Several months ago, I read this article John Kessell essay on Orson Scott Card's classic Ender's Game. I'm not sure what compelled me to read the article when I had not yet read the book, but like Tom Townsend I sometimes appreciate critiques of works more than the works themselves because they give you two competing (or concurring) ideas whereas the original work usually takes considerably longer to give you one. I similarly enjoy reading Cliff Notes of works that I do not have any obligation to read or understand.

But that's neither here nor there. In this case, I finally did get around to consuming the book itself and it was a strange thing to be entering something as comprehensive looking through the prysm of someone's ideas. It's not surprising, though, that the elements discussed in the essay were the ones I honed in most closely on when consuming the original work.

Kessell's main point is thus:

In relating Ender Wiggin’s childhood and training in Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card presents a harrowing tale of abuse. Ender’s parents and older brother, the officers running the battle school and the other children being trained there, either ignore the abuse of Ender or participate in it.

Through this abusive training Ender becomes expert at wielding violence against his enemies, and this ability ultimately makes him the savior of the human race. The novel repeatedly tells us that Ender is morally spotless; though he ultimately takes on guilt for the extermination of the alien buggers, his assuming this guilt is a gratuitous act. He is presented as a scapegoat for the acts of others. We are given to believe that the destruction Ender causes is not a result of his intentions; only the sacrifice he makes for others is.

While combing the material for examples in agreement or opposition to Kessell's thesis, I ran across a couple interesting parallels. First to Harry Potter, which I had consumed just before. The similarities between Potter and Ender are common to youth-oriented works: outcast child thrust into extraordinary circumstances. The other connection, which came considerably later, was to Neon Genesis Evangelion, the monumental (and monumentally warped) anime work of Haddeaki Anno.

One of the main elements of Kessell's essay about the Ender whose Game the book is about, and the most notable (and notorious) aspect of Neon Genesis Evangelion's lead Shinji Ikari is his reluctance to do... well... much of anything, really. There is a photoshopped picture out there for the Neon Genesis Evangelion video game where the buttons, instead of having typical markers like "punch" or "kick", all have the same command: whine.

I thought of the whine buttons pretty frequently throughout Ender's Game. Ender's resentment was much more justified than Shinji's, and I understood why Ender was often reluctant to do those things that he was reluctant to do, but throughout the entire novel one never got a sense of what Ender really wanted to do. In that vein, the characterization of his psychotic brother was considerably more deep.

Of course, that too is a sort of lesson for adolescence -- or at least adolescence as I experienced it a decade ago and many seem to be experiencing it today. There are surely many ambitious exceptions, but learning is not generally high on the agenda of young people. Neither, for that matter, is earning. Spending is usually a goal, but most of the spending seems to be geared towards temporary amusement (movies, video games, or books) or otherwise temporary things (seasonal fashion).

There is a frequent stereotype in film, among other entertainment media, of a parent trying to get through to his kid that won't take the earphones out of his ears. It is generally a quite lazy metaphor for the child living in his own world, but it is used so frequently in entertainment because it represents something so frequent in reality: the desire for isolation.

As if to make this post's descent in to geekdom complete, the last example is a comic book involving an older character: Kevin Matchstick of the Mage serials. The only real connection is the reluctance of the hero to do what is asked of him and his inability to articulate a preferred course of action, but I bring it up to cite a quote from Mirth, his wizardous sensei: "What makes you think you are so worthy of this isolation that you so crave?"

Ender Wiggins was quite a talented kid and did amazingly well with the tasks put before him, but with the exception of the relationship that he had with his sister Valentine his talents were remarkably wasted otherwise. Were he not being pushed so hard by Corporal Graff, what would he have done with all of these extraordinary skills? Without the direction that Graff laid out for him, where would Ender have gone? What would he have done to deserve the right to be left to do his own thing?

The best answer provided by the book was that absent rising to the call of duty, he would have been able to live a normal childhood. This is presented by some, inside the book and out, as some notable achievement. Normality. The childhood that our society goes to such lengths to preserve and protect and freeze in amber. Innocence as not a condition one is in but a goal to be achieved. Instead of encouraging and rewarding excellence, we lament the costs it incurs.

