August 30, 2010

Final Girl Film Club: Hellbound

This is another Final Girl Film Club review.

In this film, Chuck Norris stops the Book of Revelations from happening. Doesn’t that sound cool? Can’t you just picture Chuck giving a roundhouse to the anti-christ? Or taking down the many-eyed goat while the streets erupt in fire and the angels blow their trumpets? Well, keep dreaming. This isn’t that movie. Besides the goat eyes sported by the main bad guy, here’s the only demon in the entire movie:

There are no cool demons, no skies raining blood. And there are no roundhouses here. There are hardly any fights at all. I mean, I knew this movie was going to be bad, but I hoped for some good fight scenes. Nope. Mostly what we get is Norris standing around staring at things. But maybe this wooden veneer hides a complex subtext…

So the movie starts in 1186 during the Crusades. An emissary of the devil, the pharmaceutically named Prosatanos, is opening diplomatic negotiations between hell and the human world by trying to stab a baby with a huge golden dildo complete with golden nut sack. As he raises his phallus to impale the infant, Prosatanos is pierced with two shafts himself. Then he gets reamed up the backside by a priest. Those priests… Prosatanos is shoved back inside his womb-like tomb, vowing to be born again. Then the king takes his own mighty phallus and chops up the emissary’s golden dildo into nine little pieces. These nine pieces are then scattered around the world so that the phallus may never rise again.

In 1951, Prosatanos is awoken from his slumber. And who, you may ask, awakens him? Two grave-robbing Arabs of course. Yes, two Arabs unleash the forces of hell on the world. Is this an American movie, or what? So anyway, the devil’s emissary is back and has to piece together his broken phallus before he can do any more impaling.

Now the movie skips ahead thirty years to the gritty streets of Chicago. Norris plays a Chicago cop who is supposed to be a tough, Dirty Harry type. Yet mainly he just stands around because I guess it’s tougher to look like you could kick ass than to actually go and kick any. And his name is Shatter. Shatter. But wait, it’s a cool self-referential thing, because the main special effect in this movie is the breaking of glass. People are thrown through windows and against glass shelves, over and over again. So yeah, his name’s Shatter. He discovers a horrible murder in which a rabbi has had his heart ripped out and Chuck Norris is beaten up by the murderer, Prosatanos, who is sporting a mullet longer than Chuck’s. Yes, you heard that right: Chuck Norris is beaten up. Actually, he’s thrown against a wall. Why a guy who can rip people’s hearts from their chests just throws Shatter against a wall is beyond my feeble mind to contemplate. Anyway, clues lead Shatter and his annoying partner to discover the love interest. The love interest serves only to prove Shatter’s manliness to his partner, since heterosexuality for men is actually dependent upon homosocial approval. The partner concedes that Shatter is in fact manly and the story goes on. To Israel.

And here the movie makes a subtle commentary on world politics. First, we are lead to learn that the Israeli police are ineffectual at dealing with their own problems. The Middle East can’t handle itself: check. Then we also learn that Interpol has been following a string of murders but can’t put the pieces together. Europe has all the evidence it needs, but doesn’t have the brains or guts to act: check. So enter America, or at least it’s blonde mulletted emissary. Shatter takes with him his subservient black partner who only thinks about basketball and food. The two of them break local laws and use local thieves to uncover the truth they know is hidden and – voilá! – you’ve got American foreign policy in a neat little mulletted package served piping hot with centuries-old stereotypes.

So this all must build up to a killer fight scene, right? RIGHT? Sadly, no. Yes, there is a fight scene, but it mostly involves Shatter and his partner falling over and Prosatanos playing teleportation hide-and-seek. No martial arts showdown ensues. Instead, Shatter picks up the fallen golden phallus and then throws it at 200 miles an hour, shoving the thing deep within Prosatanos. This causes Prosatanos to light up like a sparkler and explode. Ah, the sweet release. After this pyrotechnic ejaculation, the dildo is back in nine pieces, which are then collected by a guy impersonating Jesus wearing a Mary Magdalene robe. And the movie ends with Shatter not kissing the love interest, because girls are icky. Real men prefer the company of other men.

Now just imagine all this with painfully bad acting, dark lighting, and boring shots and you can rush out right now and remove this movie from your Netflix queue. This is one bad movie.

