The Cipher 09/22/10
September 22nd, 2010 by david brothers | Tags: cipher, deadpool, music, the roots, Video GamesQuick hits!
–Shadow of the DAMNED trailer is heat rocks. Suda51 is dope, Shinji Mikami is pretty straight, and Akira Yamaoka is cool, so I’m basically on-board day one, and I don’t even really care about video games any more.
-Did anybody else look at that Shadowland: Blood on the Streets book the other week? I flipped through it, got to like page four and was like “nope.” Why?
Yeah, naw, I’m good man. You go on and take that somewhere else.
–Shadowland: Daughters of the Dragon is similarly wack. Look at the soft batch of an action scene in this preview. Everything about it is a turn-off–the way they just hop off the motorcycles, the stiff art, the absurd fight in a truck that is also a shapechanging warehouse, whatever whatever. Gross.
-I’ve been paying more and more attention to fight choreo in comics. It’s such a basic thing, and I’m growing increasingly certain that getting it wrong is absolutely ridiculous. It’s one-two-three-four–first this, then this, then this, and then this. A lot of superhero artists tend to do it the other way, pinup-pinup-pose-pinup, instead, and it looks like crap every time. It’s sequential art, right? Then it follows that the images we see should be in sequence, rather than a loose collection of images where people are maybe kinda sorta fighting/dancing. This is like drawing cross-eyed people or one leg noticeably longer than the other. C’mon, son. Do better.
-That new John Legend & The Roots? Wake Up!
-Grant Morrison wrote the superhero comic Bible when he wrote Flex Mentallo. I can’t even imagine why someone wouldn’t like it or what it says about cape comics and superheroes themselves.
-My launch PS2 still works and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
Stuff I Read, Stuff You Should Buy
-I got a big box of books from Vertical, and I’ve made it through 7 Billion Needles
–Empowered 6, huh? How good was that book? Sistah Spooky is killing me over here.
-Guess what’s on sale? Scott Pilgrim is on sale! The entire series! For fire sale prices! Links: Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 1: Scott Pilgrim’s Precious Little Life
-Comics Alliance: we beat up on a crappy interview from The Atlantic, I review Empowered, Wildstorm is dead, and here’s some Marvel comics you should read.
I read your comic, now I break weed up on it
“The Immortal” David Brothers, brother!: This week, there’s nathan, but penetra-er, I’ve got no comics this week, but I might buy Matt Fraction and Pasqual Ferry’s Thor because John Workman lettered it.
Miss Esthlizabeth: I tried to find a title that Esther’d never read, like maybe Prison Pit or Preacher, but eh… effort.
“Macho Man” Gavin Jasper: Green Lantern Corps, Justice League Generation Lost, Avengers Academy 04, Avengers 05, Deadpool Team-Up 889, Hit-Monkey 03, Hulk 25, Secret Avengers 05, Darkwing Duck 04
Anything worth reading this week?
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Holy crap, thanks for the Scott Pilgrim sales news! You just got six referral purchases from me.
Fantastic Four continues to impress me every month. I haven’t had this much fun reading this book since I picked up the Waid/Ringo trades. All the pieces Hickman moved very cautiously around the board for the first year or so are falling into place, and I get the feeling that it’s going to be particularly amazing.
I also love that he seems to be undoing almost all of the bullshit Millar enacted in his run.
Why the random mention of Flex Mentallo? It’s not finally being collected, is it? *crosses fingers*
Emp 6 was my favorite read of last week. The structure of “Action, character-character-character-ACTION!” worked well. (I’m trying to avoid spoiling it for anyone.)
@Munkiman: I ended up flipping through my copy last night, which then turned into rereading select passages, which then almost turned into “Let’s just sit and reread the whole series.”
When I was buying my comics, I saw that Nemesis #3 was out and I flipped through it very briefly to see if it might be worth checking out. Then I got to a newspaper headline panel and put it right back on the shelf.
No, Millar. That’s fucking disgusting and I want no part of it.
Re fight choreography in comics, there is a very good essay on fight choreography in film at Observations on Film Art discussing the clarity in fight scenes using Bond and Jackie Chan as examples:
Bond vs. Chan: Jackie shows how it’s done
Worth a read, and just as relevant to comics as it is to film.
@Munkiman: Morrison mentioned at SDCC that they are not the ones that told you it was being collected.
Indefinite, but seems to be in the works.
Agreed on Persona 4– though we got stopped and my wife and I need to go back and finish it up. Have you seen Persona 3 on the PSP– we have that next in the queue but haven’t gotten to it yet. Such a great series all around.
Secret Avengers 5 has some nice fight choreography. Layouts by David Aja & finishes by Michael Lark, flying cars, and Nick Fury’s clone.
Supertron #1
Free previews are pretty much all I can pay for right now, but I really liked this one. Especially the visual style; all the speech bubbles are formatted as dialog boxes from a modern OS. It’s also, contrary to what the summary might lead you to believe, fun and not terribly serious.
Gunsmith Cats had some of the best fight choreography I’ve ever seen. Every punch, every bullet is thought out. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an American comic do it as well.
Parasite Eve? For real? That game is still one of my all time favorite ps titles. Is the novel based off the movie that happened before the game or the events in the game?
Read Hulk #25 and wow, I actually want to keep reading a series about the Red Hulk now.
“You go on and take that somewhere else” – that’s something to remember that will keep me sane on Wednesdays. Thanks.
@NeoKefka: That’s not TRUE… That’s IMPOSSIBLE!
No, NeoKefka is on the money.