The Air Nomads and Religious Vegetarianism

In the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, the quasi-extinct culture of the Air Nomads are portrayed as a society of peaceful, fun-loving monks. They are known to travel extensively, are the only one of the Four Nations to be composed entirely of benders of their respective element, and have a penchant for fruit pies. But one other trait distinguishes them from all the others: They are all vegans. Or vegetarians, or what-have-you.

It's no secret that the world of Airbender (created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko) draws heavily from medieval East Asian culture. Indeed, this unique choice of source material is one of the cornerstones of the success of the series. The mythologies and histories of Japan, China, India, and other East Asian cultures are ripe with storytelling possibilities to draw from. The fact that DiMartino and Konietzko (the latter of whom is a vegan) are the most visible Western creators to do so is a credit to their ingenuity and talent.

However, looking back on the series, particularly the Air Nomads, I began to wonder just how true to their inspirations some aspects of this incredible fictional world were. Maybe it was something I read about vegetarianism in my college Nutrition class, but my curiosity was piqued. So I did a little investigating, and found some things that surprised me, if only just a little.

The Air Nomads, a monastic society, are obviously based off of Tibetan Buddhist monks, right down to their clothing and architecture. On the face of it, Buddhist monks are known to adhere to a code which prohibits the killing of either man or animal. However, as usual, the devil is in the details. Within Buddhism, there are multiple schools of thought regarding exactly how far this code applies. Insofar as I can understand, most divergences in this area of Buddhist doctrine stem from a disagreement over whether the no-kill rule logically extends to not eating meat. Put simply, one school of thought believes that the eating of certain meats (such as pork, chicken, or fish) is okay as long as the Buddhist eating it didn't know it was killed on their behalf, while another believes that a moratorium on the consumption of all meat is implicit in the reading of their sacred texts. And that's all without getting to the Tibetan school of thought which allows for the consumption of both meat and alcohol, a big deviation from these other two which I have been able to identify.

It's a bit complicated, involving a depth of understanding about Buddhist theology and doctrine that I won't even pretend to have. As it applies to the Air Nomads, who are obviously heavily inspired by Tibetan society, I can make a slightly swifter judgment. If the Air Nomads were based primarily on Tibetan Buddhist monks, then their sacraments endorsing vegetarianism, let alone veganism, make little sense. Tibetan Buddhism, as stated, allows for the consumption of meat. The 14th Dalai Lama has encouraged vegetarianism, while still acknowledging it as optional, to the point of regularly eating meat himself. The reasons that vegetarianism is optional in Tibet is for reasons both religious and practical. Tibetan Buddhism follows a school of thought originating from Northern India called Vajrayana which makes vegetarianism unnecessary. More pressingly, vegetables are scarce in mountainous regions such as Tibet, thus requiring less stringent traditions.

So, assuming DiMartino and Konietzko did their research, their incorporation of veganism into the fictional society of the Air Nomads may instead come from the culture of Hindu priests. I talked with an acquaintance who formerly resided in India, and she informed me that when it comes to adherence to the dietary laws of Hinduism, the different castes of Hinduism vary greatly. The priest caste ardently practices vegetarianism, no doubt because they can afford to do so, but not uniformly. Lower castes, however, are allowed to eat meat and dairy. Even these general rules of thumb differ heavily region-to-region.

My acquaintance's son resided in a region near the Ganges River, one of the most polluted rivers in the world by his account, which kept the consumption of fish down. Meanwhile, this 2006 survey tells us that only about 31 percent of Indians are vegetarians. That's all without accounting for Jainism, whose most devout adherents pursue the goal of non-violence to the point of using feathers to sweep insects out of their way wherever they go and wearing head coverings to avoid inhaling small insects. They're all either vegans or lacto-vegetarians, going even beyond that by not eating garlic or other root vegetables so as to not do harm to plants!

Tibetan Monks

In view of all this, the Air Nomads, like most of the other cultures depicted in Avatar: The Last Airbender, are a composite culture which contain elements from Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, and Jainism. This fictional society does not conform to any one specific religion, but is syncretic. This explains why the Air Nomads place great value in meditation and piety, abide by strict dietary regulations, and yet are able to kick serious tuckus through the use of magic kung fu.

A discussion on this blog about religion and fictional monastic orders wouldn't be complete without a Christian view on the subject of religious vegetarianism. While several Christian sects, ranging from Benedictine monks to Seventh Day Adventists, encourage or even mandate vegetarianism, the Bible's teaching on it are clear enough. God gave humanity permission to eat meat after Noah's flood (Genesis 9:3), and although He prohibited the Jews from eating certain animals, He never prohibited the consumption of all meat. Jesus later declared all foods clean in a vision given to the Apostle Peter (Acts 10:10-15), and is recorded in the Gospels as eating fish (Luke 24:42-43) and lamb (Luke 22:8-15). He also served bread and fish during the feeding of the five thousand (Matthew 14:17-21).

In one particularly notable passage, found in Mark 7, Jesus made the larger point that it isn't what a person eats that makes him "unclean," but what comes out of the person from within. As it reads there:

And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride,foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person."

Image 1 courtesy of avatar.wikia.com. Image 2 courtesy of tibettravel.org.

The Metal Clan and Utopianism

A couple weeks back, I ended my post on Zaheer and Zen Anarchism (that sounds so fun to write) with a promise that the next time I wrote about The Legend of Korra, I'd talk about the Metal Clan. That day has come, and I now plan onc talking about how the Metal Clan relates to the philosophy of Utopianism.

Utopiansim refers to the belief or philosophy surrounding the concept of utopia. Utopia itself is defined by merriam-webster.com as "an imaginary place in which the government, laws, and social conditions are perfect." Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig defines Utopiansim as "arrival at... a kind of perfect world, a paradise on earth, as it were—the perfect society." Although this precise term wasn't coined until English philosopher Thomas More wrote the book Utopia in 1516, the idea of utopia has been around since Plato's Republic at least, which dates back to around 380 B.C. Utopia has been discussed in various other literature and other media across the centuries, and in the modern era has led to the development of the respected but relatively new genre of dystopia. The Legend of Korra provides in Book 3: Change an example of what is for all practical purposes a utopian society: Zaofu, home of the Metal Clan.

Zaofu is a community made up largely of metal and earth-benders, founded and led by some of the descendants of Toph. According to its leader, Suyin Beifong, it is a place where everyone is encouraged to strive for their maximum potential. She also states that it is "the safest city in the world." Indeed it is, as it contains elaborate security measures, such as retractable metal roofs over the city, metal-bending powered gondolas for entry, and a crack squad of metal-bending police, though Lin Beifong doesn't think much of all this. What's more, it's implied that all or many of the city's earth-bending inhabitants have learned Toph's ability to detect lies in other people through earth-bending, providing a neat incentive for the residents of Zaofu to never fib. Zaofu is evidently a meritocracy, housing some of the world's finest scientific minds, including a certain Howard Hughes-esque businessman who we haven't seen since the Book 2 finale. Thus, for all intents and purposes, Zaofu is a utopia, most likely following the philosophy of classical liberalism (not to be confused with liberal progressivism), perhaps not intentionally established, and not stated outright by the characters, but definitely meeting much of the criteria.

But here's the catch: Utopia, by its very definition, is imaginary, just like Zaofu is imaginary. But unlike many imagined utopias, Zaofu's status as an ideal society is subtly deconstructed by pointing out one of the principle holes in the proposal of utopia: Who's going to make it all happen?

Many utopias, especially those based on the principles of socialism, profess that given the proper conditions, a classless, stateless society will emerge in which everyone works for the common good. Of course, this has never happened in reality, with attempted experiments with such models resulting in oppressive dictatorships such as Soviet Russia, Maoist China, Revolutionary France, and countless other nasty historical episodes. The main problem with this idea is that human nature is, by default, self-serving and uncharitable. The only way to organize a group of such creatures to work for the common good is through coercion, such as in a dictatorship or an oligarchy. But if that happens, then the ideal of a classless, stateless society is lost, and the whole experiment is for nothing. Due to their inherently faulty natures, the economies produced by socialism and its ilk generally descend into kleptocracy, or in a few extreme cases, anarchy. In many cases across the modern developing world, multiple dictatorships have risen and fallen in succession, calling to mind the French proverb, "The more things change, the more they stay the same." As Lois H. Sargent wrote in her essay "Anyone for Utopia?" in 1977, "Utopians seem never to give thought to the mechanics of management and operation of their imagined systems."

Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.)

Part of the reason societies like the Soviet Union developed into dictatorships was because the dictators in question typically don't want to relinquish their power. (The rest of the reason for these particular events have to do with a discussion of Communism, which is beyond the scope of this post.) Rare in history is the benign ruler who, when given absolute power in a time of crisis, resists the temptation to take hold of it until someone else can take it back by force. The Roman statesman Cincinnatus (519-430 B.C.) comes to mind, as does George Washington, who refused the opportunity to become King George I of America after the American War of Independence. In the Soviet Union, people like Lenin and Stalin, despite their ostensibly sincere belief in the Communist Utopia, were evil tyrants who used their power to bring about many deaths, if for Lenin it was thousands and Stalin millions. Later Soviet dictators weren't much better, using their power to line the pockets of they and their friends while the people lived in squalor. 

It is this element of corruption which all dictatorships and oligarchs have in common that exposes a chief vulnerability of any kind of utopia. In The Legend of Korra, a principle leader of Zaofu is revealed to have been in league with the villains. The reason this is significant is because it shows that Utopia can't be accomplished as long as there are imperfect humans trying to make things perfect. All civilizations have rulers, and if a ruler is corrupt, the whole civilization will be corrupt along with him. As we have seen, corruption is often the case in dictatorships. Imagine if the aforementioned Zaofu leader had used his position to accumulate illicit wealth, curry favors, accept bribes, or pervert justice for his own ends, which nearly does happen? What would we make of this Utopian community then?

The other big problem with Utopianism, an extension of the problem outlined above, has to do with the nature of government. Government is designed to restrain the corrupted nature of man, as the founders of the United States set out to do, with successful results. The American experiment is unique in that it went about this task by restraining the government; that is, by setting in place certain safeguards, such as separation of powers and elected representatives, so that the government would not grow too big or oppressive. The founders had no illusions, however, that they could produce a perfect society. James Madison, widely known as "the Father of the Constitution," wrote in The Federalist #51, "If men were angels, no government would be necessary." The long and short of it is that there will always be iniquities in any society made up of imperfect men. Even the nation of Israel, whose law codes (forming the first five books of the Bible) were provided by God Himself, and was supposed to be a model for the rest of the world, was a less than perfect society, frequently veering into apostasy, war, civil unrest, and other blights, to the point of being split into two separate kingdoms after the death of Solomon. (See 1 Kings 12)

Oddly enough, Israel in the days of the judges was little more than a loosely federated coalition of tribes led by a council of elders, and yet things were usually just as chaotic then as they were during the period of the kings, if not more so. (See Judges.) Thus, not even a semi-democratic theocracy such at this could bring about Utopia, not by a long shot! If all of this tells us anything, it's that there is no hope of a truly perfect society, not one made by human hands, until the coming of the Lord in His power, when there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth. Imperfect man can never make anything truly perfect, permanent, or stable. This world is, after all, transient and temporary.

In sum, we see from The Legend of Korra than even a society as wonderful and idyllic as that of the Metal Clan is not invulnerable to fault. For all its veneer of Utopia, it is still shown to be fallible in some key respects. It brings to mind another location from Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra's predecessor. This location, the city of Ba Sing Se, is a dystopia controlled by the villainous Grand Secretariat Long Feng, who through the use of the Dai Li, the sinister secret police, claims to be maintaining "an orderly utopia. The last one on Earth." Unfortunately, poor Long Feng is just as deluded as Marx, Wells, and Lenin. The only Utopia to ever exist will come at a time when all of them have faded away, and this one will never fade away: The kingdom of Christ, the Son of the Living God. And unlike any human made utopia, its coming is inevitable and everlasting.

Follow Levi on Twitter at @levi_sweeney, and submit questions and post ideas with the hashtag #QLevi

Image 1 courtesy tv.com. Image 2 courtesy kids.britannica.com.

Review: The Book Thief

The German poet Heinrich Heine once wrote, "Them that begin by burning books, end by burning men." (Kudos to Indiana Jones for that quote!) By the end of The Book Thief, written by Australian author Markus Zusak, Liesel Meminger probably understands this better than some college professors. She should know. Being the titular character, she makes a career of petty theft throughout the story, specializing in stealing books. Beginning in 1939, ten year old Liesel arrives in a poor neighborhood of a small town near Munich, brought in by a foster family after her biological mother can no longer support her. Her brother dies of disease on the train ride there, leaving Liesel deeply shaken, but also leading her to begin her career in book theft. Suffice it to say, she steals a manual on grave digging from the cemetery where her brother is buried, but doesn't begin her book thieving career in earnest until later, where she steals a book from a Nazi party book burning.

From there, everything changes.

Liesel, initially illiterate, is taught to read by her loving foster father, the accordion playing, cigarette smoking Hans Hubermann. She becomes best friends with the incorrigible boy next door, Rudy Steiner. She becomes the heavyweight champion of the local schoolyard. She is drafted into the Hitler Youth. She befriends the young Jewish boxer that her foster family takes in. She accompanies Arthur Berg and Rudy on apple stealing expeditions. And she keeps stealing books.

What is particularly notable about this book is that, unlike so many other popular young adult novels, such as The Hunger Games and Divergent, it is not written in first person per se. It's a mixture of first, second, and third person in the form of an omniscient narrator, identified both within the novel and specifically by Zusak in interviews as Death. While I contest on theological grounds the anthropomorphic portrayal of Death as a sentient, thinking being, I have to admit that Zusak's choice of Death as the narrator of a book set in Germany during the Second World War is a stroke of brilliance. In the book, Death is a wearied, put-upon being who yearns for a vacation and is amused by human conceptions of him. (At one point, he notes that he does not carry a scythe and that he only wears big black cloaks on cold days.) He is not a sadist, but rather a disinterested, even compassionate being. He goes so far as to directly contest the assertion that "War is death's best friend." In The Book Thief, Death is literally as much a main character as Liesel Meminger.

Speaking of characters, Zukas manages to successfully work with a large cast and make them all stand out in their own way. They all feel well rounded and realistic, like they're really living and breathing on the other side of the fourth wall. Everyone from Liesel, Rudy, and Max Vandenburg (the aforementioned young Jewish boxer) to Ilsa Hermann, Tommy Mueller, and Frau Diller have a clear cut motivation and characterization, all of which work together like a well trained orchestra, producing an equally grand result. The most interesting character in the book, I think, is Hans Hubermann (my personal favorite is Max). In him are wrapped up many of the prevailing themes of this book. Courage versus cowardice. Survivor's guilt. The power of love. Those are just a few of the many powerful themes present in this book, but we'll discuss those later.

Of course, with great characters that you can relate to and love, that also means that they are characters who you will be crushed to read about when their unfortunate fates are mentioned. I won't go into detail for risk of spoilers, but let's just say that you're going to come away from this book very, very sad. I sure did. But the sadness and emotion generated in the reader is only a payoff for the suspense built up throughout the whole book. The reader is constantly kept guessing at just what will happen, how this plot thread will unravel, who does what, what happens to whom. If nothing else, The Book Thief is unpredictable. Most of the time, that's a good thing. This is one of those times.

Oddly enough, the least interesting character in this book is probably Liesel herself, though that's not necessarily a bad thing. Though the story is ostensibly about her, most of the focus is on the events and people going on and about around her as she perceives it. How she reacts to it is generally how the reader reacts to it. She's still a well-rounded, complex character, but not to the degree that a lot of the others, such as Rudy, Max, Hans, or even Rosa Hubermann (Liesel's foster mother) are. She is, in a word, a viewpoint character, and a darn good one at that. I actually learned in my creative writing class last year that the main character shouldn't necessarily always be the most interesting, for the sake of telling a good story. If they are the most interesting character in the cast, then it's usually harder to write a good story, something only the best writers can usually pull off. Again, this is not a bad thing, and the book actually benefited from it in the end.