August 14, 2010

new Pentalic Paper for Pens

Awhile ago in the local art and office supply store, I saw that Pentalic had a new cover for its “Paper for Pens.” I wondered if the paper itself had changed, but I didn’t try it out. My experience with the old “Paper for Pens” was that while it advertised itself as being “crisp and bleedproof,” it wasn’t. All ink lines I put on it, no matter what the ink, feathered. To be fair, I live near sea level and there tends to me a lot of moisture in the air, but I found that the Borden & Riley Bleedproof Paper for Pens was, in fact, bleedproof. But on the last few Carnivale pages, I have been noticing that even this paper isn’t as crisp as I’d like it. So today at the art store, I ran my fingers over the new Pentalic Paper for Pens and found it incredibly smooth, much smoother than the old version and even smoother than the Borden & Riley. So I bought a pad. Well, I just did a test and found that it is bleedproof. It seems like a great surface to use pen and ink on. I think it may replace the Borden & Riley as my favorite paper, though I’ll need to use it for awhile to really ascertain that. Still, it is definitely a major improvement over the old version. Here’s a link to it at the Pentalic site.

August 7, 2010

short reviews of some recent Fantagraphics stuff I’ve read

• It Was the War of the Trenches by Jacques Tardi. If you’ve read novels like All Quiet on the Western Front or poems like Hardy’s “The Man He Killed” or Owen’s “Dulce and Decorum Est” then you have some idea of the tone Tardi strikes in this graphic novel. Maybe that’s my way of saying that this book doesn’t cover anything you may have heard before, but this book still contains a lot of power. Tardi’s art is in top form here and he uses three panoramic panels per page to show us the horror he wants us to see. Just the visual nature of this book alone makes it powerful, but his narrative choices are also affecting. I had read a few of the stories here before and had enjoyed them, but all next to each other another meaning emerges. Since there isn’t a single character to take us through the entire book, we understand that the misery felt by one character is the same as the misery felt by another. So the book becomes not a story of a single person, but a story of all the soldiers who fought in the First World War. And when Tardi finally gives us all the statistics in the end– how many dead, how many wounded, etc.– it has a real punch that statistics by themselves usually don’t have, since we have seen what those statistics mean in the previous chapters. War books are not light entertainment by any means, but they are important. We need to continually remind ourselves what happens during war. We all too easily forget.

• Werewolves of Montpellier by Jason. This doesn’t break any new ground for Jason. If you’ve read a Jason book before, well, you know what to expect here. Still, I love this book. A few things struck me here. One, I was impressed by how Jason lets the reader figure things out. In the beginning of the book, I was a bit confused about the relationships between the characters. But as the narrative progressed I figured things out. “Oh, he’s a neighbor. And she’s a lesbian.” I admire this trust Jason has in his readers. He doesn’t use exposition; he expects us to get things from context. And we do. The other thing I enjoyed was how little it meant to be a werewolf. I don’t want to give anything away, but the end here is wonderfully anti-climactic. Also, as another reviewer pointed out (I can’t find the review again or I’d link to it), since Jason draws anthropomorphic animals anyway, when one of them becomes a werewolf they don’t look much different than anyone else. So the whole “transformation” motif inherent in most werewolf stories gets deflated, which fits Jason’s tone perfectly. And this book has some of the best dialogue in a Jason book yet.

• Mome Vol. 18: Spring 2010. I keep wanting to like Mome. I’ve enjoyed a few stories here and there, the ones by David B, for instance. Still, over and over again I find this to be an underwhelming anthology. This issue is no different. The little bright points in this issue are the stories by Nicolas Mahler. I guess I just always prefer the European artists. One thing I find interesting about Mome is it is a useful place to study influence. Since Mome tends to feature newer artists you can see who they are looking to. For instance, Tom Kaczynski’s “10,000 Years” in Mome Summer 2007 has a few panels swiped directly from Dan Clowes. However, the cartoonist that most the artists in Mome are influenced by is Chris Ware. It happens so much that it seems that there’s a rule for Mome that at least one artist in every issue must be heavily influenced by Ware. The rule is obeyed in this issue by Jon Adams. Now influence isn’t bad and Ware’s work is a well of ideas from drawing to pacing to layout to symbolism. Still, the stories in Mome always feel like undigested ideas. They are glimmers of possibility, but they aren’t complete and satisfying works. I’m really happy that Eric Reynolds and Gary Groth are supporting new talent, but I don’t think I can keep up with the $15 price tag.

• Baobab 2 by Igort. While I enjoyed the art in Igort’s 5 Is the Perfect Number, I didn’t really like the book. I didn’t get into the story and the characters never felt real to me. So I bought Baobab 1 because of the art. The story intrigued me, but left me confused. So I bought Baobab 2 for the art again, but also because I was curious. And what I found in issue 2 blew me away. Not only is the story finally getting its feet and drawing me in, what Igort is able to do on the page is breath-taking. The story is about an alterate history of comics, which means he depicts the art styles of different artists. He does this seamlessly. He also likes to illustrate dreams, hallucinations, and fever visions. The effect is a book that winds in and out of reality and shows us the visual and emotional possibilities of the comics medium. As you can tell, I think this is a wonderful book. I guess I’ll get issue 3.

