I never really read much Wildstorm back in the day. My Image consumption just wasn't as in depth as it was for the Big Two, and something about the Wildstorm Universe just never grabbed my attention. I read Alan Moore's run on WildC.A.T.s and the first dozen or so issues of Gen13 but that was pretty much it. So, I decided to try and remedy that with my first ever Mish Mash Monday. Fortunately, between my friends and a small run to my local (extra special thanks to Guy), I was able to collect most of the issues.

WildC.A.T.s is everything bad with 90s comics. There's not a narrative story. It's just pretty pictures with some text. What's funny is that Image was made by artists but how much they rely on writers.  I mean, look at this:



Look at how much text there is versus how much art. There's less text in the Joss Whedon/John Cassidy X-Men run. And Whedon is one of the better writers.

It's also bad because it just drops you in media res. True it was going on in 90s comics with the Big Two but they did have decades of stuff going on that people could stand it (including me... although some of that dense text would even piss me off). But this tries to fake that much dense background and to be fair, it just doesn't play.

I was sadly disappointed in this book. I can't say what I was expecting, but it wasn't this.

Guy called me this evening to ask if I had finished reading his copy of Wanted. We then had the following conversation:

"Yeah," I told him.

"And?"

"It left my mouth tasting like shit."

To be one hundred percent fair to the makers of Wanted. The Jägerbombs I had at my local bar hadn't helped. But even if I had gone in sober, it probably would have left a similar feeling behind. Here's the secret about Wanted: it is a shitty comic.

It's so funny for me to read back on what I wrote about X-Men 2 all those years ago. There's so much about that movie that I can see now so clearly that were lost to me all those years ago. Since then we've seen the Bush presidency unfold, the horrendous X-Men 3 come out, and (I argue) the misunderstood Superman Returns.

There's a thoughtfulness to this movie that I don't think I appreciated fully at the time. At the food court when Pyro makes the flame burst, Iceman cools the guy off, and then Professor X freezes everyone. The shots are gorgeous. Super tight. Eyes. Cigarette. Xavier rolling into focus. It's all very well constructed. It's by a filmmaker and not just a director; it's a subtley that is sorely lacking in X-Men 3.

This film is also interesting to look at as film history. Seeing the opening scene where Nightcrawler breaks into the White House is very post-Matrix. Nightcrawler takes out a room of secret service agents and it is a mix between slow motion and bullet-time. There's also this awareness of this is a movie that people will watch on DVD, in higher definition (although HD as we think of it today didn't exist yet) and in frame-by-frame stop-motion.

The President. He's so aggressive but so hands off. He turns things over to Stryker with the full knowledge that he might do despicable things. He's both a villain because he allows things to happen and hides behind "well, I didn't know..." but unlike how we view W now but probably did then he's childish. He just doesn't think. Once he's made aware of the situation, he regrets it. Changes course. This is the W that we hoped for in 2003. Someone who would change course if only he knew or understood how the world really works.

Magneto is held in this plastic prison "for forever." It's such a Gitmo situation. And when Xavier comes and is upset at his brutal treatment? It's such liberal outrage. Of course we want things safe, we want fundamentals of them of the streets. But when Xavier comes to visit and sees a human being, his friend, having been mistreated... well, it degrades the word 'humanity,' a thing which Xavier holds up quite highly. 
 
In general, Professor X is never as cool in the comics as he is in this movie. I think it's the dry English wit. How to make Xavier not be a tool? Think of him like Stephen Fry, Patrick Stewart, or others... He needs to be wry, intelligent, charming.

Part of the beauty is in the casting of Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart. The scene they have in his prison is gorgeous. It humanizes him and ends with his perfect line delivery of "the war has begun."

Wolverine's fight scene when the mansion gets raided? It's honestly one of my top ten favorite five minutes of cinema. About thirty minutes into the movie, when Wolverine wakes up. Talks to a kid. Talks to Iceman... it's all good. I mean, really good. It's more human than a sci-fi action film has to be. But, oh at... 35 minutes in. That... is... when... shit... gets... real... You see a major motion picture character just massacre people. He stalks them, he kills them. He is efficient. He is a killing machine. He is an animal.

And it is the striking shift from paternal figure to this military-made thing that is so amazing. Not just for the gorgeous brutality, but because it makes a statement about who he is. He knows killing. He chooses people. He chooses peace. However, like a mother bear, once poked he cannot rest until he knows that his cubs are safe. Culminating in the "you wanna shoot me? Shoot me!" I hate to boil it down to simple fanboy-like commentary but that is fucking awesome.

I think I was too harsh on how Nightcrawler was treated when I last wrote about it. His faith is present. He is interesting and colorful. But while I might have simplified my view of how he was used, I think my complaint is still valid that he gets boiled down to a plot device by the last act. 
 