Major themes in this book other than those previously mentioned include death (obviously), war, friendship, family, love, compassion, loss, grief, different perspectives in a conflict, and hope. A lot of heavy stuff. The most pervasive and obvious theme, however, is the power of words. Liesel, Max, and Death both note that words have great power, and can be used for either good or evil. That's a lesson that needs to be taught a little more often in this day and age.

A word of warning, however. This book is quite plainly enough a young adult book, mainly because of the ubiquitous profanity, both German and English. I'd think that for someone who reads a lot, Liesel would have a larger vocabulary, though she does by the end of the book. As it is, all of the characters, except Ilsa Hermann, swear at least a little, but the primary offender is Rosa Hubermann, so take what you will from that. There's also a lot of, well, death, and destruction, and some other nasty things that I dare not mention in polite company. Moreover, The Book Thief doesn't seem to condemn the eponymous character's actions so much as it observes them, but I can't help but note that stealing, whatever the reason, is stealing, specifically prohibited by the eighth commandment. I do hope that Liesel, noted by Death to be a Lutheran, paid heed to Ephesians 4:28 in her later years.

Nevertheless, The Book Thief is without a doubt one of the greatest books that I have ever read, with a style and excellence in writing that reminds me of Louis Sachar, Jeanne DuPrau, and even Eoin Colfer. I therefore see fit to award this book with the highest rating which I can bestow upon it. I also look forward to reading another of Markus Zusak's award-winning books, I Am the Messenger. It sounds quite good. I also hope to view The Book Thief's recent film adaption of the same name, though I've been told that it's "so-so." Ah well. Worth a shot, right?

RATING: 10/10

Image courtesy of barnesandnoble.com

Review: Road to Marvel's the Avengers

Note: After a week-long vacation in an undisclosed location, I have now returned to blogging. Please return to enjoy this blog post. Also, congratulations to my grandparents, Pat and Jeanne Sweeney, on their 50th wedding anniversary! Also, congratulations to the blog for this, the 275th post!

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This book is bad.

I just wanted to get that out there. Not only is it bad, it's boring, unoriginal, predictable, and stupid. To be totally accurate, it is precisely because of these latter deficiencies that it is bad. I originally put this collection on my graphic novel to-read list because I wanted to get the whole story on The Avengers. What I read only cemented my belief that everything we saw in the films leading up to that glorious cinematic spectacle was more than enough. I'm sure that whoever was writing this carp was just doing their job, but the least Marvel could do is get some actually good writers to put out actually good promotion material meant to represent and advertise their actually good movies.

Road to Marvel's the Avengers collects all of the cheap-as-Hades tie-in comic books that were put out to generate buzz for Phase 1 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe... as if they needed anymore. We're treated to a full on, word-for-word comic book rendition of Iron Man, and background and backstory on Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, Dr. Abraham Erskine, and Johann Schmidt. We're also told exactly how Black Widow infiltrated Stark International in order to become Tony's new personal assistant.

If any or all of this sounds even remotely exciting and compelling, let me assure you, it's not.

The Iron Man stuff takes up roughly half of the book, and is basically a poorly rendered version of the film of the same name, plus some stuff showing Iron Man doing his thing in-between Iron Man and Iron Man 2. This latter part is particularly dull, depicting Tony fighting... people with guns in the Congo, I guess, and Tony using his Iron Man armor to impress the ladies. At the very least, it guest stars General Ross from The Incredible Hulk, and I just love that guy.

The problem with the Iron Man stuff is that it tries too hard to be the movie. The comic book rendition of the film (titled "I Am Iron Man!") is word-for-word, scene-for-scene, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was shot-for-shot too. "I Am Iron Man!" manages to capture the basic skeletal structure of the film, but has none of its substance or style. This, I think, is the problem with book-of-the-film tie-ins, or comic-book-of-the-film tie-ins, or any kind of tie-in which recycles the film for that matter: It often leaves the writer with no room for originality, essentially copying the script. As a result, this comic feels nothing like the movie, despite all of its effort to do so.

The other Iron Man stuff has a similar problem, combined with a hackneyed and stale plot. It's obviously trying to ape the pseudo-cleverness of Iron Man 2, and unlike "I Am Iron Man!", it actually succeeds in emulating the film. Considering considering that Iron Man 2 is widely considered to be the weakest film in the MCU, however, that's a patently terrible strategy, if only in hindsight. I can only imagine how fans who were gearing up for Iron Man 2 felt when they read this monstrosity. If I were in their shoes back then, however, I would have prayed to the most high God with all my heart that the movie was nothing like this comic. Paradoxically, the tone of this comic was spot on in regards to its reflection of the movie, yet somehow much, much worse. (For the record, I found Iron Man 2 to be an enjoyable flick, though admittedly not as good as its fellow MCU films. I hope to complete my Iron Man set of reviews and review it sometime.) At any rate, the only good thing about it was its exploration of the dynamic between Tony and his father, but while that was an oasis of good stuff in a wasteland of mediocrity and awfulness, it is far overshadowed by what we actually saw in the dadblamed movie.

The final bit of stuff related to Iron Man 2 promotion is a story with Black Widow. This story's tone shift early on is jarring, to say the least, going from crazy Mission Impossible/Die Hard/James Bond-esque stuff to a drama version of The Office. What I mean is, we literally see Black Widow jumping out of an exploding plane before going to apply at the Stark International corporate office. The whole time, she's using this awful, grating inner dialogue where she complains about "American inefficiency" (Clearly, the writer did not do his research when writing a defector from Soviet Russia) and the idiosyncrasies of office work. I imagine that under a different, actually competent writer, it would have been pretty darn funny to see Black Widow trying to navigate office politics without seriously injuring someone, but no, that's not what happens. What happens is a dry, humorless story which should have been very entertaining, maybe even interesting. But it is instead very boring, and only succeeds in persuading us that we really did not need to know the answer to the question it poses, that question being, "How did Black Widow infiltrate Stark International?" It's a perfect example of wasting a perfectly good plot.

As if things couldn't get any worse, we are then treated to a similar fill-in-the-blanks plot with the stuff for Captain America: The First Avenger. The story constantly shifts between a generic Cap-fighting-in-World-War-Two stuff and pre-Captain America Steve Rogers training with Bucky. Ordinarily, this would be fantastic stuff, showing Steve and Bucky growing up together. However, it's stifled by the stupid generic Cap-fighting-in-World-War-Two stuff and showing Johann Schmidt's story. (It's not that I have a problem with stuff showing Cap fighting in World War Two, but it's because it's so generic and careless in presentation that I found it to be intolerable.) The basic premise of this comic, in the same vein as televised tripe such as Smallville and perhaps even the upcoming Gotham is to show how our heroes and villains came to be the way they are. There's just one problem: Devoting a whole series, or even a miniseries, to answering that question gets really old really fast. I mean, how many times do you really want to see Steve getting pounded on in an alley before Bucky shows up to be a street fighting badbutt? (And remember, Bucky's supposed to be the sidekick.) Steve's story is basically what this series is, and while it's fairly compelling, it's not the stuff of great comics, because we already know what's going to happen. That's why we have origin stories, not origin series.

The stuff with the Red Skull and Dr. Erskine also had tons of potential, but whoever is writing this carp failed to capitalize on it. The Red Skull is shown in his days as plain old Johann Schmidt, who was apparently some random Hitler-groupie who got noticed by Heinrich Himmler and landed a position in the Waffen SS. The Red Skull's role in the plot is particularly interesting because he was so underdeveloped in the flipping movie. This comic could have been a chance to greatly redeem him as a character, delving into exactly why he wants to take over the world while parading about in an all black leather wardrobe. Unfortunately, despite one or two pretty great scenes with Johann Schmidt, we're mostly left in the dark (again) about these details. There's also a few scenes where Dr. Abraham Erskine is show trying and failing to escape to Switzerland with his family, and that really showed Dr. Erskine's selfless nature. He gets captured by Schmidt, but his manner of escape is blatantly ripped off from the Hong Kong scene in The Dark Knight of all things. And he gets put in his place in the hierarchy of morality by Peggy Carter of all people. Once again, plenty of potential, but poor execution.

