Comics, Manga

A few thoughts on a manga I am reading

I am just one volume in, and Twentieth Century Boys reminds me of Stephen King’s It.

I am a huge fan of Naoki Urasawa and consider him among the greatest contemporary manga creators out there. That’s right – not just a writer or an artist, a creator. He writes and draws, and it’s tough for me to say what he does better. The first Urasawa creation I read was a series called Monster, a psychological thriller set in Western Europe, an 18 volume joyride that I blazed through in one weekend. Early this year, I picked up the full run of Pluto, Urasawa’s homage to one of the most beloved Astro Boy story lines that Osamu Tezuka ever created.

In terms of technique, Urasawa is as much removed from the style one comes to expect from a traditional manga artist as Satyajit Ray is removed from, say, Subhash Ghai. When I see his line-work, I am reminded of European masters – his figures in motion carry a bit of Herge, the inking brings to mind the polished assurance of Moebius; the Japanese influences on his style is reminiscent of Katsuhiro Otomo and Jiro Taniguchi, both of whom, not surprisingly, have been influenced by Moebius.
Urasawa’s work therefore becomes a perfect gateway work to people who ‘mistrust’ manga. I use the term ‘mistrust’ because that seems to be the perfect term to describe the reactions that general comicbook fans have whenever manga comes under discussion – Naruto and Bleach seem to be the eye-roll-inducing standards against which all manga is judged, there are references to bug eyes and fetishization of prepubescent females, and of course, the eternal ‘you have to read it the wrong way’. Except for the last, which is something akin to insulting a language just because it does not sound like yours, Urasawa’s work defies conventional classification. No, it’s not art-house, highbrow literature that tries to batter you with it’s own sense of self-importance nor is it commercial franchise-building content.

Monster had its moments of storytelling naïveté, but it was a thriller comic done right, told exactly the way its creator wanted to. I made the mistake of slotting Pluto, when I first heard of it, as fan- fiction that would only make complete sense if I had the sense of nostalgia attached to the original Tezuka story as its intended audience. I was wrong. Sure, the second reading of Pluto, after I tracked down Astro Boy  vol 3 and read the 149-page ‘greatest robot on earth’ kind of helped me appreciate the choices that Urasawa’s homage made in course of its 8 volumes, the artistic licenses. It actually helped me take in the level of audacity of this fan, this guy who dared to remake something that had resonated in his childhood into something that unmakes nostalgia. I do not want to think of how much he must have internalized the original story to come up with something like this.
Why did it take me so long to get to 20th Century Boys, then? Because as is expected of output that maintains a high level of quality, there is only so much of it out there. Well, there is early Urasawa, such as Pineapple Express, published in every other language but English, but scanlations are not encouraging. His early work reminds me more of Toriyama, more cartoony than I would expect. I am not aware of what he’s doing right now, but there are only 22 volumes of Urasawa-output available for me to read, and I sure as hell did not want to squander those the weekend after I finished Pluto.
But it’s time now, and I’ve just finished the first volume, as the train that takes me back to Los Angeles passes through the Pacific coast. I pause from time to time and stare out of the window, taking in the sunshine that streams through. It’s a lovely day. As Urasawa jumps between 1969 and 1997, and I see childhood dreams and idealism flip to middle-aged resignation and ennui, I realize that I was only 10 years away from being a twentieth century boy myself.

(written on Saturday, on a train)

 

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Movies

Two Films

I am not a Woody Allen guy at all, but Midnight in Paris is hardly a Woody Allen film.

Its a film for every person who’s ever been disillusioned with the present, and wondered how much better life would have been ‘back then’ – ‘then’ standing in for any time period in the past that strikes one’s fancy. For Gil Prenders, Hollywood screenwriter and self-proclaimed hack , the time to be in is the 1920’s. In Paris of the twenties, to be precise, where the likes of Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald and TS Eliot discussed poetry in bars and soirees; Picasso, Matisse and Dali were starting off on their careers, and Cole Porter serenaded the city of lights and the  colorful inhabitants in its nightclubs. Prenders, played by Owen Wilson, floats the idea of settling down in Paris for good. But his all-American fiancee Inez (Amy Adams) and her moneybag parents have different ideas. ‘Cheap is cheap’, sniggers his future mother-in-law at his choice of jewellery and his reluctance to spend upwards of 20 thousand dollars on a set of antique armchairs, while Inez chooses to go dancing with a bunch of friends rather than humor Gil and his fanciful romanticization of Paris. As Gil wanders through the streets of Paris, the clock strikes midnight, and …  stuff happens. Go watch.

