The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

This is just brilliant – Kris Staub has gone all Dmitri Mendeleev on our favourite Telefantasy and SF movies by creating the Periodic Table of Sci-Fi Film and Television. Genius. Do the Nobel people do awards in science fictional chemistry? Kris actually sells prints of it here. (via Gizmodo, tip of the hat to Kenny who spotted it):

On the racks today is the Batman International collection, which includes Batman: the Scottish connection by Alan Grant and Frank Quitely. I like Frank’s artwork normally, but glancing inside at his depiction of Edinburgh Castle as viewed from the Grassmarket I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t render a more accurate depiction of the scene:

The Grassmarket is an old area – there are inns there that were already old when Robert Burns came to Edinburgh in the 1700s – but it doesn’t look like this. There are buildings which don’t exist which have been added in, an extra bridge where it shouldn’t be, buildings in the main foreground mostly do exist but are badly distorted, the Castle and Castle Rock appear to have been grabbed and stretched taller and thinner out of normal proportions, the street and road on the side of the Rock are missing… It’s a major world landmark (and indeed part of a UN World Heritage Site) so it isn’t hard to find decent visual references to base the art on. It does make me wonder however, how accurate – or inaccurate – comics depictions of other major cities are, ones which I don’t personally know so can’t really tell.

(actually it looks a bit more like this)

Yes, I know, its fantasy and there’s artistic license to consider – perhaps Frank deliberately drew it in this manner for a largely overseas audience. And to be fair Scottish Connection is a daft but quite enjoyable Bat-romp, but it does irk me that they couldn’t be bothered to render a reasonably accurate image of such an important landmark. When Denise Mina had John Constantine go to Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum she supplied the artist – who had never been there – with visuals and a fairly good representation was made of the building in Hellblazer, so I wonder why not here with an even more famous landmark? Have you ever seen your own town or city either distorted or well depicted in comics? Answers on a postcard as they say (or more likely in the comments, which is much easier).

Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island issue 1 (of 4)

by Warren Ellis and Raulo Caceres

Avatar Press

“This is a secret history. Everything I tell you is true.
Ionic air propulsion. Electrostatic levitation. Electrogravitics. The Biefield-Brown Effect and electro-fluid-dynamics. Nothing here is invented. It simply appears to be uchronic, counterfactual, sitting in the break of a time out of joint.
Everything I tell you is true. It is everyone else who’s been lying to you. I am Captain Swing.”

Here we go again, another Warren Ellis comic that sounds like an absolute blast, full of the sort of manic, extreme, sharply dialogued stuff I enjoy from Ellis on themes both he and I find continually and repeatedly interesting; experimental science, crime, law and strange history viewed through a steampunk lens.

But I’m not going to be fooled this time. I think Ignition City taught me something, finally, about Ellis comics; never be taken in by a first issue full of inventive ideas, sparse on plot and dialogue but full of potential. So I’m going to hold off on fully appraising Captain Swing until the inevitable collection comes out – only then will I be able to tell if that early promise was fulfilled in a satisfying story.

(Captain Swing? Possibly. Electrical? Certainly. Whoever it is, he’s way ahead of both types of policemen here. From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Captain Swing certainly starts out as extremely promising, the title comes from Captain Swing, the imaginary leader of agricultural riots of the 1830s but Ellis spins this idea and his Captain Swing appears to be an electrically charged character who the locals mistake for Spring Heeled Jack – another bit of 19th Century English folklore. Throw in the competing law enforcement of the time between the amateur, underfunded and incompetent Metropolitan Police Peelers and the far more professional, armed, dangerous and corrupt Bow Street Runners controlled by the Magistrates and we get an intriguing setup.

(Oh, those text pages just scream Ellis don’t they? From Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island by Ellis and Caceres, published by Avatar)

Then add in all the allusions to secret histories, electricity, scientific concepts way ahead of their times and a “galvanic cell that fell into the sands of Baghdad in 250BC” introduced on the text pages that litter the comic and Captain Swing comes across as a mysterious and interesting, if short, read.

It’s an immediately gripping first issue, supplemented by Avatar standard colour art by Raulo Caceres – which is not bad, doing everything it needs to do with a little style and the occasional iffy panel or figure.

Captain Swing And The Electrical Pirates Of Cindery Island – style over content, certainly, but it’s Ellis’ style and I’m a fan. Whether the series lives up to this early promise….. this time I shall wait and see. And if nothing else, the series does have that great title and a beautiful cover.

