Named, of course, for the Gene Kelly musical about sailors in New York. Or maybe not - I just like having that as a title, then skipping the whole Night On The Town bit to join our heroes on their way home...
Fewer references this time -
"This same lonely desert..." paraphrases HST in Fear & Loathing, talking about the Manson Family. That pretty much fixes us in the Mojave Desert, demonises those little blonde fuckers the Bradys and allows us an opening for the Pope himself at some later point...
Pretty much reference free then, until we hit the endless guitar solo of Freebird by Lynrd Skynrd. I like the fact that it's on for over an hour, as it's famous for being one of the most overblown, cliched 70's rock stormers. It ties in once again with Monk's preference for that era's music, I also include it just because I like it, and have recently been battering their albums whilst writing.
Friday, 11 September 2009
Monday, 7 September 2009
Annotations - Absolute Beginners 1: Soldier Girl
Another reference-heavy piece here, so here's the annotated version:
The titles are taken from 2 songs, by Bowie and the Polyphonic Spree respectively. I especially like the fact that for their third album, the PS are ditching the robes in favour of army fatigues, a fact I only discovered while preparing to write part 2. And I figure that Blue will eventually come to Absolutely love Fliss. I've taken the liberty of having her blonde in this piece, but that can change from chapter to chapter as easily as, well, ANY woman can change her hair colour... For now though, think Patsy Kensit in the movie of the same name, Twiggy in 1967 and Claire Danes in the Mod Squad movie, dressed in Israeli army cast offs.
"We can swim like the dolphins, be kings and queens, or even be ourselves, for eternity." This is a VERY loose paraphrasing of the lyrics to Bowie's Heroes. I think the concept fits well with the overall idea of this trilogy of bits - We all have massive untapped potential. Fliss, Monk and Ari just figure out how to use theirs.
Matus: Don Juan Matus, the (allegedly fake) Nagual who coached Carlos Castaneda in various esoteric Mayan magics. Nagual (pronounced Na'wal) can be taken to mean both teacher and the totality of existence. Tonal, used in a couple of paragraphs, means both student and the single closed reality in which the uninitiated are bound to spend their lives. This man may or may not be the same Matus from the Castaneda books, but as there are questions as to whether he ever actually existed, I think we can leave it hanging and get away with it; It's never really pointed out anyway. There's also another meaning for Nagual - An evil shapeshifter, like a Mayan werewolf.
...slapped him harshly between the shoulder blades: The creed taught to Castaneda states that we are beings of lumious energy fibres which extend from a point between our shoulders to about an arm's length behind us, anchoring us to this Tonal/reality. By displacing it, we can refix our point of reference wherever we wish, inhabiting other minds and bodies in this realm or any others (which seems to explain a lot of the weird stuff in Donnie Darko, now that I think about it).
...his legs twitching like a dreaming dog... This echoes the scene in Ghost Town and uses the same phrasing, hopefully suggesting that what happens to Mark in that piece is more than just a mind rape - He actually sees the past as another reality.
...there are many dark actors playing games : A phrase used by Dr David Kelly in one of his final emails on the day of his alleged suicide, which has been seen as a key piece of evidence for foul play. Using it here prefigures some later developments, as well as suggesting that one of our characters killed the Doc...
...A humble Earthworm: I'm not sure there's even a connection here myself, but after I'd written this, I realised that in Dr Bloodmoney, the consciousness of the psychic foetus Bill is temporarily trapped in a worm, and I think Hoppy Harrington winds up in there permanently at the end of the book. No big reference, just an interesting aside.
This one will always have trouble with his appetite : Obviously, with his prodigious drug-taking in later days...
cihuapilli: The Nahuatl word for Princess. I think there may be more history with Matus and Fliss than we may ever get to see. Or not - It might just be an old lecher's term of affection.
Wax on, wax off : Please tell me I don't have to annotate that?
Christa Paffgen : Another icy blonde bombshell, better known to most of the world as Nico, of Velvet Underground and Chelsea Girl fame.
Fata Morgana : Another name for Morgan Le Fay, half-sister to, sometime nemesis and occasional ally of King Arthur Pendragon, star pupil of Merlin and latterly taken as a feminist icon for her role in the Grail legends. No real reason for Ari taking that particular pseudonym, but a handy reference to drop now in case we ever choose to hit the Grail cycle for other resonances.
