2000AD Mystery

This one's been bothering me a bit... Prog 1053 of British anthology 2000AD had a Mark Harrison poster titled "Space Girls", featuring several notable female characters from various 2000AD series. I recognize Durham Red, Venus Bluegenes, Tyranny Rex and Judge Anderson, but who's the white-haired woman between Tyranny and Anderson? She seems familiar - at first I thought it was Halo Jones, but that doesn't seem right. Any ideas?

EDIT: After consulting with some fellow readers, the general consensus is that it is indeed Halo Jones, albeit not any version of Halo Jones who actually appeared in 2000AD before...

Movie Review: Shrek The Third

I'd like to say that "Shrek the Third" is every bit as successful, as well-written, as hilariously delightful as its predecessors.

I'd like to say that. I probably would say that, except that the film has this teeny, tiny flaw:

Oh lord. Ohhhh lord. It's probably my fault for thinking Justin Timberlake couldn't possibly be any more irritating in movies than he is with his music; that sort of blind optimism just screams out to be punished.

As far as I'm concerned, it really is Timberlake and his character Artie who send things awry. Here's a series that derives its primary comedic and dramatic strength from its ability to invoke and undermine cliches - Shrek both is and isn't a typical ogre, Fiona is and isn't the princess-in-distress, the Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming aren't quite as benevolent as their names and appearances imply, etc. And at first, "Shrek the Third" continues that proud tradition of subverting expectations: you have the possibilities of Shrek as a father and Shrek as a monarch being put forth, and it's pretty much the Anti-Princess Diaries. Meanwhile, Prince Charming's scheme to usurp power hinges on a rather unorthodox appeal to his fellow fairytale villains.

All well and good... until we meet Artie. An unpopular high-schooler with daddy issues who's in love with the most popular girl in school and gets picked on by the jocks, only to be revealed as a figure of great destiny - a destiny he initially rejects only to come around at the last minute and grow into the role.

Could there be a bigger walking cliche?

It's all the more jarring because the rest of the cast - Shrek, Donkey, Puss, Fiona and the various supporting characters - are very much in step with that irreverent, iconoclastic tone that made them so endearing in previous films. Artie, by contrast, is a two-dimensional cutout (and Timberlake does us no favors by playing the role painfully straight, without the slightest bit of affectation), so utterly predictable that you can literally guess the entire span of his storyline after five minutes of screen time.

Without giving away the ending, I should also add that said ending is heavily sabotaged by Artie's character in what may have been an attempt to break the pattern of the previous films in terms of climactic showdowns, but ends up becoming an ill-advised and unsatisfying resolution that's at odds with the narrative thrust of the entire story - in other words, an hour and a half is spent building up towards an event that never actually happens. "Disappointing" would be putting it mildly.

On the other hand, there are quite a few amusing moments strewn throughout the movie: Shrek imagining fatherhood, his catastrophic attempt at playing the part of king, the "baby shower", the addled Merlin offering our heroes hugs, Lillian's surprising talent, Prison Break Starring Fiona and Friends, and much more. As a story, it pretty much falls apart towards the end, but taken as individual sketches, the comedy is every bit as solid as the first two films. And for that alone, it's worth a look. Just don't expect it to hold together quite as well as its predecessors.

Caught In A Web: Starslip Crisis

Kristofer Straub's "Starslip Crisis" makes for an interesting parallel to Brad Guigar's "Evil Inc." in that, while they share certain generic, thematic and format-related aspects, Straub's series has that one critical component that "Evil Inc." lacks: variety.

There are certainly enough similarities to sustain a comparison: both strips poke fun at a specific genre (superheroes in "Evil Inc.", sci-fi in "Starslip Crisis"), both are littered with simple yet tremendously funny characters, both are well-written, and both use the daily punchline technique within a larger structure of ongoing storylines.

The main point of divergence, I think, is the way each series runs those storylines. For the most part, "Evil Inc." has a singular focus; all storylines are tethered to the company and its employees. The arcs aren't necessarily contingent, but Guigar typically has one narrative unfolding at a time while everything else is on hold.

"Starslip Crisis", by contrast, bounces back and forth between a number of plotlines all running simultaneously - earlier in the year, one of the series' protagonists went off to military school, and Strauber started alternating the focus between the school and the rest of the characters. Going further back, a war that had been discussed in the periphery suddenly took center stage as the cast blundered right into the battle. Events are constantly occuring outside our field of vision, and that has the added effect of broadening the scope of the story. It also allows Straub to stray from the A-plot from time to time, and that helps break up any tedium that might set in over an extended period of time.

The fact that Straub is able to milk the science-fiction genre for every drop of parodical comedy will probably come as no surprise to anyone familiar with his work; truly, the best thing about "Starslip Crisis" is that it manages to take the most basic aspects of science fiction and make them funny. You don't even need to be familiar with the genre to "get" the jokes; there's no direct appropriation of, say, "Star Wars", that would require insider knowledge. The humor is for everyone. :)

Anyone who samples Straub and finds him to their liking would also be advised to read "Checkerboard Nightmare", Straub's previous series which chose, as its subject matter, the very medium of webcomics itself, and managed to be every bit as amusing.

Diamondz are a girl's best friend?

Has Israel finally produced a decent femme-rock band?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTKccwQUypA

U-DECIDE!

Caught In A Web: Evil Inc.

I'm not quite sure why I'm still reading this; lack of a proper jumping-off point, I suppose, coupled with the fact that I'm more bored with it than genuinely displeased or irritated. It's not that "Evil Inc." has changed for the worse, far from it; if anything, Brad Guigar has remained remarkably consistent since spinning this series off from "Greystone Inn" two years ago.

And that's really my beef with it; it's too consistent. The humor just feels less effective to me these days, and I find I've lost interest in the storylines and characters. Inertia's keeping me going at the moment, but I doubt that'll last much longer.

Still, it's worth reiterating those traits that drew me to "Evil Inc." in the first place; a lighthearted parody of the superhero genre, executing the gag-a-day format very nicely. If it rocked the boat a bit more often, I'd still be aboard.

A Lovely Day

The world's a bit more beautiful, a touch more wonderful today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah_crvR5wqA

Swimming Against The Manstream #5

Down to the last two, and believe me, I've been wracking my brain trying to come up with more. Either I'm not quite as well-read as I like to believe, or there really aren't ten notable, obvious picks for important women in mainstream comics. I went ahead and bent the rules for the last entry, just because.

9. Barbara Gordon (Batman, Birds of Prey, etc., DC): I'm very ambivalent when it comes to good old Babs. On the one hand, she's a sidekick who made good, graduating out of the male identity she co-opted to create her own entity, Oracle, a far more formidable and distinctive force than Batgirl ever was. On the other hand, Barbara is very much the typical woman victim at DC: crippled as an afterthought in a story that had nothing to do with her, for purposes relating solely to the motivation of the male protagonist, and she was left in that state permanently while other heroes (read: men) bounced back from similar or worse injuries on a regular basis. I fondly remember her animated counterpart becoming Commissioner of the GCPD in "Batman Beyond" (since "The Killing Joke" never took place in the Timm&Diniverse), but overall I still have trouble reconciling those two aspects of her character, Perpetual Victim and Self-Defined Heroine.

10. Gail Simone: Granted, being the most prolific female writer in the Big Two isn't saying much (who's her competition, Devin Grayson? Fiona Apple?), but it's my hope that Gail Simone's continued success and high visibility in the industry opens the door to many other female writers in the future. Also, as lolcomics would say, she can rytes teh komiks gud.