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terramythos · 4 years ago

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TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 22 of 26

Title: House of Leaves (2000)

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Genre/Tags: Horror, Fiction, Metafiction, Weird, First-Person, Third-Person, Unreliable Narrator

Rating: 6/10

Date Began: 7/28/2020

Date Finished: 8/09/2020

House of Leaves follows two narrative threads. One is the story of Johnny Truant, a burnout in his mid-twenties who finds a giant manuscript written by a deceased, blind hermit named Zampanò. The second is said manuscript -- The Navidson Record -- a pseudo-academic analysis of a found-footage horror film that doesn’t seem to exist. In it, Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson moves into a suburban home in Virginia with his partner Karen and their two children. Navidson soon makes the uncomfortable discovery that his new house is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Over time he discovers more oddities -- a closet that wasn’t there before, and eventually a door that leads into an impossibly vast, dark series of rooms and hallways.

While Johnny grows more obsessed with the work, his life begins to take a turn for the worse, as told in the footnotes of The Navidson Record. At the same time, the mysteries of the impossible, sinister house on Ash Tree Lane continue to deepen.

To get a better idea try this: focus on these words, and whatever you do don’t let your eyes wander past the perimeter of this page. Now imagine just beyond your peripheral vision, maybe behind you, maybe to the side of you, maybe even in front of you, but right where you can’t see it, something is quietly closing in on you, so quiet in fact you can only hear it as silence. Find those pockets without sound. That’s where it is. Right at this moment. But don’t look. Keep your eyes here. Now take a deep breath. Go ahead and take an even deeper one. Only this time as you start to exhale try to imagine how fast it will happen, how hard it’s gonna hit you, how many times it will stab your jugular with its teeth or are they nails? don’t worry, that particular detail doesn’t matter, because before you have time to even process that you should be moving, you should be running, you should at the very least be flinging up your arms--you sure as hell should be getting rid of this book-- you won’t have time to even scream.

Don’t look.

I didn’t.

Of course I looked.

Some story spoilers under the cut.

Whoo boy do I feel torn on this one. House of Leaves contains some really intriguing ideas, and when it’s done right, it’s some of the best stuff out there. Unfortunately, there are also several questionable choices and narrative decisions that, for me, tarnish the overall experience. It’s certainly an interesting read, even if the whole is ultimately less than the sum of its parts.

First of all, I can see why people don’t like this book, or give up on it early (for me this was attempt number three). Despite an interesting concept and framing device, the first third or so of the book is pretty boring. Johnny is just not an interesting character. He does a lot of drugs and has a lot of (pretty unpleasant) sex and... that’s pretty much it, at least at the beginning. There’s occasional horror sections that are more interesting, where Johnny’s convinced he’s being hunted by something, but they’re few and far between. Meanwhile, the story in The Navidson Record seems content to focus on the relationship issues between two affluent suburbanites rather than the much more interesting, physically impossible house they live in. The early “exploration” sections are a little bit better, but overall I feel the opening act neglects the interesting premise.

However, unlike many, I love the gimmick. The academic presentation of the Navidson story is replete with extensive (fake) footnotes,and there’s tons of self-indulgent rambling in both stories. I personally find it hilarious; it’s an intentionally dense parody of modern academic writing. Readers will note early that the typographical format is nonstandard, with the multiple concurrent stories denoted by different typefaces, certain words in color, footnotes within footnotes, etc. House of Leaves eventually goes off the chain with this concept, gracing us with pages that look like (minor spoilers) this or this. This leads into the best part of this book, namely...

Its visual presentation! House of Leaves excels in conveying story and feeling through formatting decisions. The first picture I linked is one of many like it in a chapter about labyrinths. And reading it feels like navigating a labyrinth! It features a key “story”, but also daunting, multi-page lists of irrelevant names, buildings, architectural terms, etc. There are footnotes that don’t exist, then footnote citations that don’t seem to exist until one finds them later in the chapter. All this while physically turning the book or even grabbing a mirror to read certain passages. In short, it feels like navigating the twists, turns, and dead ends of a labyrinth. And that’s just one example -- other chapters utilize placement of the text to show where a character is in relation to others, what kind of things are happening around them, and so on. One chapter near the end features a square of text that gets progressively smaller as one turns the pages, which mirrors the claustrophobic feel of the narrative events. This is the coolest shit to me; I adore when a work utilizes its format to convey certain story elements. I usually see this in poetry and video games, but this is the first time I’ve seen it done so well in long-form fiction. City of Saints and Madmen and Shriek: An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer, both of which I reviewed earlier this year, do something similar, and are clearly inspired by House of Leaves in more ways than one.

And yes, the story does get a little better, though it never wows me. The central horror story is not overtly scary, but eeriness suffices, and I have a soft spot for architectural horror. Even Johnny and the Navidsons become more interesting characters over time. For example, I find Karen pretty annoying and generic for most of the book, but her development in later chapters makes her much more interesting. While I question the practical need for Johnny’s frame story, it does become more engaging as he descends into paranoia and madness.

So why the relatively low rating? Well... as I alluded to earlier, there’s some questionable stuff in House of Leaves that leaves (...hah?) a bad taste in my mouth. The first is a heavy focus on sexual violence against women. I did some extensive thinking on this throughout my read, but I just cannot find a valid reason for it. The subject feels thrown in for pure shock value, and especially from a male author, it seems tacky and voyeuristic. If it came up once or twice I’d probably be able to stomach this more easily, but it’s persistent throughout the story, and doesn’t contribute anything to the plot or horror (not that that would really make it better). I’m not saying books can’t have that content, but it’s just not explored in any meaningful way, and it feels cheap and shitty to throw it in something that traumatizing just to shock the audience. It’s like a bad jump scare but worse on every level. There’s even a part near the end written in code, which I took the time to decode, only to discover it’s yet another example of this. Like, really, dude?

