In a few days, the WWE’s latest show NXT ends its first season. This new experiment is reaching the end and I thought it would be a good idea to look back at this idea. The short of it is that I think NXT started out strong, got borderline unwatchable for a while, then started getting good again towards the end.

But looking a little deeper into it, I notice what a brilliant show it’s been, at least in concept. The concept of a mistake is an interesting one in wrestling because most of the time, you can only see it in hindsight. A lot of the time, the wrong aspect gets blamed and allows for the same mistake to be made again and again. That’s a lot of what makes TNA so sad, in that it’s run by Vince Russo, Eric Bischoff and Hulk Hogan – three guys who couldn’t own up to a mistake if their lives depended on it. Those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it and TNA is proving that right.

The WWE machine has the occasional ability to see what went wrong and modify it in future attempts. For instance, Vince McMahon had the idea of having a handicapped wrestler. He thought it would make for the ultimate underdog hero and hired Zach Gowen, a trained wrestler with only one leg. The “handicap = underdog” idea was sound, but the execution failed. Gowen wasn’t exactly the most threatening individual and his one-legged offense stretched the suspension of disbelief to the utmost breaking point. A short while later, the WWE tried the same concept, but made the handicap something that’s fictional to the man portraying the wrestler. Hence, Eugene, a mentally-challenged wrestler whose drawbacks only existed within the story. Despite some flaws (hotshot booking, writing themselves into a corner and the wrestler letting himself go), he was a bigger success than Gowen.

NXT is a big amalgamation of different WWE ideas into something new and mostly fun. You see aspects of what they were trying to go with the first time around, but they’ve improved their process. Let’s take a look.

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The Fourcast wields the power of the gods. The very gods, themselves!

And I love it.

The best thing to emerge from Blackest Night? Read the rest of this entry �

Anyone who has picked up a DC book in the last few weeks has seen the preview for the upcoming Green Arrow series.  It’s technically perfect.

A woman runs alone at night through a moodily-lit, nearly-deserted city.  A gang of men follow her.  They’re wearing outfits that wouldn’t mark them as especially threatening in real life, but in comics are basically thug suits – black leather jackets and boots, with patches of their hair shaved.  This type has been causing trouble for women in moodily-lit cities since the thirties, and will probably continue causing trouble for them in the twenty-second century.

The woman keeps running, coming to a wooded area.  The men behind her shout crude, insinuating, but PG-rated threats, their intent unmistakable.  Eventually one of them catches her.  Escape is impossible.  All is lost.

Suddenly, something knocks him off of her!  A voice calls out in the darkness.  Enter the hero.

Like I said, the technical perfection of the sequence is obvious.  There is even some subtle detail work that clues the reader in on the state of things in the city.  For example, the woman being chased runs right past a police station without even trying to go in.  Clearly, the law isn’t being enforced in that city.

Don’t even pretend that that sequence, older by far than comic books, doesn’t draw in readers.  It hasn’t stuck around because it’s useless.  It’s a situation that is recognizable, horrible, and yet comforting, because any reader knows that it’s a set up for the hero’s entrance.  There isn’t a doubt in anyone’s mind that the hero will make an entrance.  It’s a set up for an iconic hero, and DC does well with iconic heroes.

The trouble is, it’s the set up for any hero.  Any hero at all.  You could paint over Green Arrow on the first splash page and no one would be the wiser.  As previews go, this one is giving us a hero, but it isn’t giving us any hero in particular.

Some readers will have noticed that I’ve been struggling with the Green Arrow book for the past . . . ever.  I think that if I could just accept that the book isn’t ever going to go in the direction I hoped it had, Robin Hood and his Merry C0-Heroes, I might just enjoy the solitary Oliver Queen in his urban forest.  At the same time, throwing away every other Arrow in for this guy, who is interchangeable with any other hero in the DCU, it seems like a bad trade.

rest in power ryan choi we gon neva forget u

Return of Bruce Wayne 01
words by grant morrison, art by chris sprouse/karl story/guy major/jared k fletcher, cover by andy kubert

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Sean did it because Wolkin asked him to. I’m doing it because I can. I’m picking movies for a personal film festival. These aren’t my favorite (that would be Out of the Past), but I love all of them. No explanations, though the titles of each day should give you an idea what I’m going for. Feel free to chime in. If you’re really puzzled, I’ll explain in the comments.

Three movies a day. I could probably come up with a food menu for these, too, for the full David Brothers Experience.

