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From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – The Kindred #1-4

November 10, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Today we’re tackling the first WildStorm book to deliberately connect their various franchises – The Kindred mini-series.

We’ve seen many hints dropped throughout WildStorm’s books about International Operations and Team 7. It’s obvious that it has some resemblance to the retconned Weapon X program, which turned out many more characters than just Wolverine.

The Kindred capitalizes on these dropped hints to tell a new story that isn’t just expositional history, but that ties several pieces of information together along the way.

The book is more memorable for those revelations than for its plot. For a title starring the electric Grifter, the badass Backlash, and the mysterious Lynch, it seems like it could have escalated to a considerably higher-intensity.

Maybe the simmering intensity level is a good thing – it corrects the pacing issues that hurt the opening arcs of both WildCATs and Deathblow, presenting easy-to-follow rising action with a definitive end-point.

There’s no single credit for scripting on this book. At points it shows in the torrent of gently conflicting information. Also, while Grifter and Backlash bumping heads ought to be a teeth-gritting delight, somehow their combined prickliness slightly waters them both down.

Backlash is a character whose coolness isn’t fully justified by what we’ve seen from him so far on the page. He’s lithe, gray-haired, wields a whip, wears a slick black suit, and can dematerialize into fog. It’s all dangerous, but altogether it doesn’t suggest a terrifyingly deadly character we ought to be scared of. He definitely qualifies as “the most arrogant man alive” for all his bragging and complaining, but not the deadliest. Kindred doesn’t really do him any favors – he gets beat up more often than not, here, and he’s a lot of bark with relatively little bite.

(Grifter, on the other hand, just keeps getting cooler now that we know he went AWOL from Team 7 thanks to his unrequited love, is hated equally by Backlash and Lynch, and was the softy who tried to save his teammates who got left behind. Also? Still no hint of his powers.)

The villainous elements of the mini-series are needlessly complex. The Kindred’s leader Bloodmoon isn’t even a Kindred and the result of a totally separate Team 7 caper, which leaves a lot of questions and ultimately makes The Kindred sort of window dressing in their own story. It also leaves a lot of open questions about Bloodmoon that a little dose of simplicity could have solved better than more explanations.

Art from Brett Booth is solid and enjoyable. All of the characters are recognizable and Booth draws clear action that’s easy to track. His characters can have a slight Spider-Man rubbery-ness to them that calls back to earlier Eric Larsen or even Todd McFarlane. That this would become somewhat of a trademark of Backlash rather than a more muscular stance is definitely down to Booth’s early influence on the character.

The biggest reason to include this in your WildStorm read? Context, glorious context. We finally understand Director Lynch’s place in the WildStorm Universe, and how Team 7 and IO are linked with the history of Stormwatch.

Want the full details? Read on to learn more about the connective tissue of the WildStorm Universe. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we head back to WildCATs to see Jim Lee reunited with his X-Men co-conspirator Chris Claremont on WildCATs #10-13!

Need the issues? This is a rare early WildStorm title with a TPB collection! Look for it on Amazon and eBay. Also, the single issues to this series tend to be pretty cheap – try eBay (#1-4) or Amazon (#1, 2, 3, 4). Since a second Kindred mini-series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post. [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – The Kindred #1-4

35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

November 10, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Oh, yes, we are going there. I have another Paula Adbul song on this list of all-time favorites from the same year Nirvana released Nevermind. Come ahead and fight me.

Spellbound is a much stronger LP than Forever Your Girl. It signaled this clearly on each of its first two singles – “Rush, Rush,” a ballad with Abdul’s finest recorded performance (crazy, since it’s reportedly an early scratch vocal) and the unpolished and new age-y “Promise of a New Day.” The third single was the marginal ballad “Blowing Kisses In the Wind.”

That meant that the core of this album had yet to be heard by the general listening public. It included a sexy, sultry, witty set of songs that paired well with Prince’s 1991 effort Diamonds and Pearls. Songs like “Spellbound” or “U” would have made terrific singles that could compete on the radio. (“U” was even written by Prince! How do you pass that up as a single?!)

So, of course, the fourth single was “Vibeology.”

