by Jonathan Hickman

Jonathan Hickman is so new to the industry that his biography in The Nightly News cites issues of The Nightly News. But Jonathan Hickman is not a new babe, mewing and he scratching at little projects before he develops voice or style. With the Nightly News, he fires at full speed with energetic storytelling and a graphic art style that challenges and rewards on each viewing, making Hickman one of the most interesting new voices in Comics.

The Nightly News follows John Guyton, a man falsely accused and ruined by the Media, who joins an underground cult following the unseen Voice. Their mission: to attack the media head-on with the style and grace of guerilla anarchists armed with bombs, sniper-rifles and a plan. To punish the six most powerful news media conglomerates in America for destroying their lives.

The Cult of the Voice is a crazy, dangerous cult that you can’t identify with, but you’re not supposed to. They aren’t anti-heroes prone to posing with cool gadgets and absolutist philosophical beliefs about freedom and justice. They’re pissed off crazy people with guns and a plan that comes to them via cassette tape. The narrative doesn’t pass judgment on them, the same as it doesn’t pass judgment on the journalists or leaders of industry, like you don’t when you watch a high octane action thriller – when the hero is taking the law into his own hands and warps justice for the entertainment value.

It is perfect that The Nightly News vaults into the story with a first chapter titled: “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore,” which should drag back the memories of Howard Beale of Network, screaming of the power and corruptive force of all media and the powerlessness of the individual. The Nightly News is more than a spiritual successor, using infographics (which he acknowledges you can either ignore and continue with the story or absorb some facts) to show us that we are in Howard Beale’s nightmare. Our media mainstream media is owned by six conglomerates and it is growing uniquely independent from fact checking and accountability. Lives are ruined by the news, more than a few don’t deserve it.

The Nightly News is a voice telling you how to live your life. It’s not a manual to change the world and it certainly doesn’t advocate violence or bloody coups in industry. It’s not a call to arms. It’s a story that touches on how easy it is to fall into camps with the media. Operating with the News and you sell your voice to unchecked corporations that will lie and cheat and destroy without recourse. Operate outside of the news and be careful who you follow, as one of more groups may steal your voice and replace it with their own. So the Nightly News exists, as Howard Beale once did, warning you, sincerely, to look at who you’re listening to, or have your Voice stolen.

- Timothy Legion

– Timothy Legion is not presently read, looked to or admired. He created a newspaper (pamphlet) at his University that is fondly remembered by six people. He has not won any awards or been considered for nominations. He is wrist-deep in the Third Year of his self-imposed GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN.

The first time I saw American Movie was about seven years ago with my brother. The movie ended, and I could not stop laughing. I remember telling my brother “that was one of the funniest mockumentaries I’ve ever seen.” It was at that moment my brother told me that it was not a mockumentary. Everything I just saw was completely real. Upon hearing that, I could feel my brain slowly start to leak out of my skull.

American Movie is the story of indie film maker Mark Borchardt and his attempts to make his first feature length film, Northwestern. Realizing that the easiest way to raise money for a movie is to sell copies of another more commercially accessible movie, he goes about filming a short occult horror film called Coven (pronounced COE-ven, not like ‘oven’), expecting to use the funds from VHS sales to cover the cost of producing Northwestern. Working with little money and very little experience, Mark goes out with a few thousand dollars of his uncles money and makes Coven in barren fields and living rooms all over rural Milwaukee. Joining him in his adventure is his best friend and musician Mike Schank, a lovable stoner who is always ready to help Mark in any crazy scheme he thinks up next. The interaction between the two make for some of the best moments in the film, with Borchardt talking a mile a minute about film technique and the catharsis of independent creation and Schank staring into space like a dog who just heard a high-pitched noise.

To laugh at Borchardt for his ineptness as a film maker is probably most peoples instinctual reaction to the documentary, but American Movie goes far beyond simple mockery. While the costumes are pretty weak and his actors are not quite at the top of their game, but you can still see that Borchardt truly loves what he is doing. He is trying so hard to do it well, that it is almost tragic to see the mistakes he makes and the hurdles he has to overcome. A scene in which he describes his day job as a landscaper at a funeral home gives you the perfect impression of why he still has the drive in him to achieve his dreams. After an incident at the funeral home, he remarks “It was a really, really profound moment. Cuz I was thinkin’, “I’m 30 years old, and in about 10 seconds I gotta start cleaning up somebody’s shit.”