The titles are taken from 2 songs, by Bowie and the Polyphonic Spree respectively. I especially like the fact that for their third album, the PS are ditching the robes in favour of army fatigues, a fact I only discovered while preparing to write part 2. And I figure that Blue will eventually come to Absolutely love Fliss. I've taken the liberty of having her blonde in this piece, but that can change from chapter to chapter as easily as, well, ANY woman can change her hair colour... For now though, think Patsy Kensit in the movie of the same name, Twiggy in 1967 and Claire Danes in the Mod Squad movie, dressed in Israeli army cast offs.
"We can swim like the dolphins, be kings and queens, or even be ourselves, for eternity." This is a VERY loose paraphrasing of the lyrics to Bowie's Heroes. I think the concept fits well with the overall idea of this trilogy of bits - We all have massive untapped potential. Fliss, Monk and Ari just figure out how to use theirs.
Matus: Don Juan Matus, the (allegedly fake) Nagual who coached Carlos Castaneda in various esoteric Mayan magics. Nagual (pronounced Na'wal) can be taken to mean both teacher and the totality of existence. Tonal, used in a couple of paragraphs, means both student and the single closed reality in which the uninitiated are bound to spend their lives. This man may or may not be the same Matus from the Castaneda books, but as there are questions as to whether he ever actually existed, I think we can leave it hanging and get away with it; It's never really pointed out anyway. There's also another meaning for Nagual - An evil shapeshifter, like a Mayan werewolf.
...slapped him harshly between the shoulder blades: The creed taught to Castaneda states that we are beings of lumious energy fibres which extend from a point between our shoulders to about an arm's length behind us, anchoring us to this Tonal/reality. By displacing it, we can refix our point of reference wherever we wish, inhabiting other minds and bodies in this realm or any others (which seems to explain a lot of the weird stuff in Donnie Darko, now that I think about it).
...his legs twitching like a dreaming dog... This echoes the scene in Ghost Town and uses the same phrasing, hopefully suggesting that what happens to Mark in that piece is more than just a mind rape - He actually sees the past as another reality.
...there are many dark actors playing games : A phrase used by Dr David Kelly in one of his final emails on the day of his alleged suicide, which has been seen as a key piece of evidence for foul play. Using it here prefigures some later developments, as well as suggesting that one of our characters killed the Doc...
...A humble Earthworm: I'm not sure there's even a connection here myself, but after I'd written this, I realised that in Dr Bloodmoney, the consciousness of the psychic foetus Bill is temporarily trapped in a worm, and I think Hoppy Harrington winds up in there permanently at the end of the book. No big reference, just an interesting aside.
This one will always have trouble with his appetite : Obviously, with his prodigious drug-taking in later days...
cihuapilli: The Nahuatl word for Princess. I think there may be more history with Matus and Fliss than we may ever get to see. Or not - It might just be an old lecher's term of affection.
Wax on, wax off : Please tell me I don't have to annotate that?
Christa Paffgen : Another icy blonde bombshell, better known to most of the world as Nico, of Velvet Underground and Chelsea Girl fame.
Fata Morgana : Another name for Morgan Le Fay, half-sister to, sometime nemesis and occasional ally of King Arthur Pendragon, star pupil of Merlin and latterly taken as a feminist icon for her role in the Grail legends. No real reason for Ari taking that particular pseudonym, but a handy reference to drop now in case we ever choose to hit the Grail cycle for other resonances.
Annotations - The Girl On The Factory Wall
Finally, after almost 20 years, Marg Cornell lives and breathes the rarified air of Doubtless Wonder. Marg was the original star of the show, created by Phil in a late 80s/early 90s maths lesson, in between discussions about the meaning of Twin Peaks, arguments about the relative merits of A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 and 3 and attempts to sing the songs of JRR Tolkien without being beaten up every single day of our school lives.
Lots of references, both real world and DW. Obviously, music plays a huge part in Marg's life, so plenty of bands named here, with the chemical plant referred to as a Factory right at the head of the page to start things off.
"Cool As" ...Fuck - The slogan of Clint Boon's stoner cartoon cow (I always wanted an Inspiral Carpets tee shirt but didn't think I'd get away with it. Marg clearly has a rather more relaxed mother than I do...)
Lovecraft - The original incarnation who wrote the songs Bow Down and Lady Fliss.
Floyd, Morrison, Marley and the Sex Pistols, through to "the current crop of Madchester bands." So we're in mid 1990, when baggy ruled the world, George Dubbya's daddy had his finger on the button and the poll tax rioters decimated Trafalgar Square and huge chunks of Brixton.
Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Northside. Good God, Northside! Shall we take a trip?