June 28, 2010

Final Girl Film Club: It’s Alive

This is a review for the Final Girl Film Club.

The scariest thing in this movie is how the main character’s check jacket clashes with the floral wallpaper in his house. I would like to think this was an ingenious way of showing the character’s unease, but this movie was made in 1974. In the 70s my family had a house with purple floral wallpaper, green shag carpet, and a mustard yellow refrigerator. The hipsters of the 70s  just didn’t know any better.

The next scariest thing in this movie is the dehumanized nature of hospital birth. Babies are taken from their mothers and put into nurseries, left to cry alone in a warehouse of plastic cribs. Husbands are not allowed to be with their wives during the birth process. Expectant mothers are forced to lie flat on their backs, which is now widely regarded as one of the worst positions in which to give birth. It all makes me really thankful that I had a child when and where I did.

All this is to say that the movie isn’t scary. Which, for a horror movie, is, you know, kind of a problem. That said I still kind of liked this flick.

If you don’t know, the basic premise of this film is that a couple gives birth to some kind of genetic mutant that likes to fly at people’s throats like the rabbit in The Holy Grail and chow down. A tad unsettling; most babies can’t eat solid food until eight months. To add to the misfortune, the baby looks like a rubber monster from an old Dr Who episode and it never seems to stay a consistent size. So when it appears during the movie, whatever dramatic tension was building in a scene suddenly escapes and the scene flops to the floor like a deflated balloon. Luckily, Larry Cohen, the director, seems to understand this and doesn’t show the baby too much. At least in the beginning.

He focuses mostly on the guy in the check jacket, Frank (John Ryan). Frank is not easy to like. He’s got a pompous swagger and he’s quick to judge. There’s a waiting anger just below the surface of him that comes out in dismissive looks and choked off sentences. But as I was watching him, I found him to be very engaging and very familiar. When he started talking about Irish words for babies it came to me: he reminded me of my father and his side of the family. That and the 70s décor struck a personal chord within me and drew me into the film. I began to love Frank’s wise-ass smirk. And it takes some real acting to make an unlikeable character sympathetic. So my hat’s off to John Ryan.

I was getting more and more into the movie until about half way in. The growing tensions bearing down on Frank and his crumbling relationship with his wife Lenore (Sharon Farrell) were engaging. But then Lenore’s character stopped going anywhere. Once she goes crazy, that’s it. And isn’t even an interesting, Lady Macbeth kind of crazy. There is no sense of guilt or loss in her craziness, so she’s more annoying than disturbing. It’s a real waste of dramatic material. Also, the last half of the movie becomes a hunt for the baby, and, as I mentioned, the more the movie focuses on the baby the more silly it is. Then there’s a really hard to decipher scene in the family basement. It’s meant to be an important moment and full of tension, but poor lighting and sloppy editing take the life out of the scene and make it confusing instead of terrifying.

For all the laughable rubber baby moments, the movie has some great parts. As I said, I really liked the first half. And there’s a great scene in which a bunch of cops pull their guns on an innocent infant.

I also liked Frank’s turnaround at the end. The entire movie, Frank is willing to have his murderous baby killed and he even signs its life away to science. Yet when he finally faces his spawn in the end, tears roll down his eyes. It happens a little too quickly, but it’s still a moving change. Yes, I’m a dad myself. Yes, Frank reminded me a bit of my own dad. Yet, I found it affecting and strangely healing that Frank finally learns to love his mutated son.

Overall, the character of Frank and society’s treatment of the family are really intriguing, but obviously Larry Cohen didn’t know how to develop the ideas. Or maybe he was just more interested in showing a killer baby. I get the feeling he couldn’t make up his mind if he wanted a horror movie, a comedy, a family drama, or a satire. Maybe those elements could have all been brought together, but here they pull the film in different directions. Instead of complexity we get discord and an uneven tone. There’s just a lot of unfulfilled potential in this movie. So much so that the film almost begs to be remade. Oh, wait. It was. And it sucked. Never mind.

April 19, 2010

JCVD

I just saw the movie JCVD last night and I still haven’t stopped shaking my head in amazement.

I remember seeing Jean-Claude Van Damme movies in high school on TV. I was always amazed at how the guy could do a perfect round house kick and drop into the splits at a moment’s notice. But the plots were always the same. I have had a running joke that I use when I discuss plot in my classes: “When your friend asks you what a movie was about, what you tell her is the plot: “A guy’s friend gets beat up in a martial arts competition. The main guy trains in a forest to be a martial artist, part of said training being the cracking open of his groin. He enters the competition and after several fights he gets to KO the guy who hurt his friend by dropping into the splits and upper-cutting the guy in the testicles.’ Which is the plot to every single Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.”

