Verily...Tis Random!

[Johann Chua]

Finished watching FLCL last night. One of Gainax's best works. Found an old article about it by Carl Horn from the now defunct PULP manga magazine website, courtesy of the Wayback Machine, linked on the Wikipedia entry.

[Johann Chua]

Just got my Max Headroom DVDs today. Crossing my fingers that it lives up to my fond memories of it.

[jensaltmann]

Max Headroom's finally out on DVD??? Yes, please let us know how well it has aged.

[Johann Chua]

The Max Headroom DVD set was released in August last year. Bought it when Amazon's price dropped to nearly 50% off MSRP.

The first episode ("Blipverts") is great. "Rakers" was a bit ridiculous (extreme motorized skateboarding). The booklet includes an essay from the creator of The Middleman (will have to get the DVDs for that next time).

[Anders]

Oooh, cool. I don't think I ever saw more than the first episode, but I remember it as being fun.

And yes, you should definitely get the Middleman DVDs. It's a great show.

[jensaltmann]

Dude, you REALLY need The Middleman.

[Johann Chua]

"Kiss my Asimov" was the moment I totally loved The Middleman.

[Anders]

I watched some of the extras for the British superhero parody show No Heroics and I found some of the bad puns on the liquor bottles to be quite irresistable: V for Vodka, Gin City and Logan's Rum, the last one being a double reference of course.

[jensaltmann]

Watching Person of Interest episode 1 right now. A very Knight Rider-esque concept, just without the talking car. Or the cheesy humor. My main problem so far is with Jim Caviezel. Is he really that bad an actor, or is he phoning it in?

Edit to add: I was wrong. Person of Interest is not so much Knight Rider as it is The Destroyer. With Jim Caviezel's character John Reese as a TV-budget Remo Williams, and Michael Emmerson as a wannabe Mr. Smith. I wonder if they're gonna have a Chiun rip-off too, down the road.

[jensaltmann]

It's not a secret that I'm a huge fan of Christopher Lee.

I even made some cartoons about it:

www.drunkduck.com/Made_of_Fail/5273841/
www.drunkduck.com/Made_of_Fail/5274753/

This is what I imagined would happen if I ever got to meet/interview Christopher Lee.

He was in Hamburg last Sunday. Presenting his new movie.

AND NOBODY TOLD ME!!!!!!!

Translation: considering that he's 89 years old, this was probably the only chance ever to meet him, AND NOBODY TOLD ME!!!!

(slinks into a corner to cry)

[michaelpaciocco]

So..yesterday I sat down and read this in one sitting

www.amazon.ca/Captain-America-Mark-Gruenwald/dp/0785149651/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318165312&sr=8-1

520 pages, and it's a thick brick of a story. Of course, there's a few things dwelling in my mind. The following points stick out.

1) Man, Nomad was a complete asshole in this story. Start to finish, and I can't fathom the why of it. I guess because he needed one straw man in his story (more on that later), and he just picked Jack Monroe...but just the same, wow.

2) D-Man - poor, much maligned D-Man, who nobody BUT Gru liked. I mean, he's interesting in a way - a former wrestler with a heart condition who wants nothing more than to be Cap's buddy (because, come on, outside of the Red Skull, who DOESN'T want to be Steve Rogers' friend?) and is willing to put it all on the line because he straight up BELIEVES in him, despite the fact that D-Man probably lacks some of what it takes to make it in the business. But he tries, and I'm a sucker for good-hearted everymen.

3) John Walker is actually a much better character than he's given credit for. It would have been easy to make the character a one-dimensional reactionary and a straw man to completely disprove his worthiness as Captain America. Hell, one-dimensional Captain America parody that's also political commentary on reactionary tactics? That's Nuke, and he's probably better remembered (unfortunately for everyone). But Walker is more nuanced - he's eager to be his best, but he has different ideas on what that means. And when he crosses the line, it's due at first to inexperience, and then to his impulsiveness getting the better of him. But he's not a bad guy - he's just a little off.

4) Gru- Libertarian? This is something that's been discussed about Mark Gruenwald's comics before,

www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/politics/pol10.html

and it's certainly an arguement that can be backed up in this story, but, very imperfectly. For one thing, if Gru was a true Libertarian, then Nomad and Falcon's responses of taking the government head on would have been correct, which they were not - they just would have escalated things, which Cap was right to oppose because he knew he had to stand up for American ideals, including the idea of shared values of civilization and laws. Also, for the Libertarian interpretation to be valid, the whole thing wouldn't have to have been manipulated by the FREAKING RED SKULL.

The inclusion of the Steve Rogers/Iron Man fights (including an issue of Iron Man) is also important - because Tony's crusade (Armor wars I - trying to prevent anyone, including the government, from using his tech) is very much a Randian quest, and it's shown to be in the wrong as much anything else, tends to subvert the idea of Gru being a true Libertarian.

Most importantly, John Walker's failures as Cap were due not to being a "good soldier who always obeyed orders and serves the State" but because he often went and tried to do things against the rules as much as any Randian character, often with horrific results.

5) The opening scene of #350, is to me, the high point of the Red Skull taking his job as "archenemy" seriously - I mean, hiring 5 mercs a day to cosplay as Cap and then killing them all before Breakfast? WORK ETHIC.

pacioccosmind.blogspot.com/2008/02/great-moments-in-comics-cap-lays-down.html

Discuss.

[jensaltmann]

Basically, Cap frequently plays against the rules but succeeds because he's the best there is at what he does. Walker plays against the rules, but fails because he's not good at what he does.

I still say that Walker is a thinly disguised Judge Dredd clone -- didn't Busiek write him like that once in a miniseries?

[michaelpaciocco]

I'd disagree - I think Walker was a sincere and earnest attempt to make someone very close to Cap, but that was as much a (again, well intentioned) reflection of things that fans thought they wanted in Captain America (more contemporary, more "gritty/realistic") while subverting all those things.

I'm not sure if that Busiek or someone else - they definitely redesigned the costume to reflect that idea though.

[jensaltmann]

You mean, kind of like the story about how and why DC created Azrael and made him Batman? "You say this is what you want, well, now deal with it!"

I've always felt that Walker was more supposed to be the exact opposite of Steve Rogers. Where Steve is for the ideals, Walker is for the letter of the law. Where Steve breaks the rules and succeeds, Walker fails. Where Steve is good at what he does, Walker isn't. Where Steve is open-minded, Walker is prejudiced. And all that.

Kind of showing all the ways that someone who is the opposite of Steve Rogers could not do anything but fail at being Captain America. Or even at being a hero.

(In other words, I suspect that Johnny Walker was created after Gru was originally exposed to Judge Dredd.

[michaelpaciocco]

Well, that certainly may be the case for the character now, but apparently, at least according to the Late Gru, it was more Rambo than Dredd.

www.comic-art.com/interviews/gruenwal.htm