Hawkwind, Doctor and The Medics, Velvet Underground and Primal Scream; All have their places on the DW soundtrack, and I'm pleased with their inclusion here. The connections? Besides covering Spirit In The Sky, D&TMs also covered Hawkwind's Silver Machine (while Hawkwind themselves frequently collaborated with SF's beardiest wierdy, Michael Moorcock, on tracks inspired by his Eternal Champion stories). Meanwhile, the Velvet Underground (the original Factory band) had an album called Loaded, which was the title of Primal Scream's biggest single from 1991's Screamadelica (but released over 18 months ahead of the album, in March 1990).
A worn out husk full of brittle glass and rusty nails that squealed and scraped as it fought to stay alive - Somehow, Sarah goes from the bright young thing of Another Girl to this broken down robot. The description echoes PKDs ersatz human psychotic and the animatronic creatures which appear in Little Boy Blue.
With her weekend job in Woollies, Marg earned enough to bring home two or three new albums every week - If we ever decide on a fixed running order then this will be the opening story, meaning that this would prefigure the similar description of a young Sarah in Another Girl, rushing home with her LPs stuffed under her coat so old man Schnitzler won't find them. Again, music is massive in the lives of these women.
And a big shout out for Simms Cross Curios where, in 1990/91, I bought my first ever Neil Young LPs.
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
And here's the Inspiral Carpets tee shirt.
And then there are a couple of boy geniuses, wandering aimlessly round the post industrial wasteland, discussing the possible meaning of Gandalf's horse appearing in Laura Palmer's bedroom and sniffing solvents from a shirtcuff. Well, if Hitchcock can have a walk-on role in his movies then why can't we?
Lots of references, both real world and DW. Obviously, music plays a huge part in Marg's life, so plenty of bands named here, with the chemical plant referred to as a Factory right at the head of the page to start things off.
"Cool As" ...Fuck - The slogan of Clint Boon's stoner cartoon cow (I always wanted an Inspiral Carpets tee shirt but didn't think I'd get away with it. Marg clearly has a rather more relaxed mother than I do...)
Lovecraft - The original incarnation who wrote the songs Bow Down and Lady Fliss.
Floyd, Morrison, Marley and the Sex Pistols, through to "the current crop of Madchester bands." So we're in mid 1990, when baggy ruled the world, George Dubbya's daddy had his finger on the button and the poll tax rioters decimated Trafalgar Square and huge chunks of Brixton.
Stone Roses, Happy Mondays and Northside. Good God, Northside! Shall we take a trip?
Hawkwind, Doctor and The Medics, Velvet Underground and Primal Scream; All have their places on the DW soundtrack, and I'm pleased with their inclusion here. The connections? Besides covering Spirit In The Sky, D&TMs also covered Hawkwind's Silver Machine (while Hawkwind themselves frequently collaborated with SF's beardiest wierdy, Michael Moorcock, on tracks inspired by his Eternal Champion stories). Meanwhile, the Velvet Underground (the original Factory band) had an album called Loaded, which was the title of Primal Scream's biggest single from 1991's Screamadelica (but released over 18 months ahead of the album, in March 1990).
A worn out husk full of brittle glass and rusty nails that squealed and scraped as it fought to stay alive - Somehow, Sarah goes from the bright young thing of Another Girl to this broken down robot. The description echoes PKDs ersatz human psychotic and the animatronic creatures which appear in Little Boy Blue.
With her weekend job in Woollies, Marg earned enough to bring home two or three new albums every week - If we ever decide on a fixed running order then this will be the opening story, meaning that this would prefigure the similar description of a young Sarah in Another Girl, rushing home with her LPs stuffed under her coat so old man Schnitzler won't find them. Again, music is massive in the lives of these women.
And a big shout out for Simms Cross Curios where, in 1990/91, I bought my first ever Neil Young LPs.
Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
And here's the Inspiral Carpets tee shirt.
And then there are a couple of boy geniuses, wandering aimlessly round the post industrial wasteland, discussing the possible meaning of Gandalf's horse appearing in Laura Palmer's bedroom and sniffing solvents from a shirtcuff. Well, if Hitchcock can have a walk-on role in his movies then why can't we?
Annotations - The Word Is...
...Love, according to the Beatles track. Basically placing Sarah little more than three months on from last time we saw her. Again, not vital to an understanding of the story, but hopefully, the burgeoning counter culture will tie in with the development of our little Sarah as she loses her dad and joins a succession of less than helpful cults and churches. I guess she's my way of squeezing some theological and spiritual concerns into DW, on top of the already existing ideas.