Second, this book’s portrayal of mental illness is not great. (major spoilers for Johnny’s arc.) One of the main things about Johnny’s story is he’s an unreliable narrator. From the outset, Johnny has occasional passages that can either be interpreted as genuine horror, or delusional breaks from reality. Reality vs unreality is a core theme throughout both stories. Is The Navidson Record real despite all evidence to the contrary? Is it real as in “is the film an actual thing” or “the events of the film are an actual thing”? and so on and so forth. Johnny’s sections mirror this; he’ll describe certain events, then later state they didn’t happen, contradict himself, or even describe a traumatic event through a made-up story. Eventually, the reader figures out parts of Johnny’s actual backstory, namely that when he was a small child, his mother was institutionalized for violent schizophrenia. Perhaps you can see where this is going...

Schizophrenia-as-horror is ridiculously overdone. But it also demonizes mental illness, and schizophrenia in particular, in a way that is actively harmful. Don’t misunderstand me, horror can be a great way to explore mental illness, but when it’s done wrong? Woof. Unfortunately House of Leaves doesn’t do it justice. While it avoids some cliches, it equates the horror elements of Johnny’s story to the emergence of his latent schizophrenia. This isn’t outwardly stated, and there are multiple interpretations of most of the story, but in lieu of solid and provable horror, it’s the most reasonable and consistent explanation. There’s also an emphasis on violent outbursts related to schizophrenia, which just isn’t an accurate portrayal of the condition.

To Danielewski’s credit, it’s not entirely black and white. We do see how Johnny’s descent into paranoia negatively affects his life and interpersonal relationships. There’s a bonus section where we see all the letters Johnny’s mother wrote him while in the mental hospital, and we can see her love and compassion for him in parallel to the mental illness. But the experimental typographical style returns here to depict just how “scary” schizophrenia is, and that comes off as tacky to me. I think this is probably an example of a piece of media not aging well (after all, this book just turned 20), and there’s been a definite move away from this kind of thing in horror, but that doesn’t change the impression it leaves. For a book as supposedly original/groundbreaking as this, defaulting to standard bad horror tropes is disappointing. And using “it was schizophrenia all along” to explain the horror elements in Johnny’s story feels like a cop-out. I wish there was more mystery here, or alternate interpretations that actually make sense.

Overall The Navidson Record part of the story feels more satisfying. I actually like that there isn’t a direct explanation for everything that happens. It feels like a more genuine horror story, regardless of whether you interpret it as a work of fiction within the story or not. There’s evidence for both. Part of me wishes the book had ended when this story ends (it doesn’t), or that the framing device with Johnny was absent, or something along those lines. Oh well-- this is the story we got, for better or worse.

I don’t regret reading House of Leaves, and it’s certainly impressive for a debut novel. If you’re looking for a horror-flavored work of metafiction, it’s a valid place to start. I think the experimental style is a genuine treat to read, and perhaps the negative aspects won’t hit you as hard as they did to me. But I can definitely see why this book is controversial.

#taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #6/10

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josephvirgin495-blog · 5 years ago

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Is Pop Music Dangerous For Your Health?

Music actually began to separate into totally different classes through the Fashionable period (1910-2000). However Nashville hasn't all the time been welcoming toward pop and digital music. In the early 2000s, now-defunct document sellers Cat's Music made a killing off Drum Machines Have No Soul" bumper stickers, a rallying cry for Volvo-driving rockists across the Midstate. In 2008, when a very rowdy Woman Talk show at Cannery Ballroom ended with a busted stage and flooded workplaces under, the venue's house owners stepped away from booking non-rock gigs. We are a rock 'n' roll venue, and we're going to play rock 'n' roll reveals from right here on out," Todd Ohlhauser informed the since-folded local leisure weekly All the Rage at the time. In standard music principle right now, the prevailing query is, What is the ‘tonality' of standard music?" Tonality, capitol T, is a really particular phrase in music idea, applying only to a selected use of specific chords (specifically, that the V is the chord that factors back to tonic). But well-liked music would not at all times do that. And yet, the chord progressions should not the chaos of avant-garde or 20th century music - so if they are organized in some style, what is it? What rules govern standard music chord progressions? These kinds of statistics - perhaps on a yet grander scale - might begin to plumb the depths of those questions. It's tempting to confuse pop music with in style music. The New Grove Dictionary Of Music and Musicians, the musicologist's ultimate reference resource, identifies popular music as the music since industrialization in the 1800's that's most consistent with the tastes and pursuits of the city center class. This would include an extremely big selection of music from vaudeville and minstrel reveals to heavy steel. Pop music, on the other hand, has primarily come into utilization to describe music that advanced out of the rock 'n roll revolution of the mid-1950's and continues in a definable path to today. To check these ideas, we estimated four yearly measures of range ( determine four ). We found that although all four evolve, two—matter range and disparity—present the most hanging changes, each declining to a minimum round 1986, but then rebounding and increasing to a maximum in the early 2000s. Because neither of those measures monitor tune number, their dynamics can't be as a result of varying numbers of songs within the Hot one hundred; nor, because our sampling over 50 years is almost complete, can they be because of the over-representation of latest songs—the so-called pull of the current 34 As an alternative, their dynamics are resulting from changes within the frequencies of musical styles. To measure the typical sales numbers of music types we use a dataset that incorporates data on the Amazon SalesRank of music albums as of 2006 27 The Amazon SalesRank can be regarded as a ranking of all information by the time-span since an merchandise last offered 28 Albums in the Discogs dataset are assigned their Amazon SalesRank by matching album titles between the two datasets. Because the Amazon SalesRank dataset solely incorporates information on album titles, it was matched to entries within the Discogs dataset by selecting solely albums whose title appears only as soon as in each datasets.