Finally, there are a handful of stories focusing on people like Nick Fury and Agent Phil Coulson. These stories should have been awesome, but they failed spectacularly, thanks in part to ugly, ill-suited art, but mostly in part due to crudely put together story. None of the characters sound like their movie selves. Heck, they barely even look like their movie selves. What's particularly galling, however, is that these are the characters who, like Rhodey, Pepper, Bucky, and Dr. Erskine, would have benefited the most from tie-in comics. Instead, they all get this half-baked super-spy nonsense. A terrible shame, really.

In sum, I checked out Road to Marvel's the Avengers in an effort to enhance my appreciation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I was disappointed by what I found, and am now reconsidering my plans to check out Fury's Big Week, another lead-up to The Avengers. What I found in this wholly ill-conceived trade paperback was bland characterizations, contorted dialogue, and a worse plot, which, combined with several details contradicted by the films, make for an altogether dull, uninspired story. Please don't add this to your personal library. It's bad enough that it made it into my local public one.

RATING: 5/10

Image courtesy of wired.com

Review: Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory

A while back, I reviewed Booster Gold: Day of Death. In hindsight, I think I gave too high a rating, as it was, in truth, pretty mediocre. Indeed, Booster Gold's eponymous series was never particularly outstanding, but it was one thing that made it stand head and shoulders above the rest: It was fun. In a world surrounded by joyless, ultra-serious grim-and-grittiness, we have a fun, irreverent, silly book which plays with the idea of time travel in a superhero shared universe. The stories in this title are sometimes a bit involved, and require the reader to have some knowledge of the fictional history of the DC Universe, but the comic usually fills the reader in so that they know enough to enjoy the story.

For instance, the primary story arc of this book, "The Tomorrow Memory", heavily involves that time when Cyborg-Superman and Mongul teamed up to destroy Coast City and turn it into a giant engine for a new War World. (Told you so.) The basic plot is that 75 or so years in the future, the government has developed crude time travel abilities and sends an agent back in time to avert the disaster. Booster Gold, being the protector of the integrity of the time stream with Rip Hunter, has to make sure that history happens as it did, including resulting in Coast City being wiped off the map. The aforementioned agent isn't too happy about this, but neither is Booster.

The other story in this book precedes "The Tomorrow Memory," and is a two-parter focusing on what Booster Gold was doing during the Blackest Night crisis crossover back in 2009. Man, has it already been five years? Anyway, this story features Booster and Blue Beetle (Jaime Reyes) being forced to fight a reanimated Blue Beetle (Ted Kord), Booster's dead best friend. It's appropriately titled "Dead Ted."

The thing about this title is that is plays with the concept of time travel without trying to sound too clever about it. There's not a whole lot of time spent discussing how exactly the mechanics of time travel work, with the main focus being on how Booster and co. deal with having to protect history- even when it means letting terrible things happen. This trade paperback also toys around with the idea that there are people outside of Booster and Rip's little group who can travel in time and want to "help" by averting big disasters. At the same time, I'm kind of disappointed that The Tomorrow Memory wasn't gutsy enough to apply the idea to real life catastrophes, like the First and Second World Wars. On the other hand, it may have been a good idea to show some respect for real life tragedies and stick to metatextual commentary on fictional events. I guess it all depends on personal preference, and I suppose it wasn't such a bad way to go.

Another particularly great thing in this book is the emotion. In "Dead Ted", Booster is forced to fight the reanimated corpse of his dead best friend, who has Ted's voice, memories, gadgets, etc. Booster's initial response to the situation is actually kind of funny, in a weird, twisted sort of way. In this story, however, Booster is seen dealing with Ted's death at Ted's funeral in the past. It's some really heart-pounding stuff, and the end of this story is pretty touching.

The best stuff, however, is in "The Tomorrow Memory" where Booster is reunited with his sister, Michelle, who got ticked off at him in the previous book and lost herself a few years in the past. There's a whole final issue devoted to Booster mending fences with Michelle over what happened during this story arc. We get to really dig into Booster's feelings about his hero career, and how much he hates his job, but goes on doing it anyway. Rip Hunter also gets some character development in a very spoileriffic way which I won't discuss here. I will say, however, that Rip is more than just Booster Gold's mentor: He's a superhero in his own right. And I've got to say, I like Rip almost as much as I like Booster. That last issue is probably my favorite in the whole series, next to the Batman-secret-keeper one.

In short, Booster Gold: The Tomorrow Memory isn't the best comic book story around, or even the best Booster Gold story, but it's still quite good. Despite my better rating of the previous trade, I actually liked this one better, and I think it is better. The only particular flaws were more annoyances than anything else. For instance, at the beginning of almost every issue, Booster takes some time to explain via inner monologue his basic origin story, which kind of got on my nerves. I understand that there's a lot of pressure on these writers to cater to new readers who are cold calling on these issues, but it does so at the expense of loyal, longtime readers and fans. I was like, "I know this already. Get on with it!" There's also the art, which looks great, but the fight scenes just look a little uncoordinated and goofy. Other than these few complaints, I recommend this books for all Booster Gold fans, and happily direct such readers to Justice League International, 52, and Justice League: Generation Lost, the last being one of my favorite comic book series.

RATING: 7.5/10

Image courtesy of collectededition.blogspot.com

The Space Trilogy: Outstanding in Obscurity

"Everybody and their dog knows about Narnia and has probably read it. They also probably know about the likes of Mere Christianity or The Screwtape Letters. But if you ask them whether they realized that C. S. Lewis wrote science fiction, they'll look at you like you're from another planet."

This quote from TVTropes.org's page on C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy is a fitting description of one of that great author's more obscure works. The Space Trilogy is one of those book series that you would hardly believe existed, and if you did, you might scoff at. As is par for the course in Lewis' writings, it is a Christian allegory, blending the genres of science fiction and fantasy, resulting in a throwback to the genre of Planetary Romance. (I didn't even know that such a genre existed until after I began researching for this article). The result? A pretty fine set of literature.

The Space Trilogy, also known as The Cosmic Trilogy, consists of three books written between 1938 and 1945, detailing the misadventures of Dr. Elwin Ransom. A Cambridge philologist, Ransom begins the series in Out of the Silent Planet while on a walking tour of northern England, when he becomes entangled in a interstellar voyage after being kidnapped by sinister scientists Dick Devine and Professor Weston. The long and short of it is that he winds up on Mars, where he meets the friendly inhabitants and goes on an adventure. The second book, Perelandra, describes Ransom's voyage to Venus (the titular location, but in the constructed language of Old Solar), where he must ward off a demonically possessed Weston from corrupting this planet's version of Eve. The third and final book, That Hideous Strength, in addition to being longer than the previous two books, is also of an entirely different genre. Subtitled "A Modern Fairy-Tale for Grown-Ups", this third book focuses on Mark Studdock and his wife Jane as they experience both sides of a battle between the literally diabolical N.I.C.E. and Ransom's seemingly passive partisans, respectively. Dick Devine returns in this book in a less prominent but still villainous role, now styled Lord Feverstone. Ransom's role is also less magnified, though he is the de facto leader of the good guys in this book.

Like I said, The Space Trilogy begins as a throwback to old school Planetary Romance and ends as a modernized fantasy story. Though my experience with science fiction with a Christian philosophy has been limited and sordid, C.S. Lewis, through his unique genre-blending and trope-defying ways, manages to pen a genuinely good series of books. The books originated when he was chatting with his good friend (and merciless critic} J.R.R. Tolkien. Noting the sharp decline of science fiction literature in their day, they made a sort of bet: Tolkien would write a time travel story, and Lewis would write a space travel story, which eventually became The Space Trilogy. Tolkien, the cad, never held up on his end of the bargain, apart from some half-finished scrap in The Lost Road and Other Writings or some such place.

