Meg 253 - Ho Drokkin' Ho, Creeps!

[Dudley]

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[Goaty]

is it most campest cover ever???

[I, Cosh]

It's like a competely different comic this month.

[Byron Virgo]

Anyone else read that article on comic-to-film adaptations? I'm fucking fuming over that...

[dweezil2]

I love Cliff Robinson's work, when he's on form! Though can we have him on strip duties soon, please.
Dweezil

[Pete Wells]

Only read Dredd but the payoff at the end is great!

[I, Cosh]

Anyone else read that article on comic-to-film adaptations? I'm fucking fuming over that...

Ordinarily I wouldn't have but your vitriolic response to it intrigued me. The lad talks a lot of crap about "closure" and changes his mind halfway through about whether he likes Superman Returns or not, but I didn't see what there was to get worked up about. Pray tell...

[Byron Virgo]

Well, he just seems to have entirely missed the point of superheroes. According to this Worley chap, superhero adaptations were rubbish in the past, because they weren't set in the 'real' world, ala the works of Moore or Miller.

But that utterly misses the point - we had superhero 'realism' in the form of Watchmen and Miracleman, but ultimately there's nothing more to say on the subject. The titles mentioned as being great 'realistic' superbooks - Kingdom Come, The Ultimates, etc - are all sloppily-written, fanboy rubbish. Superheroes and the real world are two mutually exclusive factors - if our world had superheroes in it, then we would be changed by that fact, and our world would no longer be 'real' in the same sense that it is now. That's why the best works of recent years have been Morrison's JLA and All-Star Superman, or Moore's Supreme or Top 10 - books that were able to actually enjoy themselves as modern updatings of the classic Silver Age books that the creators loved when they were kids, acknowledging the inherent silliness of the superhero as a concept itself. Ultimately, it's people actually taking the time to enjoy what they're doing and producing something with a bit of soul, instead of the souless, by the numbers cash-cows that are something like Identity Crisis or Civil War.

Also, the reviewer isn't even consistant - I mean, one minute he's berrating Superman Returns for being apolitical, but then the next he says that Supes catching people falling out of buildings is a reference to the Twin Towers. Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't he do the exact same thing in the very first film? Was Richard Donner somehow fortelling the future?

"Consider the cocksamamie scheme cooked up by supposed criminal genius Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey), who plans to build a whacking great heap of crud in the middle of the Atlantic and then sell real estate off it...Such Crayola-level stoytelling might have washed with comics readers in the '70s (lest we forget 'Costa del Lex'), but twenty years after Moore and Miller, doesn't it sound just a little bit childish?"

What, you mean like a bloke flying around in the air in a cape with his pants on over his trousers...?

[Byron Virgo]

But then I was a film student, and therefore obliged to argue pointlessly about flicks...

Anyway, I didn't want to distract from the actual job of reviewing the latest issue of the Meg, which is really very good, and one of the best so far this year. Dredd made me laugh, Black Atlantic looks interesting, nice to see Jack Point back, and a good choice of reprint. I particularly like Devlin's new look on the cover too...

[TordelBack]

Haven't read the article but Byron mate, your analysis of the superhero is spot on, and gels well with Moore's oft-quoted horror at what his 12 (wonderful) little issues of Watchmen did to the entire genre, if not the whole medium.  

[Matt Timson]

"...acknowledging the inherent silliness of the superhero as a concept itself..."

Now then Virgo, what you've just described there is deconstructionism- and it totally violates the core concept of all superheroics, while fundamentally disprespecting the genre.

I know this because John Byrne said so- and he's not a man to talk out of his nutsack- oh no.

[wrly_bird]

Hi there,
   Thanks for reading my piece on comic-book adaptations in the Meg 253. Hope everyone enjoys it more than they do my movie reviews â?? ouch! Just felt I had to sign in and add a further couple of points after reading Byron Virgoâ??s post. Hi Byron.
   First of all, I have to say that I certainly didnâ??t mean to give the impression that I believe all superheroes pre-Moore/Miller are â??rubbishâ?. I simply feel that they are naïve compared to the superhero comics of today, which comment, satirize and reflect the real world, a la Watchmen, The Ultimates and Supreme Power.
   Yet itâ??s the perceived naivety of modern comics that Hollywood movies, and hence their non-comics-reading punters, generally appear to believe is what comics, all comics, are about.
   I confess, Byron, youâ??re much wider read than me (Iâ??ve yet to read Mooreâ??s Supreme and Top 10 and had to strike All-Star Superman a couple of issues in following fresh budgetary constraints on my standing order). However, I disagree strongly with your point about there being nothing more to say on the subject of superheroes and on the â??inherent silliness of the superhero as a concept.â?
   On the contrary, I believe superheroes, costumed or otherwise, are nothing less than incarnations of ourselves as we wish to be, and are therefore powerful indicators of our aspirations and fears. They are the modern-day equivalent of Gilgamesh and Achilles, projections of our collective desires, which is why they work so well on the world stage in the hands of astute writers like Moore, Millar and JMS.
   If only Hollywood movies had half the political nous of The Ultimates (sorry, Byron, I still think this title rocks â?? well, at least it did before Jeph Loeb got his mitts on itâ?¦) the mainstreamers wouldnâ??t be half as eager to dismiss comics (which most people are ignorant enough to believe is all guys in capes anyway) as escapist daydreams we all should have grown out of years ago.
   As for the point about the real world and superheroics being mutally exclusive, I guess itâ??s all a matter of degree. Just because Supes exists in a world one remove from our own (one that allows superheroes like him to exist) doesnâ??t mean his story canâ??t maintain some kind of dialogue with the real world as we live it, as was done in Watchmen, et al.
   Iâ??m always reminded in discussions like this of a mate who always lets bad storytelling in fantasy movies slide, saying â??itâ??s fantasy, anything can happen.â? WRONG! Itâ??s all a delicate, delicate balance within that make-believe world, whereby rules are created and adhered to in order for the story to work as drama.
   For me, and Iâ??ve had plenty of people disagree with me, I felt that after Superman Returns went to so much trouble making us not only believe a man in red pants can fly but also care whether or not heâ??s happy it was a shame to pit him against a villain with all the emotional depth of a Frosties commercial.
   Like I said, reality in fantasy â?? itâ??s all a delicate balance.
Cheers.
Alec