In spite of everything, genuine causes for disgrace are riddled by way of pop historical past: American standard tradition has its deepest roots in slavery, the blackface minstrel show, ethnic vaudeville comedy, brothels and burlesque, non secular revival movements, rural poverty, urban segregation, mob-run clubs and labels, wheeler-seller rip-offs and plenty of different not-so-fairly chapters. Cultural theft, pandering, shock and other crass strikes are bound up with pop innovation and creativity. Be essential, however do not get on excessive horses, because only a few of our creative heroes may be disentangled from these dubious, generally tragic associations. Just a few weeks ago, Ted Gioia wrote a bit for The Each day Beast taking modern music criticism to job, specializing in his commentary that people who would have once written about a musician's sound and approach are actually targeted on the star's way of life and fame. Then, this past weekend, the New York Instances Journal featured an essay by Saul Austerlitz about poptimism, " deriding the trend of music critics agreeing too readily with the taste of thirteen-year-olds." In their own ways, both essays make the point that at the moment's pop is getting a cross. In that narrative, there existed a great-previous-days time when critics have been unswayed by the lure of pop. Immediately, they argue, quite a lot of elements — maybe a need to reclaim the concept of a mass tradition despite the fracturing influence of the Web; possibly the economics of getting the maximum variety of clicks on an article — have conspired to let pop off that hook. Not solely did 80s pop music outline who we were, but the music held the anthems of our day by day lives. We woke up to Manic Mondays" with the Bangles just to seek out ourselves hangin tough" with the New Youngsters On The Block by the point Wednesday or Thursday rolled around. By the top of the week, it was Friday, I'm in Love." When the weekend got here, Kylie had us doing the Locomotive" and Debbie Gibson taught us that youth was electrical. One of the best ways to revisit all click the next page good pop music of the 80s is to re-watch the music movies of your favourite songs. In spite of everything, MTV was a product of the early 80s - what better solution to enjoy the fashions, dance moves and musical stylings of the last decade's music? We have a giant assortment of our favorite 80s music in our video section: watch 80s music movies right here. If pop's sound is changing into blasé and in need of disruption, so is its subject material. Almost without fail, the songs that ruled 2017 ignored the 12 months's dominant social and political themes in favor of zoned-out lifestyle music. Pop has all the time served an escapist function, but it has additionally been one of many simpler supply strategies for significant content material. So at a time of utmost national turmoil, it was surprising not to hear a single protest music amongst 2017's biggest hits (although bless her coronary heart, at the least Katy Perry tried). Nor have been there any big singles addressing gun violence or the opioid disaster, unless you rely Put up Malone glamorizing drive-by shootings and popping pillies." Though pop stars aligned for numerous charity concerts in response to terrorism, hurricanes, and deadly racist demonstrations, the music itself principally sidestepped weighty matters. By the late Seventies, most major U.S. cities had thriving disco membership scenes, and DJs would combine dance information at golf equipment resembling Studio 54 in New York Metropolis, a venue well-liked amongst celebrities Discothèque-goers usually wore expensive, extravagant and sexy fashions. There was additionally a thriving drug subculture in the disco scene, particularly for medicine that will improve the expertise of dancing to the loud music and the flashing lights, akin to cocaine and Quaaludes , murielproby44.wikidot.com the latter being so frequent in disco subculture that they had been nicknamed "disco biscuits". Disco clubs have been additionally associated with promiscuity as a reflection of the sexual revolution of this period in well-liked historical past.

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jamiehueblog · 4 years ago

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Web design trends to watch out for in 2020

If you used Facebook or pretty much most other social media a decade or half a decade ago, you remember how flat and boring their designs were. Websites were made with more practicality and efficiency in mind, as opposed to a blend of aesthetical and smart design. And if we looked at them again, chances are, they won’t be particularly pleasant to look at.

Unless you’re new to the industry of web design, you want to get all the updates on the latest and greatest design, so that your work matches the modern standards we’ve all come to expect. Sure, not everything is about following trends, but when we’re talking about aesthetics, it’s easy to get lost in the large variety of styles that people use for their websites.

So, we decided to highlight a few web designs we think are going to be big this year, so you have some idea of what you’ll be working with, or perhaps are working with right now.

1. A Little Darkness Never Hurt

We’ve reached a point of technological convenience, where you can use your electronics pretty much anywhere, one of the most famous places to use it on the bed, especially at night.

You’re sitting there in the darkness staring at the screen and the last thing you want is to be blinded by all these bright vibrant colors that make your retinas melt in their sockets. Which is why so many social media websites as well as tons of browsers allow you to turn on “Dark Mode”.

This is as practical as it is stylish, but there are many people out there who choose to have Dark Mode on all the time, even when there’s light around. It’s just so much more soothing to the eyes and less piercing. Sure, you could just turn down the brightness, but this may just make things hard to see.

Tip: Dark mode works best with minimalistic design since the entire point of it is to make it easier for your eyes to see the screen. By using minimalist design, you’re also making it simple for your eyes to track different areas of the page, making it even more pleasant to navigate.

2. Keeping Things Simple

An old design turned on its head with some zany colors that pop out, minimalist design has made a giant comeback in recent years and has won over many web pages with its simplistic practicality. This is where they say “less is more”.

Minimalism can mean many things in design, from a simpler font, to overall structure of the web page. Also, avoid being too wordy, as most individuals need very quick and immediate information, as opposed to paragraphs of text. Also, utilizing images and descriptions as a minimalist form of labeling can make your web page more accessible to people who don’t speak the language.

The minimalist design is not only pleasant to the eyes and considered to be stylish, but it also exists to improve users’ attention span and allow them to take in more of the web page without getting tired. Many people lose focus when there’s too much movement on the screen, so a minimalist design allows for better visual flow through each individual page.

Tip: Minimalism is a great style to use for web pages designed to give quick bursts of information, like a Q&A or FAQ page.