To get to the point, what makes The Space Trilogy unique is demonstrated in two parts. First, it is decidedly more adult. For one thing, here's harsher swearing than you'll ever find in The Chronicles of Narnia, and the themes and theological allegories are much more overlapping and direct, though not more eloquently expressed, than Narnia ever was. Second, it is a very intelligent science fiction series, a description which I'm sure hasn't been applied to a story of that genre since Isaac Asimov was around. Just look at half-baked tripe like Across the Universe and you'll see what I mean. Then again, perhaps that's a little unfair, as I haven't read Ender's Game yet. However, I have read a lot of Star Wars books, and I know that nearly all of them were barely passable, and few were particularly memorable, that is, if they even count as sci-fi at all. The Space Trilogy, on the other hand, plays with the genre in Lewis' unique style, discussing standard sci-fi tropes such as Planet of Hats and Single Biome Planet. It's stuff like that that makes me admire this series to no end.

If for no other reason, C.S. Lewis writing a science fiction series is appealing because it gives us that esteemed author's direct insight into various philosophies typically and popularly aligned with science today, such as transcendentalism, humanism, and materialism. To say the least, Lewis had a very dim view of all of these ideologies, and deconstructed them thoroughly in The Space Trilogy, particularly in the first and third books. In Out of the Silent Planet, my personal favorite of the three, Lewis takes the character of Weston, a staunch humanist who wants to wipe out the native Hrossa and their neighbors to make room for humanity, and shows us a fundamentally flawed worldview. Lewis does this partially in the form of a hilarious sequence in which Ransom attempts to translate a speech given by Weston to the ruler of Malacandra (that is, Mars) into Old Solar. The result, due to being lost in translation, is so funny that I invite the reader to go over to Out of the Silent Planet's Wikipedia page and see its entry on Weston's speech.

Perelandra is something of the odd man out in The Space Trilogy. In between the whimsical, leisurely adventure story of Out of the Silent Planet and the hard-hitting, philosophical commentary of That Hideous Strength, we have a story which is largely a theological treatise. This treatise is in turn sandwiched in between the old Planetary Romance stuff and your not-so-standard epic battle between good and evil. In truth, I personally did not enjoy reading Perelandra as much as I did Out of the Silent Planet or even That Hideous Strength, but interestingly enough, it was Lewis' favorite thing to have written. (His least favorite was The Screwtape Letters, but that's another post.) A lot of it is complicated theological musing, and while that's all well in good in some cases, here the allegory was a bit too on the nose. This seems odd, as C.S. Lewis is the master of allegory, but even the best authors slip sometimes. Perelandra may be a bit more complicated than the others, but it is no less beautiful.

If Lewis attacked humanistic materialism in Out of the Silent Planet, he declared war on transcendentalism and its ilk in That Hideous Strength. The primary antagonists of this book, the National Institute for Coordinated Experiments (the N.I.C.E.), is actually a front for demonic activity. Its members outside of the inner circle which Mark Studdock so desperately yearns for, however, are fringe scientists who range from dupes like Dr. Filostrato to Horace Jules, a dimwitted populist who in reality knows little about science. Interestingly, Wikipedia describes him as a pastiche of H.G. Wells, who apparently advocated for the active persecution of all religions in his book The Shape of Things to Come. Lewis' disdain for the elevation of science, pseudo or otherwise, in conjunction with the aforementioned philosophies, above faith is vividly and expertly demonstrated. Above all, however, these books possess wit as well as wisdom, the distinguishing hallmark of all of Lewis' works.
 
I was Facebook chatting with my dear friend Caleb yesterday, and we were discussing a petition on Change.org to get the Lewis estate to get on the road to making a film series about The Space Trilogy.  While I doubt that this petition will get much of anything done (I signed it anyway), it's still a cool idea. If The Space Trilogy were made as film series, we'd need producers and writers who loved the books as much as fans like Caleb and I do, plus a director who would be willing to honor the source material. As the old cliche goes (courtesy of the New  York Film Academy website), you can make a bad movie with a good screenplay, but you can't make a good movie with a bad screenplay. Who would direct? I honestly don't know. I'm not as big of a movie buff as Caleb, and even he doesn't know for sure. He suggested J.J. Abrams, but that's kind of a long shot. I do know, however, who I wouldn't want directing a Space Trilogy movie series. My nightmare director is M. Night Shyamalan. With Tim Burton as producer. I hope I don't give anybody bad dreams. I could, however, settle for a radio drama adaptation by Focus on the Family. They did outstandingly with Narnia and Screwtape. In the meantime, however, The Space Trilogy truly remains outstanding in obscurity.

Who do you readers think would make a good director for The Space Trilogy film series? Does that Change.org petition have a snowball's chance in Hades? If you've read The Space Trilogy, which of the books is your favorite? Leave a comment and let me know!

Image courtesy of narniafans.com

C.S. Lewis: Author, Academic, and Lay Theologian

Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis is by far my favorite author. I've been reading his books since I was eight, and I continue to do so. From The Chronicles of Narnia to The Screwtape Letters, I have read many of his books, and look forward to finally reading Mere Christianity when I get to it on my list. C.S. Lewis was not only a great author, but he was also a great man, applying a mixture of intellectualism and imagination to his work and teachings. Though he had no formal training as a clergyman, he was a renowned lay theologian, whose works continue to be studied today. In addition to being wittily and wisely crafted, Lewis' books are also very popular, having sold millions of copies and being translated into dozens of languages all over the world. This seminal author was even featured on the cover of Time Magazine in 1947. Lewis' work has been a profound influence on my own writing and worldview, and I daresay that any serious Christian should look into his work.

C.S. Lewis was born and raised in Belfast in Northern Ireland, with his brother Warren. His mother died when he was very young, resulting in him identifying as an atheist for much of his life. Lewis later recalled that as a youth, he was trapped in the absurd attitude of "being very angry with God for not existing." His experiences with a particularly nasty boarding school resulted in him becoming a sharp critic of modern education. Lewis served in the British army during the First World War, seeing combat and enduring trench warfare in the Somme Valley. He was 19 at this time. After the war, he finished his studies at Oxford and eventually became a Fellow and tutor at Magdalen College. At the age of 32, Lewis' faith was reignited after he met and became friends with J.R.R. Tolkien, a devout Roman Catholic. Lewis rejoined the Anglican Church, and though he considered himself an Orthodox Anglican, he tried to avoid promoting one specific denomination in his apologetic writings.

Lewis went on to write dozens of books, including The Great Divorce, The Screwtape Letters, The Space Trilogy, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Mere Christianity, to name a few. Lewis took children into his country home during the air raids of the Second World War, which partly inspired The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the first published book of the The Chronicles of Narnia. Lewis later married Joy Gresham in 1957, despite being some 17 years older than his bride. The otherwise happy marriage was cut short by Joy's tragic death from cancer in 1960 at the age of 45. Lewis himself passed away just five years later in 1965, coincidentally on the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. He is survived by two stepsons from Joy's previous marriage, Douglas and David Gresham, the former of whom is involved in the affairs of the Lewis estate and has acted as a host in the radio dramas of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters produced by Focus on the Family. Three of the Narnia books have been made into live action motion pictures, and a fourth based on The Silver Chair is in pre-production.

Lewis' writing is just one more piece of evidence pointing to the monopoly that the English seem to have on great literature. He's up there with J.R.R. Tolkien, G.K. Chesterton, George Orwell, and all the rest of the great 20th century English authors. What makes Lewis' work unique, however, is that he writes with a mixture of wisdom and wit, getting across deep, complex points while at the same time making the reader laugh. Insomuch as I have read of his work, this is nowhere else so greatly demonstrated as in The Screwtape Letters, where Lewis portrays Hell as a literal infernal bureaucracy. By making fun of Satan and his demons, Lewis sought to construct an alternative stereotype of the devil, namely that of a humorlessly humorless bureaucrat. Lewis' other works of fiction tend to be heavily steeped in allegory, from the fantastical Narnia books to the more adult Space Trilogy. Lewis, being a professor of medieval literature, was also partial to playing around with the standard literary conventions of various genres of fiction. For example, with Prince Caspian, the second published book in The Chronicles of Narnia, Lewis wanted to know what it would be like to be on the receiving end of a magical summons. More overtly in Out of the Silent Planet, the first book in The Space Trilogy, Lewis toyed with and deconstructed the various tropes and cliches of science fiction, such as Planet of Hats and Single Biome Planet.

