Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #4-5 & Special #1

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]stormwatch_v1_005Stormwatch wasn’t immune to the widespread Image delays, but it had them more managed – its initial three-issue sprint was effectively a bi-monthly comic.

From that opening arc, it launched into a quick two-issue story that would connect it more strongly to WildCATs by introducing Daemonites into the mix. A subsequent special tells a weirdly rushed magical tale and a critical piece of background on second-in-command, Diva.

Brett Booth delivers marvelous work on pencils, with a set of vivid, superheroic colors from Joe Chiodo. Booth’s Warguard are positively Liefeldian, with mouths overstuffed with teeth and creases on every part of their clothing not stretched taut over a muscle. In keeping with the Liefeld inspiration, Booth does sometimes skimp on backgrounds.

This quick hit story only serves to emphasize how solid Stormwatch is as a comic and a concept. The cast doubles in this pair of issues, canon is deepened, the book begins to tie-in with the wider universe – yet, it’s still a coherent plot that moves the Stormwatch story forward.

The first Stormwatch Special isn’t quite up to the par of the main book  even as it succeeds in upholding the strong continuity of Stormwatch.

stormwatch_v1-special_01Ron Marz’s story of a parallel dimension akin to He-Man’s Eternia would have been better suited across multiple issues. It’s difficult to understand Battalion’s actions as they occur over just a day, making it seem as though he was hypnotized or possessed by a sudden love interest. If that was Marz’s intent, I’d say the issue was great, but it’s unclear if we’re supposed to believe the relationship was on the up-and-up.

While traveling to a dimension of sword and sorcery seems somewhat out of left-field here, it’s consistent with Stormwatch’s upcoming appearing in Union that they are increasingly the team called upon to deal with dimensional breaches in the fabric of our reality. Dwayne Turner manages to keep up the title’s high standard of art (though he trends a little more Kubert-brothers here more than Lee/Booth), although some of the colors are a bit off (e.g., Diva’s outfit is more red than pink).

Marz and artist Richard Johnson turn in a second story that reveals Diva’s origin and takes a moment to humanize Cannon. It’s a well-crafted, heartbreaking little story of Diva encountering her former vocal instructor that’s completely unnecessary to the main narrative in Stormwatch, but it adds depth to Diva’s steely, no-nonsense leadership. Johnson’s pencils are more grounded in realism that typical Image work, and it makes for some genuinely great panels.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of the team’s first run-in with Daemonites.  Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow we’ll read the biggest blockbuster yet, the “Killer Instinct” crossover between WildCATs and Cyberforce. If you want to get a headstart, you can read Cyberforce’s original 4-issue mini-series as background.

Need the issues? Stormwatch #4-5 & Special #1 have never been included in a collected edition! You’ll need to purchase single issues – try eBay (#4-5 & Special) or Amazon (#4, 5, Special) [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – Stormwatch #4-5 & Special #1

35-for-35: 1985 – “Everybody Wants To Rule The World” by Tears For Fears

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]First of all, let me point out that the most memorable song of 1985 for me is clearly “These Dreams,” but I’ve already blogged about that, followed by “How Will I Know,” which I’ve already covered, and also “Crazy For You,” which I’ve covered, too.

What a year! That meant for this post I had to go fishing for favorites not by that triumvirate of excellent women. The pickings are a little slimmer on the XY side of the fence, unless I want to go with laughing at Bowie and Jagger on “Dancing In The Streets.”

As I sifted through my music collection, I kept returning to this song, the sound of which evokes “80s” for me more than nearly any other song.

There’s something about the galloping bass and the plaintive melody of the chorus of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” that still brings a positive swirl of butterflies to my stomach every time it begins. (Unlike their ponderous “Head Over Heels,” which still makes me sweat like a fever dream (seriously, I’m getting queasy just thinking about it).)

Maybe that’s because of the swirl of a two-note arpeggiated electric guitar riff that starts the song off fluttering in a major key before it settles into its two chord verse. everybody-wants-to-rule-the-worldWhatever the reason, I’m always giddy and than the steady gallop of the bass brings me back to earth as Chris Hughes tells me, “Welcome to your life…”

There’s no turning back
Even while we sleep
We will find you

Acting on your best behavior
Turn your back on mother nature
Everybody wants to rule the world

There’s a dissonance between the cheerful D-major key of the verses and the ominous lyrics that suggest an ever-watchful big-brother. Only two phrases in the song begin minor – the start of each refrain, and the title of the song. Each time the line begins with Em, the minor second chord, rather than G, the major fourth (which is Em’s relative major).