In my defense, I think a lot of people who were not told beforehand that American Movie was indeed completely real may have thought the same thing about it I did. The characters are incredibly animated. The progress and pacing of the story feels very cinematic. The moments of humor seem far too hilarious to be unscripted. Turns out I was wrong on all counts. A story this great could only be real life, and no actor could ever deliver lines like Borchart and Schank and make it feel half as organic. It’s a documentary that truly shows you how documentaries can craft a story, no matter how absurd.

- JD Renaud

– J.D. Renaud has no formal education in film, but that is more than evident upon meeting and/or seeing him. A purveyor of all things eccentric, he prides himself on being a guinea pig test subject for any new form of media he is given. He currently lives in Winnipeg Manitoba with his go-go dancer roommate.

A Ronin, formerly executioner of the Shogun, is forced to wander the vast country-side, searching for ways to redeem himself after his honour is sullied and his school turned against him. Yet for reasons unseen, he is also alone in raising his three year old son, whom he is forced to carry with him. A man on a mission of bloody redemption, carrying innocence as a burden.

But a the son of a wolf is still a wolf, as we are constantly reminded, and innocence in this place is not so innocent.

LONE WOLF AND CUB is episodic in presentation, each issue telling a wholly accessible story of the Father and Son as they travel – pointed but seemingly aimlessly – through countryside and cities, forced to accept work as an Assassin along the way.

An excellent blend of Western pacing and dialogue intermingled with the Manga toolbox of accomplished, lush visuals of cities, the country and duels at sun down, LONE WOLF AND CUB is the Kurosawa of comics. So engrossed are we by the lush, engaging art, we hear each clang of sword play and each splort of bloody violence.

The audience is welcomed to each dangerous scenario as it’s played out, but only the Lone Wolf understands how everything will play out. His purpose and thoughts hidden from us until the last moments. And when you understand the true intention of the Lone Wolf, be certain you have spoken the truth, or incur their wrath.

- Timothy Legion

– Timothy Legion is not presently read, looked to or admired. He created a newspaper (pamphlet) at his University that is fondly remembered by six people. He has not won any awards or been considered for nominations. He is wrist-deep in the Third Year of his self-imposed GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN.

]]> http://thesilentmajoritysays.wordpress.com/2009/03/15/lone-wolf-and-cub-vol-1/feed/ 0 thesilentmajoritysays Lone Wolf and Cub vol 1 http://thesilentmajoritysays.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/hawaiian-dick-vol-1-byrd-of-paradise/ http://thesilentmajoritysays.wordpress.com/2009/03/13/hawaiian-dick-vol-1-byrd-of-paradise/#comments Fri, 13 Mar 2009 17:00:33 +0000 thesilentmajoritysays http://thesilentmajoritysays.wordpress.com/?p=174 ]]> Hawaiian Dick vol 1 – Byrd of Paradise
Writer – B. Clay Moore
Art – Stephen Griffin

Hawaiian Dick is a detective story following the titular Byrd, a disgraced former police forced from the mainland due to a violent incident, who takes up residence in Hawaii to – one assumes – drink himself to death. Instead Byrd ends up working as a private investigator for police detective and war-buddy Mo. Alongside them is compatriot and cocktail Waitress Kahami, a dame with a heart of steel and an eye for Byrd, looking for her runaway sister and a cast of characters to make the island both dangerous and colourful. And so we’re put alongside our Hawaiian Dick, who alongside Mo, has the odds stacked against him with time running out.

As the outsider, Byrd is witness to the unexplainable phenomenon of the Hawaiian culture gone supernatural, as witch-doctors and resurrected bodies roam the countryside, looking for revenge. But it’s not that kind of “magic” book. It’s not a supernatural mystery, it’s a ghost story. It’s not horror, it’s mysticism. Hawaiian Dick is chock full of the undead, floating monsters that hang in trees outside your window but it’s not mutants, or magic, or elves and orcs. It’s the supernatural kind of supernatural that Byrd can’t understand or explain with smoke and mirrors. It’s the local myths of the colonized scratching at the feet of the detective story playing overtop.