In sum, the works of C.S. Lewis are a veritable bank of great literature, having wrote books that will appeal to people of all ages. The Chronicles of Narnia aren't just for children; they can also be enjoyed by adults. The Space Trilogy, however, is definitely more grown-up than Narnia, but no less enjoyable for older audiences. The Screwtape Letters is an excellent treatise on human nature, and is particular useful to Christian readers. I'm told that Mere Christianity is great for seekers or people searching for answers about Christianity. To cut a long story short, Lewis' many works are accessible by many large and diverse audiences. I encourage all of you readers out there to not only check out the books of C.S. Lewis, but also to seek out and listen to the radio dramas of The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters which Focus on the Family has produced over the last several years. Those specific works, however, are their own blog posts. At any rate, I hope one day to have read most, if not all, of the works of C.S. Lewis. I also hope sincerely to spend many long hours chatting with this great man someday on the other side.

"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." - C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

Image courtesy of realremnantradio.com

Review: Destination Tokyo

Back in the day, and I'm talking way back in the day, during the Second World War, Hollywood was
pumping out patriotic movies by the dozen. They weren't all blockbusters or Oscar-bait, to be sure, especially when the movie market was saturated with them. As one studio executive said, "I don't want it good, I want it Tuesday!" I have yet to see a particularly bad motion picture from that era of film history, but I'm sure that even some of the lesser ones were a bit more above par than some of the stuff we have today. A lot of stuff then was better than the stuff of today.

Destination Tokyo is, happily enough, one such film.

I watched this film way back in January, so that's just a brief testament to my review backlog on my side of the internet. Anyway, Destination Tokyo chronicles the journey of a lone submarine across the Pacific into Japanese waters on a vital scouting mission. It stars the famed Cary Grant in the lead role as Captain Cassidy, a father to his men and a altogether agreeable sounding fellow. The rest of the submarine crew include the macho guy Wolf (John Garfield), the naive newcomer Tommy (Robert Hutton), who's a regular Billy Budd, plus affable Cookie Wainwright (Alan Hale), the, uh, cook, and Pills (William Prince), an atheist pharmacist's mate, the closest thing the crew has to a doctor. Together, this crew of American sailors is determined to get to Tokyo and complete their mission, braving all the dangers along the way.

First of all, I've gotta say that for an old movie, this flick is intense. Submarine movies usually are, but man, Destination Tokyo hits the nail right on the head. Everything about this film is done with a subtle intensity, from the performances to the character arcs to the effects. The acting is very well done, with Grant and Hutton doing their jobs particularly well. Hutton provides a fine performance as the naive, inexperienced newcomer Tommy, who, like I said, is a regular Billy Budd. Hutton plays the roll with a sincerity and authenticity that rivals that of even Cary Grant, who masterfully portrays the role of the tough but good captain. He's something of a nicer version of Gregory Peck's Frank Savage from Twelve O'Clock High, except that his crew actually likes him the whole way through. It's a well oiled machine we see here, and while that doesn't provide for much internal conflict, it does provide us with an entertaining and fun team dynamic.

Another thing which makes this movie better than most others is the presence of actual character arcs. That is to say, over the course of this movie, people change. Tommy, the most relatable character in the cast, becomes more experienced. Pills abandons his atheism. Wolf becomes less of a macho man and more of a real man. Even Cookie and Cassidy both develop, if not as overtly and obviously as the others. In short, the whole cast develops somehow by weathering the difficult, dangerous situations they are thrust into. Speaking of the whole cast, there is a large cast, including a bunch of guys who I didn't mention. The thing here, however, is that the characters all manage to be very individualized and memorable, so that you can pick one out from the other. In a monochromatic film, this is a pretty big accomplishment. The characters are all well fleshed out, and that's good, because there are a lot of heavy themes in this picture, and in order to pull of heavy themes well, you need to have well developed characters.

What are these heavy themes, you ask? First and foremost there's camaraderie among fire forged friends. When you have hundred or so guys cooped up on a confined space on a dangerous enterprise for a long time, you're bound to create some lasting friendships. Another big theme that Destination Tokyo deals with is fear in the face of danger. During a depth charge attack, everybody on the sub is scared, and Cassidy says as much. They're scared, but that shouldn't stop them from doing their job. And it doesn't. One of the biggest and most apparent themes in this movie, however, is why the U.S. needs to defeat Japan. There are several instances in which the crewmen comment on and discuss the mindset and society of the "Japs." It sounds pretty blatant and even racist to our modern ears, but back in the day, a portrayal like this was pretty fair for its time. The enemy Japanese aren't demonized or condemned; rather, they're humanized and pitied. As Captain Cassidy says, "There's lots of Mikes dying right now. And a lot more Mikes will die. Until we wipe out a system that puts daggers in the hands of five-year-old children." In other words, a primary lesson that people should learn from this movie is that bad guys have gotta go, or people on both sides are going to suffer.

With all this talk of heavy themes and stuff, the reader might think that this film is all doom and gloom. Far from it! It's actually pretty humorous at many points. At the same time, however, it is very suspenseful, such as when Pills has to perform an appendix operation in the sub on the sea floor of Tokyo Bay. It's all done with some pretty clever cinematography which I'm sure my film making friend Caleb would appreciate. In short, the movie will make you laugh, it will make you sit on the edge of your seat, and it might even make you cry. It's a beautiful film, and it's an engaging, entertaining piece of cinema. It's not explicitly grim and gritty like, say, Das Boot, but it's still pretty darn good. For all of you history buffs out there, you'll love it. If you like submarines and ships and what not, you'll adore it. My dad sure did.

RATING: 9/10

Image courtesy of thegloriousninth.blogspot.com

Independence Day 2014

Today is Independence Day, more commonly known as the Fourth of July. On this day in 1776, exactly 238 years ago, in the city of Philadelphia, the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence, finalizing the decisions to break away from the tyrannical rule of the British Empire. Not all of the members of the Continental Congress were able to be there to sign it at once, coming in and out of town sporadically to sign when they could. However, this historic document, penned by the great Thomas Jefferson, was the foundation upon which our young country based its most essential doctrines of law. As much as certain pundits, politicians, and people would like to have you think otherwise, it remains as pertinent and relevant today as it did then, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

For the weekend, I would like to ask everyone to relax, have a barbeque if you can, spend time with your family and friends, watch a patriotic film or historical documentary (preferable a good one), and to enjoy the fireworks. As the great orator and statesman Daniel Webster said, “May the sun in his course visit no land more free, more happy, more lovely, than this our own country!”

A happy Fourth of July to all of you out there!

"[I]f my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land."
- 2 Chronicles 7:14

Image courtesy wikipedia.org

Review: JLA Deluxe Edition: Volume 1

Attention readers: I will be out of town this week and unable to post anything. On the other hand, I will now be posting on Saturdays as well. Thank you for understanding.

The nineties were a weird and frightening time for comics. Known as the Dark Age of Comics, this era in comic book history actually began in the late eighties following the successes of Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and Alan Moore's Watchmen. The next thirty years or so of comics were spent trying to emulate those two series. Both Marvel and DC did everything in their power to make their comics "darker" and "grittier," in order to show that their stories were more "mature" and "serious." To them, and, sadly, to a lot of fans, that meant outrageous displays of profanity, sex, and gory, bloody violence. Every hero under the sun suffered at the hands of creators who wanted to make their heroes more dark, more brooding, more, you know, realistic. The art was affected too. Characters were drawn to be more exaggeratedly muscular, more ripped and mean looking. Superman got a mullet for a while, for Pete's sake.

Then you throw Grant Morrison into the mix.

I've never been a big fan of Grant Morrison's work. It's generally super trippy, super complicated, and super hit-or-miss. I haven't read much of his stuff, but I have read enough to know what his style is like. He tends to rely on plot twists, Chekhov's Guns, and lots and lots of nightmare fuel, depending on what he's writing. I've got to give him credit, however, for being really, really into all manner of comics. I mean, this guy digs up stuff from the Silver Age and recycles it for use in the Modern Age. He just loves comic books. Plus, he actually writes some pretty good stuff. It's not always to my personal preference, but it's usually aesthetically good, and I can always find something to like about that.

