I never trusted Henry Gale.  From second one, I knew he was up to something.  I wanted to torture him with a nail gun.  It was the eyes, I think. Those eyes.

My first thought, to crib from Robert Browning, was that he lied in every word.  And Henry Gale was a liar.  And a killer. A horrible little man.  He wasn’t even Henry Gale, late of Kansas.  He was Benjamin Linus, and everybody hated him for it.

How things have changed.

People who write off the craftsmanship of Lost and reduce it to a series of implausible twists and interminable teases have a crippled view of the show, and Ben Linus’s arc throughout the past five years has been a testament to that. Last night’s episode was a significant hour for him.

The question that has dogged us all season is one of destiny.  We’ve seen that Kate is always, well, Kate and that Sayid is never not a murderer, but we’ve also seen John Locke become a rational man, watched Jack deal with his obnoxious interpersonal issues and now we’ve seen Ben choose integrity and compassion over authority and power not just once, but twice, once in each world.

This season, as we start to learn more about Jacob and his lassez-faire way of rolling, his maddening lack of specificity, it’s easy to see both how he can turn the Others to his whims and why exactly it would make them seem like evil pricks. We’ve watched Ben move from zealotry to agnosticism and it has humanized him in unexpected ways. He’s given the island his daughter, his father and his entire adult life and when he was not rewarded with a medal and a parade, he lashed out angrily. In that way, his murder of Jacob is the most human act we’ve seen him perform.  I know that feeling, the feeling of being the good child in the Prodigal Son parable; odds are you do, too.  It would be easy for Ben to be spiteful and to choose The Man In Black/fLocke/whatever we’re calling him in fitful, angry vengeance; he doesn’t, though. He grows. He’s a dark man who chooses the light – a contrast to last week’s episode where we watched a dark man consumed by darkness.  Maybe – just maybe – Jacob saw that coming, too, and sacrificed himself to save Ben in the end.

Nerds have questions, but nerds have to appear authoritative or risk losing their nerdy cred.

That’s why, as a recurring feature on Alert Nerd, Jeff answers these conundrums anonymously. It’s like Anne Landers as written by Wyatt Wingfoot. We call it Nerdly Advice.

Dear Nerdly Advice,

I have a friend who’s in a big romantic rut right now.  He’s your quintessential video game nerd: owns an Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and has them all hooked up to his 46″ flatscreen, plus has a running subscription to a major MMORPG for the last five years or so.  He was single for about five years then in early 2009 he met a girl on MySpace, but he’s not met her yet.  This has been going on for a little over a year at this point and she keeps coming up with excuse after excuse after ridiculous excuse for why they can’t meet in person quite right now.  He lives in central CT and she’s in New York City, so it’s far from a hassle to take a day- or weekend-trip.  The thing is that I don’t think she’s ever going to make good on her promise to meet up.  He’s put so much effort and emotion into this girl and gotten nothing in return except tons of broken promises.  I want him to go out and meet other women, but most of his time is spent either online with the MMORPG or with his video games, not to mention that he’s extraordinarily devoted to making this situation with NYC girl work out.  I’m worried because I see a lot of my past romantic self in him, when I did nothing but read comics at home and wonder why I didn’t have a girlfriend.  It wasn’t until I listened to friends and family that I got out of the house, went back to school part-time and met the girl I’m currently involved with.  I am trying to help him realize that (a) – NYC girl needs to be put on the back burner and (b) – finding a world outside of Bioshock is a step towards finding the special someone he desperately wants to connect with.  I know it’s always harder to hear this from the friend who’s got a girlfriend, but I feel like it’s something he needs to hear.  I don’t know how to tell him any of this without sounding like I’m berating him or trivializing his problems.

Thanks,

—-Exasperated In Connecticut

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Excerpt from “A Hero’s Journey,” Rolling Stone no. 397, June 1983
By Charles Huff

Our Hero stands tall against the forces of evil. In this case, “evil” represents a scene from his next film, one which refuses to achieve the rhythmic perfection for which he has become famous.

“Faster, more intense,” he repeats to his editors, over and over, a filmmaking mantra. Faster, more intense; faster, more intense; faster, more intense, for what seems like hours. If they’ve heard it enough, none of them lets on.

Finally he watches the scene and is satisfied.

“Let’s stop there for today,” he announces in a clear, crisp voice. “Thank you everyone.”

Only he won’t be stopping here today; he will spend the majority of the evening in the studio with this editing machine, watching his work in progress again and again. His wife stops by with dinner, a thirty-minute break to inhale a plain hamburger, fries, and a gigantic coke. Then it’s back to the reels. He takes copious notes with a number two pencil on yellow thin-ruled legal size notepads. There are hundreds of them stacked against the wall of his home office in Manhattan Beach, California.