This is not so much a criticism of Orson Scott Card and his premier novel as I believe Card himself would agree with a lot of what I have to say. It does seem, however, that in the same way that Archie Bunker was often found to be funny for all the wrong reasons, I wonder if Ender Wiggins is found to be right for all the wrong reasons by many of the book's admirers. I wonder if people relate to him not because of the universality of certain aspects of his condition, but because they too see their talents as a metaphorical burden in their lives in the same ways that they deliberately (on the part of Graff and others) become a burden on his life in the novel.

All this talk of anime reminds me of a story.

A little while back I was driving down one of the town's main drags and I saw a marquee that said "Anime is back!"

I thought, "cool" as last I knew there wasn't actually a place to get anime in Pocatello (besides the paltry selections at the national chains). Being that this is a college town (of sorts) that it would be good for them to have a place that puts enough of a value on anime as to put it on their marquee.

I figured that it must be a comic or gaming shop or something.

I should have figured that it was a porn shop.

I have recently discovered the utilitarian delight of being able to read comic books on my computer. I have a confession to make: I've been downloading comics on the Internet and viewing them using CDisplay. For the most part, however, I'm downloading comics that I already own. The problem is that they're back in Texas and I am presently in Idaho. The only comic book I have up here is V for Vendetta and I've sorely missed comic book reading -- even reading stuff I've already read. Over the past week I read Watchmen. Next week I'm thinking maybe Hitman and Demon.

Reading comics on the computer is actually less undesirable than I thought it would be. One reason I never really considered doing so before was how much I don't like reading long tracts of text on a monitor. I guess I hadn't considered that I prefer reading comic strips online as compared to on paper. While I don't prefer reading CBR and CDZ files in comparison to paper, storage certainly is a lot easier!

Part of it has me considering the commercial viability of digital comics. One of the justifications the comic book companies give for price hikes competing in frequency with the post office (Comics were $1.25 a piece when I started collecting, they're $3 now) was how expensive paper has gotten. Not to mention comic book dealers and their financial troubles (they sell less, therefore need to make more per unit). So theoretically digital comics would alleviate a lot of the problem.

Unfortunately, however, I don't see it happening any time soon. The most immediate issue is copyright management. People have largely been able to hack through most DRM systems and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future. In many ways, I shudder to think of the limitations of a system that can truly prevent illegal copying. Eggs and omlettes.

Unfortunately that leads to the standoff between the companies and its potential customers that benefits nobody. People that honestly wish they could get comics digitally aren't able to. Comics that would almost certainly like to deliver them can't without fear of losing control of their product. Ironically, by not offering anything few really know what they're missing out on (I didn't until a week or two ago), they're in the clear. If they were to actually serve their audience and develop a system that let people read comics but prevented them from being copied and spread out, they would become villains in the eyes of many for protecting art that deserves to be free (as in unpaid for, not liberated).

See Also: Loonyblog has this and this to say about the general subject.

As I hear new things about the upcoming Wonder Woman movie, I can't help but think of the relatively few Wonder Woman comics that I have. It was part of John Byrne's run earlier this decade. It was most notable because for the span I read it Wonder Woman was not actually in it and when she returned I moved on. So considering that the best Wonder Woman stories I've read don't have the starring character, this may be one marquee superhero movie I'll take a pass on.

Of course, I can't help but wonder a little bit what Diana's lack of appeal is, for me. Sexism? Maybe, but I'd see a Black Canary or Huntress movie in a New York minute. And the other marquee character that I have no interest in seeing a movie of, Aquaman, is quite male. One thing they do have in common is having a lot of roots outside the western world (Amazon for Diana and Atlantis for Arthur). But I'd see a Hawkman movie, and a lot of his history is off-planet. On the other hand, Thanagar is earth-like in everything except verticality. I'd also kill for a Martian Manhunter movie, and most of his history is on Mars. But then maybe the fact that his planet - like Krypton - no longer exists makes him more palatable to me.

