when I’m talking about a movie? Because I know that I will visually be impressed. The few trailers and video journals I’ve seen are so mouthwateringly good that I’ll willingly pay to see this artistic masterpiece on the big screen. But the truth is that Frank Miller’s version of the events at Thermopylae was poorly written and shallow.

Fans of the graphic novel, please refrain from throwing your spears. When I first read 300 I myself was awed by it, by the visual masterpiece of Lynn Varley’s paint over Frank’s rough pencils. I even bought the fact that the spartans only wore briefs and red cloaks to war and that Xerxes the Persian emperor looked like a Nubian. I was one of you once.

But when I read Valerio Massimo Manfredi’s “Spartan” and Steven Pressfield’s “Gates of Fire”, it just dawned on me how lacking Miller’s vision was. How he reduces the Spartans to the role of noble and valiant savages whose only aim in life was to do war. There is hardly any depth to Miller’s Spartans, a trait that will become all too apparent once blown up onto the big screen. I fear that what I’ll end up watching is a beatifully rendered classical Greek action flick, with curly haired men yelling “SPARTAAAAAA!” each time they stab a Persian warrior in the face.

Like Miller’s first film outing “Sin City”, 300 will barrage you with a truckload of blood drenched eye candy. But remember kids, as much as we all like candy, it has no nutritional value.