In other words, a joke.

When I saw the trailer to JCVD I was surprised. Still, I thought the movie was a spoof. Instead of being a hero, Jean-Claude is a desperate has-been actor. I was impressed that Jean-Claude would poke fun at his image like that. But that’s about as far as my thought process went and I never went out to actually see the movie.

So I was both taken aback and excited when my wife rented JCVD the other night. She’s not a martial arts movie fan, but since we both thought it was a spoof, we thought it’d be fun entertainment.

The actual movie blew away my expectations. yes, JCVD plays around with the image of Van Damme, but it is not simply a spoof or a comedy. It is a meditation on fame and the price of actually achieving one’s dreams. And, more amazingly, Van Damme gives an incredibly moving six minute, single take monologue that put tears in my eyes. Yes, when he talks about the honesty in a martial arts dojo, I know what he’s talking about. Yes, when he talks about his daughter (he actually has a son, by the way), I can relate because I have a daughter myself. But it’s not just my personal identifications that drew me in. It was his acting. HIS ACTING! JEAN-CLAUDE VAN FUCKING DAMME!

What the movie ends up being about is a man held hostage by his own life and his own decisions and failings. The character Van Damme depicts in the movie is imperfect, but wanting to be better. He wants to be an actual hero, but is constantly sidetracked by his fame and his own inconsistent attention. The movie has real weight. It is a deep exploration of character. Really.

While Steven Seagal claims he is a buddhist spiritual leader endowed with clairvoyance, Jean-Claude Van Damme shows us an imperfect man trying to make sense of his life. Even if it’s all just an act (and what an act), this film conveys much more truth than Seagal’s Buddhism-for-beginners blathering. Jean-Claude Van Damme shows me something about what it means to be human.

And I can’t believe I just wrote that.

March 16, 2010

notebook/sketchbook/journal quickie reviews

I love getting a new notebook. Part of it is my art supply fetish and part of it is the world of possibility a new notebook offers. What this means is that I’ve tried out a few different kinds of notebooks (sketchbooks, journals…) over the years. Since I like to look on-line for suggestions of notebooks to try, I thought I’d add to the collective consciousness with a few of my own quick reviews. Since I like to draw with pen-and-ink, these reviews are focused on which notebooks are best for that.

• Apica notebooks. I have tried many different kinds and since I get mine from a Japanese stationary store, all the writing on them is in Japanese so I don’t know what the different ones are called. Furthermore, they are probably not that easy to find in the U.S. Still, I return to this brand over and over again, because, lined or plain, the paper in these notebooks is awesome. It’s very thin and smooth, but it seemingly can take any ink. I once spilled black ink on a page of one of these notebooks and the ink didn’t soak through the paper. Just amazing. If you see one of these in a store, be sure to pick it up. The covers tend to have a filigree border and the emblem on the back is a bird reversed over a setting/rising sun (not the old Japanese flag rising sun, though similar).

• Pentalic a la Modeskin. The Pentalic version of the Moleskin. I’ve used two of these and they’re okay. The paper is nice and smooth, but only takes certain inks well. For instance, Speedball Super Black feathers, but Sumi ink is fine. The paper is thin, so it will wrinkle if you use watercolor (which I did anyway). I like the colors of the covers available and the light cream hue to the paper.

• Moleskine. Just avoid it. It’s overpriced and the paper is horrible. It doesn’t seem to like any ink. Sure, the Moleskines look cool and they have a history. The covers are nice and solid, too. But the paper sucks. What more do you need to know?

• Cachet wirebound sketchbook. The paper in this is toothier than I prefer, but it’s a nice notebook. The cover is solid and the wirebound binding means the notebook can lie flat. The downside is the binding can get in the way of your hand or a straight edge. Every ink I tried in this notebook worked well and there was no bleed-through, so I could use both sides of the page. Actually, I should probably get one of these again.

• Pen & Ink sketchbook. The store I got this at only had the small ones, 3.5″ X 5.5″, and the size was a bit smaller than I prefer. There is a larger size available now. This notebook looks a lot like the Moleskine, but the paper is better. The paper didn’t always handle watercolor well, but the pages were thick and I was able to use both sides of the page. A nice little notebook.

• Watson and Guptill Sketchbook. I tend not to like hardcover, bound notebooks because they are hard to keep open while you are trying to draw. This notebook had that problem, though after a bit of use the problem was less pronounced. Inks worked fine here, but they tended to dry a little gray. Also, the pages tended to bleed through. It’s an okay notebook overall, but I don’t think I’ll be getting another one.