This song… I really have no words. I love it so much. How can I possibly express my feelings to you other than through dance?

“Vibeology” sort of takes the position of, “What if Paula’s duet with MC Skat Kat was the best thing on that first record?” And, well, “Cold Hearted” aside … maybe it was? While Spellbound was pretty evenly split between ballads and more sultry numbers, paula-abdul-1991-spellbound-album-cover “Vibeology” alone stood in the center as the one batshit crazy dance-capade full of horns and also Paula Abdul screaming “horny horns!” to introduce said horns.

If you listen to it next to the Prince-penned “U” it seems to be imitating the New Jack Swing sound with dancehall flourishes. It’s just so damn manic it’s hard to take it as anything other than a novelty song. I mean, all the different voices, the lack of a discernible verse, the croaked slam poetry section, the “Go Paula!” chants, the horny horns.

Yet, there is something I unabashedly love about this song. It’s basically built from the same pieces as “Vogue” – check out the bounding low bassline and the clanging piano chords. If you stripped away some of the silliness here and moved the “you got the vibeology” rap further into the song, it would actually feel a lot like “Vogue.”

Only, you know, with horny horns.

Honestly, I think this song single-handedly killed Paula Abdul’s career – maybe specifically her low-rent “Express Yourself” video, sexy frumpy circus-with-feathers aesthetic, and subsequent pitchy MTV Music Video Awards performance. When she came back with an even sultrier follow-up in Head Over Heels it seemed like a desperate grab for attention in a post-pop, rock-oriented world – but, that’s only because it was never set up with the right singles from Spellbound.

Here’s that so bad it’s bad MTV VMA performance: [Read more…] about 35-for-35: 1991 – “Vibeology” by Paula Abdul

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Union #1-4 & 0

November 9, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug] In June of 1993, a fourth title joined WildStorm’s fold, and it was the first whose heroes seemingly didn’t have an explicit connection to the shared backstory of Kherubim, Daemonites, IO, and Stormwatch.

union_v1_001 That hero was Union, co-created by Jim Lee and Mike Heisler – a longtime letterer and only occasional writer. (He’d later write a long run of the Gen13 spin-off DV8).

Union has a rich origin that nods to Superman’s, though his Krypton is not an exploding planet but a sister reality to our own that is in a constant state of civil war. When Ohmen, a warrior Relayer of the Protectorate, is shunted through an explosion of energy from his world to ours he crash lands on the Maine coastline.

Union’s mini-series is a pair of parenthesis, two stories opened in the first two issues without the full information we need as readers to understand them, and then two issues that resolve their mysteries in reverse order.

That makes for what is undoubtably the best first issue yet from WildStorm, and even the exposition-heavy final issues is a thrill since they answer so many questions. Union #0 provides a thick spreading of glorious connection-making context to fill in Union’s past and tie him to more closely to another Wildstorm title. It’s a bit leaden told all in one shot, but it makes re-reading the series even more fun.

The real draw here wasn’t the mysterious superhero from another dimension, but the artwork. Mark Texeira was mostly known as a Marvel utility player who launched Ghost Rider and drew Punisher and Sabretooth. His wild, untamed pencil-work and inky blacks were nothing like the high-gloss figure-work of the other Image founders and their proteges, but a near neighbor to Sam Keith and Jae Lee.

Maybe that’s why it seems like the early digital colors are fighting against Texeira’s linework in the first two issues of Union. While some of the gradients help enhance the inherent dimensionality of his characters, too often the colors are garish or overwhelm his rough lines. Despite the struggle, Texiera delivers wild, beautiful work – especially in the domestic scenes that could easily be just talking heads. The colors settle down by #3, and by the end of #4 it’s the best Texiera’s work had looked to date.

Despite the unevenness of the pace and the colors, Union feels like a title that’s truly grounded in a universe that’s already-formed. It’s filled with references to Supreme, Youngblood, and Cyberforce, and it opens by featuring Stormwatch so prominently that the first issue could have easily been Stormwatch #5.5.

That’s a tribute to Mike Heisler, who bucks the WildStorm trend of super-cool action to unfurl an exceedingly human mystery of how much we can trust Union as a reliable narrator. We see him deliberately withhold things from us and from his human companion Jill, and that makes it hard to completely trust him as our protagonist even when he professes to be doing good.