• The Maxx was never released to DVD. Does anyone know why? It was popular enough, I'd think. There must be some copyright issues? I wanted to get it on Netflix, but couldn't. I may have to buy it.
• Speaking of Netflix, I've got the new Batman cartoon on queue. I don't think it's at all possible to measure up to the outstanding 90's cartoon and its successors. I've never understood how DC could get television so right (Batman: The Animated Series, Lois & Clark, The Flash) and screw up their movie properties so royally until recently. Other than Ninjajoker, the visuals of the new cartoon look pretty cool, though. Prior to this, there was another animated movie I missed: Batman: Mystery of the Batwoman. I doubt it can be as good as Mask of the Phantasm, but it couldn't be worse than Sub Zero if it tried. Or unless it included Panzer-level bad CGI.
• I'm kinda disappointed that they're not rebooting Superman entirely when Superman Returns. Not that I think all of the first set need to be redone, but it opens up a lot more possibilities for charting a new direction. Batman Begins may have "undone" Batman 1989, but I think it had to in order to have room to breathe for an entire franchise.
• Then again, I still have not actually seen the original Superman movie. I am still baffled by this.

• Somewhere along the way it seems that they made a fourth Crow movie. It looks better than the dereadful second one was. Not sure it could measure up to the first. Never saw the third. For those of you that never saw it, though, the TV series was not bad at all. It's a bit hard to get around the fact that they all necessarily have the same plot, though.
• Anyone actually seen the Fantastic Four movie? I've heard nothing but negative things about it and I'm not even an FFan, but there's something oddly attractive about the cheesiness of it. "Come on, Susan, let's not fight." "No. Let's!"... that supremely bad fight dialogue could be interesting. They made one not long ago. The fact that I was unaware of this until today suggests that I may not have missed much. Besides, it doesn't have The Commish in it.
• DC actually has a knock-off of the Fantastic Four called Challengers of the Unknown. A miniseries was written several years back that would make a pretty good movie. It even had a song in it for the soundtrack! The writer of that series, Jeph Loeb, came from film. He wrote Teen Wolf and Teen Wolf Too, but we shan't hold that against him.
• And the more that people seem to heap on The Hulk, the more interesting it sounds to me. Sounds more up my alley than the big green guy usually is.
• I saw that they are making another Captain America movie. The last one, made in 1991, was dreadful. Though I have to say that I thought Matt Salinger made a good Cap. In fact, his demeanor defines who the otherwise bland character should be. If Superman is The Last Son of Krypton, Cap would have to be The Last Son of The Forties. A symbol of a country he doesn't entirely understand. I don't know if that's what Salinger was going for. His bewilderment may have had more to do with trying to figure out what to do with the otherwise awful script.
• Oversaturation seems inevitable. Silver Surfer? Aquaman? Black Panther? Some of these characters shouldn't even exist at all, much less be brought to the Silver Screen.
• They still totally need to do a Blue and Gold movie, though. It'd be awesome.
• Here's a bunch of gay guys dressed up as superheroes.

Used to be that Anime came in dubbed and subtitled form on different tapes. DVDs, in their majesty, give everyone the option of both. I have, over the years, taken quite a bit of flack for my preference for dubbed features. One of the biggest arguments that pro-subtitle gave was how much more the subtitles conveyed than the dubbed because they weren't limited by the constraints of mouth movements. The other big argument was that the subtitled tend to be more faithful to the original. But even the second argument relied partially on the first - they could be more loyal because they could put more out there because they weren't constrained.

Which brings me back to DVDs. I prefer DVDs to tapes for several reasons. They're more enjoyable, but more than that, they're gratifying because it completely blows the myth of the elaborate subtitles out of the water. Anyone who watches something dubbed and subtitled at the same time can see that (a) the translations are actually not very different, most of the time, and (b) the dubbed almost always transmits more words than the subtitles. Whether A is a big deal or not is subjective, but the subtitled folks have almost completely lost their "objective" reason B.

And that's a beautiful thing. Because while the whole debate gives anime geeks that have little reason to feel better than anyone else ever, it's annoying as all heck for those of us that have a different preference.

Of course, I can hold out the olive branch as well as the next guy. With the advent of DVDs it doesn't matter. I can have them my way and they can have theirs. And unlike VHS, it's not a zero-sum one-or-the-other situation.