Captain Swing #2 is due later this month.

Dave Evans tells me that well known Brit small press gang FutureQuake Press will have several new issues of their 2000 AD themed titles out in time for this year’s Hi-Ex comics con the weekend after next in Inverness, including a new Dogbreath (with a cover by Neil Roberts), FutureQuake #15 (with a cover – and a strip – from Wasted’s Gibson Quarter) and brand new Zarjaz (with a cover by Nigel Dobbyn – below); if you can’t make Hi-Ex they are all, as usual, available from the FQP site.

Via Tom at Comics Reporter comes this time-lapse video of Chicago Tribune cartoonist Scott Stantis working on a political cartoon from initial sketching to the finished work. I’ve said it before, but I love the use of time-lapse photography to cover the creation of visual art, its just fascinating to watch work take shape using that technique. Mind you the choice of soundtrack to go with the video might have been better used for a time-lapse of Simon Bisley working:

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day to you; yes, on this side of the Atlantic we’re well aware there are probably more Americans wearing green wigs and leprechaun hats today than there are people in all of Ireland, but what the heck, it’s still a good excuse of a pint of the black stuff and a good bash. We did ask our resident Irishman Pádraig if he would dance a merry Irish folk jig for us today but his answer was unrepeatable (something to do with Michael Flatley, Riverdance, Slaine, Brian Ború, Garth Ennis and various unmentionable parts of the anatomy), so we’ll settle for a cartoon instead; I liked this one by Donal Casey, which comments on a survey by an Irish TV presenter where they tried to see if some young Irish folks could tell which words were Irish in origin and which were Klingon:

(Irish Gaelic meets Klingon in this cartoon by and (c) Donal Casey)

And while we’re at it, here’s a cracking short video by the League of S.T.E.A.M. as our intrepid steampunk heroes attempt to capture a leprechaun (link via BoingBoing):

Slash Film (via BoingBoing) has this fab pic of the Dark Knight armed with a lightsabre tackling a huge Great White Shark. It doesn’t say who created the image but although it’s a bit daft it’s also all kinds of awesome!

We’d like to remind readers of Somersault that it is a work of speculative fiction on the part of Mr Richard Cowdry, esquire, and any resemblance to actual events and persons is purely coincidental. And this week’s strip in no way reflects the real lives and concerns of hard-working cartoonists at all. Really. Okay, maybe a little bit.

(Somersault is (c) Richard Cowdry; if you want to reproduce any part of it you should ask him first; you can see the larger version and all of the previous episodes  archived here)

Talking to Strangers

Written by Fehed Said; Illustrated by Sonia Leong, Nana Li, Wing Yun Man, Chloe Citrine and Faye Yong.

Sweatdrop Studios

This is a collection of short Manga all written by Fehed Said, whose last book The Clarence Principle was thoroughly enjoyed by Katherine back here. Talking To Strangers is themed around some concept of connections with strangers, and they all sit beneath a simply gorgeous cover by Nani Li, with it’s modern conceit of the raised headphone a perfect metaphor for truly opening up to engage with the world.

Inside the book we have six stories, all of decent length (the shortest is the bonus story with just 8 pages – but that’s the exception, most are 30+ pages), something I’m increasingly convinced is necessary in any anthology, and especially Manga, where the storytelling structure and the relatively faster pace of the artwork demands a bigger page count to tell even the simplest of stories. The art is all Manga styled in some way but within that each tale manages to have it’s own, very distinct style; we have very traditional Manga, very Westernised Manga (think Bryan Lee O’Malley for that one), pure cute “bighead” style and much more besides. A veritable visual feast.

(What does an agoraphobic do when his TV breaks? Makes his own TV through his window. Slightly creepy voyeuristic romance from Static by Fehed Said, Wing Yun Man and Faye Yong in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

I’ll start and end with the best in the book, stories and art working perfectly together and resulting in two fantastic shorts and the first of these is Static, with art by Wing Yun Man and Faye Yong. It tells us the hope filled tale of an agoraphobic, trapped in his littered apartment, newspaper taped to the windows to keep out the world, with television his only friend. But when the TV breaks and his life turns to static, he notices the light coming in through the window where the newspaper has peeled away. Suddenly he has a different view on the outside world, one that’s better than TV, one with a view of the park and two possible lovers. Totally engrossed in their story, just as I was in his, he is eventually challenged to leave his prison to effect a possible reconciliation. It’s a wonderful little story, visually inventive, playful, surreal and great fun, yet still just that little bit strange, just the pleasant side of voyeuristic creepiness.