Far from a formulaic detective story, the characters are placed in a setting so unique that it changes the entire aesthetic and reading of the book. It’s a 50’s Noir tinted with a Hawaiian mythos. A campfire story with bullets, broads and the revenge of the undead body they found in a trunk.

The effect is an island surrounded by mystery, mob bosses and lackeys, bent cops interfering with the investigations of straight cops and relatively no place to go. When it comes down to it, how far can you run on an island as small as Hawaii? Especially from what you don’t understand?

- Timothy Legion

– Timothy Legion is not presently read, looked to or admired. He created a newspaper (pamphlet) at his University that is fondly remembered by six people. He has not won any awards or been considered for nominations. He is wrist-deep in the Third Year of his self-imposed GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN.

Quentin Tarantino’s third film opens on Pam Grier, playing Jackie Brown. Her demeanor generates the “I don’t give a fuck” vibe. Behind her is a hideous, multi-colored tile wall which screams 1970. On the soundtrack is Bobby Womack’s soulful “Across a 110th Street”. The title, “Jackie Brown” splashes on the screen in Blaxploitation style.

We then find out, despite the stylish, soulful, and nostalgically badass introduction, Jackie is just trying to get to work. She is a flight attendant for a small, low-paying airline. On the side, she smuggles money for Ordell Robbie, a low-level gun merchant, played by Samuel L. Jackson. That is, until she gets caught with more than Ordell’s cash by the ATF.

Jackie Brown is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece. The film appears to be a superficial foray into Blaxploitation cinema, but consider the genre: Exploitive, gratuitous, and glamorizing. Blaxploitation featured street-level amoral characters killing, stealing, and copulating. In Coffy, Pam Grier used sex to get close to her enemies, and murder them in cold blood to avenge sister. Still, we rooted for her, despite a skewed sense of morality.

Jackie Brown also features killing, stealing, and copulating, but the criminals are aged and desperate to get off the streets once and for all. The glamour is removed from the equation and what the audience is left with are a group of rag-tags trying to make up for their mistakes. The cast is both colorful and plentiful. Tarantino, working from the novel Rum Punch, by Elmore Leonard, paints a beautifully sardonic world of petty criminals all making a last ditch effort to come out on top.

Beautifully realized, Jackie Brown is a sober, mature, and unforgiving crime film. It is endlessly inventive in how it defies genre conventions. It is both paying tribute to Blaxploitation and criticizing it. The film never sees a dull moment between its fascinating characters, stunning dialogue, soulful soundtrack and impeccable storytelling.

The original tagline for the film read: “Six players on the trail of a half a million in Cash. There’s only one question… Who’s playing who?”

Much like that Blaxploitation vibe, the tagline merely describes what is on the surface. The important question isn’t “Who’s playing who?” but rather “Why are they playing?”

- Alex Lyons

– Alex Lyons studied English and History at the University of Guelph, where he acquired keen insights into late Victorian history, and its literature. This education, of course, serves no purpose here. Alex still lives in Guelph, and thinks of Jack the Ripper often.

Sax Raker, the main character of Aetheric Mechanics, may seem familiar to you: He is London’s greatest detective, has a Doctor friend (Dr. Robert Watcham), and is a consummate asshole. No, it’s not Sherlock Holmes. At least not just Sherlock Holmes. Sax Raker is equal parts Holmes, Sexton Blake, Solar Pons, and every other fictional London detective that are cheap rip-offs of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic creation.

You’re asking, why do I want read a graphic novella about an amalgamation of Holmes and lesser creations? Because it’s written by Warren Ellis, and it’s bloody brilliant. Moreover, said amalgamation is partly what the story is about, but you would never predict how.