What I'm saying here is that Grant Morrison in the nineties makes for a bizarre combination. We've got goofy, over-the-top art combined with trippy, devil's-in-the-details writing, which all combine to make one of the most peculiar trade paperbacks I've ever had to review. For the uninitiated, JLA stands for "Justice League of America," and features the adventures of DC's "big seven": Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, the Flash, Aquaman, and Martian Manhunter... plus all their friends who pop in every now and again. JLA Deluxe Edition: Volume 1 collects the issues originally collected in New World Order and American Dreams, plus some random Secret Files issue. We've got an alien invasion story, a mole inside the JLA story, a story about a fight between a rogue angel and the Legions of Hell that spills over into the corporeal world, and a traditional Morrison mind-bender story involving a supervillain called the Key and medically induced comas.

I'll be honest: I'm not a huge fan of alien invasion stories. For one thing, it's been done to death, and for another, I have yet to meet a comic book story full of large groups of people blasting each other with energy or hitting each other that did it in an interesting way. I have faith in comic books as a genre, but I just haven't seen anything of that nature which I find entertaining to date, except maybe, just maybe, Blackest Night. Thankfully enough, Morrison manages to subvert the usual pitfalls of an alien invasions story by injecting his own unique spin on it. With the first story, the one with the "Hyperclan," I think Morrison was actually trying to make fun of the exaggerated, toyetic era of the nineties. The Hyperclan, led by "Protex," show up on Earth apparently wanting to use their powers to better the world. But they actually have a secret agenda. Next, a JLA recruiting drive brings in "Tomorrow Woman," secretly a mole cooked up by T.O. Morrow and Professor Ivo to bring down the Justice League. Following that, there's the story where Zauriel the angel literally falls out of the sky, shortly before all heaven breaks loose, so to speak. Finally, we get a two-parter where Green Arrow is forced to go it alone on the Justice League satellite against the Key, who has trapped the rest of the Justice League.

Like I said, Morrison has his flaws, but his unique style manages to bring out his stories so as to elevate them above the rest. Considering that this thing was written in the nineties, that's saying something. My favorite story of the four listed was undoubtedly the two-parter at the end. For one thing, we've got the novice Connor Hawke, then the only Green Arrow, being a badbutt, while at the same time we're treated to some cool-looking alternate realities. The Key is an awesome villain, a truly magnificent bad guy. The thing about this story, though, is that it was set up in the Zauriel one. Morrison tends to do that. Just pay extra close attention to the hospital scenes and you'll see what I mean. Speaking of Zauriel, that story was probably my least favorite. The long and short of it is that I don't appreciate Morrison's grasp on theology (it's almost as bad as what David Hine and his ilk were doing over in Azrael a few years ago), and the story wasn't particularly groundbreaking. I guess I just don't think much of Morrison's huge, epic stories, and it's the smaller scale, more personal stories like the two-parter that I really like. It doesn't help that the evil invasion plot is so... generic.

Morrison also has trouble with stilted dialogue, but it's not usually particularly egregious. The art is typical nineties fare, with Batman's look being particularly ridicule-worthy. My only other objections are motivated by personal preference. I don't generally like epic science fiction adventure epics like this story, but I'm willing to proceed given that I've heard so many good things about Morrison's run on this book. It's just that he did the invasion/war story twice in the span of seven issues. Granted, he resolved and executed them in cool and unique ways, but I just don't particularly care for that sort of story. Otherwise, his characterization of the JLA members is spot on, particularly with Batman. I've always liked Morrison's take on Batman, mainly because Morrison knows how to make Batman look really, really cool, and I'll thank him also for only minimally touching on the souped-up Superman (see Dork Age). The dynamics we're given here are sure to be deepened later, as they are prone to do in long runs. In short, while not perfect, Morrison does deliver a satisfactory start to the JLA series.

RATING: 7.5/10

Image courtesy of unitedmonkee.com

Review: Mr. Holland's Opus

If there's one movie genre that I'm an absolute sucker for, it's late twentieth century period dramas. Second Hand Lions. Forrest Gump. The Help. October Sky. Apollo 13. I think it's because they all take a interesting concept and put it in a visually engaging historical setting. The point is, I love all of these films, and now I've added another one to the list: Mr. Holland's Opus. It stars Academy Award winner Richard Dreyfuss in the title role.

Glenn Holland is a struggling composer and musician who desperately wants to compose full time. He and his wife, Iris (Glenne Headly) find themselves living in an Oregon town where Holland gets a job as a High School music teacher. At first, Holland views the position as a short term gig, a mere stepping stone on his way to becoming a famous composer. But things happen, as they always do, and he stays on. The years go by, and Holland makes lifelong friendships, touches and influences the lives of many of his young students, and welcomes a son into his family, all the while going through the trials and tribulations that inevitably accompany life. At the same time, we get to see the major events of the 60s, 70s, and 80s through his eyes.

Mr. Holland's Opus is one of those movies that is very effective at what it tries to communicate. In this case, it succeeds in communicating raw, unadulterated emotion. It's not schmaltzy or sappy, and it's by no means a feel-good movie, but it totally sells the feeling and mood its going for. From the opening to the conclusion, and everywhere in between, this movie will put a smile on your face, and it will make your eyes water when it wants to. It all hinges on the characters, really. We see Holland's trials, we see his friendships develop, we see his mundane exploits. These range from the hilarious to the sad to the heartwarming. Mr. Holland's Opus manages to be all of these things simultaneously while not feeling like a tonal train wreck, just like all great dramas.

It helps that Richard Dreyfuss totally sells it as Glenn Holland. And really, he overshadows all of the other actors in this picture. First of all, we're given a rich, complex character like Holland. He starts out as a slightly jerkish person, but evolves and matures into a caring, almost fatherly figure to his students, and eventually to his biological son, Cole, with whom he initially has a strained relationship due to a very important reason. Then we get an A-list character actor like Dreyfuss, who proceeds to act the heck out of the role, to the point where he gets nominated for yet another Academy Award. I'm telling you, the sheer subtlety, the sheer talent, the sheer emotion he puts into it far outshines any and all of the other undoubtedly talented actors in this film.

In a movie about music throughout the late twentieth century, there is, of course, good music. We've got stuff from John Lennon, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Beethoven, and many others. Additionally, it is marked by other virtues, such as being pretty darn funny, and while it does focus primarily on Holland, all of the other characters have a clear-cut motivation. Principal Helen Jacobs (Olympia Dukakis) wants to give her students a good education, while later Principal Gene Wolters (William H. Macy) wants to run an efficient school. Hard to blame him for coming off as a bad guy, in view of how messed up schools are these days, but even then he's played well enough that we can sympathize with him, thought not as much as we can sympathize with Holland. Iris wants to help her husband and raise a family, and Bill Meister (Jay Thomas) the gym teacher (and later, Holland's best friend) wants to do for the jocks what Holland is doing for the music students. Even Cole (played by various actors, including Joseph Anderson and Anthony Natale) wants to be understood and accepted by his father, a good motivation as any.

Mr. Holland's Opus deserved an Oscar, pure and simple. I guess it was enough that it was nominated for one, but still, it totally deserved it. Dreyfuss lost out to flipping Nicolas Cage, for goodness sake. But nevertheless, I am glad to have watched this film, and I happily grant it the highest esteem I can afford to it. The only reservations I have are with a smattering of bad language, so parents, please be discerning. In the meantime, we have a wonderful, moving film with great acting and awesome emotion, and a beautiful, rhythmic premise. I think Mr. Holland would appreciate that.

RATING: 10/10

Fun fact: Terrence Howard, who would later play Rhodey in Iron Man, played a student of Holland's named Louis Russ! Man, he looked young. I wonder what Don Cheadle was doing in 1995...

Image courtesy of wikipedia.org

Spider-Man: The Greatest Superhero in Comics

Web-slinger. Spidey. Web-head. "Masked menace." Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man.