(A terrifying nightmare – boxed in, trapped, but where? Why? The answers are far more than you’d expect. From Box by Fehed Said and Nana Li in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

The first tale in Talking To Strangers is the creepiest story of the lot; Box, illustrated by Nana Li in traditional style full of expression and quite a lot of chilling images. I’m loath to spoil the ending as it’s definitely not what you think it will be, but suffice it to say that it’s a bizarre, slightly nasty tale of two strangers who find themselves trapped in something worryingly like coffins; are they alone, are there more strangers out there in similar circumstance, and what connection does it all have to the grieving families in a hospital? Mysterious, slightly ghoulish and a great start to the book.

Malignant, with art from Chloe Citrine is more emo-esque fairy tale than out and out horror. A good enough tale, but too heavy handed, starting with “There once was a boy carrying the weight of the world on his shoulder” on a page with a boy pulling a large rock, chain attached to his neck, up a hill. The hill gets steeper, the rock gets bigger, he meets others along the way all tethered to the earth by their own chains. He’s planning to throw the stone off the bridge and rid himself of it. But what if the stone is too big, what will he do then when the weight of the world gets too much? Well, he is on a bridge with a chain attached to his neck…… like I said, heavy handed. Nice enough, a pleasant read, but it was always struggling to get past that concept that (ahem) weighed it down.

Hero with art by Sonia Leong is another very dark tale, of an abused boy putting up with his father’s beatings and finding a strange ally and potential saviour in the hooded figure who lives opposite. It’s a horrible subject and handled as such by Said. But there’s just something about it which fails to connect, the story seems too fragmented, the mystery too forced. Again, good but not great.

The final story; the 8 page The Old Man with art by Faye Yong is the weakest of the book, with a story that’s just too trite and simplistic – oldest man on earth has press conference to talk about how he got to live to 150, ends up spinning a parable about living for others  and being a citizen of the world. It takes just 8 pages because there’s not really that much to say.

(From Flowers by Fehed Said and Faye Yong in Talking To Strangers from Sweatdrop Studios)

And I’ll end with the best thing in Talking To Strangers, a story that’s just packed with imagination and wonderful storytelling, and as the couple of panels above should tell you – a lot of perfectly timed comedy as well; Flowers, done in fantastic “chibi” style by Faye Yong. A brother and sister, Simon and Elowena discover an abandoned square, fenced off from the world and containing two little flowers. Poor Elowena takes one home, innocently telling it “I’ll put you back after show and tell on Friday“. It ends badly for the flower the following morning.

From there this tiny slice of life tale becomes something far more sci-fi, as we discover we’re in a future where flowers have been extinct for 200 years and Elowena has stumbled across two (now just one) of the last specimens in the world. Her increasingly desperate attempts to look after this last flower, through summer, autumn rains and the eventual, devastating winter (for both flower and girl) are equal parts funny and heartbreaking. And at times it’s very funny, with the set piece of Elowena’s puffer jacket being so restrictive it forces her to walk along as if she’s trying to fly a highlight early on. Smiles and laughter. Brilliantly paced, perfect timing.

Elowena realises that she was too selfish with her treasure and, after the flower dies in the winter she just wishes she could have the chance to share the magic with her friends. And so do we. It’s staggeringly simple, beautifully good, full of simple, evocative emotion, and quite wonderful.

Talking To Strangers is a strong anthology, with at least two stories (Static and Flowers, maybe three in Boxes) that are absolutely top notch examples of great storytelling. But like any anthology of worth, my favourites may not be yours, in which case, please, please, seek this out and discover it for yourselves. It’s available from the Sweatdrop Studios website for just £6 – and considering my favourite stories have 100 pages between them that’s excellent value.

Richard Bruton.

The Flemish comics blog Strip Turnhout just announced that the Smurfs will be present at the coming World Fair 2010 in Shanghai, China.  The little blue men will be the official mascots of the Belgian-European pavillion, which will open on May 15th.  They were selected because of their Belgian roots (they were created by Belgian cartoonist Peyo), because they are well-known around the world and particularly popular in China.