• Maruman Mnemosyne. This is another notebook I got from the Japanese stationary store I frequent, but the title on this one was in English. This notebook has a hard plastic top cover and a cardboard back, and is wirebound. The paper in this thing is a lot like the paper in the Apica notebooks. It had a soft feel, kind of like vellum. The paper takes any ink and allows for really crisp lines. Yet it’s thin so not good for watercolor. Though heavy gouache worked fine. As with the Cachet notebook, the binding can get in the way. I was wanting to practice using an Ames lettering guide and the wirebound edge made that unfeasible. Still, this is a very nice notebook.

• Flexi-sketch. This is what I’m using right now. This notebook is fairly cheap and offers a lot of paper, though that makes the book thicker and heavier than what I prefer. The paper is a little toothier than what I like also, but it’s nice. Speedball Super Black tends to feather ever so slightly. Still, it’s been rainy around here recently so that may account for the feathering. If you crack the spine the notebook actually opens nicely, which is surprising for such a thick book. Still, the thickness kind of bugs me. I don’t like drawing with my hand being so high off the table the notebook is on. I guess that problem will lessen as I make my way through the book. This is a fine notebook, but I doubt I’ll get another one.

Just doing a quick search through Google, I was able to find hits for all these notebooks and places to order them from.

March 12, 2010

Silent Hill 2

So I figured enough time had passed and I could journey back to the little lakeside town of Silent Hill. The first impression I had as I began playing the game was what a difference in graphics there was between this and the first one. The Playstation 2 was a huge leap forward from the Playstation 1. The other thing that quickly became apparent (which I had read about) was how little Silent Hill 2 had to do with Silent Hill 1. Yes, there was a town covered in mist full of creatures. Yes, there was a radio that emitted static when the creatures got close and a clip light that barely illuminated the gloom. But everything else was different. None of the characters from the first game returned. No plot points continued. Even the town itself was laid out differently. The biggest difference though was that instead of a horror story full of demon worshipping cults, psychic teenage girls, and haunted architecture, Silent Hill 2 presented a psychological tale of guilt, repression, and the inability to be honest with oneself. In the first game, as Harry, you were attacked by a hostile environment and at the mercy of forces not in your control. While James faces a hostile environment, it is very keyed into his mental state. Instead of Silent Hill alternating between fog and a bloody alternate reality, in this game the progression is gradual. You really get the feeling that you are falling deeper and deeper into one man’s psychosis. The fact that near the end of the game you have to repeatedly jump into abysses accentuates this feeling.

Silent Hill 2 is an incredible game. It is proof that video games can be more than simple entertainment and are actually a valid artistic medium. One can see the artistry in the control the creators have over the elements of the game. It has an incredibly reserved pacing that makes the player feel an ever increasing tension. And all the pieces of the game fit together not to reveal a hidden story, but to reveal character and theme. It’s almost a literary game in how it’s put together. And it’s incredibly sad. There are multiple endings and the one I got was “In Water,” which is a torturingly ironic conclusion to a harrowing personal journey.

So I want to throw out a few ideas. If you haven’t played the game, none of the rest of this post will make much sense.

It’s all about a misreading.

The set up of the game is that James has received a letter from his dead wife, Mary, in which she says that she’s waiting for him at Silent Hill. Yet, at the end of the game we realize that this interpretation of the letter is wrong. I’m not exactly sure if the letter at the beginning of the game is the same one that is revealed at the end and James just never read the whole thing, or if the letter at the end is the second letter that the girl, Laura, runs off to find in the hotel. Either way, it completely changes the meaning of what we are shown in the beginning of the game, what we are lead to believe through James’s point of view.

First, he thinks a dead woman sent the letter. He believes his wife died three years ago and her ghost has just sent him a message. Yet through the course of the game, mainly through James’s interactions with Laura, we realize that Mary did not die three years ago and, in fact, probably died quite recently. Also, we learn that Mary wrote several letters as she lay dying in her hospital room. One was to Laura and Mary had given it to the nurse to give to Laura after she was dead. Yet Laura got ahold of the letter before then. Still, this explains why James received a letter from a “dead” woman. Mary wrote it as she was dying, just as she wrote the letter to Laura. And, just as the letter to Laura, Mary gave it to a nurse to send to James after she was dead. So the delivery of the letter from Mary is not a supernatural act. We only see it that way at first because we are experiencing the game from James’s point of view and his repression and guilt make him unable to see things clearly.