3. Keeping Things Even More Simple

Nothing beats the simple bliss of a basic, yet effective black and white style. This is a classic and it’s very hard to get it wrong, since it’s pretty much everywhere; in most books you read, this Word document I’m writing in, most documents in fact.

Tip: Use several shades of grey with the black and white to give the overall design more depth.

4. Vibrant Colors, Vibrant Life

We love that glow. We love that shine. Combine it together and you get these beautiful, strong colors, which take the overall aesthetic to a whole new level.

One of the best parts of this style, is that it looks futuristic and almost cyberpunk, with a lot of great designs which resemble a high-tech atmosphere and environment.

Tip: Neon colors are very vibrant, but sometimes too vibrant. Combine them with more somber colors, so they don’t get too tiring.

5. Getting Back to the Roots

When we talk about design, we talk about its roots in the craft of hand-drawn designs and illustrations. You can take the concept of style and design back to its roots with hand-drawn elements.

They may be a little cartoonish and look sloppy (on purpose, of course) but for many people, this is a very organic style, as it fits perfectly with their project. It brings more humanity and a little bit of personality to web pages. Sure: saying something is full of “soul” is a bit kitsch nowadays, you can’t look at hand-drawn design without giving yourself a little smirk.

Tip: Make sure you don’t force this style on people. Oftentimes, it can be quite distracting to see hand-drawn designs in every single corner of your website and could possibly be tiring for the eyes to take it all in. Be a little more conservative with this style.

6. Clean and to the Point

Some things need to be direct and to the point. This is exactly why so many web pages use Bold typography. A good UX design needs to communicate its message as clearly as possible. Hence why this design exists. Some people don’t need complicated designs and patterns. They need something formal, to the point and direct.

And nothing says this more than a simple bold typographic style that gets right down to business. You may find it boring, but then that means it’s not a web page meant for you.

Tip: Large letters and big blocks are easy to work with when it comes to building a website for the desktop, but it may cause problems on smaller screens, like phones and tablets. Be careful with how you design it so it’s easy to translate onto a mobile browser.

7. A Whole New Dimension

3D web designs have taken a backseat to flatter and more plain minimalism, but by no means is 3D obsolete. When used in the right areas, 3D elements can create a more dynamic UX. 3D allows for greater detail in designs, is super engaging and can catch a user’s gaze for longer.

This mostly comes from the depth of the shapes and patterns that catches the interest of the user, as they are interested in experiencing your website from different angles and perspectives.

Tip: 3D overload can cause longer load times on your website. Make sure that the webpages are optimized enough to handle such a high load.

8. Key is in the Detail

Speaking of depth, you can have a 3D experience on your website without the heavy load of actual 3D design, by cleverly using shadows, layers, and other floating elements to give users the illusion of 3D.

Despite the fact that this kind of style is clearly not 3D and only a façade, users will still appreciate the attention to detail, the light playfulness, as well as the practicality that comes with this style.

Tip: Shaders, layers and floating objects can be hard to work with, since wrong placements can cause your web design to look more noobie than old-school. You’ll need to play around with different kinds of shadows and layers before making the final design.

9. Some Satisfying Motion

You can keep things to a minimal, or you can go nuts with your animations. While many web designers are deciding to let animations take a back seat to practicality and better web page load times, animation is still one a favorite tool for many UX developers and is a very versatile tool.

Let’s be honest: we all love to play around with the different animations on the web page and see the little details the developers hid around.

Long story short: we find happiness in the little places, and when they move around, then we’re even more happy.

Tip: Much like 3D, fully animated web pages can also be very performance intensive. Be careful that you don’t overcrowd your page with animations and then find that it takes several minutes for them to load.

10. Old School Turned New School

Gradients are super old fashioned, but also really heartwarming. If you’ve ever had the opportunity to use the late 90s to early 2000s internet, you remember how wholesome it was to see all those out of place gradients and weird color placement.

You can take that style, modernize it, and make it sleek and smart. Gradients are still a great tool in design, so don’t be afraid of them. They’re a great way to add more color and style to your pages.

Tip: Do not use them randomly. Consider very carefully how you use them, so that they don’t look out of place or cluttered.

11. Videos Make Things Easier

Sure a decade or two ago, putting videos on your website could’ve completely destroyed your websites’ performance, as they are so demanding. But nowadays, everyone has some very powerful devices, capable of opening web page videos very quickly and without any hiccups.

There is basically no reason not to use videos in your design unless you are specifically instructed not to, as they’re a great way to communicate information without lengthy paragraphs that very few visitors will bother to read.

Imagine if instead of all these written descriptions there were videos that narrated and demonstrated all these design tips… You know, that’s not a bad idea at all.

Tip: Videos can still be somewhat demanding, so be careful with their amount, length and quality. You still have a lot of room to work with, but don’t overdo it.

To sum up

2020 is a year of big design diversity. Not only are some old-school designs and styles making some pretty big comebacks, but recently developed ones are also holding their own in recent trends. This means picking one out of the lot won’t mean regretting it after a couple years, when that particular design goes out of style.

If you’re a UX developer, just think about these following design ideas and see which ones best fit your project:

Dark mode A Little Darkness Never Hurt

Minimalism Keeping Thing Simple

Black & white Keeping Things Even More Simple

Luminous color schemes Vibrant Colors, Vibrant Life

Hand-drawn elements Getting Back to the Roots

Bold typography Clean and to the Point

3D elements A Whole New Dimension

Shadows, layers, and floating elements Key is in the Detail

User-triggered animation Some Satisfying Motion

Multi-colored gradients Old School Turned New School

Videos or text-only heroes Videos Make Things Easier

It’s looking like a promising year, so keep your eyes open to catch any new style or design that crosses your path. You never know where good ideas come from, so always remember to look all around you.