(a jolly Smurf gets his passport and visa stamped for China, (c) Peyo)

In his books Peyo continually stressed the value of a life in balance with nature: modern technology typically leads to disaster and a lesson learned.  This fits niceley with the theme of the Expo, “Better City, Better Life”. Additionally, in the Belgian pavillion, portraits will be shown of thirty great Belgians, such as Hergé, the creator of Tintin. Meantime, for no other reason than we can, via the magic of the web, showing the international nature of the Smurfs here they are in Hungarian! (vid link via Andrea Kis’ Twitter)

Wim Lockefeer lives in Belgium and suspects the closest he will get to this is watching The Lady From Shanghai on DVD; you can read more of his comics musings on The Ephemerist blog

The British International Comics Show (BICS) has made its first official announcement for 2010 – the show will be taking place across the 16th and 17th of October at the Think Tank, Millennium Point in Birmingham, with guests from the UK, Europe, North America and Japan.  From the official description:

“This year the guest list includes the complete creative team from Vertigo’s runaway success “Unwritten” including award winning illustrator Yuko Shimizu, writer Mike Carey and penciller Peter Gross. There will also be a special appearance by Artist Jimmy Broxton as visitors have the chance to take part in an exclusive “Unwritten” panel at the show. Vertigo editor Pornsak Picheshote will also be at hand conducting portfolio reviews and taking part in events.

Other big names flying in from across the world include Turkish creator Mahmud A Asrar and American Superstar Tommy Lee Edwards who’s work can be seen in the new Jonathan Ross penned series “Turf” .”

A large number of the UK comics creators will be there too of course, including Duncan Fegredo (Hellboy), Alan Davis (X-Men), Charlie Adlard (Walking Dead) and Sean Phillips (Criminal) to name but a few – I’m sure that list will grow considerably in the next few months.

Acclaimed comics creator Dave Gibbons will be hosting a free webinar on the popular comics illustration package Manga Studio where he “will teach aspiring and professional artists how to create compelling comic illustrations from start to finish using Manga Studio.” It is free but limited to 500 people so check the Smith Micro site for details of how to register for the event which is on March 21st; there will also be a chance to win some freebies as an added incentive – the event is open to professionals and first timer comics creators alike.

Now this guy has class – a busking accordion player in the New York subway, wearing a Boba Fett helmet. Bounty hunting Boba Fett busker? It’s mad but true – I love it when real life throws up something wonderfully weird like this in an everyday location, it makes life that little bit more magical. I’ve seen Stormtroopers wandering the streets during the Edinburgh Festival but they weren’t doing street performances. I wonder what other Star Wars character would perform if they busked? With that deep voice could you imagine Darth Vader doing improv poetry in the street? A group of Stormtroopers line dancing? (via BoingBoing)

Andy Diggle talks to The Times online’s Blockbuster Buzz (a spot which has a lot of love for comics and comics-related flicks) ahead of Andy and Jock’s The Losers coming to the big screen:

“BB: It looks like a good year for British comic book scribes in Hollywood with both The Losers and Mark Millar’s Kick-Ass  released later this year. Why do you think British comic book writers prove to be such successes and are there any other British led comics you’d like to see get the Hollywood treatment?

British comics I’d like to see get the Hollywood treatment? There’s loads, but top of my list would be Phonogram and Suburban Glamour, along with three decades’ worth of stories from the untapped intellectual property goldmine that is 2000AD, starting with my personal favourite, Strontium Dog. Old British war comics like Battle are also filled with stories ripe for adaptation.”

Oh yes, I think we’d go along with some of those choices for film versions, oh yes indeedy…

Filmish: Comic Book Essays on Film Theory

By Edward Ross

Self published

I spotted this mini-comic on a recent trip to Edinburgh’s Filmhouse (spiritual home to the city’s film festival and a mecca for those who love quality cinema from around the world). A short comic on film theory? Unusual topic but since I spent a fair chunk of my college time studying film theory I was intrigued and picked it up (admittedly a considerable part of my studying involved watching movies in that same Filmhouse, but that counts as research, not bunking off classes, honest). Film and media studies can leave mental scarring for life, with victims still moved years after university to indulge in pseudo-academic discussion (or talking cobblers in the pub post-film, depending on your point of view and level of inebriation) in which they use terms like “the paradigmatic and syntagmatic nature of the text.” I shall endeavour not do that here. Filmish is a short work, black and white, nice, clear artwork with card covers,  and obviously it can’t cover several decades of film theory in any depth, but Edward opts smartly to take just three areas as examples and discuss those: Monsters, Food on Film and Point of View (the longest of the three chapters).