Even in these nascent days of computer technology, most of the screenwriters I know have already made the transition to word processors. You can hear them comparing their bits and bytes against one another as they procrastinate in the endless coffee shops and diners that dot the LA landscape.

In his movies, Henry Lane frames the relationship between old technology and new technology as a constant battle; in his real life, the war has already been won.

You pride yourself on the cutting-edge technology that brings your stories to life, I ask him one afternoon over cheap beer. Yet you rely on the oldest of mechanisms to record your work. I’ve seen that ancient reel to reel tape recorder you keep by your bed for the ideas they come to you in the night.

“It’s what I’m comfortable with,” he says. “More than anything else, I’m a creature of comforts.”

The blockbuster success of Henry’s first two films has guaranteed that comfort for life. We’re drinking our cheap beer as we sit on the deck of his home, which is both large and beautiful. I stare at the ocean, rolling in, rolling out.

The large and beautiful home sits on a thin strip of sidewalk known as The Strand. Just past that strip is the beautiful California coast, and along the coastline roars the ocean.

“I’ve lived here for five, six years, and I spend a couple hours every day just staring at the water,” Henry admits. “It’s reassuring, like no matter what else happens in your life or your mind, there is always something that will be constantly moving, never stopping, never tired. It’s comforting, I guess, though comforting from what, I’m not sure.”

A pissy reporter in a People magazine feature, annoyed because he repeatedly refused her request for an interview, once described Henry as “an awkward gazelle, long and edgeless, with a hint of frump.” She nailed it, except for the frump, which has somehow evaporated with age, and that’s shocking, because Henry refuses to exercise.

I’ve known Henry for more than a decade, so his nearly implacable calm in the face of enormous tension is something I’ve grown used to. It doesn’t mean it’s any easier to handle, especially when I know he must be sweating right now. At least a little.

I empty the last of my brew. You’re staring down the end of a six-year journey that has made you wealthy and the most successful filmmaker of all time. You’ve changed the entire landscape of filmmaking and impacted our culture for probably decades to come. One more movie, and then it’s all over. What if it…

“What if it sucks?” Henry chuckles. “I don’t know…depending on who you ask, all my movies suck. I’m just trying to stay true to the story and see this through.”

Then what’s next, Henry? Another big movie? Something small and personal?

“A lot of rest,” he replies, grabbing my glass for a refill. “I can be incredibly lazy when I want to be.”

From Blockbusted (title tenative), due 2010 from Alert Nerd Press

So, that’s going to start off pretty interesting and then drop off with a whimper after being plagued by delays, isn’t it?

There’s an interview with JMS on Newsarama that is pretty illuminating in regard to his take on the characters.  Surprise, surprise, he says that his goal with Diana is to pare her down to her core and get rid of the “layers of debris” around her.  Not only is this something that every new writer to come aboard Wonder Woman says that his or her goal is, it’s a goal that has never been strictly necessary.  On the other hand, he talks with a clear simplicity about Superman, a character that does have tons of baggage attached to him.

Look at it this way: If I were going to write a Fraption (you know, those caption bubble things that Matt Fraction uses in his Uncanny X-Men run where you get important facts about the character), I think that if you were going to simply skip over cleverness like “Wonder Woman: Is Wonder Woman” or “Superman: Is Superman” (both of which strike me as valid, honestly, just like Batman’s caption box would just read “BATMAN.”) then you could probably get away with “Amazon Princess. Kicks ass.” a lot better than “Last Son of Krypton. Mild-mannered reporter. Farmboy. Has awesome wife. Does basically everything. Except magic. And kryptonite.”  Or maybe I’m expressing a bias here.

I was trying to defend Superman to my girlfriend not too long ago.  She doesn’t like him because he’s too perfect. I did my standard thing about how Superman’s limits are only the limits he imposes on himself and that it’s those limits that define him more than his powers and that’s kind of beautiful yadda yadda yadda and I realized something – I don’t think I honestly care that much about Superman.  It’s a small sentence, but it felt like this big watershed thing for me.  Why I didn’t, I wasn’t sure, but I figured it out while I was reading that JMS interview.  I looked at the stuff that he was saying about Superman and realized that it’s the exact opposite of what I’ve always felt (that it’s more about the possession of his ridiculous power and not the judicious use of it) and I think I figured out that the funny thing about letting superheroes become your mythology is that you still end up with several incompatible theories of god butting heads against one another.  As much as I respect Straczynski, I don’t think I buy into his, just like I – a straight, male longtime comics reader who has read Wonder Woman on and off since the post-Crisis Perez reboot don’t really care for the way that the author kind of ghettoizes Diana as being just for girls, or even worse, the girl version of Superman when she is, in fact, completely different.