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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‘Quarterback Princess’ is the best sports movie about a girl playing football

Tami Maida (played by Helen Hunt) faces off with a cheerleader in Quarterback Princess. | Quarterback Princess/20th Century Fox

It’s the best cinematic representation of what it’s like for a girl to play football.

She walks onto the field for football tryouts in a pink shirt, in case you somehow missed that she is a girl. After patiently waiting for the boys to go first, she finally lines up to take a snap — and throws a tight spiral straight to the receiver.

“Hey little girl, where’d you learn to throw the ball like that?” one of the boys asks.

“My mom,” she replies.

It’s one of a few pitch-perfect lines in Quarterback Princess, the 1983 made-for-TV movie based on the true story of Tami Maida, a 14-year-old girl who made national headlines in 1981 for playing quarterback in a tiny Oregon town. The movie is the first in what’s become a somewhat fruitful subgenre: the only girl on the football team. And, nearly 30 years later, it remains the best of its kind, showing the hurdles many girls still face today when they want to suit up as evenly as it does the triumphs they experience when they do.

Quarterback Princess/20th Century Fox

A shot of (probably) the real Maida as Helen Hunt’s stunt double in Quarterback Princess.

The movie began as an irresistible story, one producers clamored for rights to as it happened: teenage girl goes 7-1 at QB on an otherwise all-boys team and wins homecoming princess. Maida would eventually appear on Good Morning America, NFL Today and in the pages of National Geographic, but oppressive media attention began as soon as she shared her intention to try out for the team in Philomath, Oregon. “If anybody pushes me around, I’ll drop ‘em,” she told papers at the time.

She wasn’t the first or last girl to play high school football, but her story drew disproportionate interest that was only amplified by the movie, which was released while she was still in high school. “I got a lot of mail over that year: fan mail, hate mail, scary mail,” says Tami Maida O’Meara, 53. Today, she’s a counselor at Selkirk College in British Columbia. “People viewed me as abnormal. Someone sent a picture of me saying I was an abnormal Amazon, and that there was something wrong with my head. Remember, I was 14 at the time. I was just like, ‘What the heck?’”

A 1981 clip about Maida from the Sun.

“What the heck?”, as it happens, is still most people’s reaction to seeing girls and women play football, if the way they’re covered — primarily as novelties — is any indication.

Yet popular culture isn’t entirely to blame for this disconnect. Gridiron-obsessed women and girls have featured prominently in some of football’s most iconic movies, notably via Little Giants’ Icebox who also embodied the only girl on the team cliché. Sports movie parodies of middling (1991’s Necessary Roughness) and terrible (2007’s The Comebacks) caliber have co-opted the soccer-player-turned-placekicker trajectory as a way to get both eye candy and, unfortunately, an easy visual gag on-screen. Representation is as representation does.

Odder, yet more compelling, examples come via kids’ TV. Bella and the Bulldogs, a sitcom that ran for two seasons on Nickelodeon in the mid-aughts, tells the story of a cheerleader who winds up as the quarterback of her middle school football team. The titular Bella faces a new, predictable battle-of-the-sexes quandary with each episode, but the show doesn’t force her to choose between playing football and being traditionally effeminate. That in itself is something of a victory for nuance, given how many sports movies and shows insist that only tomboys take the field.

Lindsay Lohan also took a crack at the girl QB role in the profoundly strange Disney TV movie Life-Size (2000). Lohan’s character, like most sports-playing girls and women of cinema, is the daughter of a single father; in this case, she wants nothing more than to bring her mom back to life. So she steals a magic book to, um, reanimate her dead mother, but accidentally brings to life a Barbie-esque doll (which of course she hates, because she likes sports) instead.

Life-Size/Walt Disney Television

Lindsay Lohan as a young quarterback in Life-Size.

Shenanigans ensue, though the preternaturally talented Lohan was still able to wring real emotion out of the movie’s patent absurdity. Similarly surprising is that though some clichés persist — the single father, the hair tumbling down from the helmet — neither sexism nor insufficient girliness is central to the movie’s plot. If anything, the doll character (played by Tyra Banks) becomes less overtly feminine over the course of the movie; Lohan’s Hail Mary, in a refreshing twist, winds up just short of the goalline.

But none of them comes closer to showing the reality of what it’s like to be a girl playing football than Quarterback Princess. Maida’s fight began when she and her family moved to Oregon from Prince George, British Columbia, so her father, a psychologist, could take a sabbatical. She had been playing in Canada with no issue, but when Maida said she wanted to try out for the Pilomath High School team, all hell broke loose.

The way her story is told in the movie is quite close, Maida O’Meara says, to how she was received in real life. From sexist comments to gratuitous late hits to inescapable press attention, the movie shows that girls trying to play football face hurdles on all sides. Nothing comes easily: parents conspire to get her off the team, other girls in school are suspicious of her �� even finding a place to change and retrofitting her football pads to cover her chest are challenges that have to be overcome.

The exception, perhaps surprisingly to viewers, tends to be in the locker room itself. In Quarterback Princess the team accepts Maida (played by Helen Hunt) almost immediately, a part of the movie that was particularly true to life — all the way down to her close friendship with the team’s center, who gives her a few enormously endearing pep talks. “It didn’t matter how hard I was hit, how many times I was hit, the taunts that were tossed at me — I didn’t react to much,” Maida O’Meara says now. “I actually took pride in being able to get smashed and bashed and stand up and say, ‘Let’s go, next play.’ I think that made a big difference in terms of how I was able to connect with my teammates.”

Maida O’Meara, who was just 16 at the time, and her family served as consultants on the film. She was also Hunt’s stunt double: most of the time you see Hunt actually throwing passes or taking snaps, that’s Maida O’Meara. Her close involvement with the production helps account for its verisimilitude — some lines of dialogue even came directly from things she told the writers. But Hunt, she says, didn’t make much of an effort to get to know her, and as a result the character’s affect is somewhat more reserved than her own. “She wanted to play the role the way she wanted to play the role,” Maida O’Meara says.

