Heroic hype: the Batcave
August 21st, 2009
As adults we forget how strange things are. Take caves, for example.
On a recent holiday, my wife, son, and I found ourselves on a guided tour through a cave system. The group was large, and the cave as well lit as the intersection between health and safety and the management’s sense of theatricality would allow. The guide’s patter was honed and confident, glinting with comfortable jokes that didn’t require laughter, and just the right blend of folklore and history to keep us interested. The package offered no reason this side of phobia to feel unsafe, or uncertain. No-one was going to get lost, and no-one was going to get hurt, even boredom was unlikely to be much of a problem given that the tour was, quite sensibly, rather short.
But somewhere in the darkness beneath the spotlit consumer experience the real appeal rustled. Awe. It went unspoken of course only ever hinted at or skirted. The guide spoke of a gigantic network of which ours was but a fragment, of divers who had squeezed their way through small spaces in the deep and discovered gigantic caverns, one of which was thus far inexplicable to the geologists and engineers that had pored over the photographs, the mega-tonnage above the vast cave roof apparently unsupportable. The guide also spoke of deeper passages still, of underground lakes and streams, and of tunnels yawning forever into the earth. Even the history of the place hung like a heavy shadow. The caves had been sacred to the Celts, who offered up sacrifices to the dark. Later the Christians came and banished the old religion, a conflict hinted at in the local legend of a witch turned to stone by a priest. The guide showed us the rock where, if the light is right, the witch’s petrified profile can still be seen glaring into the blackness, and claimed, as a good tour guide should, that late at night her mordant laughter can be heard echoing in the depths.
Perhaps from sub-level 7, perhaps deeper
Heroic hype: Captain Britain
June 18th, 2009
So the news about Captain Britain and MI-13 coming to an end hit just as I was halfway through a reread of the Alans Moore and Davis’s seminal run, and I’m left with the distinct feeling that had Cornell and Kirk engaged more closely with the question of haircuts that their tenure may have had more longeivity, or at least been more enjoyable from my own valuable perspective.
MI-13 never reached the heights of Cornell and Hairsine’s brilliant Wisdom mini. Even that series’ latter issues, the weaker ones, were comparable with MI-13 at its best. And Kirk’s art, sitting halfway between Mark Bagley and Brian Hitch, never rose above merely adequate. Perhaps if MI-13 hadn’t been creatively hobbled by a no doubt sales boosting tie in with Secret Invasion things would have been different; Perhaps if Cornell had opted/been permitted not to stretch the second arc to five increasingly tedious issues, and stuck to the snappy, smart high concept format which had worked so well for Wisdom I would be sad to see MI-13 end, but given that I’d just had the pleasure of wallowing in a youthful Moore’s kaleidoscopic take on the titular character I can’t say that the news bothered me overmuch. Yes it was half decent, yes it was one of the better books on the racks, yes I want to be a cheer leader for Cornell’s work because when it’s good it’s very good, but I know what I want to see in a comic featuring Captain Britain, and MI-13 wasn’t supplying it.
I want to see is a lot more of this…
Bad hair
The centrality of haircuts is discussed at length after the jump
Heroic Hype: Martian Manhunter
April 19th, 2009
Just like our Rogue’s Reviews but with 100% more hero!
Ah, the Martian Manhunter. Don’t you feel like waxing lyrical on the Martian Manhunter? I know I do. But let’s get a few preliminaries out of the way first.