I mentioned this at my last anime convention. I was told I was wrong because... well... I was wrong. And because subtitles are more elaborate. And accurate. So there. Tis a shame that I couldn't make Ushicon or A-kon this year and tis not a shame at the same time.

I'm still not sure if the movie is going to be any good, but even if it completely bites this poster may be worth having for its own sake:



Beautiful.

I really should have seen Batman Begins sooner than I did. Unfortunately so many favorable reviews popped up that I went into it with what were probably unrealistically high expectations. That said, it almost met them, and that is a stellar achievement in and of itself.

One thing this movie really wins points on is originality. This is the first time that we've actually seen a young Batman in the movies... ever. Well, with the exception of Mask of the Phantasm, but even that mostly took place later in his career. Technically Michael Keaton's Batman was "just starting out" in Batman 1989, but Michael Keaton certainly could not qualify as a young Batman. Both the animated series and Adam West Batman joined his career a few years in.

This was all particularly significant to me because it's the first time that I've ever seen a Batman that's presumably about my age (well, he's two years older I guess, but close enough). Part of it is me getting older, but this is the first time that Batman hasn't at least partly been a father figure (with a Robin in tow or old enough to have a son Robin's age) and instead more like a peer. that alone made the movie interesting, though it doesn't necessarily make the movie good.

The characterization, however, made the movie good. Great, perhaps. Outside of comics, the only depiction that is even remotely as thorough and interesting is that of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, the animated film. While I'd have to give Phantasm a slight edge in the characterization of Batman, where this movie really excels is giving us a much closer look at Batman's perpetual supporting cast of James Gordon and Alfred as well as typically unrepresented Lucius Fox! Particularly James Gordon, a thirty-something depiction that still managed to come across as a somewhat grandfatherly nerd. I was sorry not to get to see more of him.

Though I am not the first to say this, the weakest character had to be Rachel Dawes. A mute district attorney would have won the movie decent political correctness points and would have saved us all from having to listen to her whenever she spoke. Okay, she wasn't quite that bad, but she was even more pointless than most Batman love interests are - and that's saying a lot. The most comparable love interest is Andrea Beaumont from Mask of the Phantasm, which already puts Dawes at a disadvantage because Beaumont was by far the best. But at least Julie Madison from Batman & Robin knew when to get out of the way (which was, thankfully, most of that film). Dawes, on the other hand, just kept talking and talking and talking. If the intent was to have her pulling Bruce towards the side of light, and I suspect it was, it needed to be counterweighed - and not by a villain. She was so unconvincing as to make me want to turn evil. But anyway, more on this part later.

One of the other interesting differences between Begins and previous set of Batman movies is how little it focuses on the villains. Jack Nicholson was the start of Batman 1989, Jim Carrey of Batman Forever, and so on. Begins had a handful of villains and while they were obviously important to the story, they were not the driving factor. We got to know very little about them and that's okay. They weren't the point of this movie. They were just greasing its wheels. But considered all of the villains well played, especially Scarecrow.

The villains backgrounds were okay. It was a bit painful to see Ra's and the League of Assassins/Shadows without Talia. Talia would have been a much better love interest than was Dawes. Or even having one tug him towards darkness and the other towards light. I'm not sure the logistics of it, but I see a two-bird stone in here somewhere. I think that Scarecrow would make an excellent marquee villain given his powers (save for the fact that few know he exists), but Cillian Murphy hit all the right notes and made his secondary villainhood into all that it could be.

The rotating villains also allowed for an outstanding deviation from the typical comic book movie plot, which usually consists of a villain or set of villains who dance around the hero until the tail end of the movie. In this case the villains were (mostly) done away with one at a time. Considering that there were four, it really helped avoid uncomfortable situatins where three or four villains must be dispatched in the span of ten minutes or so, as was in the case of Batman Returns where they essentially had to all dispatch one another.