Quarterback Princess/20th Century Fox

The team holds up Maida (Hunt) after a win in Quarterback Princess.

What Quarterback Princess explores considerably more thoughtfully than most of its equivalents is how wrapped up gender norms are in the decision to play football.

“Everyone acts like I’m from Mars, except the guys on the team,” Maida tells her mother at one point.

“You can have everything — the trouble is, the attitudes just haven’t kept up with the opportunities,” her mother responds, with a sentiment that’s unfortunately evergreen.

“That’s a heavy load to hand someone,” Maida responds, sighing.

Maida’s conversations with her on-screen love interest, Scott (in reality, Maida O’Meara clarifies, they did not wind up together), also show the tug-of-war that sometimes comes along with a decision that, for boys, is straightforward.

“How am I supposed to know what you’re like?” he asks her after a botched first date. “You’re so different from other girls.”

“I’m not, but I sure get treated that way by everybody,” she retorts. “The coach treats me different because I’m not a boy, you treat me different because I play football, they treat me different because they don’t know what I am. Well here’s the news: I’m a girl. Have you got that?”

In another scene with Scott, things get still murkier when he punches an opposing player who comes in with a late hit. “Look: When I’m not playing, I’m a girl, but when I’m playing ... I’m not a male exactly, but I’m not a girl either,” she pleads, insisting he let her stand up for herself.

“It’s kind of confusing, isn’t it,” is all he can muster.

Though Maida seemed to wind up having it all — on-field success and validation of her girlhood as a member of homecoming court — she’s acutely aware of what a tricky line it can still be to walk for young girls. “There’s always sort of two camps,” she says now. “One side that’s quite supportive and thinks, ‘That’s great, girls can play whatever they want,’ and then there’s the other side, which is much smaller in number, but where people don’t have a lot of nice things to say. You still have to have a certain mindset that allows you to take some flack and let it roll off your shoulders.”

Quarterback Princess/20th Century Fox

Maida (Hunt) gets the game ball as she wins homecoming princess in Quarterback Princess.

Maida O’Meara was hired as a motivational speaker for athletes of all stripes while she was still in high school, and says the lessons she learned playing football wound up shaping much of her life. “I continued to do the things that I was interested in doing, regardless of whether they sort of fit with a norm,” she says, alluding to her time as an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces.

She also stayed involved with football, coaching with youth teams and eventually one of her three sons’ high school teams. No girl, though, ever came through her programs. “People would ask about their girls playing, and I’d always be very encouraging and say, ‘Yeah, come out and try,’” she says. “I always hoped that more girls would want to play, and I have no idea if there are more girls that wanted to but still won’t come out.”

Sometimes those parents of girls who have started to play football will come across Maida O’Meara’s story and reach out to her for advice — often, even now, facing adversity remarkably similar to what she went through. “It is still the same language, the same story, the same questions,” she says. “You think we’ve shifted in so many ways, but in some ways and places it’s still, ‘Yeah, the girl.’”

It’s that exceptionalism that stings, that proves unfortunately not enough has changed yet to make Quarterback Princess obsolete. “We hear about more girls playing,” she says. “But that’s the thing: We hear about it. There’s some sensationalism around that.”

“Seeing women commentating or coaching in men’s professional sports, I’m still like, ‘Oh yay!’ and then I’m like, ‘Man, I’m still saying yay’,” she concludes. “But everything takes time. We’re certainly further ahead than we were.”

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golshxd-blog · 5 years ago

Photo

Welcome to the results of this month’s “Loved Ones” challenge. The idea was to send in photographs of things, objects, ideas, places … we love and fear might one day disappear out of our lives. Or about loss and disappearance themselves. Not only that, but photographs made in such a way that the love would shine through the photographs to the readers viewing them, even those who feel nothing about the subject.

Incy Wincy

Once again, this was very difficult. Not only because you were asked to reveal something about yourself, something intimate, but also because it is so hard to convey an emotion to someone else when we are ourselves locked into it and lack the objectivity to think formally.

I love those practical exercises. They are infuriatingly hard but so efficient to push us upwards. Always the educator at heart, right 😉 Kinda strange, coming from someone so bad at being educated himself 😀

Anyway, as always, I am blown away by what some of you have sent in. To me, the ability to convey a variety of emotions while retaining a consistent style is the hallmark of a great photographer and that’s what I’ve been observing in many of your contributions over the months. Some are moving, others are thought provoking. Great work.

Thank you all so much for taking the time to create/find images and sending them in for us to enjoy. Since the photographs on this page are very personal I will refrain from any commentary and simply publish whatever texts authors agreed to link to the images. On with the show.

(as always, I’m stressed out about forgetting someone’s work. Last time it was Kristian and this time, I have the feeling someone sent in just one photo, and can’t find it, and it’s nagging me. Please accept my apologies if your contribution isn’t in here and just drop me a line in the comments so I can correct my mistake …)

Philippe Berend

Philippe writes : “Here are my first pictures. They embody or symbolize, or represent nature. The unbelievable, almost painful, unbearable beauty of it. I worry that, one day, most probably through man’s folly, it will be gone like the dodo bird…

The second theme is Paris. The song says, “Paris sera toujours Paris”. But if Notre-Dame can burn, what is really safe, really there “forever”?

The third theme is: beautiful fast cars. Could it be that, in order to perserve what is left of our planet, we have to give up these extraordinary objects of beauty, desire, thrill and freedom? Could it be that I have been part of the last generation to have ridden a Ferrari at 265kmh on a motorway?