Oh, and this is probably the only film where I’ve liked Owen Wilson as an actor. And the supporting case – Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni in a surprising cameo. If you like literature and film and the idea of walking in the rain in Paris, this movie is for you.

The opening sequence to the film is a beautiful piece by Sidney Bechet, that I’ve been listening in a loop since.

 

Incendies was Canada’s official entry to the Oscar this year, and it’s a darn shame that the film did not win. It’s definitely the most hard-hitting film I’ve seen since 2005 – no, I am not saying which one. Directed by Denis Villeneuve, based on a play (which apparently runs 4 hours), this film would have totally gone under my radar had I not seen the trailer at Laemmle while watching 13 Assassins a few weeks ago.

The premise is this – twin children, son and daughter. Their mother dies and leaves them individual letters in her will. The son has to deliver a letter to their brother(who they never knew existed), and the daughter has to deliver one to their father(who was presumed dead in a war). This takes both of them on a journey to their mother’s roots in the Middle-east, and a lot of revelations. The story is told in a brilliant non-linear style involving the mother’s life in the past interspersed with the siblings’ journey in the present, and all of it winds down to a terrific, searing climax. Unbelievably good.

 

The film begins with Radiohead’s ‘You and Whose Army’, originally used in Kingdom of Heaven.

Seriously, fuck Super 8, X-men and all that stuff playing in the theaters right now. They’ll play on cable TV later, and you could watch them even with ad-breaks. Go watch these two movies. One’s a downer, the other leaves with you a dazed smile. Both of them are awesome.

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Comics

Comics you should not read: Shadowland.

Once every 6 months, I get that urge again. The need to sit my ass down with a pile of the latest in buzzword comics that I keep hearing about.

Buzzword comics, you ask?

Blackest Night. Shadowland. Siege. Dark insert-Marvel-title-here. Flashpoint. Final Crisis.

You know, the kind of stuff mainstream comics still keeps putting out, probably hoping that their latest offering will cause hordes of unbelievingly masses – the kind of sinners that do not read comics at all, or worse, read those fancy graphic novelly titles, or horror of horrors – manga – will suddenly discover a copy of Dark Avengers (not to be confused with Dark New Avengers, or Dark Mighty Avengers) in the spinner rack of their local bookstore. And then their eyes will pop and their hearts would beat faster, when they realize what they have been missing all along, at which point they burn their copies of Strangers in Paradise and Azumanga Daioh, and spend the rest of their lives finding out every single issue where the Avengers have appeared in, just so  they can understand Dark Avengers completely.

Yes, I probably went overboard with the sarcasm. But seriously?

Fuck. This. Shit.

My latest incursion into this buzzword comics mess was something called Shadowland. All I knew about it was that it deals with Daredevil being more and more miserable, which has kind of been the theme of every Daredevil comic since 1979 (incidentally, I was born that year. That does not relate to anything I am saying right now, but just thought I would put it out there.) Apparenly this is what happened – Daredevil suddenly figures out that he owns The Hand. Which sounds vaguely dirty, but what we’re referring to here is a medieval group of ninjas that’s been a thorn in Murdock’s path ever since Franky Miller did things his way, mashing up Hell’s Kitchen with repeated readings of Lone Wolf and Cub. Ninjas in the Marvel universe, just so you know, refer to human-looking characters that jump off rooftops and then die. They are also known for talking in genre-speak – the way someone from India thinks  a waitress’s speech patterns by watching True Blood, or an writer from the USA thinks a Ninja would sound like. Or, to put it more simply, Ashok Banker’s writing. Kind of like this.

 

Something as badly-written as Shadowland does not even require the kind of effort I am putting into explaining it, but let me see if I can break it down easily.

Everybody thinks there is a problem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, there is a problem. P.S The costume is now black.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stop! Hammer-time! (Nothing like a fight sequence for plot development)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's not his fault. He's just possessed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Japanese Hangover Part 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oh yeah, and somewhere in the story, just to show how dark and edgy Daredevil has become, this happens.

Bazinga!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes. Nothing that says ‘serious comics’ like a big fat kill.

There’re a bunch of tie-in books too, like every self-respecting crossover title should have. Needless to say, they add nothing to the story except for some more convoluted posturing of various characters who nobody would give a shit about. Moon Knight? Power Man?

I hate to think that there are people paying for this crap, or that there will be actual paper wasted to reprint these books as hardcovers and then trade paperbacks. That a bunch of ‘creative’ people still get together to come up with storylines like this, and there are editors who allow dialog and plot twists like this to tell a story, in this Age of Postmodern Irony, shows a lack of storytelling sense 101. Rating: 4 stars, out of a possible 4000.

 

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