"You wanted me to cure your son but mutation is not a disease..." Oh, how gay. And I don't mean that in the colloqual 'gay equals stupid,' but instead in terms of queer studies. Not to mention that in the following scene there is a "have you tried not being a mutant." And then it keeps going. When Nightcrawler asks Mystique since she can pass why she doesn't and she says "we shouldn't have to." So much of how Bryan Singer chooshes to relate the X-Men to the audience is through the metaphor of homosexuality.

Which is also why I think Singer has been misaligned when talked about Superman Returns. This movie is so similar. It's about otherness. Character motivation. Action. Thoughtfulness. Superpowers. Part of what's different from the two movies is the person vs. team dynamic. In the X-Men he can have them doing super stuff then have a good character beat. Whether it's Wolverine going crazy, Bobby's "have you tried not being a mutant?", or Nightcrawler's prepared "but in the Munich circus I was the incredible Nightcrawler" line. Whereas Superman Returns has to be carried pretty much by Superman alone.
 
As an odd end note, I think there is a problem in that Wolverine was part of our lens in the first two movies. So when he says to Jean "I could be the good guy" then kisses her (after she says "I married a good guy"). We want him to win. Cyclops is an Other. He is foreign to us. We've never really established a connection to him, the way that we have with Wolverine. I'm not saying they should have changed it, I'm just saying that it sort of doomed Cyclops to being a little unlikeable. A fate he seems to end up with without any help from the filmmakers.

Let's be honest, Marvel Studios are shrewd. Not only are they in the midst of creating a writer's group to pitch and rewrite Marvel projects, they've also been very aggressive in their contract negotiating.

The first thing they did was walk away from Terrence Howard and sign Don Cheadle rather than haggle over his price. Jon Favreau almost walked away due to Marvel not offering him a fair deal. Sam Jackson, who was very excited about being a part of the Marvel movie franchises, practically got dropped as well before a last-minute nine-picture deal was struck (while signing someone to a nine-picture deal might seem like tying up a lot of money, and it certainly is, Marvel is definitely looking at like they're tying Jackson down long-term to work on a fixed rate). Scarlett Johansson and Mickey Rourke, both of whom are in demand, were offered a measly $200,000 before settling on somewhere in the still-low-ball $400,000 neighborhood.

So as everyone probably knows by now, Marvel Studios is looking like it will hire five to six writers to form a sort of Hollywood bullpen, who can create pitches and do rewrites. This formation is getting coverage on a couple of different layers and is only right and proper because despite the fact that this sounds like a rather straight-forward idea, there are a couple of different things going on at once.

First, this is great for Marvel moviegoers. It means that Marvel will be able to create a variety of pitches for several different properties. It also means that since Marvel Studios owns the rights to most of their characters (Sony still owns Spider-Man, and Fox still owns the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Daredevil franchises) the writers are free to drop mentions or have cameos by anyone in the entirety of the Marvel Univese which should result in the films having a richer, deeper fee for it. And since it would be a small group of writers, it's easier for everyone in the room to be on the same page.

Second, it's a bad thing for Marvel moviegoers. By getting this crew together, Hollywood is about to be bombarded by superhero pitches and with the box office bank of Iron Man and Dark Knight, expect distributors to be very interested. This could lead to a glut of movies and TV shows which will flood the market which could then bore audiences and/or mean that several of the projects will be of lower quality.

Third, it's good for writers. Marvel is looking at bringing in already established screenwriters and writers for Marvel Comics. With the current economy, any work is good work in Hollywood. Of course, this also doubles as bad news for aspiring writers as I'm sure there are many Marvel Zombies who read headlines about this program and started to dream that they'd love to work for Marvel. If so, I hope they already have an agent, because otherwise it's just not going to happen. 

Finally, it's horrid for writers. This program is not the most writer-friendly, because it doesn't have to be. With this economy, writers are lining up to be taken advantage of and this deal certainly does that. Before a writer can come in they have to sign a 70-page non-negotiable contract and non-disclosure agreement. What's in the contract? Anything you write in that year is owned by Marvel (a similar clause is what led to DC not having to pay Siegel and Shuster any cash for Superman), plus first look and last refusal on any script written for two years before or after the program. 

All in all, I think this is a good thing but I just want to make sure that everyone is cognizant of the deal with the devil that is being struck. 

This issue keeps the action train rolling and it is good.

This is an action-packed issue that reveals some of Woody's inner angst. While I had been having some trouble with Woody, this issue goes a long way to restoring the character in my estimation as it shows his funny-guy routine cracking. Not to mention the issue has an amazing ending with Woody crossing a moral line before both of heroes are defeated by an unknown enemy.

So this issue wraps up the previous arc and sets up the next one. The bad news? Well, the body swap arc silently fizzles as the two switch bodies back without much fanfare or even any real screen time. The good news is that there is a decent Amy Fishbein subplot and holy crap, the last three pages... they kill off their potential sidekick Taylor and bring back Magnum to act as a arch-villain. Now that's entertainment.

It's bizarre that Quantum had what was basically a superhero origin story before his actual origin story (spending two years training in the African wilderness after graduating from West Point) and yet it was Woody who suggested that they become heroes.