I wanted to try and draw some correlation between Sarah and her father, so that when we finally get into the possible familial links with Fliss, there's an existing lineage of slightly odd spiritual/magical/revolutionary figures stretching out behind her. I now see her as the final manifestation of the line, the perfect distillation of all that went before, meaning that she didn't enter DW so much as bring it into being here on Earth (or in the realm next door at least).
Running late... that's a private joke, because this was once again supposed to be Sarah meeting George King and the Aetherians (who are now called Arthur Pendleton and The Order Of Intergalactic Angels. They WILL turn up eventually. But not tonight.)
No specific reference, but I like the idea of Sarah being particularly susceptible to the shamanistic power of music, the drum beat of The Word helping her to reach a transcendent state. That's why she drifts so much into her own thoughts both here and in Another Girl. Felicity's mum lives right on the border betwen our world and hers.
Lamplight on the bridge... The corpus callosum is the link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and a malfunction of that link is often characterized by visual halucinations, particularly random flashes of colour and light, like PKDs pink laser beam. Just to completely contradict everything in that last paragraph, we could play up this aspect and have it seem that Sarah is experiencing halucinations and hemispheric cross-chatter due to a mental imbalance, which would just make Fliss a third generation schizophrenic thrown into full-blown episodes by the ingestion of the DW substance. Maybe.
Everything from Deep in thought... to ....the higher realms is a fairly straight description of Astral projection techniques AND the standard hypnagogic/sleep paralysis state. This is when the body goes into lockdown to prevent sleepers from thrashing too wildly in their dreams. In some cases it can occur before you're asleep, leading to a wide variety of folklore and strangeness. PKD claims that most of his VALIS visions occurred in this state. The Mara is a German witch creature which is said to sit upon the chest of a sleeper and bring nightmares. Again, this reinforces Sarah's Tuetonic roots and ties in with the sleep paralysis.
A silver star - Notes deleted.
The red forest, the zone of alienation - These are the names given to the area directly surrounding and a dead wood adjacent to Chernobyl. Sarah is seeing the future here. We might make it back to Chernobyl at some point in the near future.
An earnest young man - Notes deleted.
I wanted to try and draw some correlation between Sarah and her father, so that when we finally get into the possible familial links with Fliss, there's an existing lineage of slightly odd spiritual/magical/revolutionary figures stretching out behind her. I now see her as the final manifestation of the line, the perfect distillation of all that went before, meaning that she didn't enter DW so much as bring it into being here on Earth (or in the realm next door at least).
Running late... that's a private joke, because this was once again supposed to be Sarah meeting George King and the Aetherians (who are now called Arthur Pendleton and The Order Of Intergalactic Angels. They WILL turn up eventually. But not tonight.)
No specific reference, but I like the idea of Sarah being particularly susceptible to the shamanistic power of music, the drum beat of The Word helping her to reach a transcendent state. That's why she drifts so much into her own thoughts both here and in Another Girl. Felicity's mum lives right on the border betwen our world and hers.
Lamplight on the bridge... The corpus callosum is the link between the left and right hemispheres of the brain, and a malfunction of that link is often characterized by visual halucinations, particularly random flashes of colour and light, like PKDs pink laser beam. Just to completely contradict everything in that last paragraph, we could play up this aspect and have it seem that Sarah is experiencing halucinations and hemispheric cross-chatter due to a mental imbalance, which would just make Fliss a third generation schizophrenic thrown into full-blown episodes by the ingestion of the DW substance. Maybe.
Everything from Deep in thought... to ....the higher realms is a fairly straight description of Astral projection techniques AND the standard hypnagogic/sleep paralysis state. This is when the body goes into lockdown to prevent sleepers from thrashing too wildly in their dreams. In some cases it can occur before you're asleep, leading to a wide variety of folklore and strangeness. PKD claims that most of his VALIS visions occurred in this state. The Mara is a German witch creature which is said to sit upon the chest of a sleeper and bring nightmares. Again, this reinforces Sarah's Tuetonic roots and ties in with the sleep paralysis.
A silver star - Notes deleted.
The red forest, the zone of alienation - These are the names given to the area directly surrounding and a dead wood adjacent to Chernobyl. Sarah is seeing the future here. We might make it back to Chernobyl at some point in the near future.
An earnest young man - Notes deleted.