(In fact, the bridge is approximately what an all-major chorus would sound like, replacing Ems and F#ms with Gs and As. That’s part of what gives it such an explosive, anthemic quality as it bursts from a chorus.)

I love that it’s a memorable song for a baritone-voiced man (and 1985 was a good year for them – it also gave us “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”) I also love its unmemorable guitar solo. There’s really nothing distinct or melodic about it that you might sing along to, but it’s a perfect amount of frantic rising action to create tension leading to the final refrain.

tears-for-fears-songs-from-the-big-chairThen there is the simplistic melody of the chorus, sketching little wedges across the stave on the minor lines as it leaps over and steps down across the tonic, b/ e \b \a, only treating us to a walk across the D on the single major line.

Taken altogether these elements give the song a haunting, almost melancholic quality. The chorus feels like a sudden, paranoid rant cast against the big break to minor. The title has always suggested to me something more sinister about everyone wanting to the rule the world. (The original title was “Everybody Wants to Go To War,” which definitely merited the minor chord!)

“Everybody Wants to Rule The World” was Tears for Fears biggest hit. While it has the same looming dread quality of their other tunes like “Shout” and “Mad World,” all of those songs were methodical and rigid where “Rule The World” shuffles and gallops.

It’s all the dissonance that makes the song memorable – major vs. minor, looseness paired with dread. Rather than plod or hammer, the song is filled with dozens of tiny moments of resolution – something none of the bands other hits can promise.

I think that’s why I still get butterflies.

Krisis, Issue #1, Chapter One: April Tenth (pt. 1)

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Krisis, Book 1

Issue #1: Girl Disappearing
Chapter One: April Tenth (pt. 1)

 

Everything felt different on April tenth.

Though he never looked any different than he had on the ninth, on April tenth Nathan Padell felt more a man than on any other day – felt the weight of the world settling down upon him. It was a day to reflect, to shed a tear, and to have some small inkling of hope.

krisis-chapter-01aHe did not even consider himself a man, necessarily. He had boyish looks that refused to mature into something more credibly grown up and a boyish enthusiasm for everything – even utterly unexciting drudgery at the office. At least, that’s what he was told. He was slimmer than average, but not taller, and given the opportunity he would live his entire life in blue jeans and t-shirts. Even at twenty-seven years old with a corporate job and his own apartment he felt like he was still not quite an adult.

Except for on April tenth.

It was a day he visited Ella, without fail.

Nathan stood on a cracked slab of West Philadelphia sidewalk, prepared to mount the steps to the porch of Ella’s apartment building. Actually, it was a just a house – one of the booming, three-story, faux Victorians common in West Philly. This block of them had long since been carved into duplexes and triplexes to accommodate the swell of students from several nearby colleges, which earned the area the nickname “University City.”

The sagging porch roof smiled a lopsided grin at Nathan, the heavy molding on the trim like a set of scuffed wooden teeth. Ella’s side street was typically shrouded in quiet, broken by occasional blasts of noise – car stereos passing on the adjacent streets, distant dog barks, and the hollow sound of a basketball bouncing somewhere out of sight.

Nathan smiled back at the roof and took the stairs two at a time. He crossed the groaning floorboards of the porch and rang Ella’s buzzer with one hand as he jiggled the handle of the front door with the other. It popped open, as it always did. He let himself in to the dim vestibule, separated from the foyer beyond by a heavier metal door with double-paned security glass window. It screamed in dissonance against its warm wooden surroundings.

He felt annoyed with her, despite himself. I turned down a gig for this, he thought. A good one. As if he would miss this night, any more than she would.

Ella probably would have come to the gig, if he had asked. That was their arrangement with each other, unspoken these five years. They watched each other. Nathan watched over Ella, trying to navigate around the empty spaces in her life. Ella was Nathan’s audience, listening to his worries and validating him in times of doubt.

Neither of them truly made up for the thing they both lacked, but at least they found something to share in its absence.