Friday: Nothing Succeeds Like Excess
Ninja Scroll, directed by Yoshiaki Kawajiri (dub) (possibly on second generation VHS)
Scarface, directed by Brian De Palma
Bad Boys II, directed by Michael Bay

Saturday: Building Blocks
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, directed by Steve Barron
Akira, directed by Katsuhiro Otomo (original dub)
Malcolm X, directed by Spike Lee

Sunday: A History of Violence
Seven Samurai, directed by Akira Kurosawa (sub)
The Killer, directed by John Woo (dub)
Blade, directed by Stephen Norrington

During the last DC panel of Wondercon, the talk turned to illegal downloads, their ethics, popularity, and effect on the comic book industry.

My take is that they’re not ethical, they’re very popular, and their overall effect is bad.  That being said, I can’t really lord morality over anyone.  I don’t get permission for the panels I use to illustrated stuff on this site, so to the extent I can steal, I suppose I do.

To the extent that I can.  To be honest, a part of what’s keeping me back from at least sneaking a few downloads to get the flavor of a particular book, is that I honestly can’t do it.  At all.  I’m a half-wit when it comes to know-how.  I don’t really know where to look for anything that I can’t look up in a book.  I’m also a half-wit when it comes to technology.  I tend toward the user-friendly programs and everything else is ‘magic’.  Half times half leaves me with a quarter wit to navigate my way through torrent sites, and I’m not up to the challenge.  I’ll pay the three dollars, thank you.

Another part of what keeps me shelling out money for books I know are going to frustrate me, is the overall atmosphere.  To me, going to a comic book store is like going to a bar.  Specifically, my well-loved, local bar.  I see people every week.  I catch up with them.  I talk comics with them.  I drift away and read when they talk sports.  I come back and we talk about what’s on TV, and eventually they close up and I head home.

Downloading comics has its appeal, especially to the broke and cheap, both of which kind of describe me, but at the same time – come on.  That’s like saying, “Why go down and meet my friends for a beer when I can make gin in my bathtub and get drunk alone?”  Sure, you can.  But why would you?

Except that, thanks to 4thletter, and Comics Alliance and Io9 and Comic Book Resources and LJ and Dreamwidth and Twitter and hundreds of message boards, that’s not true.  Hell, half of why I got into comics was the vast amount of resources, and company, online.

So I wonder, is this part of why people download comics?  I know, I know, less human connection, less local communities pulling together, standards.  I’m not frowning on it.  Like I said, I wouldn’t be into comics if I couldn’t talk about them whenever I have the time, and if I couldn’t get the number of angles on them that the internet provides.  Supplanting local with global might not be picturesque, but it gives a lot of opportunities for connection, and for variety.  At the same time, when you can get comics online for the same price that you can get conversation about comics online, maybe that’s competition too tough for vendors and creators.  And given that they’re who we need for our fix, maybe that’s going to be a problem pretty soon.

There’s little more disappointing in comic books than a bad ending. A story that’s bad from start to finish? It happens all the time. A story or series with a rough beginning? As long as they can get past it and get their footing, it gets a pass. A rough ending, on the other hand, easily poisons your final thoughts on a product. For instance, let’s say Return of the Jedi ended with a scene of Luke saving the galaxy by viciously murdering Darth Vader and the Emperor. Not only would that have sucked, but Return of the Jedi would have sucked and the Empire Strikes Back would have sucked in retrospect.

That’s how I feel about Siege, the miniseries by Brian Michael Bendis and Oliver Coipel. The miniseries ended about a week ago and I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it initially. Why did the ending bug me so much?

First, let’s look at the miniseries itself and how it ranks as an event. At only four issues (regardless of the unfortunate delay), it’s really refreshing. With Secret Invasion and Blackest Night, I’ve become completely sick of overly long event comics. This goes doubly for the two examples, as it means every single comic tie-in is going to be the same basic story told over again. Siege is quick and to the point. The issues are action packed and move the story forward at breakneck speed. The tie-ins are quite good for the most part, with the worst being at least inoffensive. It’s the first event where the Ben Urich tie-in mini is actually pretty good.

The art’s rather nice too.

Then you have to look at what it’s all about. Usually with these event comics, they do so well because they’re really dynamic story ideas. You can rant about how people only buy them because they’re important to continuity, but I mostly disagree on the basis of having described these stories to non-comic readers and seeing their reactions. If you tell someone about what World War Hulk or Civil War or Blackest Night is about, a lot of the times they’ll come across as interested.

How do you describe Siege to somebody? “There’s this crazy jerk who is one of the country’s bigwigs and he conspires with a trickster god to attack a floating city of gods in Oklahoma just because they’re there. The crazy jerk has a uber-powerful ace in the hole and a bunch of superheroes interject themselves into the battle.” It doesn’t have any real kick to it.

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Click ’em if you got ’em.

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