Annotations - Ghost Town
This has the rare distinction of being the only 'lost' DW chapter. Somehow, both Phil and I managed to delete the original and I had to rewrite it from memory. It wound up twice as long as theoriginal, with extra homosexual activity and a completely different ending. In honour of that, I've also rewritten a lot of the notes on the piece.
This is the second appearance of The Imperial, after the mid-60s version gets a mention in Another Girl. Here we are again, some 20 years on. The shop names and ESB tee-shirt should place us in the early 80s, along with the title which, of course, comes from that Thatcher/Early 80s/Brixton & Toxteth Riot-era classic by The Specials.
We've also seen Mark's mum before, I think. Compare:
...the stain on Cynthia's blouse, the clumsily re-applied lipstick and the cigarette burn on her far too short skirt, (Cyn in Another Girl).
He saw her work clothes, the stained blouse and the skirt with the cigarette burn... (Mark's mum in Ghost Town).
Yeah, it surprised me too, but the town bike is more than she seems, and there's a whole lot of pain in her life before she stands at the gates and waves goodbye to her son...
I've nicked a couple of place names from Widnes, again tying in with Another Girl, but beyond that, there's nothing too deep. Humbug Billy was a genuine sweet-seller who inadvertently caused the great Bradford sweet poisoning of 1854, selling around 200 bags of arsenic-laced sweets, but no-one really needs to know that, it's just a dumb joke for my own personal edification.
However.... Things take on a very different hue if you look at that description of the boys in the attic and their concerns about Humbug. They armed him, set him off, and now they want to beat him down before he gets too big for his boots. That sounds a bit like America and Iraq. And Mark gets pimped out to keep him occupied, then holds him down as he dies - Blair's Britain? So the house is the UN, with us getting royally screwed by the US, then waving our big dick at the smaller EU boys. That would then mean that the riot stricken town is a metaphor for the modern world,with all its violence and bloodshed and brutalized children, and the reason for it all? That crazy old whore Thatcher gave up on us and left us to fend for ourselves all those years ago. Sure, we miss her now that we've forgotten how bad she really was, and in a lot of ways, we're a lot like her, but when the smiling man (who isn't Jesus...) comes around, we're going to have the veils lifted from our eyes and we will see what we're doing to the world, and we'll have to decide, lying there on the Imperial steps (or beyond the Empire, to put it a different way...) whether we really want to grow up and do something right for a change.
Probably completely overblown, and maybe I'm the only one who can see it, but it makes sense to me, and I think it works well either way, so what the hell.
This is the second appearance of The Imperial, after the mid-60s version gets a mention in Another Girl. Here we are again, some 20 years on. The shop names and ESB tee-shirt should place us in the early 80s, along with the title which, of course, comes from that Thatcher/Early 80s/Brixton & Toxteth Riot-era classic by The Specials.
We've also seen Mark's mum before, I think. Compare:
...the stain on Cynthia's blouse, the clumsily re-applied lipstick and the cigarette burn on her far too short skirt, (Cyn in Another Girl).
He saw her work clothes, the stained blouse and the skirt with the cigarette burn... (Mark's mum in Ghost Town).
Yeah, it surprised me too, but the town bike is more than she seems, and there's a whole lot of pain in her life before she stands at the gates and waves goodbye to her son...
I've nicked a couple of place names from Widnes, again tying in with Another Girl, but beyond that, there's nothing too deep. Humbug Billy was a genuine sweet-seller who inadvertently caused the great Bradford sweet poisoning of 1854, selling around 200 bags of arsenic-laced sweets, but no-one really needs to know that, it's just a dumb joke for my own personal edification.
However.... Things take on a very different hue if you look at that description of the boys in the attic and their concerns about Humbug. They armed him, set him off, and now they want to beat him down before he gets too big for his boots. That sounds a bit like America and Iraq. And Mark gets pimped out to keep him occupied, then holds him down as he dies - Blair's Britain? So the house is the UN, with us getting royally screwed by the US, then waving our big dick at the smaller EU boys. That would then mean that the riot stricken town is a metaphor for the modern world,with all its violence and bloodshed and brutalized children, and the reason for it all? That crazy old whore Thatcher gave up on us and left us to fend for ourselves all those years ago. Sure, we miss her now that we've forgotten how bad she really was, and in a lot of ways, we're a lot like her, but when the smiling man (who isn't Jesus...) comes around, we're going to have the veils lifted from our eyes and we will see what we're doing to the world, and we'll have to decide, lying there on the Imperial steps (or beyond the Empire, to put it a different way...) whether we really want to grow up and do something right for a change.