The fourth theme, of course, and it ought to be the first, is my mother, who will in just over a week turn 98, God willing. I love her, and, know for a fact that she won’t be there forever. I hope you will forgive me fo not putting up her picture, which I consider private. Nah, the real reason is, the years are not always kind to faces of loved ones. And she, for sure, would not forgive me, for putting up a picture of her in her old age, when she was once so radiantly beautiful… And the Bard said “hell hath no fury like a woman posted on DS against her will….

Michael Fleischer

Michael writes: “a photo of a place dear to me – the lake close by where I grew up I Denmark – where I spent my youth fishing, swimming, kissing and more…”

Jean Pierre Guaron

Jean Pierre writes “The first was taken with my Pentax, c. 2002 – my second Dobermann, Chloe. I’ve always adored this photo, and in fact it’s my screen saver, in front of me every day. It’s not 100% SOOC, but it hasn’t had much post processing, because in those days I had limited access to post processing software (ONLY PS Elements, in one of its early iterations) and very little knowledge or experience with digital processing. Actually it was scanned onto the computer, from AGFA color negative film and given a bit of a touch up from there. I love the colours, the bokeh, the typical expression on her face – and she was my best friend, except for all the others.

The second was one of many, taken at a time when my friend Kath’s older Dachshund Bella seemed to me to be nearing the end of her life. Without wanting to alarm Kath, I started taking photos of Bella on a regular basis, so that when the inevitable happened, at least she would have some decent photos of her little girl, to remember her by and to ease the pain of losing her.

My present Dobermann, Cris – taken with the D500 and a zoom AF lens (AF is an overwhelming reason for not going with the larger gear, like the D850 and the Otus’s)”

Brian Nicol

Brian Writes: “I have always wanted one of the classic thunderbirds. We lived in California around 2000 for about 5 years. I was driving my wife’s car by myself and say a late fifties red thunderbird convertible approaching in the opposite direction. It was like a scene out of American Graffiti. I did not notice traffic has stopped and I drove into the back of a 70’s Volvo with the giant bumper that wiped out the grill and rad of my wife’s car. I have even more emotion now when I see a pristine thunderbird.”

Pascal Jappy

I suppose starting with the most endangered is probably the most in line with the challenge.

So wildlife it is. I love wildlife and the outdoors. My life is largely indoors, these days, but recent hiking photographs by my son reminded me just how much I miss it. Anytime something is wrong, being out with (friendly) wildlife just makes it all go away.

Art. Probably not at any risk of disappearing. Our societies are crumbling faster than sand castles at high tide at the hands of populist devils. It’s sad and will only get sadder as the years pass.

But the great news is that art thrives in those conditions. Not paintings made for oligarch wives (although the concentration of money in the hands of a few does make that market happy as well). Real Art, made by people freed of their smartphones and tired of Facebook. People willing to think about life’s meaning from up close.

I love London. It’s a ridiculous city, architecturally, with stuff sticking out of other stuff in every which direction. “A man tired of London is tired of life” wrote Samuel Johnson and that’s certainly true from a photographic perspective. A hundred times or more, I’ve visited, never have I made the same photographs twice.

Traveling. I love it. Particularly with family. Environmental concerns make it a little harder to enjoy without feeling some guilt these days, but it is probably the last luxury I would like to give up 😉

Astronomy made it easy for me to cruise through school. Whether we had a lesson about some murderous hero of the past or about the damping of springs or about some really important protein that makes monkeys fart (I wish) or about the dative of comounds, my note books were full of drawings of telescopes, and buildings, and telescopes and planets, and telescopes and stars …

To me today, astronomy symbolises time. The time I’m no longer making to observe and read about the heavens is time stolen from thinking about the deeper meaning of things, stolen by the mundane and unimportant. Life slipping away.

Oh, and what’s life without a cat? Why not forfeit cookies and milk while we’re being barbaric. I mean …

Bob Kruger

Bob writes : “The sarcophagi in Key West, FL are not buried, as the water table is too high. So the burial chambers are stacked like cord wood so they will not float off. A weathered flag keeps watch.

Jim used to rent a “villa” every winter in the Conch Republic, aka Key West, Fl. I memorialized his veranda during his last visit.

I took this picture of an abandoned fish house from around the corner where I once lived in Pamlico County, NC, an un-destination if ever there was one.

How many childrenonce traveled to school on this relic, now forgotten,in Florence, NC.

Family cemeteries tell their own stories.”

Paul Perton

Paul sends this series of portraits without words of this wonderful land he has to leave behind for a while. No words are needed.

Nancee Rostad

Nancee sends those 3 gripping images of desolation.

Lad Sessions

Lad writes: “The Chessie Trail lies below our property, and I walk it frequently. It’s a converted rail line (the “Chessie” was short for “Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad”) and winds along the Maury River, a tributary of the James River. Here are four shots taken at different times and places that express my affection for this “nature trail.” There are many more…

Hope one of these strikes cords of affection in your heart too.”

They sure do …

Kristian Wannebo

Kristian’s series is entitled “Forest, left alone”.

Shot with DxO ONE

John Wilson

John writes: “They are all shooting locations and will need some explanation. The Richmond Night Market was a Street Photographers wet dream. Lots of action in a limited space, great lighting exotic atmosphere and great street food. One of my all time favourite shooting locations. The old parking lot had a fantastic mural along the length of one side and a poster covered wall at the end. The wall behind the poster wall was covered in graffiti and vivid paint. After a rain there would be pools in the parking lot to reflect the mural and there was always lots of reflections in the car windows and metal surfaces. A fabulous place to shoot. The umbrella shop was one of only two stores I’ve ever seen that specialized in umbrellas. Their window was always colourful and being under a bridge the light was always soft and even … perfect for catching the reflections of passing cars and pedestrians. Another much loved location. Sadly they are now all gone … “

June Challenge: and now for something completely different

Nope, that is not the name of a contributor. April Flowers, Theresa May, June Challenge, July Andrews … ya know …

No, this is the RFP (fancy!) for your photographs for the new DS challenge for the month of June. Just sounds better the short way. June agrees.