This also leads to the second point, why James thinks Mary is in Silent Hill waiting for him. He wants her to be alive. He wants to see her one last time. So his mind is going into the realm of magical thinking, to borrow a phrase from Joan Didion. But Mary isn’t in Silent Hill. She’s dead. The final letter makes this clear: “In my restless dreams, I see that town. Silent Hill… I feel so pathetic and ugly laying here, waiting for you…” Mary is writing this letter from her hospital bed and she’s thinking of better times. She’s thinking back to her vacation in Silent Hill with James. This is where her mind goes, her paradise to help her get away from the hell that has become of her life due to her illness. Her “special place” is all of Silent Hill, as James himself suspects. She is waiting there, but only in her mind. She its telling him that while her body is being destroyed her mind is still like it always was. She still loves him and longs for the connection that they used to have. In the hotel after James views the video, he tells Laura that Mary isn’t there. He finally realizes his delusion. His whole quest, the whole premise of the game, was simply self delusion borne from his guilt.

His supernatural misreading of the letter is due to James being unable to face the full truth.

It’s all about love.

As others have pointed out, this game is actually a convoluted path designed to make James finally admit the truth to himself. For James, honesty opens too many Pandora’s boxes. But that is just what Silent Hill does for him, makes him confront those demons. Pyramid Head is just James’s worst fear about what he actually is: an immoral, selfish monster. James uses this creature to torture himself and at the end of the game he realizes this and so Pyramid Head commits suicide. With this, James is free (almost- there’s one last battle) of his self delusion.

What he is finally able to admit, which is shown in the “In Water” and “Leave” endings, is that while he deeply loved Mary, the long illness also made him hate her. He never wanted to admit that to himself and so that hatred became a monster inside him. And it made him doubt whether killing Mary was a kind act of euthanasia or a vicious act of murder. This doubt has eaten away at him and is the source of the visions he sees in Silent Hill. No one else sees Silent Hill the way he does. The monsters in the game are from James’s own mind. The architecture, at least the state it’s in, also relates to his mental state. For example, after James views the video, the rooms and hallways of the hotel drip with water, as if the very building were weeping.

The question is, once James has admitted the truth to himself, what does he do with it? This is shown in the various endings of the game. Again, the “In Water” and “Leave” endings show us Mary’s full letter. The emotions surrounding that letter change depending on which ending you get. I got the “In Water” ending, which means that James has chosen suicide. He drives his car into the lake and we watch bubbles drift lazily up to the surface as the letter is read. I have to say, this is easily the saddest moment I have ever experienced in a video game and one of the saddest moments I’ve experienced in any medium. I think the fact that I had just spent hours navigating James through his own hell made the ending so affecting. The immersive quality of playing a video game can open up a person’s emotion in ways that other media can’t.

What’s so sad, and so fitting, about the “In Water” ending is that it shows that James is unable to escape his guilt. He might be able to admit to himself what he’s done, but he can’t forgive himself for it. The act of killing his wife killed him also. That alone is moving, yet that coupled with Mary’s letter is even worse. Because Mary forgives him. She lets him go. Obviously, when she is writing the letter she doesn’t know what James is about to do, but she knows how her illness has affected him: “But I’m afraid James. I’m afraid you don’t really want me to come home. Whenever you come see me, I can tell how hard it is on you… I don’t know if you hate me or pity me… Or maybe I just disgust you… I’m sorry about that.” Then she says: “That’s why I understand if you do hate me.” So she sees James’s darkest feelings and she forgives James for feeling them. “These last few years since I became ill…I’m so sorry for what I did to you, did to us… You’ve given me so much and I haven’t been able to return a single thing. That’s why I want you to live for yourself now. Do what’s best for you, James.” Mary sets James free. But James can’t set himself free. The best thing that James can think of to do is to kill himself. He can’t move on, even though Mary tells him to. And so we have two people who love each other deeply, but who are victims of cruel circumstance. Yet you can see their love in James’s misguided quest and in Mary’s final words. There are no villains here, just two lovers, one of whom is unable to deal with the cruelty of fate and his own tortured emotions. As the last of the bubbles fade, Mary says: “James… you made me happy.”

And my heart is crushed.

March 10, 2010

the Zebra G pen and How to Pen & Ink

I tried out the Nikko G pen nib awhile ago, but found it to be a little too stiff and broad for my tastes. People commented there and on my previous nibs post that the best G pen nib was the Zebra G pen. Thanks to Joshua Dodge mentioning that Zebra G nibs were often sold under the title IC Comic, I was able to order some through Akadot Retail.

The Zebra G is much nicer than the Nikko G. For one, it produces a much finer line. It is also capable of producing bigger swells. So it has a greater range overall. This coupled with the fact that it’s a very strong nib makes me see why it’s the nib of choice for many manga artists (the fact that they can buy it locally in Japan helps, too). The solidness of the nib, besides meaning it holds up for longer, means it’s a bit stiff. That stiffness means though that you can produce very consistent lines. Some artists love that level of control. So this nib is the opposite of the Hunt 100, which is incredibly responsive, giving the lines character while sacrificing consistency.