Warren Ellis is known for his approach to big concepts and mind-melting science fiction, and Aetheric Mechanics is no different. It is set in an alternate London, when steam technology gave Britons airships powered by reactionless drives and the fear of invasion from Ruritania grew stronger by the day; Dr. Robert Watcham returns home to London from the war, amidst social hysteria, and visits his good friend Sax Raker, who has just been commissioned for some detective work.

The MacGuffin: A dead body. What does it mean? Oh so many things.

A genre-bending tale of detective fiction, Aetheric Mechanics builds to a stunning, and wholly original conclusion. Ellis’ London is a city on the edge of science, where the relationship between faith and reason is greatly segregated. The art by Gianluca Pagliarani delivers the story cleanly, and with great elegance.

Aetheric Mechanics is 50 pages of wonderful comics. Also, it retails for $6.99. The fact that the book is dirt cheap is not the selling point, however, the content is.

I would have gladly payed quadruple for the Aetheric Mechanics. It’s just that wonderful.

- Alex Lyons

– Alex Lyons studied English and History at the University of Guelph, where he acquired keen insights into late Victorian history, and its literature. This education, of course, serves no purpose here. Alex still lives in Guelph, and thinks of Jack the Ripper often.

“For the next hour, everything you hear from us is really true and based on solid fact,” says Orson Welles at the start of F for Fake. And with a run time of over an hour and a half, that is your first clue that you are not in for a normal ride. F for Fake is a true documentary in as much as Welles was a true documentarian. Which is to say, not exactly.

Welles was without question a brilliant actor, director, and jack of all trades in the movie business. However, he also prided himself on being a self described trickster, charlatan and magician, though as he puts it: “There are no magicians, only actors playing the parts of magicians.” With F for Fake, Welles takes a stab at encapsulating his favourite past time and tries to elevate the art of fakery and fraud to its rightful place in the artistic community. The film acts very much like a visual essay, drawing examples from the lives of art forger Elmyr de Hory, his interaction with hoax-biographer Clifford Irving and Welles’ own sordid life story, full of fanciful tales of little white lies and little green men.

While never forgiving the actions of the imposters he documents (nor even his own), Welles instead proposes the idea that a truly well executed hoax is, in of itself, a sublime work of art. To explore this idea, he crafts the film to be insightful and engaging, while always keeping the viewer at arms length, wondering at all times when we are being told the truth or simply being led on by the master trickster himself. At the core of Welles’ gripe is the hypocrisy of art criticism, and the idea that beauty and form is dictated entirely by the so-called experts and aficionados of the art community. The film argues that truly great art is an expression of yourself, and an expression of the love of your craft. If you express yourself by painting fake Picassos, how is what you did any less valid than what the real Picasso painted?

Going beyond the idea of forgery, the film also explores the troubled identity of the modern artist. In one truly stunning scene, Welles delivers a stirring monologue about the grand French cathedral Chartres, and the fact that its many builders and architects names were omitted from any part of it. In many ways a love letter to Chartres, the scene is also a subtlety enraged rant about the identity of art versus the mere presence of it. The scene culminates with Welles’ immortal words…

“Our songs will all be silenced. But what of it? Go on singing. Maybe a man’s name doesn’t matter all that much.”

Which is something so radical and sublimely challenging that only Welles would attempt it: That the unity of art and artist is fundamentally obsolete.

At times profoundly reverent and at others gleefully prankish, F for Fake is Welles letting go of narrative and linear story telling to explain his passions as best he can. He takes the viewers expectations of what art, and indeed the very structure of documentary film making and jumbles them so gracefully that by the end of the film, no one is left unaffected. You may feel tricked. You may feel conned. However, you will not feel settled. At the risk of sounding too hyperbolic, anyone with a creative bone in their body should see F for Fake at least once just to ask themselves: What’s in a name?

- JD Renaud

– J.D. Renaud has no formal education in film, but that is more than evident upon meeting and/or seeing him. A purveyor of all things eccentric, he prides himself on being a guinea pig test subject for any new form of media he is given. He currently lives in Winnipeg Manitoba with his go-go dancer roommate.

Philip K. Dick infamously wrote letters to the spy agencies that he assumed were keeping tabs on him detailing the illegal activities of his friends, which he taped to the underside of his trash can left on the road because that was the most obvious place that they would look. For years, Dick had these one-way conversations with fictitious investigative agencies, including the intelligence community in his life everyday, fictitiously surrounding himself with spies and spooks from all over the world.