Probably completely overblown, and maybe I'm the only one who can see it, but it makes sense to me, and I think it works well either way, so what the hell.
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
It's The End Of The World As We Know It...
So I've had about 24 hours to digest the news that Disney has bought Marvel and I've come to the conclusion that this is a good thing - For DC Comics.
Opinion has been fairly mixed across the comics blogosphere, with die-hard fanboys weeping into their Spider-Man comforters and Stan The Man (currently on an exclusive first-look deal with the House Of Mouse) claiming, unsurprisingly, that it's great.
Arguments put forward by supporters of the deal include:
Disney own Miramax (producers of Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction etc) so clearly don't mind their subsidiaries producing adult-oriented content.
The financial security will allow Marvel to publish critically acclaimed but low-selling titles without worrying about the bottom line.
The deal gives Marvel a ready made pipeline to Pixar, making a CGI X-Men movie a strong possibility.
And so on...
But there are some very strong counter-arguments for each of those ideas.
Firstly, why would Pixar want to make an X-Men movie? The Incredibles already showed that you don't need 40 years of continuity baggage and (questionable) brand recognition to produce a great, family friendly superhero movie.
Secondly, the idea of Marvel continuing to publish loss-making titles is based on the assumption that Disney will operate the same way Time Warner does with it's subsidiary DC Comics, but that's not necessarily the case. Disney have bought Marvel at a time when there are literally dozens of comic book movies in production and countless more being pitched all the time. Warner bought DC in 1969, when the closest thing to a multi-media superhero crossover was the Adam West Batman series which had been cancelled three years earlier. Looked at from that angle, it's highly unlikely that Disney have bought Marvel because they want to expand into comic book publishing (they already have an existing deal with Boom Studios for that) - The House of Ideas is about to become The Factory Of Ideas, churning out comics which are little more than illustrated spec scripts. The recognised, iconic characters will be packaged and pitched as potential movies. Follow that up with action figures, lunch boxes, branded babygrows and a thousand other merchandising opportunities, then ask yourself - Who wants a Captain Britain Happy Meal? Fool Killer underpants? Nextwave flavoured vitamins?
(okay, I'd probably go for that last one, but I don't think I'm Disney's target demographic...)
At the end of the day, Warner bought DC and let them get on with it for 9 years before they finally made Superman The Movie. For every Dark Knight there's at least two Schumacher abominations, a Quest For Peace for every Watchmen. Warners have no clue what to do with the characters and have let countless opportunities slip through their fingers over the years (anyone remember when Clint Eastwood was rumoured for The Dark Knight Returns?), right up to Whedon's amazing disappearing Wonder Woman. By now, DC is so autonomous that Warners probably forget they even own them. Disney will be a completely different kettle of worms though. You don't pay $4bn for Alias and Kabucki, and every new title will be seen as a dry run for the eventual movie. If it can't even pull in the fan boys for $3.99 a month then it will never be a worthwhile investment for the big screen. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. If anything, lower tier titles will probably get canned quicker than ever.
And finally, The Tarantino Defence. My favourite of the bunch, and the reason I think we'll soon see a whole bunch of creators heading to the Distinguished Competition. And it all boils down to one thing - The Disney Store.
Yes, Disney owns Miramax and was therefore behind the distribution of Pulp Fiction, The Crying Game, Heavenly Creatures and a host of other movies about matricidal lesbians, transvestite terrorists and smacked up hitmen. They also (allegedly) bought foreign films to keep them off the market, forced cuts on Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Michael Moore for political and moral reasons and practically buried Dead Man when Jim Jarmusch refused to make the cuts requested.
Leaving all of that aside though, the one thing all of those films had in common - Reservoir Dogs, Dogma, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the rest - is that not one of them had a cuddly doll sold through the Disney Store. There was never any chance of Little Johnny buying a Chuck Heston NRA Forever duvet cover and going on to see the film, or of Cindy Lou wanting to snort heroin because her Mia Wallace Styling Head looks so great with a ruptured septum. But over at Marvel, things are not so clear cut. Every month, they produce a range of all ages titles, wherein Wolverine goes to a theme park with Thor, Captain America and MODOK open a pet store and Doctor Doom's latest scheme revolves around making Ben Grimm the perfect birthday cake. Those cute and cuddly characters will be stacked high in every Disney Store worldwide.
And then every month, those same characters appear in the other Marvel comics. The ones where Wolverine castrates rapists, Thor pounds his enemies to a bloody paste with his hammer and Captain America demonstrates the best way to beat up a semi-comatose post-Hulkout Bruce Banner is with a kick to the head.