While the Zebra G nib is really nice and I want to spend more time playing around with it, I still prefer the Brause 511. This is all a matter of personal taste of course, but when I switch back from the Zebra G to the Brause 511 I immediately notice how much smoother the 511 is to draw with. It glides along the paper with hardly a sound. I just love the feel of that.

In my order of the Zebra G nibs, I also got How to Pen & Ink: the Manga Start-Up Guide. Now, I usually avoid manga how-to books. They tend to be about aping a drawing style that I have no interest in. How to Pen & Ink is different; while it does push for a “professional” manga style, the book is about technique, how to handle a pen. However, the book is strangely laid out. The design of it is too busy for my tastes. But once you get past that, it has a lot of good and very practical advice.

For instance, the second part of the book, entitled “Step 1: I Want to Draw Manga!”, emphasizes keeping a sketch book and thinking with drawings. The fact that this whole chapter is drawn in a simple line style makes the creation of comics seem less intimidating. The third section, or “Step 2″, is one of the most useful parts of the book and is what sets it apart from most pen and ink books. This section is organized around questions and answers and the questions are ones that many of us have had, especially when we were first starting out, like “what ink should I use?” and “how do I vary the faces of my characters?” This section even discusses burning nibs, which I brought up in an earlier post (the book says it’s a matter of preference).

The fourth part of the book, or “Step 3,” is the section about how to handle a pen. There is a lot of practical advice here and it’s broken down into a four week course, so the reader can try out one thing a day. While the advice in this section is nothing new–one can get similar instruction from older books, such as Guptill’s Rendering in Pen and Ink–the writing style and pictures are probably more accessible to aspiring artists, especially fans of manga.

So this is a great book. Keep in mind, that these tips and lessons are not set in stone. A pen and ink artist does not have to cross hatch like a machine, as this book implies. A true artist should take the tips here as suggestions and things to try out. While more practical than How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, this book teaches a certain style like that book does. So keep in mind that it doesn’t teach the way to do things, but a way to do things. If you want a book that’s more about how to be creative with pen and ink, I strongly suggest The Pen & Ink Book by Jos. A. Smith.

And I just wanted to mention quickly that the first section of How To Pen & Ink showcases three manga artists. You get to see pictures of these artists drawing- though just their hands. What struck me is how they all hold their pens really low. One of them, Nightow Yasuhiro, even seems to have one of his fingers on the nib while he draws. Doesn’t his hand cramp up?

Vom Marlowe reviews the book here with some sample pages.

January 28, 2010

Town of Evening Calm, Country of Habitual Denial

Over at The Hooded Utilitarian, Ng Suat Tong has a review of Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (which I reviewed before). He has a very particular take on the book, situating it into a larger context of books about Hiroshima in Japan. His main thesis is that Kouno’s graphic novel fits a self-pitying pattern in Japanese depictions of Hiroshima, a pattern that completely ignores Japanese culpability. I haven’t read all the same books Tong has, so I have trouble getting as hot under the collar as he does. Still, I have seen how the Japanese, at least the Japanese government, has time and again denied its own role in some of the atrocities of that war. For instance, Japan has denied or distorted its alleged role in the Rape of Nanking. Likewise, Japan has also denied its alleged treatment of Koreans, especially Korean “comfort women.” On a personal note, I once had an older student who had grown up in Japan who exhibited the same mentality. In the class he was in, we read Native Speaker which briefly mentions the Japanese mistreatment of Koreans during World War Two. This student, though he had left Japan years ago and in fact was unhappy with the Japanese government, wrote an entire essay about how I was a brainwashed American promoting lies about the Japanese because I had students read this novel. So it’s interesting to me to see this denial as a larger cultural mindset and seeing Kouno as being part of it.

Still, I like her book. Jog’s response (number 15) to Tong’s review matches my own sentiments and he words his thoughts much more respectfully than I could. Still, this brings up two other ideas for me.

One is if the U.S. has a similar whitewashed view of World War Two. Many people in the U.S. view it as “the last moral war,” ignoring the oxymoronic nature of the comment. Yes, the U.S. didn’t “start the war,” but I don’t think that somehow exonerates all U.S. actions. Hiroshima is a big point of national guilt, though I think many people think it was necessary. Yet I also think many people admit the horror of Hiroshima as a way of ignoring other potential atrocities. I for one was unaware of the constant fire bombing of Japan by U.S. forces until I saw the documentary The Fog of War (which I highly recommend). And movies like A Thin Red Line only hint at some of the vicious behavior of American soldiers in the South Pacific. I haven’t thought this through very much, but I generally think most countries deny their personal responsibility for the suffering that happens in the world. Perhaps Japan is an especially extreme case. But I’m sure Japan is not the country that would spring to mind of you asked most people in the world which country is the most guilty of denying the negative effects of its military.

