The Forbidden Planet International Blog

Well, I’m obviously doing the Internet and media right this week, because all I heard and saw was an outpouring of praise for a difficult decision by Angelina Jolie that raise awareness and save lives in future. But it’s no surprise to find out that some idiots decided that they had a right to complain about her surgery, to which Megan Roslarian has the perfect reposte…

Megan Rosalarian:

“Angelina Jolie had a double mastectomy, in case you hadn’t heard. How dare she remove those ticking time bombs from her chest, amiright? Like, hasn’t she learned by now that her body is public domain and we all get to vote on what she does with it? Sheesh, how selfish can ya get.”

Well, hopefully you’ve managed to avoid the spoilers? Bad BBC America, releasing those dvds early.

Today it’s series finale time, and we learn “The Name Of The Doctor” and work out the secret of Clara….

On the left, the young non-stereotypical young princess going against tradition, on the right, the hideous Disney Princess version.

I hate the whole Disney Princess thing, always did, and worked hard to keep Molly (mostly) away from it when she was younger (we went with Sulley, Mike, Stitch – a far better choice). But this is just horrible. Finally a Disney Princess with a little more about her and Disney marketing turn her into another clone.

Thankfully public pressure seems to have done the trick, as Jezebel reports, a Change.org petition exceeded 200,000 signatures, and now the Disney Princess website is back to the old line-up with a lack of red-headed Scots Princess.

And if you want a perfect summation… here’s Dork Tower:

Eighteen months ago Allie Brosch posted Adventures In Depession at her blog. And then promptly stopped posting.

It was a perfect illustration of what depression can feel like, how ridiculous, miserable, futile and angry it can be, how it can attack without reason or rhyme. It was the perfect thing to stick under the nose of someone who just couldn’t get why you were the way you were every so often.

Eighteen months on, and Allie is back online, back with another post. It is every bit as emotionally raw and affecting. You should read it, and you’ll be a better person by the end with a far better understanding of depression.

“It’s weird for people who still have feelings to be around depressed people. They try to help you have feelings again so things can go back to normal, and it’s frustrating for them when that doesn’t happen. From their perspective, it seems like there has got to be some untapped source of happiness within you that you’ve simply lost track of, and if you could just see how beautiful things are…”

And that’s the most frustrating thing about depression. It isn’t always something you can fight back against with hope. It isn’t even something — it’s nothing. And you can’t combat nothing. You can’t fill it up. You can’t cover it. It’s just there, pulling the meaning out of everything. That being the case, all the hopeful, proactive solutions start to sound completely insane in contrast to the scope of the problem.

It would be like having a bunch of dead fish, but no one around you will acknowledge that the fish are dead. Instead, they offer to help you look for the fish or try to help you figure out why they disappeared.”

Okay, it looks like a DC Comic, it reads like a DC Comic, but Junior; written by Vivien Gallasch and Megan Butler, art by Pamela Lovas, is most definitely, absolutely, completely NOT a DC Comic, as they are very quick to point out:

[Copyright Disclaimer: We do not own any of the characters or their likeness. All material belongs to DC Comics and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use”, including non-profit, educational or personal. This is purely a fan comic. No copyright infringement intended.]

I hope that’s enough. There is a long history of fan fiction such as this, but the modern problem is that something like this, or Yale Stewart’s JL8, is so well done, looks absolutely professional and genuine, that there’s always a chance the company will decide to issue those nasty cease and desist notices.

However, whilst it’s up online still, I’d definitely recommend heading over to Junior The Comic Tumblr, where you can download the first couple of issues – mere tiny things, issue 1 just 8 pages, issue 2 coming in even shorter at 7. I know little about Morrison’s Batman, but I do know what happened to Damian recently, and saw the response online. This is great wish-fulfilment and I imagine a lot of Damian fans are loving this right now…

Here’s a little from issue 1, where Damian and Titus rescue a birdie. Issue 2 sees father and son do a little bonding over paint.

Brazilian designer Butcher Billy has a new copyright taunting series of t-shirts (is it a steal, is it satire?) - The Post-Punk / New Wave Super Friends.

Ian Curtis, Devo, Billy Idol, Jon Lydon, Siouxsie Sioux, Robert Smith, and Mozza as Supes….

John Cei Douglas delivers a great, great six-pager on the subject of depression and the perils of not dealing with the black cloud that hangs over us all sometimes. Originally presented in ink + Paper #3.

First two pages below, the rest at the link:

Largo Winch Volume 12: The Way And The Virtue

By Jean Van Hamme and Philippe Franq

Cinebook

By now trying to review Largo Winch has become something of an exercise in swapping the words around. It’s not like reviewing a movie franchise where there’s the variation derived from different actors, directors, and styles. But a Van Hamme and Francq Largo Winch is always going to be a Van Hamme and Francq Largo Winch, and that does tend to mean a lot of similar things from each two-volume story to the next.

In pretty much every story you can expect: high adventure, Largo Winch doing a little business, his advisors criticising him for his way of doing business and gloomily forecasting the end of the W Group, bad guys (corporate), bad guys (criminal), a chase/escape, a fight or two, and a hint of womanising. Yep, every time. But although that may suggest repetition and eventual diminishing returns, the stories also have two very important things very much in their favour; Van Hamme and Francq.

Van Hamme does this sort of high concept, intelligent version of a throwaway action thriller so well, and Francq delivers all the action, all the talking, all the scenery ever so well. It’s something that could so easily have grown tired very quickly, but given the skill and style of both men, I can’t see it being anything but cleverly done intelligent thrills for many volumes to come.  Essentially it’s James Bond as a corporate maverick with a past, less spying, more money, just as dangerous.