These books appear in the same format, often alongside each other on the comic shop shelves, and if Sweetpea wants to read about the X-Men then there's a fifty - fifty chance that he'll pick up the wrong one (hell, at 8 I would have flicked through them both and gone for the one with the highest booby count, so it's probably more like eighty - twenty). You can't have characters on sale in plush form at the Disney Store discussing genocide, much less commitiing it in the name of truth and decency. The first time that happens, the balloon will go up, there'll be screaming headlines about Disney corrupting the young and a massive public outcry. Disney can't afford that (remember how scared they were by the rumours of a naked Jessica Rabbit?), so they will be drawing up a list of proscribed phrases, scenes, situations and poses right alongside that exclusive merchandising rights deal. Let's face it, on a slow news day, a flash of MJ's side-boob will get headlines. Once the mouse gets involved, it will be massively overblown.
So, Marvel will be de-fanged, effectively neutered by the mouse, before they see a penny of that fat movie cheque. And that will have a massive knock-on effect for DC. Previously, for both of the major companies, the biggest names have pretty much all followed this route; Take a second or third string character who is either out of print or on the verge of cancellation, turn the book around and gradually push the edges of what is acceptable as you build up a small but vocal fan base and a strong critical reaction, then take on something bigger, better and more adult that will make your name. That's Miller with Daredevil, Morrison with Doom Patrol, Ennis on The Demon, even Moore on Swamp Thing (about to be cancelled for the third time when he took it on, remember). With no room for poorly performing books, those new creators wil have to jump straight to the major leagues, with little or no time to develope and grow. Anyone who does find themselves riding a wave of success will soon find themselves stifled by editorial interference ("No Grant, you can't annihilate Genosha." "Frank, we can't show sais in the book. What about some sort of rubber sap for knocking people out?").
So with no opportunity to do stretching, adult work like that, the brain drain will soon begin, and DC / Vertigo is the obvious place to go. We'll lose the edgier superhero books that Marvel does so well, but we could get the next Sandman, Preacher or Transmetropolitan, so on balance, I think I'm glad that Disney bought Marvel, and the sooner they drive them into the ground the better.
Opinion has been fairly mixed across the comics blogosphere, with die-hard fanboys weeping into their Spider-Man comforters and Stan The Man (currently on an exclusive first-look deal with the House Of Mouse) claiming, unsurprisingly, that it's great.
Arguments put forward by supporters of the deal include:
Disney own Miramax (producers of Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction etc) so clearly don't mind their subsidiaries producing adult-oriented content.
The financial security will allow Marvel to publish critically acclaimed but low-selling titles without worrying about the bottom line.
The deal gives Marvel a ready made pipeline to Pixar, making a CGI X-Men movie a strong possibility.
And so on...
But there are some very strong counter-arguments for each of those ideas.
Firstly, why would Pixar want to make an X-Men movie? The Incredibles already showed that you don't need 40 years of continuity baggage and (questionable) brand recognition to produce a great, family friendly superhero movie.
Secondly, the idea of Marvel continuing to publish loss-making titles is based on the assumption that Disney will operate the same way Time Warner does with it's subsidiary DC Comics, but that's not necessarily the case. Disney have bought Marvel at a time when there are literally dozens of comic book movies in production and countless more being pitched all the time. Warner bought DC in 1969, when the closest thing to a multi-media superhero crossover was the Adam West Batman series which had been cancelled three years earlier. Looked at from that angle, it's highly unlikely that Disney have bought Marvel because they want to expand into comic book publishing (they already have an existing deal with Boom Studios for that) - The House of Ideas is about to become The Factory Of Ideas, churning out comics which are little more than illustrated spec scripts. The recognised, iconic characters will be packaged and pitched as potential movies. Follow that up with action figures, lunch boxes, branded babygrows and a thousand other merchandising opportunities, then ask yourself - Who wants a Captain Britain Happy Meal? Fool Killer underpants? Nextwave flavoured vitamins?
(okay, I'd probably go for that last one, but I don't think I'm Disney's target demographic...)