Monsters was a lot of fun for me – it will surprise no-one that I worked the more fantastical and horror genres into my film studies back in college. Actually this wasn’t just because of my own interest in those genres – films with science fiction, horror and monsters in general are a hugely rich subject area for academics. It shouldn’t be surprising since these are genres which often use the theatrical trappings of the fantastical to explore real, everyday human fears and concerns. Edward notes this and how the filmic monster has changed throughout the decades in response to historical and cultural forces: Gojira in early 50s Japan playing on the fears created by the atomic bombings which ended World War Two, the ‘reds under the beds’ scare of McCarthyist America in the 50s and how the original, classic Invasion of the Bodysnatchers fits the rampant paranoia of the time and the fear of the enemy within, through to the body horror of the 70s and 80s (step forward Mr Cronenberg) and the 21st century return to the big monster movie with Cloverfield, linking the rampaging, city-destroying monster with post-911 fears.

Point of View is the longest segment in the comic and covers rather more than the simple, technical meaning of POV (i.e. the viewpoint presented by the camera’s ‘eye’ to the viewer) but also the cultural point of view: the way a scene or character is framed and the way that influences the way the viewer ‘reads’ the image. Sadly this does mean a bit too much Laura Mulvey and the ‘male gaze’ for my taste (at college I thought Mulvey made some interesting points but as with many academics in this field, only selectively, there are many examples that don’t fit her theories). That said Mulvey is a major writer on understanding film and my personal likes and dislikes aside Edward would be remiss if he didn’t include her in this chapter (thank goodness he didn’t quote Barbara Creed and her ‘monstrous feminine’ or the various Freudian film analysts though).

The POV chapter also takes in later cinema which established different ways of seeing and presenting the world to the audience and changes in the sorts of lead characters audiences are encouraged to identify with, changes which mirror the way society has changed its views on, for example, women. I would question one scene though, where he implies that it was these later films that now allowed the audience to “participate with the film and think about and question the ideology of the onscreen image”; it seems to assume earlier audiences didn’t think about what they were watching, which seems unlikely. The passive audience has often been brought up by media theorists for various mass media, but I’ve never really bought into it (and indeed the old ‘hypodermic needle’ model of totally passive audience acceptance of what they are presented with is largely discredited among many media studies types. Some elements of audiences have always interpreted the text differently from the preferred reading encoded by the maker).

The third and final short chapter is Food on Film – you might have expected something more obvious like a chapter on genre theory, perhaps, but as Edward explains “Wait” Hear me out” It’s not as daft as it might sound. In fact food has long played a major symbolic role in the movies”. He then goes on to cite a number of examples, from the early, silent era (a starving Charlie Chaplin carving up of an old boot as dinner) to more indirect uses of eating to portray characters’ state of mind (the ever increasing breakfast table, one of the simple but incredibly clever devices used to portray the cooling of a marriage in Citizen Kane) through to the more modern era and humans themselves being on the cinematic menu, be it as prey to other nightmare creatures (back to the monsters again! Cinema and film theorists can’t leave monsters and horror alone) or being served up to other humans (as in The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover).

As I said at the start it seems an unusual subject matter for a short comic, but the fact that it is using comics on a different theme from many I read is one of the things which interested me. The brevity means there’s no time for much depth in the chosen examples, understandably – you could fill 10, 000 word essays on each of these areas easily (and for some of them I have, in a former life), but obviously Edward isn’t trying to pretend he is giving you that. Rather he’s picking out some major examples and citing some of the important writers in the field of film studies and, importantly, he concludes each chapter by listing both some relevant films and some of the authors and their books which he quotes from, so if you are a movie buff but haven’t delved much into the academic study of the medium there are some good suggested examples of further reading should the comic inspire you (on a personal note I’d add Pam Cook’s excellent The Cinema Book, published by the BFI, as a perfect general primer for anyone interested in learning more about film theory and studies). It’s an interesting wee comic which I enjoyed; I don’t think you have to have any familiarity with film studies to enjoy it though; in fact for those unfamiliar with the field but interested in cinema it probably functions nicely for introducing a few key ideas from the field that they can then follow up for themselves.

There you go and I didn’t use the term ‘intertextual’ once and I have refrained from stroking my beard in a thoughtful manner while discoursing on postmodernism in cinema. You can check out more of Edward’s work via his blog, where I see he is another of our comics community who is taking part in the Hundred Days project and posting up the results, so go check it out.