It's unfortunate because Scott Pilgrim, a perfect marriage of source material and director, is in no way a two-hour piece of fecal matter like most of those other flops, due to Wright's respect for--and enhancement of--Bryan Lee O'Malley's material and inventive gags like what has to be the most amusing cover of the Universal logo music to ever open a Universal picture.
O'Malley's creation is partly influenced by 8-bit video games, so legendary Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich redid Jerry Goldsmith's Universal fanfare in 8-bit form. It accompanies an NES-style version of the Universal globe that's as charmingly pixelly as all those title screen graphics that would open NES games I used to play as a kid. The enthusiastic audience that was treated to an advance Scott Pilgrim screening at Comic-Con went so wild over this opening gag that a Wired blogger couldn't even hear the drowned-out 8-bit logo music and wondered in his post if the opening piece was the Legend of Zelda theme. The redone fanfare also opens Godrich's digital-only Scott Pilgrim score album.
Another studio logo music parody I like is the J.B.'s-style cover of the 20th Century Fox fanfare at the start of White Men Can't Jump (one of many instances where a Fox release spoofed the fanfare--another example was Alien³). Alfred Newman never sounded so funky.
My rundown of the graphic novels and TPBs I bought at Comic-Con concludes with two recent projects from IDW, which quickly became the comics publisher whose releases I've been looking forward to the most because of its ambitious reprints and high-quality revivals of properties like Star Trek and Doctor Who.
I picked up Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 at the IDW booth because I was looking for a comic that veteran Marvel and DC letterer (and friend and mentor to several of us Secret Identities creators) Janice Chiang worked on and could sign for me at Comic-Con, and the TPB happened to contain an issue lettered by Janice. She then brought me over to another former Marvel letterer, Rick Parker, to have him sign the TPB because his work appeared in the collection too.
I never was an avid reader of Marvel's G.I. Joe comics, although I bought some issues of the mothership and a couple of its spinoffs when I was a kid. I was more familiar with the Sunbow animated series, which hasn't exactly aged well. Even when I watched G.I. Joe and Transformers back-to-back after school, I thought the animation on both those Sunbow shows sucked. The constantly choppy character movements made the crappy made-for-TV Popeye shorts from the '60s look like Richard Williams cartoons. Because the Sunbow series was essentially a 29-minute toy commercial (subtract one minute for the "Knowing is half the battle" PSA, which was devoted to giving safety tips or warnings about creepy guys in white vans instead of selling toys), most of G.I. Joe's episodes were forgettable and silly, except for one: the Steve Gerber-penned "There's No Place Like Springfield," an eerie two-part ep about Jack Nicholson's Shipwreck's awakening from a seven-year coma that was inspired by The Prisoner (Shipwreck's home address at "Number Six Village Drive" was a shout-out to that famously surreal show). The downbeat tone of the ep and the images of Shipwreck's wife, daughter and friends melting into grey goo blew my mind when I was a kid and scarred other kid viewers for life.
The Marvel comics were intended to sell toys too, but the writing in those comics tended to be much better than the writing on the cartoon, thanks to regular scripter and G.I. Joe action figure dossier writer Larry Hama, a real American hero, especially to Secret Identities contributors who dug that an Asian American was at the helm of Marvel's finest-written toy-based title (also the first comic ever advertised on TV). The Vietnam vet-turned-comics scripter's military expertise added authenticity and grit to the comics and kept them more grounded than the cartoon, where nobody died, Star Wars-style lasers replaced bullets and Cobra was about as dangerous and menacing as Colonel Klink and Sergeant Schultz. That's why the late Gerber's despair-filled "Springfield" was such a stunner back in 1985--the cartoon ditched its usually campy tone for once, added some much-needed menace to Cobra and incorporated a storyline from the comics, the Joes' discovery of a Cobra base disguised as an idyllic, all-American suburb called Springfield.
The standout 1983 G.I. Joe issue that introduced Hama's Springfield--a town that's as rotten-at-the-core as Matt Groening's Springfield--is included in Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1, which collects the first 10 issues of the original 1982-1994 Marvel comic, most of them drawn by '70s Incredible Hulk artist Herb Trimpe in the classic '60s/'70s Marvel style. My tastes in espionage comics lean towards the more adult Queen & Country and Sleeper, so I found the dialogue in these early '80s G.I. Joe issues to be on the hokey side. Despite the hokey one-liners, as the Topless Robot blog noted last year, the original comic still kicks its cartoon counterpart's ass. Scarlett--the lone female Joe in these earlier issues, before Hasbro added Cover Girl and Lady Jaye to the cast--gets a bunch of thrilling take-charge moments in the 1983 issue that Janice lettered, a Mike Vosburg-drawn story in which Scarlett is assigned to protect a diplomat who's being targeted by Cobra (another highlight of the TPB, as well as one of the few issues in the collection that didn't involve either Hama or Trimpe).