I like JMS a good deal a lot of the time, however; between Rising Stars, a majority of his Amazing Spider-Man and his relaunch of Thor, he has my reader good will.  I’m committed to giving Straczynski a chance with both of these books, but I’m keeping my optimism in check.  How about you?

Back in the day, we used to just like stuff every week. We still like stuff, but now we mix in links, videos and other random claptrap. We call it the Bin, and it will steal your heart away.
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I try not to read much of what other writers have to say about a show I’m reviewing until after I’ve written my own review. But my friend Dan Carlson posted a link to his write-up of the season six Lost ep “Sundown” for Pajiba and his post title was too spot-on to miss:

“In Every Possible World, Sayid Is A Killer”

Just about says it all, doesn’t it?

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I think I burned out my geek-rage gland. Not over the subject of this post, mind; just in general. It might be an age thing. Inspiring any nerd passion in me requires that it involve something close to my heart, and even then, I often default to a (shrug) “What do they know? They don’t get it and I’m not interested in explaining it to them” position.

So, it is with complete and utter raising of one lazy eyebrow, that I repost this YouTube clip from Frederico Dordei’s website – It’s a 5 minute sampling of the US remake of Spaced and Dordei plays the role of Brian/Christian.
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I (Jeff) am looking for an artist to help me out with a 4-8 page sequential thing that I’m doing for the next issue of Grok. It might end up being the first glimpse of the Secret Comic Book Project thing that we’re working on at Alert Nerd, too – a little side story focusing on one of the minor characters from said thing that Matt and I really dig.

Hit me up at J.Stolarcyk(at)gmail(dot)com and we can talk more.

So, JLA: Cry For Justice #7.  What in blue fuck was that!?

In the first act of the Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem, the filmmakers do the inviolate – they kill a kid and his dog. We’re not attached to the kid or the dog – I couldn’t even tell you their names – so the act basically serves as a message to the audience that, for the next hour and thirty minutes, we will not be fucking around here.  It is a moment full of declarative force and while it’s shocking, it’s also happening in a monster movie that is a response to a bowdlerized AvP as much as it is a sequel to it.  It makes sense. It has an impact because it makes sense.

Did I just defend killing kids?  Well, fictional killings and fictional kids, but I’m not going to write the whole idea off with a “NEVER!”  There’s always at least one good use for even the worst idea. Angelina Jolie married Billy Bob Thornton.

Why do I bring this up? So that you know where my limits are when I tell you that the cheap and thoughtless killing off of Lian Harper is crass, insulting bullshit storytelling and that whatever member of DC’s Powers That Be who said “Yes, that’s an excellent idea!”  should have one final, fleeting moment of humanity as they lie down in a casket filled with the rich and loamy soil of their homeland as the dawn approaches and stake themselves.

I mean, I guess that we should maybe be thankful that Doctor Light wasn’t involved. Right?  I guess we should be thankful that Mirror Master didn’t do a line of coke off of her eight year old corpse, or that Superboy Prime didn’t squash her head like a grape or that Deathstroke the Terminator didn’t brainwash her with syringes full of mind control drugs or whatever.  At least she didn’t grow up into some hateable melange legacy character called “Red Cheshire” who’d get ignominiously executed during a linewide “Crisis” event. At least it was just a bomb.

Fuck you, DC Comics.  I don’t even like Roy Harper – NOBODY likes Roy Fucking Harper, for crying out loud, but you’ve just gotten rid of the one thing that makes him interesting that isn’t a crippling heroin addiction or a severe case of juvenile overcompensation.  Congratulations.

Note: This isn’t a review of last night’s episode of Lost; it’s not even a review of last week’s episode of Lost, since our pal Jeff admirably wrote up that episode already. It’s a review of two episodes ago, done only to satisfy my anal need to make sure we’ve reviewed every episode here at Alert Nerd. In a few days I’ll write up the latest episode, Jeff will pick up next week’s, and all will be right with the world, such as it is.

“Don’t tell me what I can’t do,” “John Locke” yells. Of course, he’s not really Locke at all; he’s the creature we’ve known till now as the smoke monster and the Man in Black, taking Locke’s form, to what end we’re not sure. John Locke is dead, killed by Ben Linus.

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