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Bob Dylan is a Cylon
The Season 3 finale of Battlestar Galactica was like an acid-induced writing seminar titled “We Have No Fucking Clue What We’re Doing”.
Characters catching strains of a sitar-and-electric-guitar-squealing cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower” in the walls of the ship, going so far as to actually spout lyrics from the song as lines of dialog. Just rereading that last sentence feels like I made that shit up, but that’s what actually happened – the show was spontaneously possessed by the spirit of Bollywood! Ending the episode with the same Watchtower cover tune blaring, full-on with lyrics drowning out the regular sound and voices was horrifying icing on the cake.
When Ron Moore says that he came up with these big plot twists “this season as I worked toward the finale” I can plainly say “No guff”. Massive screwy plot alteration midway through the season is exactly what it felt like – no forethought, no consistent threads and no over arching plan for the show. The sheer number of flaming hoops the writers will need to jump through to make any logic out of the 4 Cylons revealed in the finale is staggering. They bent their own story over a barrel. Even the actors seemed detached from the whole thing, losing their regular verve as they spouted lines that felt wildly out of place.
Just like the terrible “1 year in 10 minutes” end of Season 2, they jerked their audience sideways for the sake of doing it and sucked away any empathy I had for the cast. Shock endings can be great when they don’t feel completely random, pointless and out of step with everything else the show has presented up to that point.
Bob Dylan by way of Bollywood 80’s hair band rock… Seriously, did that actually happen? I’m still in shock.
Independent Publishing Advice
Fantastic quote from Mike Mignola’s interview on Newsarama:
“My one piece of advice has always been, if I’m an example of anything, is that you take what you really want to do and you do it—then it is possible that it will work out. Thing’s aren’t always going to work out but I tell guys all the time—if you want to take a shot at something else just do one issue of a comic; like I did, you finish your Batman book then you say, ‘I’m going to do this one Hellboy mini-series and if it works out great and if it doesn’t work out—that’s fine; I took a year to do this thing now I’ll go back to drawing Batman or whatever.’ At least you took a shot at it.
If I had never tried I would’ve never found out that Hellboy would work. I didn’t think it would work; I didn’t think anyone would buy it but I took a shot and I didn’t try to make up a commercial book. I didn’t try to make up a book I thought would sell—I made up a book made up entirely of things I like. So, in the off chance that it did work and I was stuck doing this thing, then I was stuck doing a book that I love doing.”
Protected: Student VS Real Life
New Schlock Pin-Up
At home today recovering instead of teaching. I caught the flu over the weekend and don’t want to infect my students. They’ve got enough problems with time management/workload without me diseasing them on top of everything else.
The Shazam fury died down fast. Once it finally got through to people that it was, in fact, NOT an official design… sanity finally returned. Controversy vanished, I’m no longer ‘special’ and the gawkers move on to the next internet house fire. Heh.
On with other things…
I’ve had a few conversations over the past couple of weeks that have made me step back and mark time. I’ve been back in Ontario and working with Udon for four years…. it doesn’t feel that long, but there it is. Sometimes I feel like I haven’t done much or grown as an artist, other times I can see the huge divide.
Shazam Revised
Okay, posting this revised version to rebalance my karma with the Captain Marvel hardcore. 🙂
A more traditional/respectful approach to the character’s face/hair and a far less dopey expression. I do think it works better, honestly:
The question now is, will this stop their angry e-mails pelting my in-box and various other cries for my blood (even after it’s been explained that this design is not official)?
I’ll let you guys know how it goes. 🙂
Shazam RAGE
Whoah… I used Google to find some Captain Marvel forums as I was curious what people were saying about the Shazam cartoon that I’m not involved in…
Hardcore fans are amazing and terrifying at the same time. I forget how passionate I’ve been about things I love and, man-oh-man, do these guys love Captain Marvel. If I would’ve known that piece was going to get turned in to a whirlwind of publicity/rumor/whatever I would’ve stuck closer to the traditional Captain Marvel face/eyes/nose. They aren’t all negative posts but the ones that are… they’re ballistic!
“dear Zod that has to be one of the butt-ugliest character designs i’ve ever seen”
“Not to happy about the design”
“Dreadful. And I thought Cartoon Network’s LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES was bad.”
“that Captain Marvel cartoon looks so awful”
“Definitely a terrible character design – the head really drags the rest down – it doesn’t remotely resemble Cap.”
“it looks like it was drawn by a child. With no hands.
“The body doesnt kill me on this (I dont like it, but I could live with it) but that face…”
“I’m psyched that we’re getting a Cap. Marvel cartoon, but that picture is just painful to watch.”
“Why can’t they hire talented people? Like us. Phuck.”
Um, sorry?
I’m actually not angry at their comments – it’s not like I intended it to be a final professional design. These things would go through layers of revisions and approval. My late night kneejerk design for Captain Marvel was just that, something fun.
I need to print these quotes out and keep them at my bedside on cold nights when I need extra warmth. Their rage can melt the deepest chill in the air.
Shazam?
A friend just phoned to point me towards this week’s edition of the infamous comic book rumor column Lying in the Gutters…
Click the link there and scroll down…
Recognize that Captain Marvel promo piece?
Some crazy fanboy Photoshopped out my sig and made up a mock promo pic as if it was a real WB animation piece! That’s hilarious. I’m flattered and confused at the same time.
The rumor is marked as ‘green’, meaning it’s apparently been confirmed. So strange.
Death Note
I’m quite enjoying Death Note so far (just finished reading book 3, which is equivalent to episodes 1-11 of the anime series).
As a brief summary, it’s about a Japanese teen who finds the ‘Death Note’, a notebook which can kill anyone whose name is written on its pages. I figured it would be some cheesy revenge story with this kid killing off bullies who’d picked on him but it’s actually become more complex than that… he decides to kill major criminals every where to make the world a better place and scare humanity in to being good. The mysterious deaths all over the globe create a sensation as people start worshiping or fearing a person/force the media dubs ‘Kira’.
From there, a cat-and-mouse style hunt begins between Kira (the teen) and an investigator, known only as ‘L’, who is determined to find out who Kira is and bring him to justice. All this happens in the first half of book one, so I’m not really ruining anything… the plot looks like it has a lot of places to go from here.
It’s not perfect or anything, but it is smarter than I’d expected and quite well drawn. A few friends recommended it and I’m glad I gave it a shot. I haven’t seen much current anime/manga that I’ve enjoyed. It’s nice reading a manga where characters aren’t stupid in order to propel plot forward and aren’t breaking out in to super deformed shenanigans every five minutes.
Anyone else reading it or seen the anime?
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Makeshift Miracle