Jill is the most well-rounded character we’ve had yet in a WildStorm book. She’s an actual human being who loves art and sometimes does stupid things in the name of romance. She makes gallows-humor jokes to herself and absent-mindedly explaining why she switched to painting abstracts when she was in a world of beautiful landscapes. Even if her budding romance with Union is rushed, this book is grounded in human emotion more than any of the other Wildstorm material to date. Together, she and Union give off major Lois & Clark vibes from the classic Reeves Superman films.

If Union had pushed forward from this mini-series to continue the story with Heisler and Texiera still at the helm it would have catapulted into must-read territory for me along with Stormwatch! Instead, it was the first WildStorm book to take a brief hiatus and return as an ongoing series (a pattern Gen13 would follow). However, Heisler does stick around for every issue of Union ever published, so maybe I’m in for a treat when I get back to the title’s ongoing relaunch later this month.

Want the full details? Read on to unravel the mystery that begins in Union #1. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read. Tomorrow we find out what Backlash and Grifter have been up to in Kindred #1-4.

Need the issues? These issues have never before been collected! For single issues – try eBay (#0-4) or Amazon (#0, 1, 2, 3, 4). Since the ongoing Union series hit these same issue numbers, be sure to match your purchase to the cover images in this post.

From The Beginning: Dr. Seuss – The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (Book #2)

November 9, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]It’s the second installment of my “From The Beginning” read of Dr. Seuss’s entire bibliography. Last week I covered his first book, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street.

Dr. Seuss’s second children’s book was The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. This happened to the be the first one we acquired from the library for our reading.

Let’s just say, EV was a bit averse to Dr. Seuss for a few weeks after this one…

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins (1938) – Dr. Seuss

CK Says: – Skip It

Gender Diversity: Every named character is male, as likely are all who are depicted. “Lords and ladies” are mentioned.

Ethnic Diversity: None

Challenging Language: anxious, curbstones, trumpeters, impudence, jangling, triangular, plumes, parapet, yeoman, executioner,

Themes to Discuss: distribution of wealth, monarchy, agrarian society, manners/ettiquette, leaping to judgement, scientific process, bratty/entitled behavior, executions

Reading Time: 25-35 minutes

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins is an allegory without a moral … with a touch of shocking violence! It’s a long slog of a read for even the most attentive toddler, making it a Dr. Seuss book you can most definitely skip.

500 Hats is written in prose rather than meter. In fact, it’s more a novella than a picture book at its length of over 3,500 words! Each page contains multiple paragraphs of copy and while the language is cleverly written it includes none of Seuss’s typical word play.

The story is of a poor, young peasant of the Kingdom of Didd named Bartholomew, who had a single treasured hat handed down to him from his father’s father. It wasn’t a fancy hat – in fact, it was quite plain save for the single feather stuck upon it that always pointed straight up in the air – presumably due to being so caked with generations of grime.

Bartholomew is on the way to sell cranberries from his family bog at the market when his walk is interrupted by the King Derwin’s royal procession through town. The King is mightily offended to see that Bartholomew had not whipped off his hat in an act of respect and supplication, and stops to command him to remove it the-500-hats-of-bartholomew-cubbins-interior-pg10 … except, he did take off his hat, only to find an identical one beneath it!

Thus begins the central hijinks of this tale. You know how they say funny things happen in threes? Well, we see Bartholomew try to take off his hat a lot more than three times – though sometimes he’ll go through several at once to save us from watching it happen 500 times. This is part of what’s so wearying about this book that causes EV to quickly lose interest in it. The same thing happens again and again, and while different people get progressively more angry about it (sometimes in mildly amusing sub-groupings of threes), there’s really not much entertainment to be derived.

That’s especially the case when it comes to the young Grand Duke Wilfred, who is like the mean-spirited Draco Malfoy to Bartholomew’s Ron. Wilfred is rather violent – his first attempt at hat-removing comes in the form of target practice with a bow and arrow, and later involves throwing Bartholomew off of the highest tower! He’s also a bit of a brat, yelling “it’s not fair” and throwing several tantrums.