I finally finished reading all the books I bought during my one-day trip to Comic-Con. In an August 6 post, I discussed the first book I grabbed there that day, The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, Javier Grillo-Marxuach's adaptation of the unproduced final episode of his prematurely cancelled TV series version of The Middleman.
I also picked up a TPB of Tyler Chin-Tanner's self-published miniseries Adrenaline, Debbie Huey's Bumperboy and the Loud, Loud Mountain, IDW's Classic G.I. Joe Volume 1 and an exclusive Comic-Con edition of Darwyn Cooke's eagerly anticipated IDW adaptation of The Hunter, the first Parker novel by Richard Stark, a.k.a. the late Donald E. Westlake. My tastes in comics aren't usually this wide-ranging--I stick to a steady diet of mature crime or espionage titles--but this list of books I grabbed in San Diego was an exception.
I first met Tyler at the Asian American ComiCon, where we had Artists Alley tables, and I ran into him again at the SDCC, where the AACC was still on our minds (the much smaller AACC was a far more enjoyable experience than SDCC, despite the occasional moments of insensitive Artists Alley behavior). Tyler is currently at work on American Terrorist, a comic about ordinary citizens who go on the lam after they're branded as terrorists for criticizing the government (the first issue is available to iPhone and Google Android users).
Like American Terrorist, Adrenaline is ripped from the headlines, and it centers on Dr. Saida Nri, a young Nigerian physician who gets roped into competing for a $4 million grand prize on a sensationalistic, globetrotting reality show of the same title--think a sleazier version of The Amazing Race. This enjoyable actioner, which Tyler wrote and drew layouts for (with epic-looking artwork provided by penciller/colorist James Boyle and inker/letterer Fabio Redivo), is a gentle sendup of reality TV and its frequent co-opting of the extreme sports craze. Alex Lowder, the Adrenaline show's wealthy host/creator (and he's not only the host, but he's also a contestant), is a mash-up of the douchey, culturally clueless Jeff Probst and an extreme sports nut.
One of the books I picked up at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con was an early copy of Viper Comics' The Middleman: The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse, which, according to Middleman creator and Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse co-writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach on his Twitter page earlier this week, "has shipped to the distributor and should hit comic book stores this or next weds."
After JGM wasn't able to film the 13th and final episode of his rejected TV series pitch-turned-Viper comic-turned actual TV series due to budgetary issues, he did what Buffy creator Joss Whedon and Farscape creator Rockne O'Bannon have done with their respective shows after the end of their runs. Like those two cult TV masterminds, JGM decided to pick up where his show left off--in comic form instead of onscreen.
Without giving too much away, The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse is an entertaining and bittersweet farewell to the TV incarnations of the Middleman and his trainee sidekick Wendy Watson (wonderfully brought to life on the show by Matt Keeslar, the most prim and proper action hero on TV since the days when Paul Gross' polite Canadian Mountie neatnik literally cleaned up the streets of Chicago on Due South, and newcomer Natalie Morales, who once called herself "the child that Amanda Peet and Rosario Dawson would have if they could procreate"). But the graphic novel, which JGM co-scripted with his fellow Middleman co-executive producer Hans Beimler, also opens the door for more adventures with the Middleman characters, although if JGM decides to resume the comic, I doubt we'll see them drawn again as Keeslar, Morales and the other actors (in the comic, Wendy is a redhead and is white instead of Latina).
I wasn't familiar with the comic before the TV version premiered on ABC Family last summer, but I instantly became a fan of the show because of its perfectly cast actors and amusing dialogue, which was loaded with pop culture references that were never forced and bizarre-sounding exclamations like "Story of O!" and "Eyes without a face!" For those who have never watched The Middleman--and really ought to now that Shout! Factory has released all 12 wordily titled episodes on DVD--the show is about Wendy, an unemployed art student who becomes the apprentice to a mysterious, Eisenhower jacket-wearing secret agent known as the Middleman, the latest in a long line of agents who take on adversaries other agencies are too chicken to fight, from evil extraterrestrials disguised as boy bands to corporate tycoons with hidden agendas like Manservant Neville (serial guest star Mark Sheppard), a Steve Jobs-esque mastermind with nefarious plans for his iPod-like uMaster product (rhymes with "View-Master").