We all know the story. Or at least, we all should know. It was plastered on the big screen on no less than two occasions, plus all the comics and TV shows. Peter Parker was an Ordinary High School Student. But when he went to that science lab and got bitten by a radioactive spider, he gained the proportionate strength, speed, and agility of a spider, plus a sort of sixth-sense that allows him to detect danger (dubbed "spider sense"). At first, he did what any real teenager would do: He used his powers to make money. But when his Uncle Ben was murdered by some random jerkhole whom Peter could have stopped earlier, Peter decided to take his Uncle Ben's admonition that "With great power there must also come great responsibility," and use his powers to help people. Thus, Spider-Man was born!

My bold declaration in the title of this post may have many of you wondering. Surely the lowly Spider-Man is not the world's greatest superhero? Does not that title belong to Superman? What about Captain America, or even Batman? Let me assure you that I stand firm in my conviction. Superman may be the world's most well known ("iconic") superhero, and Batman and his associates may be my personal favorites, but Spider-Man is still the best. Why? If you want a really good reason, go to Comics Alliance and find Chris Sims' article on the subject. My take, however, is a bit different. The thing about Spider-Man, about Peter Parker, is the whole "With great power comes great responsibility" thing. It may sound clichéd, but it is in fact pretty original. Spider-Man was the first real superhero that Stan Lee and co. actually wrote. The Fantastic Four were more like a team of adventurers, and the Hulk was just a rampaging monster, but Spider-Man was genuine superhero, when the superhero comic was still relatively young. I could go on about how this reflected Marvel and DC's differing modus operandi, but I'll leave that to Mr. Sims. The point here is that Spider-Man was specifically setting out to help people. Not to ruthlessly target crime like Batman, or to routinely save the world and circumvent disaster like Superman, though he has done that. He doesn't even do it to fight supervillains, though he does that a lot. Spider-Man's core purpose is to use his powers responsibly, and to him, that means helping people and doing the right thing, no matter what.

Of course, this trait alone is not enough to make Spider-Man the greatest superhero in comics. At least, not without elaboration. When Spider-Man was created, he was, as mentioned, an ordinary high school student. A teenager. Back in the day (that is, 1962), it was a pretty novel idea to have a teenage superhero headlining his own book. Before that, teenagers and other younger characters were seen as only worthy of being sidekicks. (Stan Lee, for the record, hated sidekicks.) When Spider-Man became unexpectedly and outrageously popular after first appearing in Amazing Fantasy #15, pop culture became awash in teenaged heroes, so much so that the character has become even more clichéd than "With great power comes great responsibility." (On a side note, it was also a pretty novel idea to have the story being set specifically in New York City, as opposed to some generic, made up metropolitan area.) The point is that Spider-Man does what he does, the right thing, no matter what, in the context of having to deal with all the normal problems that teenagers have. And by normal problems, I mean the feeling that everyone reading this got as a teen that the world's out to get them. The genius here, however, is that for Peter Parker, he has actual life-threatening situations to counterbalance perceived life-threatening situations. He's got midterms, girl trouble, an ailing aunt, adults who hate him for some reason, money problems, the whole nine yards, plus criminals, killers, supervillains who have a personal fixation on killing him, the media, and the general public, who all hate him.

The thing is, though, the things going on in his personal life are generally a lot more stressful and angst inducing for Peter than Kraven the Hunter trying to drive a spear through his torso. Just like a real teenager would. A real teenager, if granted the power of Spider-Man, would get cocky and have fun, like Spider-Man does. Chris Sims notes that Peter Parker's activities as Spider-Man is a way for him to "cut loose" and relax. That's why he cracks jokes, makes fun of his enemies, and relishes in hand-to-hand combat with unabashed glee. This is made abundantly clear in Ultimate Spider-Man when Peter decides to quit being Peter Parker, having come to the conclusion that everything's fine when he's Spider-Man, and that it's his personal life that's giving him all the trouble. Of course, this leads to an imbalance in his life as Spider-Man, nearly leading to disastrous consequences from neglecting his personal life. All of this makes it even more important to remember that whenever Spider-Man is despairing over a battle with his villains, stuff just got real. Because normally, an episode of Spider-Man's crime fighting adventures is another exciting interlude in the personal drama of Peter Parker's hapless mundane life. He doesn't have Batman or Iron Man's lax, luxurious secret identity, or the sheer, raw power and charisma of Superman. Peter doesn't even have a team of super-powered buddies to help him out every now and then (except when he does, such as when he's serving with the Avengers). And yet... he does the right thing. Because of all of this, Spider-Man is the first superhero to ever achieve something that all previous superheroes had not: He was able to make the reader relate to him.

Most importantly of all, however, is that Peter Parker does not stay an angsty teenager. He grows up. He matures. He lives life. He falls in love. He gets married. (See One More Day) He doesn't grow older than, say, 30, this being comic books, but he does go from boy to man. Peter Parker goes from insecure, petulant child to noble, strong, heroic young man. And he is a man, because, say it with me, "With great power, there must also come great responsibility." Similarly, Winston Churchill said, "A man does what he must - in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers and pressures - and that is the basis of all human morality." In light of this, if there ever was a man, it is Spider-Man.

Spider-Man's greatness is also helped by the fact that he has, as Mr. Sims has observed, the best supporting cast in comics. Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson, J. Jonah Jameson, Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, Captain George Stacy, Flash Thompson, Robbie Robertson, and all the rest of them. And while not having the best rogues gallery around (that honor goes to Batman), he does have a quite memorable set of villains, including the Green Goblin, Doctor Octupus, Venom, Sandman, and the Vulture. I'd go on, but it's a bit beyond the scope of this post.

As hard to believe as it may seem, I've actually been into Spider-Man a lot longer than I've been into Batman. I remember borrowing the 2002 Sam Raimi Spider-Man movie from my Aunt when I was a kid, though my parents wouldn't let me watch it until a couple of years later. I still have fond memories of that movie, the original Raimi film holding a special place in my heart, kind of like Jean-Paul Valley. I remember pouring over Spider-Man: The Ultimate Guide, which, I'm sad to say, is the only exposure to the original comics that I've really had. (The originals are on my list, don't worry!) This in turn led me to read Ultimate Spider-Man, which I read faithfully until Prelude to Death of Spider-Man. I intend to return to it later, but I was thrown for a loop by certain plotting decisions that the esteemed Brian Michael Bendis made. On the other hand, it's worth noting that TVTropes refers to Ultimate Spider-Man #1 as the beginning of the Modern Age of Comics. I just find it difficult to believe that 10+ years worth of comics happened in a little over 1 year. They didn't even show the seasons changing! But I'm getting off track...

I've only read a little bit of the main continuity Spider-Man (such as the woefully messy Spider-Island crossover.), and I don't think much of the new stuff. I've been wanting to check out Scarlet Spider and the original stories, plus The Superior Spider-Man, which I heard was good, but I haven't had much interest in reading post-One More Day stuff. Then again, Chris Sims has gone on record saying that Brand New Day initiated a long overdue shake up in Spider-Man's status quo, but we'll get back to that later.

Spider-Man has appeared in many other media besides the many comic book series, with two movie series, multiple animated series (one of which I wrote a review on in the early history of this blog, The Spectacular Spider-Man), a short-lived live action television series, and even a Broadway musical! For the record, Marc Webb's The Amazing Spider-Man was decidedly underwhelming, and I haven't heard good things about its sequel, leaving me hesitant to embrace it.

A final question must be addressed concerning the topic of Spider-Man: If Spider-Man is, in fact, the greatest superhero in comics, then why do I prefer Batman and associates? I guess it's because the Batman mythos harbors another character similar to yet very different from Spider-Man: Tim Drake. I'm primarily a DC man, and I'll always cast my sword with Batman and his associates in that regard. I like Batman, Tim Drake's Robin, and Jean-Paul Valley's Azrael because they've got this edge to them, this "cool" factor. Spider-Man may be more fun, but Batman is more cool. Nevertheless, I'd like to make clear that Spider-Man is really the only Marvel hero that I've ever particularly liked. I intend to get into Thor later, and maybe Captain America, but for now, Spider-Man is my only hero at Marvel. But perhaps that will change someday. In the meantime, Thwip!

Image courtesy of designyoutrust.com