(EV isn’t much for rough play, but if you do read this to your kids you might need to keep an eye on their subsequent target practice and Marie Antionette-themed pretend play.)

the-500-hats-of-bartholomew-cubbins-interior-pg22 While it doesn’t make for a very enjoyable read, 500 Hats is distinct from the grounded Mulberry Street and it introduces a pair ongoing Seussian themes – fantastical kingdoms and impossible physics. A few of the supporting characters are memorable in that silly Seuss way, such as a friendly, hesitant executioner and matter-of-fact advisor Sir Alaric, who would be played for many laughs in a screen adaptation.

All of the illustrations are black and white save for the the hats, which are a bold red. Not even the king’s regalia merits a dash of color. This emphasizes how increasingly covetous he is of the otherwise plain hat, but also sends the subtle message that any common thing can be the most-important thing to you – not only things that are valuable.

Seuss sets the tone early for the physical and metaphorical distance between King Derwin and the Cubbins family, narrating the stretch of increasingly meager houses that stretched from one to the other. The view makes Derwin feel might and Bartholomew feel small.

That theme of haves and have-nots is heavy for a little kid, but its still effective if you modernize it to be about looking from the highest skyscraper down to the smaller, flatter ranchers that might lie farther out from the center of a city. From that perspective, kids might appreciate that the view is truly the same no matter which side of it you occupy.

the-500-hats-of-bartholomew-cubbins-interior-pg25 Early in the caper, young Cubbins thinks to himself, “I really haven’t done anything wrong. It would be cowardly to be afraid.” This is a good message, but it’s not reinforced very well by the story, where no one seems willing to listen to our protagonist and the threats do become rather scary.

The moral is merely that things “happened to happen” and no one learns a thing! The king gets a fancy hat, Bartholomew gets rich for no reason, and Grand Duke Wilfred presumably slinks off to sulk somewhere.

Without many laughs or a good moral, and with the undertow of execution, I can’t recommend The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins for anything but an academic reading.

I’ll be back next Wednesday with the Dr. Seuss’s third book for children, The King’s Stilts!

35-for-35: 1990 – “Pump Up The Jam” by Technotronic

November 9, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]Yes, “Vogue” was released in 1990 and this post is not about Vogue. You’re on to me, I’m actively avoiding using this series to just gush over Madonna. I can do that any day.

“Vogue” was part of a trend – maybe its apex – of bringing elements of popular club music to the mainstream (in this case, House music). The popularity lasted only a brief period and had few popular antecedents before going underground again thanks to the radio takeover by alternative rock in the following years. You could hear it again on Cathy Dennis’s “C’Mon Move This,” Ce Ce Peniston’s “Finally,” and all over the next albums by Paula Abdul and Prince.

While those tracks are all glossy, radio-ready examples, a lot of the significant songs of the period weren’t so polished. Some of those fell into the sub-genre of “hip house,” a subgenre born in Chicago which fused hip hop break beats and bassline samples with house elements. One of the bigger crossover hits was “Pump Up The Jam,” by Technotronic – who I saw open Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour in 1990!

technotronic_-_pump_up_the_jam-_the_album “Pump Up The Jam” is really stripped down. Its drum machine sounds cheap and is almost all snares and hi-hat rides. It eschews the clanging piano of House completely and inserts only the most passing of synths to dress up its bass loops. The vocals from Ya Kid K are half spoken and half sung, tinged by the inflection of a hip hop MC (though she does not appear in the video – the singer there is model Felly Kilingi, who also graced the cover of the LP).

I played the hell out of this song on tape in 1990 and I cannot explain why. I liked all of those House singles I listed above, but I wasn’t remotely into hip hop or anything with the bracing starkness of this song. But, as Mother of Krisis would say, “Does it have a good beat? Can you dance to it?” Both answers were yes.

Thus, at sundown I would drag my boombox out to the edge of my grandmother’s postage-stamp urban front lawn, pull on my denim jacket, turn this song up to 10, and execute my choreography in the middle of the street for all to see.

(Seriously, was there any doubt that I was going to be on stage later in life? What the hell was everyone in my family waiting for.)