Enter Warren Ellis, realizing Dick’s nightmare of an intelligence community in Los Angeles, creating a sub-community of exiled spies forced to live in L.A. or be executed on their own native soil. So DESOLATION JONES’ world sits in a Los Angeles chock full of former FBI, Mi-6, CIA, KGB and uglier things, all forced to live and maintain day jobs, scattered across LA’s grotesque underbelly.

Michael Jones, neither accomplished agent nor good detective, is former MI6 who got drunk and shamed the organization. In retribution, they donated his body to science, giving him the Desolation treatment – a psychological experiment that kept Jones awake for a year and left him branded a biological hazard – and then sent him to die in L.A.. In exile, Jones is a social and emotional cripple, working as a Private Investigator who only takes spook community jobs, making sure he’s only even in contact with the community. The reason? He hates the community for what was done to him and they’re the only ones he can take it out on. His instincts are so harsh and warped that he has to convince himself to NOT kill.

So when he comes into jobs to search for the personal pornographic film shot by and starring Adolf Hitler, Jones a warped and demented forced of nature unleashed into the job, a poisonous outsider to L.A. and a tired killer to the community that supports him.

To bring the Desolation world to life is the inimitable J.H. Williams III, whose stunning colours, composition, angles and page layouts make DESOLATION JONES aesthetically vibrant. The story flows from reality to drug-induced hallucination to ultra-violence with masterful dexterity. His page layouts shift dramatically to keep the reader interested and guessing with widescreen presentation and monochrome, fluid fight sequences that’ll take out your eye.

For Philip K. Dick the “Empire Never Ended,” which reflects DESOLATION JONES’ reality. The Empire of Spies and Spooks doesn’t end, they just had to get day jobs. And for Jones, there’s no redemption. They broke, burned and scratched their markings into his arms. Unable to even drink himself to death, Jones has nothing but to work until he can’t even keep that together anymore. To die or to live and die in L.A.

- Timothy Legion

– Timothy Legion is not presently read, looked to or admired. He created a newspaper (pamphlet) at his University that is fondly remembered by six people. He has not won any awards or been considered for nominations. He is wrist-deep in the Third Year of his self-imposed GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN.

The central idea of the Image Comic’s Slim-Line format is sixteen pages of comics and six pages of back-matter to allow for crisp, shorter stories with accessible singles – each of which fit into a larger storyline, but can be read individually and enjoyed. The perfect three minute pop singles for $1.99. One of two books to come out of the Image Slim-Line format (alongside FELL), CASANOVA is a semi-automatic machine pop-gun stuffed from barrel to bullet with spies, babes, a healthy dose of the ultra violence and half a century of pop culture. Even with a reduced page count, Matt Fraction crammed more material than a book twice its size into its pages, making it the thinnest thick comic on the stands. The sheer volume of information being presented wrapped masterfully by the superb Gabriel Bá (seconds before he became THE Gabriel Bá), shooting us like a rocket through the world of CASANOVA.

Casanova Quinn (thief, super-spy and all around prick fond of jumping out of space-ships with guns blazing) is stolen from his parallel dimension by Newman Xeno (bandages, bad attitude, double plus super villain) of W.A.S.T.E., replacing now-deceased Casanova Quinn (thief, super-spy, boyscout for E.M.P.I.R.E.) from Xeno’s dimension/timeline, effectively making Cass his own Evil Twin. The mission: Casanova is sent on assignments by E.M.P.I.R.E.. Xeno gives him counter-directives to disrupt their mission and further his own agenda. Cass must balance both objectives as fucking up in one-direction results in torturous death and the other way, also torturous death. All this and sex-robots, a three faced-psychic floating monk head and funerals.

Lost?

Good. CASANOVA isn’t the kind of book you read once. It’s the kind of book you read twice. And then you put it down, walk away and try to tell someone about it. Then after ten minutes, you’ve got 1-6 people looking absently at you, wondering if YOU even know what you’re talking about. Shamed, you go home and read it again and think: “Oh yeah, Super Model Death Squads.”