At the end of the day, Warner bought DC and let them get on with it for 9 years before they finally made Superman The Movie. For every Dark Knight there's at least two Schumacher abominations, a Quest For Peace for every Watchmen. Warners have no clue what to do with the characters and have let countless opportunities slip through their fingers over the years (anyone remember when Clint Eastwood was rumoured for The Dark Knight Returns?), right up to Whedon's amazing disappearing Wonder Woman. By now, DC is so autonomous that Warners probably forget they even own them. Disney will be a completely different kettle of worms though. You don't pay $4bn for Alias and Kabucki, and every new title will be seen as a dry run for the eventual movie. If it can't even pull in the fan boys for $3.99 a month then it will never be a worthwhile investment for the big screen. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. Kill it. Move on. If anything, lower tier titles will probably get canned quicker than ever.
And finally, The Tarantino Defence. My favourite of the bunch, and the reason I think we'll soon see a whole bunch of creators heading to the Distinguished Competition. And it all boils down to one thing - The Disney Store.
Yes, Disney owns Miramax and was therefore behind the distribution of Pulp Fiction, The Crying Game, Heavenly Creatures and a host of other movies about matricidal lesbians, transvestite terrorists and smacked up hitmen. They also (allegedly) bought foreign films to keep them off the market, forced cuts on Tarantino, Kevin Smith and Michael Moore for political and moral reasons and practically buried Dead Man when Jim Jarmusch refused to make the cuts requested.
Leaving all of that aside though, the one thing all of those films had in common - Reservoir Dogs, Dogma, Fahrenheit 9/11 and the rest - is that not one of them had a cuddly doll sold through the Disney Store. There was never any chance of Little Johnny buying a Chuck Heston NRA Forever duvet cover and going on to see the film, or of Cindy Lou wanting to snort heroin because her Mia Wallace Styling Head looks so great with a ruptured septum. But over at Marvel, things are not so clear cut. Every month, they produce a range of all ages titles, wherein Wolverine goes to a theme park with Thor, Captain America and MODOK open a pet store and Doctor Doom's latest scheme revolves around making Ben Grimm the perfect birthday cake. Those cute and cuddly characters will be stacked high in every Disney Store worldwide.
And then every month, those same characters appear in the other Marvel comics. The ones where Wolverine castrates rapists, Thor pounds his enemies to a bloody paste with his hammer and Captain America demonstrates the best way to beat up a semi-comatose post-Hulkout Bruce Banner is with a kick to the head.
These books appear in the same format, often alongside each other on the comic shop shelves, and if Sweetpea wants to read about the X-Men then there's a fifty - fifty chance that he'll pick up the wrong one (hell, at 8 I would have flicked through them both and gone for the one with the highest booby count, so it's probably more like eighty - twenty). You can't have characters on sale in plush form at the Disney Store discussing genocide, much less commitiing it in the name of truth and decency. The first time that happens, the balloon will go up, there'll be screaming headlines about Disney corrupting the young and a massive public outcry. Disney can't afford that (remember how scared they were by the rumours of a naked Jessica Rabbit?), so they will be drawing up a list of proscribed phrases, scenes, situations and poses right alongside that exclusive merchandising rights deal. Let's face it, on a slow news day, a flash of MJ's side-boob will get headlines. Once the mouse gets involved, it will be massively overblown.
So, Marvel will be de-fanged, effectively neutered by the mouse, before they see a penny of that fat movie cheque. And that will have a massive knock-on effect for DC. Previously, for both of the major companies, the biggest names have pretty much all followed this route; Take a second or third string character who is either out of print or on the verge of cancellation, turn the book around and gradually push the edges of what is acceptable as you build up a small but vocal fan base and a strong critical reaction, then take on something bigger, better and more adult that will make your name. That's Miller with Daredevil, Morrison with Doom Patrol, Ennis on The Demon, even Moore on Swamp Thing (about to be cancelled for the third time when he took it on, remember). With no room for poorly performing books, those new creators wil have to jump straight to the major leagues, with little or no time to develope and grow. Anyone who does find themselves riding a wave of success will soon find themselves stifled by editorial interference ("No Grant, you can't annihilate Genosha." "Frank, we can't show sais in the book. What about some sort of rubber sap for knocking people out?").
So with no opportunity to do stretching, adult work like that, the brain drain will soon begin, and DC / Vertigo is the obvious place to go. We'll lose the edgier superhero books that Marvel does so well, but we could get the next Sandman, Preacher or Transmetropolitan, so on balance, I think I'm glad that Disney bought Marvel, and the sooner they drive them into the ground the better.
The Dark Prince Strikes Again
And the Dark Prince strikes again as he rapes and plunders the cosy Marvel Universe!!
Disney to buy Marvel in $4bn Deal
Disney to buy Marvel in $4bn Deal
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