Superbly illustrated by Armando M. Zanker, The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse pits the Middleman and Dub-Dub against a more-insane-than-usual Manservant Neville and further explores the Middleman's conflicted feelings for Dub-Dub's hot and leggy performance artist best friend Lacey, who was continually referred to by the show's chyrons as "the young, equally photogenic artist whom Wendy shares an illegal sublet with." On the show, the Middleman's love interest started out as yet another annoying Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but both actress Brit Morgan--an interesting cross between a young Frances McDormand and Zooey Deschanel who could have been perfect as a relative of McDormand's mother character and Deschanel's daughter character in Almost Famous--and the show's writers developed the Middleman's biggest admirer into something more nuanced than an MPDG. I usually don't care for the romantic subplots on my favorite shows--I'm not one of those viewers who "squee" over the "shipping" of two characters, and I wish those two slang terms would go away and take the equally grating "bromance" with them. But Lacey's crush on the Middleman--who's attracted to her and shares her love for Randolph Scott westerns, but doesn't want another relationship because of both his loyalty to his job and a rarely discussed previous romance that ended in tragedy--brings some welcome depth to an otherwise lightweight, '60s Avengers-style series.
Speaking of The Avengers--my second favorite spy show, right below Burn Notice--Jeremiah Chechik, who co-produced The Middleman and directed several of its eps, previously made the ill-advised Ralph Fiennes/Uma Thurman feature film version of The Avengers. Chechik was able to do something with The Middleman that he failed to accomplish with his bloated reimagining of Steed and Mrs. Peel: he captured the spirit of the original, lower-budgeted Avengers. There's no sexual heat between the Middleman and Wendy like there was between Steed and Peel (the Middleman views Wendy as the little sister he never had), but the enthusiasm the Middleman and Wendy have for their work is as infectious as it was when that other pairing of "top professional and talented amateur" did their duty for queen and country.
I recommend watching Shout! Factory's Middleman: The Complete Series box set before reading the series finale, which contains tons of callbacks to the show's running gags and makes little sense if you've never seen the show. At Comic-Con, the cast and crew performed the entire novel as a table read (which I wasn't able to catch, but meeting JGM and having him and previous Middleman GN artist Les McClaine sign my copy of The Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse compensated for missing the table read). On Facebook, readers won't be able to see this, but here on Blogspot, I'm juxtaposing a Doomsday Armageddon Apocalypse moment between the Middleman, Wendy and Ida the android secretary with the table read version of the scene (it takes place between 7:06 and 8:12 on the embed), performed by Keeslar, Morales and Ida's portrayer, Comic-Con audience favorite Mary Pat Gleason. Ida is what you get if you mash up Ray Bradbury's Electric Grandmother with Roz from Monsters, Inc., Blanche Devereaux from The Golden Girls and Joe Flaherty's pothead-hating Harold Weir from Freaks and Geeks ("Go back to Jamaica, greenie!").
Damn, it's a helluva week to be a nerd. The Dark Knight finally arrives in theaters (and opens to acclaim and packed houses), Joss Whedon's clever and surprisingly bittersweet Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog premieres on the Web (and gets flooded with so many visitors that it crashes), and nerds who were lucky to get themselves a membership and a San Diego hotel room are trekking to the wretched hive of scum and questionable hygiene known as the Comic-Con.
I'm skipping this year's Nerd Prom (for reasons that are partly monetary and don't have anything to do with that dumb term "staycation"), but I'm marking the occasion by streaming five somewhat Comic-Con-related episodes of Morning Becomes Dyspeptic this week. Each MBD episode during Nerd Prom Week features at least one clip of nerd-friendly comedy, from either a comic who's an unapologetic nerd (Patton Oswalt, Brian Posehn) or a comic who wouldn't be caught dead at Comic-Con (Norm MacDonald, Bobcat Goldthwait).
Here's the schedule for MBD this week:
Mon., Jul. 21: Episode MBDA13 (Dana Gould, "In Praise of Vincent Price") Tue., Jul. 22: Episode MBDA08 (Norm MacDonald, "The Fantastic Four") Wed., Jul. 23: Episode MBDA01 (Brian Posehn, "The Unholy Trilogy") Thu., Jul. 24: Episode MBDA49 (Bobcat Goldthwait, "Star Wars Fans Are Uber Nerds") Fri., Jul. 25: Episode MBDA50 (Patton Oswalt, "At Midnight I Will Kill George Lucas with a Shovel")
MBD airs every weekday at 1am and 8am on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.