To give you the brief series overview is simple; Winch is the 26-year boss of the W Group, worth upwards of $10 billion, but his way of doing things is strictly anti-establishment, and there’s no lack of opponents gunning for him, but whether the highest risk to Largo comes from the corporate greed all around him, or a series of enemies he’s made in his past is up for debate.

This time around we join the fun with Largo in dire peril, locked in a cell with an old friend’s body slowly providing sustenance for the rats:

He landed there after a business deal put him back in Hong Kong, where old Chinese enemies were waiting, and an old promise to the Triads forced him to abandon his moral code and go after a sacred Taoist scroll. Everything went wrong, Largo was caught in the act, his friends have no idea where he is, and things look desperate.

Have a wild guess what happens next?

Yes, he gets free, of course he gets free, because there’s not much fun in an action adventure of this sort where the hero dies a lonely lingering death rotting in a filthy cell is there?

And once he’s free, and on the run in Homg Kong, Van Hamme and Francq totally go for it, and we’re rewarded with a simply breathtaking chase scene where Largo navigates his way through the skies and streets of Hong Kong, hopping on paragliders, heading down the central mid level escalator (longest covered escalator system in the world – and proof if it were needed that there’s a load of research in all these stories).

It’s only 9-pages long, but Francq pulls off an impressive trick; makes his pages so detailed that you can’t help but slow down to take it all in, AND makes it feel incredibly fast paced, the comic equivalent of a thrilling slow-motion scene.

Last review I mentioned the very teeny problem I find with a LW 2-parter; that the first part, the setup, is so brilliantly constructed, alternating between corporate high jinks and manic action so well that the subsequent finale is a breathless ride to disappointment. Well, wouldn’t you just know it, this is the volume that proves me a liar. Sure it’s fast and furious, but the twists and turns are so well done, the action so spectacular, and the actual structure so neatly plotted out to deliver a couple of finale moments… it’s fabulous, it really is.

We’ll end once more praising Francq’s artwork…

That. Is. Bloody. Brilliant.

Largo Winch really is a perfect thing, playful in its genre roots, yet intelligently done, Van Hamme and Francq knowing exactly how to maximise everything about it to deliver a great, great read.

Seminal BD magazine Spirou is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year, and, as we have already remarked on here before, that event will not pass unnoticed. There are special books, exhibitions, special editions of the magazine itself; there’s even talk of bringing back the Dutch language edition that sadly saw its demise some six years ago.

But even with all this looking back, time won’t stand still, even for a comic book character with his eternal youth. And so a new digital companion to the magazine was presented to the world this month, called Spirou.Z (named after traditional Spirou baddie Zorglub, who also gave his name to the “publisher” of the digital magazine).

The new monthly magazine faithfully mimics its venerable paper ancestor, with a mix of comics, features and columns (in comic format, natch). There’s a special new Spirou Et Fantasio story and the hilarious Maïa t’explique La Vie by Maïa Maraurette (a series of advice columns for young teens by a “perfect big sister”), both of which have gotten an “animated” makeover. There’s also a feature on the history of Spirou, and on cartoonist Arthur De Pins, and the first chapter of celebrated web comic of German cartoonist Daniel Lieske’s Wormworld Saga, which, with its very long vertical structure, seems to be a format well made for tablet reading.

Overall, the digital magazine is nicely done, with a very intuitive interface and fast rendering (even though it consistently crashedafter 15 minutes on my trusted “old” iPad 1), and the less well-known strips largely make up for the Spirou short which is, sadly, rather meh. But the best part is, it’s free (or at least the April edition is) and it is enterily in French and English.

You will still need to learn French if you want to read Dans Les Griffes de la Vipère (In The Viper’s Claws), the 53rd album in the Spirou Et Fantasio series by Yoann et Vehlman, and that is a shame. This is a book that takes meta to a new level. You think Superman catching kids reading his comics is self-referential? Think again.

In this book a mad billionnaire takes over the Spirou magazine, with the sole purpose of adding our favorite groom to his collection of adventure heroes on a remote island in South-America. Only after he’s signed the contract, Spirou finds out about his “benefactor”‘s evil schemes, and from then on he tries to escape from the island and from the constraints of the contract. It’s as if Spirou suddenly did a switcheroo with Largo Wynch.

The book not only plays about with the alternate reality of comics heroes, it also references the style of the series’ heydays, with the modernist architecture and cars that people like Franquin and Jidéhem were famous for. And at the same time it’s a veritable roller coaster of a story, much like the stories by Fournier or Tome & Janry. In their third Spirou endeavour, Yoann & Vehlmann are promising to be real players.

Spirou.Z can be downloaded for free from iTunes. Dans les Griffes de la Vipère is available from a number of stores (in French), or in digital format via Izneo)

Oh lucky geekdom, we seem to have moved in just a few years from having a handful of comics events to having a whole multitude to choose from, from small and intimate Indy themed gatherings to large US style ones which also embrace gaming as well as TV and film science fiction and fantasy. Into the larger category falls the now well established MCM comic cons, which have been expanding. The major London MCM is almost here – running from the 24th to the 26th of May (perfect bank holiday weekend fun!) at Excel at the Royal Victoria Dock in London.

The gathering this year boasts a good variety of guests, including a number of film and telefantasy actors and writers, while on the comics front talent like Yishan Li, Frazer Irving, David Hine, Emma Vieceli, Al Davison, Josceline Fenton, Chie Kutsuwada, Philippa Rice, Martin Eden and more will be there. The fun is not restricted to London, however, with the MCM Manchester gig coming up on July 20th and the Scottish MCM in Glasgow on September 7th; check the official site for more details.