They did break what I have dubbed the Gyrich Rule, which basically states that you do not use a specific character unless the character is particularly useful for the purpose you are using him. Gyrich, a marginal but recurring character in the X-Men mythologies, was given a bit part and killed in the first movie. That was unfortunate because he could have been used later on. Though few will really care, Mr. Zsasz is a second-tier rogue's gallary villain and most definitely not a mafia hitman. It's unlikely that they ever would have used him, of course, but even so there was no payoff for the fans in using an established character in a throwaway, insignificant role that was very much out-of-character.

But there were other fans payoffs abound for the fans. Commissioner Loeb is black this go-around and incoincidentally not as directly corrupt, but it was good to see him. I didn't particularly like Fleese's character (I liked Eckhardt better from 1989), but his inclusion was also nice. And Carmine Falcone. Though the plot didn't follow Batman: Year One very closely, I liked a lot of the inclusions. It makes me really hope that we'll get to see Sergeant Bullock in a future movie.

The look and feel of the movie was also a strong point. Gotham was less interesting than it was under Burton and Schumacher, but it felt a lot more real. They got a whole lot of the little stuff right. Batman's ability to disappear got progressively better as the movie went along and he got a better feel for how to do it. There was also something about the costume that was aesthetically uncomfortable to me. I'm not sure what it was, but I doubt it was an unintended effect.

Besides Dawes, there was one perpetually irritating thing about the movie. It can be between neutral-to-clever to at one point or another have a character repeat what was said to him earlier in a sort of turnabout fashion. For instance, the quote about intentions and actions recited by both Batman and Dawes was helpful. "Finders Keepers" and the memo quote, however, were not. I found them quite irritating.

The comic book fan in me actually enjoyed the movie more than the Batman fan in me, oddly enough. But both of me enjoyed it and it finds itself kicking Mask of the Phantasm out of my Top Five Comic Book Movies. At the rate Hollywood is going, though, I'm going to have to make it Top Ten before too long.

After living here for over a year, I finally visited Pocatello's only comic book shop.

It's really quite dangerous to put me in a comic book shop. Not necessarily because of money, but because of time. I have the tendency to chew the fat with comic book shop clerks and owners for hours on end.

Though I can't pinpoint it exactly, I stopped reading comics in late 2001 or early 2002. I stopped collecting them in early 2003. In between the point when I stopped reading and stopped collecting, I made my annual biweekly treks down to my comic shop in Pasadena primarily to talk to my comic shop guy. We'd talk about comics, movies, politics, and even sometimes religion.

At the end, of course, I'd pick up my last two comic pulls, which usually were in the $40-50 range. They'd be put in a stack and - for the most part - never read. When he closed the shop, I stopped buying all together.

For those of you that know what a thrifty and generally utilitarian guy I am, you'll appreciate how out-of-character that is. But even before that guy there was another at my previous comic shop in Nassau Bay. There wasn't one at the comic shop in Baybrook, and not-entirely-incoincidentally I stopped going there.

So I stopped buy Poky's shop primarily to get a catalogue of trade-paperbacks. I figured when and if I do start collecting again, I'm going to go that route rather than the month-to-month. I also may go the eBay route. Not sure.

But in any case, I spent an hour or so talking to a guy I'd never really met about an entertainment medium that I haven't regularly followed in at least a couple of years and about a movie that I have not yet seen (but will this week, I hope!). The guy was so excited about Batman Begins that his daugther had to stop him from telling me about the whole movie.

I also entered a raffle for a giant Wolverine head-sculpture.

What in tarnation would I do with a giant Wolverine head-sculpture?

As I briefly mentioned a week or so back, I shaved my beartee off for a couple reasons.

And now, over the weekend, I spent a little too much time in the sun with incomplete sunscreen application.

As a result, the sun most generously donated to me a blistering sunburn just under my hairline.

When it started blistering last night I came to the conclusion that this was not going to fix itself in the next couple of days.

So rather than having the weird burn marks I've started combing my hair forward instead of back.

So two weeks ago I had my beartee and a back/up haircut, whereas now I have something almost resembling a "bowl cut."
I've gone from an Oliver Queen look to a Guy Gardner look.

Which is fine, as long as long as it's former Green Lantern Guy Gardner and not retired astronaut Guy Gardner.

My head is totally unsuitable for baldness and I can say from a brief two hours experience that my face was not made for a moustache.