CASANOVA will make you want to throw away your Television. Your favourite shows don’t present as much information and anarchic glee as musically as Fraction and Bá have stuffed into sixteen pages of CASANOVA.

And what of Casanova? He steals stuff and fucks people up for money. With style and grace and his psychic spiders.

(Right, there are also psychic spiders. And escape artist Bodhisattvas. And…)

- Timothy Legion

Timothy Legion is not presently read, looked to or admired. He created a newspaper (pamphlet) at his University that is fondly remembered by six people. He has not won any awards or been considered for nominations. He is wrist-deep in the Third Year of his self-imposed GLORIOUS FIVE YEAR PLAN.

“What religion do you profess, preacher?”

“The religion the Almighty and me worked out betwixt us.”

And so we learn the nature of one peculiar man of God and his relationship with the almighty that should strike fear into all those whom have sinned before his eyes.

Night of the Hunter presents preacher Harry Powel (Robert Mitchum), a refined southern gentleman of the cloth who has been leaving a long trail of dead ‘sinners’ in his wake. Rather than remain inconspicuous and stealthy as a common killer would, Powel has assumed the persona of a traveling evangelical preacher. A charming and compelling man, he is always eager preach the good word and to tell all those around him the story of ‘Right Hand, Left Hand. Good and Evil’. Tattooed on Powel’s hands are the words ‘love’ and ‘hate’, and the battle between the two is always a real crowd pleaser. It was with the left hand that Cain struck the blow that laid his brother low. H-A-T-E. However, the right hand has veins that go straight to the soul of man. L-O-V-E.

On the search for ten thousand dollars a former cell mate hid from the police, Powel finds his newest prey in widow Willa Harper (Shelley Winters), the widow of his aforementioned cell mate. Doing away with the husband was easy business, seeing as how the state took care of the killing for him but finding the money and outwitting Willa’s two cunning children prove to be more of a challenge than he predicted.

The idea of a movie monster is classically personified by your standard boogie men like Jason Voorhees, the Wolfman, and Freddy Kruger. Beasts and ghouls who violently kill without remorse or compassion. Then there are your more cerebral movie monsters. Characters who still kill without mercy, but fill every scene there are in with a state of discomfort and unrest, and not just at the sight of seeing them kill. Jaws. Anton Chigurh. Heath Ledger’s Joker. These villains only have to show up on screen and the audience is on the edge of their seats. Harry Powel could probably count the number of people he has killed on both of his tattooed hands. His only weapon is a tiny switchblade. Yet still, every time he is alone with another character, be it man, woman, or child, you always feel like he is moments away from doing something horrible. It is the subtle implication of murders yet to happen that makes the film so chilling. All that is needed is the idea and the audience fills in the rest.

Most unsettling about the film and this character is the fact that this is not your ordinary killer. This is a man of God. A good man, and an upright citizen. Certainly in Powel’s mind, a monster he is not, though he is a killer all the same. In fact, Powel may be the most morally incorruptible murderer in film history. Even after convincing Willa to marry him, he refuses to consummate their marriage. “The female body was made for begettin’ children and not for the lust of men,” he says. Perhaps it is his inflated sense of divinity, but Powel has deemed himself an eradicator of sin, never a perpetrator. He is the twisted and broken manifestation of all those stories of the Bible that we all assumed could never be used to justify something as horrible as murder, but to Powel, it is only natural to deduce such things from scripture. God, you see, does not mind the killings. His book is full of them.

One man and God worked out a religion between them. One where the rules apply only to those who had a hand in crafting it. The rest of us need only be told where we stand, and woe is he who challenges the preacher of such evangel. You know you’re in trouble if God is on the other side of that blade and on his hand are the letters that spell your fate. H-A-T-E.

- J.D. Renaud

J.D. Renaud has no formal education in film, but that is more than evident upon meeting and/or seeing him. A purveyor of all things eccentric, he prides himself on being a guinea pig test subject for any new form of media he is given. He currently lives in Winnipeg Manitoba with his go-go dancer roommate.