[Byron Virgo]

First off, hope you weren't too offended by my rant before - no offence, it's just that all this 'realism' in superhero books (or "badassery" as those canny DC execs like to term it, when talking about Identity Crisis) just *really* gets on my tits! ;-)

I guess part of it is personal taste - I mean, I can't stand that bloke who wrote Babylon 5, but I do know people who like Supreme Power, so I'll admit that I'm not saying anything other than my own personal opinion. That said, I don't think it's a question of accepting bad storytelling - it's about not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

I mean, other than All-Star Superman and that Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons annual, there hasn't been a decent Superman story since Crisis on Infinite Earths, and it was those Silver Age glory years that Donner and co were tapping into when producing their films. Now, I do acknowledge they have their faults (I never got the whole 'spinning the Earth backwards' when I was a kid, and was kind of amused that it now ends the cut of Superman II as well!), but overall I thought they were a pretty decent stab at the heart of what the Superman mythos was all about. As for Lex Luthor, this was more of the kooky supervillain he used to be, as opposed to the corporate evil genius he's been since Crisis. In fact, the nature of his schemes always involving real estate is brought up in the new cut of II, and he says something along the lines of 'real estate is what I know', so I guess it is actually consistant for the character. Perhaps it was just the fact that Kevin Spacey was voicing them in Returns that put you off?

Thing is, superheroes began as stories for kids - now, I'm not saying that you can't have intelligent stories or themes within those tales told today, just that I believe you have to acknowledge that fact in the telling. Unlike those tales from mythology you cite, these are set in the modern day, and since our view of the ancient past is, to some degree, mythologised already, it's easier for people to accept those than it is for a spandex-clad superhero strolling round New York. That's not to say that you can't do that, just you have to consider how the world would be changed by their presence (as indeed it was in Watchmen).

If we're talking about the world outside gaining a greater appreciation of comics through film adaptations, well it's probably more likely to happen through non-superhero films like Sin City or American Spleandor. Superheroes in film and those in comics seem to be increasingly disassociated from one another, and films seems to be vastly outperforming them - there's probably far more people who've watched the Spider-Man films than read the comic book.

By the way, if you haven't read Supreme or Top 10, you really ought to - it's all about Moore's love for the Silver Age, with a thousand and one mad ideas chucked into the pot, but it still manages to balance it with some 'issues' and dashings of pop culture as well (if you ever wanted to see Monica from friends get shot "execution style" then it's well worth checking out) - ask Santa to stick them in your stocking! Actually, it's also worth checking out Moore's Judgement Day crossover, which is pretty much a critique of the modern day 'dark' superhero, even if it does feature some ugly, *ugly* art from Rob Liefield...shudder...

Still, think about it this way: we may disagree on many things, but at least we're all united in our loathing of Jeph Loeb... ;-)

[Trout]

Fight! Fight!

Oh, well, don't then.

I think the Meg's improving. The lead Dredd is very strong and replacing Black Siddha with anything was always going to be a good move.

I enjoyed Devlin (matron!) and and interested by Black Atlantic. Also, I really like the small press thing. I wish they were all so good!

- Trout

[Floyd-the-k]

" the mainstreamers wouldnâ??t be half as eager to dismiss comics (which most people are ignorant enough to believe is all guys in capes anyway)"

From what I can see, most comics are (a) guys in tights and (b) well worth dismissing
  I've only read the one Ultimates book and can't remember if Jeph Loeb was involved. But it was rubbish...just people in tights being less fun than they used to be, in a vain attempt to be adult

Myself, I think Moore's comics work well because he's a genius storyteller, rather than anything archetypal about the characters. Superman may well be the equivalent of Gilgamesh and/or Achilles (although I don't think escapism now is what it was back then) but he's dead boring in the hands of of John Byrne and whoever wrote that death of superman thing


here is a spoilerific summary of the Death of Superman

A big bloke with a beard arrives from nowhere and beats the crap out of a lot of less important superheroes. Superman kills the big bloke, who he's decided to call Doomsday for no reason I could see, but dies himself