Her absence. [Read more…] about Krisis, Issue #1, Chapter One: April Tenth (pt. 1)

Book Notes: Fiction Friday Preamble

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]2012-02-27_01-04-47_524In an alarmingly short amount of time I will post the part of this Patreon launch I am both most-excited and most-anxious about – the first publicly-available material from my 2010 National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) novel, which has since been through several rounds of edits and expansion.

This superhero story has been with me since 1994, when I scrawled the title “Crisis Team” longhand on composition paper at seven in the morning before being picked up for Masterman to attend 8th grade. It became fodder for English class writing assignments, and later the first thing I rushed to type on my first Word Processor with a screen and memory. I used to carry a binder of it around with my school books, handing it to Gina for a read in Health Class.

After a few years of carrying it with me, its name became my email handle, which then morphed to Krisis with a K when I found that Crisis was often already taken.

Over the years I got in the habit of constantly rewriting the first chapter – updating it as a proof of concept. Of what, I’m not sure, since I never once would follow through with a second chapter or an outline. Perhaps it was just my way of keeping the story fresh for myself.

In 2010, two factors conspired to make me finally get past the first chapter. I had just read (and heard) Eric Smith’s Textual Healing and was suddenly inspired to write my own fiction. And, Gina had thrown down the gauntlet that she was attempting a NaNoWriMo book and that I should do the same.

Finally, I sat down to think about more than the first chapter. Who were these people? What was this world? How would it change as the result of people with super powers emerging? Were they just emerging, or had they been around for a long time.

I was energized by the questions and dashed the book out in 30 days. Yet, having finished the first draft, I sunk back into old habits – I’ve been revising it for six years rather than writing more.

There’s a start-up saying – “better shipped than perfect.”  It’s fine that the end goal of writing a book is publishing a book, physically or digitally, but publishing requires something resembling perfection – and perfection is my eternal foe. The way I got the novel out of my head was to give myself permission to write badly for a month just to get it on paper. The way I’m going to get the novel out into the world is to give myself permission to post my working draft here for you all to read, knowing there are still changes both small and large to be made before it reaches a final, printed state.

I am so anxious and excited for you to read it.

From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – WildCATs Special & WildCATs Trilogy #1-3

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[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]After WildC.A.T.s managed to wrap up its intended three-issue mini-series in four issues and 10 months it was unclear what the more permanent version of the title would be.

wildcats-v01-special-01In the gap, WildStorm quickly thrust WildCATs Trilogy, a three-issue mini-series from newly-poached Marvel young gun Jae Lee. It took just six months to complete (that’s sarcasm, by the way), and was accompanied by a single-issue Special #1 from Lee’s remarkable feel-alike protegé Travis Charest (which explicitly states that it fits prior to Trilogy).

Both arrived in time to promote the continuation of the WildCATs mini-series to a full-time ongoing with #5 in fall of 1993. Both also wisely put a heavy focus on Grifter, Voodoo, and Zealot, quickly realizing that the rest of the team is a snoozefest.

The Special issue is an outstanding adventure that proves that the book, its concept, and its cast will have many stories to tell thanks to Voodoo’s status as the only proven Daemonite detector on Earth. Marvel vet Steve Gerber – the co-creator of Howard the Duck! – shows a deftness with set-up scenes that makes the long, slow build-up of this issue as interesting as the brief burst of action that ends it.

On art, Charest does Jim Lee as well (maybe sometimes better?) than Lee, especially with an assist from Lee’s habitual inker Scott Williams.

Trilogy has its gawky moments of art from Jae Lee, who was still a teenager without much experience. Its strength is as an early shot of origin for the magnetic Zealot. Serving that here was a wise choice, as her popularity and narrative power would go on to threaten the team balance of the main book. Spending so much time explaining the Coda in the ongoing title would tip the scales a bit too far away from the rest of the team, but it feels just right in a mini-series.

Want the play-by-play? Keep reading for a summary of this introductory story. Here’s the schedule for the rest of this month’s WildStorm re-read – tomorrow I tackle Stormwatch #4-5 & Special #1.

Need the issues? WildCATs Trilogy #1-3 was collected in a 1999 TPB as The Way of the Coda, but Special #1 has never been collected. For single issues try eBay or Amazon (Trilogy, Trilogy Alternative Search, & Special) [Read more…] about From The Beginning: WildStorm Universe – WildCATs Special & WildCATs Trilogy #1-3