Latest Trek Pics: A Good Bad Idea
Oct 16As you’ve no doubt seen already, a quintet of websites have premiered new stills from the upcoming Star Trek film by J.J. Abrams. (This one’s from UGO.com; hopefully I’m not hurting anyone’s feelings by posting it here too. Hit that link at UGO for the full set of stills.)
Because I am enough of a fanboy to like being mollycoddled by major film studios and their benign corporate overlords, I appreciate what the Star Trek folks are trying to do. They’ve got a cover story coming out in Entertainment Weekly, and they want to give the die-hard fans a treat by getting some images out to them ahead of the mainstream press coverage. It’s a great impulse, a good idea.
Except that I think the pictures are maybe a bad idea.
Here’s the thing: The pictures don’t really show us anything we don’t already know. General geek osmosis has already informed us all that this will be a “reboot” flick and that they’re updating the look of the Original Series to a degree.
Plus, really, who cares that they put a black shirt under the yellow/red/blue shirt, or changed the sleeves, or some shit? I’m sure some fans do care, but guess what–you’ve already lost those people. If you’re the kind of Trekkie who’s gonna let a hem on a garment get in the way of enjoying a movie, you’re already gone. There’s no hope for you. You will hate this movie.
Me, I’m most interested in seeing how this thing moves. What’s the dialogue like? How’s it gonna cut together? What’s the pacing and tone gonna be for the action sequences? How have they reinvented Trek–not how it looks, but how it is–to serve a new audience?
I know the trailer’s coming soon. But if they really want to get the fans hyped early, let us see a single, well-cut, minor action scene with a few bits of dialogue. Give us a real look at this film. Because the pictures…they’re just excuses for nitpicking. The best they can hope for in terms of reaction is “Okay, thank god, they’re not fucking it up yet.”
Like I said–putting out the pictures was a nice move. I appreciate it and wish them goodwill. I just wish they’d gone a step further. I’d take a single clip over a hundred stills of Zachary Quinto looking vaguely Nimoy any day.
Keeping One Eye on the (Geeky) Ball
Oct 14Let’s try and start this from a simple, slightly controversial premise: Fandom used to be…well, it used to be BETTER.
I recently read bits and pieces of the Twomorrows volume collecting the old Alter Ego issues. Alter Ego was a comics fanzine founded in the early sixties by two adult comics fans, Jerry Bails and Roy Thomas.
These were guys who loved comics–I mean, REALLY loved comics–and were driven by that love to start a hand-crafted publication devoted to comics.
Today, we have the internet. Lucky us, right? Anyone who loves comics, or sci-fi, or fantasy, or WHATEVER can hop on that bad boy and just chat or post or blog their little living asses off about…stuff.
Except the content exists more because of the delivery method than because of the passion behind it. In other words, Roy and Jerry were inspired to create a zine by their love of comics, and we write on the internet because the internet is there to be written upon; we just happen to choose this geeky stuff to spew about.
There’s not a filter; there’s no handle for the spigot. It takes willful diligence to regulate consumption and creation so that you’re not spinning downward into an endless spiral of emptiness and negativity.
Or maybe that’s just me.
This is what’s had me wondering about all this; it’s paralyzed my fingers and left me hesitant to get this wrong:
We all need to raise the bar a little. I do; you do. We all do. It’s not that potboiling pieces of mediocre pap (or worse) won’t still come out. It’s just that we need to stop pretending they matter in any way, shape, or form.
People have read this as a specific rail against mainstream superhero comics. It’s not to my eyes. It’s an indictment against CRAP, and a statement worthy of becoming a manifesto.
And so it will.
I want to write well about the things that move me–the stuff I love, the stuff I hate, the thoughts I have both pithy and vacant.
I want it all to somehow in some small way MATTER. I don’t want to have time anymore to focus on the petty bullshit where I walk out of a comic book store with some free promo comics and suddenly I’m embroiled in snark and bile.
It doesn’t matter anymore. Sometimes, realizing that requires a conscious decision, because when that kind of content is just out there everyplace, it’s all too easy to just hitch your wagon to the endless cycle of words that can literally eat hours out of your day. You react, and then you add your words to the pile. Time marches on, and you’ve consumed nothing valuable in the way of ideas or art, and you’ve contributed nothing much valuable either. You’re just part of the endless go-round dodge.
Isn’t that the point? To talk about what we love, hopefully with some intelligence and humor and understanding, and to discuss what we don’t love while (maybe only occasionally) descending into spite and nastiness?
I think it’s the point. I want it to be the point. From the advent of all this shit to the current burst culture we exist in, where I sit here and snarf down endless reams of empty nothingness because it’s THERE and it’s EASY, I am going to try and come back around. I am going to focus, and think, and create, and read, and enjoy. And if I’m not, I’m going to walk away.
Life is too short, and my time is too valuable. Everyone’s time is too valuable. We are here to commune about what we were told for our entire lives was some kind of fringe subcultish activity–that which is GEEK. We should enjoy each other, and hear what we’re saying, and listen to others, and use this amazing instrument of communication for its best possible good.
I’m not saying I’m perfect, or that I ever could be–I’m sure I’ll dip back into the bullshit snark pool often enough. But hopefully not TOO often.
I do need to raise the bar. I need to try harder. I want to be better, so I’m gonna do that.
That’s all.
Artist Needed for (Probably Not Stupid) Comics Project
Oct 08We blog pretty good over here, and we GIVE and we GIVE–Witchblade and Heroes and such-like, with nary a glimpse of Spider-Woman’s camel toe (it’s there, in Avengers: The Initiative #17, go look at it if you’re lonely and sad).
So forgive me a random plea.
As newest Alert Nerd Jeff has pointed out at his blog, he and I are collaborating on writing a comic book project. We’ve got two scripts in the can and are working on number three.
However, it’s all a bit too masturbatory at the moment, because we need an artist!
So if you know one, or smell one nearby, or ARE ONE YOURSELF, and you’d like to taste what we’re cooking and see if you wanna join us, drop us a line.
Here’s the premise: What if Gambit and Wolverine had a baby?
(That’s not really the premise–it’s kinda like The West Wing starring Superman, actually. That’s the logline we’re gonna use on Spielberg when we kidnap him.)
Thanks! More later!
IDW's New Classics of the Fantastic
Oct 07I have a tumultuous, difficult relationship with literary science fiction.
I feel some strange obligation to read and enjoy literary SF, because I’m a full-on media SF geek, and have never read the vast majority of the books one would consider SF “canon.” Asimov, Bradbury, Verne, Clarke, Heinlein, Dick, Le Guin–they’re all just empty names to me. I know they’re great; I know I probably SHOULD read them all. I just haven’t…I guess because I’m busy?
I finally sorta stumbled into some kind of tiny foothold on great literary SF, thanks to IDW’s new series of paperback reprints, New Classics of the Fantastic, described as “an essential science fiction library. It will bring back Hugo and Nebula Award winning books that have fallen out of print.”
Sweet. The first title, Robert Silverberg’s Nightwings, sorta shocked me last night with its beauty–it’s very delicate but vivid too. Silverberg captures this pitch-perfect tone early on and maintains it easily throughout (or at least, through the first fifty pages, which is as far as I got).
It’s great stuff. I fully confess to fundamental laziness, so if someone else is going to pick through science fiction’s storied past and reprint some lost classics, I will happily follow their lead and explore the nooks and crannies of the genre’s past with them.
Read It: Alex Robinson Webcomic
Oct 02A funny little short story about some hard-on-their-luck creatures lookin’ for love.