The other thought this review brought to my attention was an old one in literary study and that is how one views an author whose work suffers from the prejudices of the time. Think of the anti-Semitism in Shakespeare or the racism in Heart of Darkness. I know of teachers who will not teach Conrad’s novella and Chinua Achebe has a famous essay stating that it needs to be erased from the English canon. I see this and understand it and yet I can’t deny the artistry of Conrad’s work. Is it possible to note its racism and its promulgation of the association between blackness and evil and still be able to admire how it is written? I like to think so. Yet I can see how others can’t. And this poses a tough question for the study of literature. Ideas change. Politics shift. We can’t deny our own political views, but we also can’t expect authors from other times and cultures to see what we see. And yet I think it is important to see how artists unknowingly or intentionally promote a political point of view and, in some cases, how an artist is used to justify that political point of view. The British Empire taught Shakespeare wherever it went. Yet we can still see the beauty in Shakespeare’s language. I think to link art to politics and not see beyond that is to kill the complexity of art. And it denies the humanity of the Humanities.

December 23, 2009

end of the year scanlation recommendations

I’ve recommended scanlations before. To me, some of the best manga I’ve read have been scanlations. In the ideal situation, a scanlation gets popular and that popularity convinces a publisher to print the book in the U.S. This just happened with Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea. It’s wonderful to be able to see Igarashi’s art in print. Anyway, here are a few of the better scanlations I’ve been reading recently.

Hanashippanashi by Daisuke Igarashi. Igarashi can draw anything. The bottom of the sea. A city reflected in the frozen sky. The world beneath a crosswalk. Hanashippanashi is a collection of short stories, though calling them “stories” is not entirely accurate. They are not narratives as much as they are small observations and mood pieces. Some of them are impenetrably odd, but others convey subtle emotional weight. And, again, the art is amazing. It’s rough and almost cartoony in the way he handles figures, but then it’s also very realistic. In Children of the Sea, the backgrounds are so realistic it’s like Igarashi traces photographs. It started to annoy me actually. Maybe it’s reading the stories on my computer, but the backgrounds in Hanashippanashi seem rougher. They are realistic, but less perfect in terms of perspective (I keep restraining myself from ranting about the overly realistic backgrounds employed in many manga). Anyway, Kotonoha has the scanlations.

Baka and Gogh by Shinkichi Kato. Mangascreener has had this one for awhile and I actually avoided it, because “baka” translates as idiots and I assumed the story was going to be a Dumb and Dumber type of comedy. I’ve seen manga like this, with main characters with snot coming out of their noses doing crude things. There’s only so much of that I can enjoy. I also didn’t really get into Kato’s other book, National Quiz. It was too over-the-top and the game show reminded me a lot of the one in Time Bandits. Well, Baka and Gogh is completely different. It’s actually a very sweet story about artists trying to pursue their dreams. In some ways, this book covers similar thematic ground as much of Inio Aasano’s work, such as Solanin. Yet Kato doesn’t have the same darkness and whininess. In their place, Kato has wild imagination. Gogh, one of the characters in the story, is a clothing designer and her designs are loud mixtures of different styles. Also, Kato’s art is much different that Asano’s. While Asano has very clear, thin lines and the photorealistic backgrounds (even putting actual photos of clouds into the skies above his drawn cityscapes) of most professional manga, Kato’s drawing looks, well, drawn. Lines are thick and thin. Backgrounds go from being detailed to being sketchy to being absent. If you’ve never seen Kato’s art, you should check it out. It’s very different than the stereotypical manga drawing. Personally, I really enjoy it. And the first volume ends with the main characters camping out at a club for transsexuals. You can read a description of the book here. Managscreener has the torrents of the first volume, but they’re a little difficult to find. They’re not on the project page. Yet if you go into the Managscreener blog and search through the entries, you can find links to the torrents. Start here at the bottom of the page and go backwards in time.

Memories of Emanon by Kenji Tsuruta. Kotonoha just released the first half of this and will be releasing the second half next week. This is a manga adaptation of the novel by Shinji Kajio. It’s about a young man who meets a young woman on a ferry in Japan. The woman claims she has memories going back to the beginning of life on Earth. The guy believes her, but then the woman says she was just joking. When the scanlation stops, we don’t know what the truth is. Personally, I hope we never do. Having been on a ferry in Japan myself, the manga brings back memories. And the story has a slow pace that perfectly captures what it feels like to travel on one’s own. The real amazing thing here though is Tsuruta’s art. You may have seen his work on Spirit of Wonder. His drawing is even more breathtaking here. The world Tsuruta creates is amazingly three-dimensional, but without being stiff. I’m sure he relies on photo-reference, but he doesn’t fall into the traps that most artists who rely heavily on photos do. Check it out.

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