Now, in the past months, we’ve explored serious, almost heavy, topics such as things we love and fear to lose (not the city, Paris and London are enough for one page), Haiku, vital energy … I’d like to do a fun and silly one for a change.

Carter and June

Antropomorphism would be the appropriate name for what I have in mind, but it feels a bit too serious for the fun mood of the challenge. How often have you seen objects or shadows or plants or … that look like human faces? Sometimes funny, sometimes spooky, sometime interesting … if you’ve made pictures of those, please send them to me (pascal dot japppy at gmail dot com). In the example above, the box on the left, the guy with the 66 bow-tie eying pretty pink June, actually seems more interesting than the overly obvious one on the right.

So bring it, or bring them. Juno, I can’t wait to see what you found 🙂

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

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aion-rsa · 5 years ago

Text

Best DC Comics to Binge Read on DC Universe

https://ift.tt/2LjeV6J

With an enormous swath of the world involved in varying degrees of social distancing, many of us suddenly find ourselves with a lot of time on our hands. Never fear! There are more options for streaming comics than ever before, and that means we have access to more of comics history, more hidden gems and epochal runs than ever before. But the variety of options to read can be daunting. That’s why we’ve put together a recommendation list of some of our favorite comics binge reads to help you through quarantine.

DC Universe rolled out in 2017 as the first full-service entertainment streaming platform – old shows, old movies, new shows, new movies, and a huge library of comics. And while a lot of the excitement over the platform has been about that original or new shows (justifiably! Harley Quinn and Doom Patrol are amazing!), it also gave us access to a staggering catalog of old comic books.

If you’re coming to a comic streaming service like DC Universe, chances are you don’t need us to recommend the hits. Nobody who watches the CW shows needs to be told that Crisis on Infinite Earths is worth reading. Likewise Batman: Year One, or All-Star Superman or The Great Darkness Saga. We’re going to skip over some of the obvious ones and point you towards hidden gems, stories you might have otherwise skipped over but for a trusted recommendation. We are also looking for monster runs that will keep you occupied – you can read six issues in one sitting. Some of these might take you an entire round of social distancing to finish.

A quick note about the reading guides: Many of them may have their own separate entry under DC Universe’s reading lists – those are helpful, but these are definitive. We will occasionally link to non-Den sources, but if you like what you hear, you should be encouraged to find your own best path. A lot of these stories wend through crossovers that are of varying degrees of relevance to the main books. It’s your call if you want to read the whole thing.

The Death and Return of Superman

The Death of Superman Reading Order

I know I said we wouldn’t talk about obvious must reads, but I feel like The Death of Superman (and it’s aftermath, World Without a Superman, Reign of the Supermen, and Kal-El’s inevitable return) should be on here. They can’t really be recommended enough.

“The ‘90s” are often maligned as a wave of gimmicks and stunts, and killing the most important comic character in the history of superhero books definitely qualifies as a stunt. But what made The Death of Superman stand out (and several other ‘90s DC events, to be honest) is that it was actually very good. This era of Superman comics is actually a hidden gem – Clark is a joy, and all the weirdness and fun of the Superman universe is in full swing, like Cadmus, Mxyzptlk, and a truly bizarre (but surprisingly good) Justice League roster.

Movies

Men of Steel: 11 Actors Who Have Played Superman

By Mike Cecchini

How Brandon Routh Returned as Superman for Crisis on Infinite Earths

By Mike Cecchini

The four writers – Jerry Ordway, Louise Simonson, Roger Stern, and Dan Jurgens – move pretty seamlessly between them on the main Superman books, and the art teams (Jon Bogdanove, Jurgens, Butch Guice, and Tom Grummett especially in the Death story) do amazing jobs of telling the story. Don’t be fooled by how gimmicky this feels, The Death and Return of Superman actually lives up to the hype.

Batman & Robin

Batman & Robin #1-17, Annual #1, Batman #17, Batman & Robin #18-32, Robin Rises: Omega, Batman & Robin #33-37, Robin Rises: Alpha #1, Batman & Robin #38-40, Annual #3

The Pete Tomasi/Patrick Gleason run on Batman and Robin never got the love it should have, because it ran parallel to two of the most high-profile Bat-comics of all time in Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Batman, and the back half of Grant Morrison’s story in Batman Incorporated. But in ten years, people are going to be looking back at this as a classic.

Comics

True Detective Creator Outlines What His Version of Batman Would Be Like

By John Saavedra

Movies

The Batman: Release Date, Cast, Villains, and More Details About the DCEU Movie

By Rosie Fletcher and 2 others

This is a controversial claim, but if you read this run, I think it holds up: Pete Tomasi writes the best Damian Wayne. He’s the right mix of arrogant little shit and not-actually-as-competent-as-Batman, and he actually learns lessons in this run that feel earned. He also dies during these stories, and Tomasi gets the chance to explore Bruce’s way of grieving, as well as drop in a series of guest stars that includes the best Two Face story I’ve ever read. Gleason and inker Mick Gray are utterly incredible, and do as much with one sixth-page panels with heavy inks and silhouettes as many art teams do with full page splashes. It’s a great, underrated run that I think you’ll love.

Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman (2006) #14-44, one story in #600

Oh my goodness Gail Simone’s Wonder Woman is exactly, precisely what I want out of a Wonder Woman comic. To me, Diana’s comics are an exception in that they should be as focused on how to avoid fighting as they are on the action. This run does that perfectly: she isn’t a belligerent meathead looking to stab everything in sight (but she does spend a little time with a neat Conan analogue, while we’re on the subject). She’s truly an agent of peace who then periodically has to kick some ass.

Movies

Wonder Woman Wasn’t Always Set During World War I

By Kayti Burt

Movies

Wonder Woman 1984: Who Is Maxwell Lord?

By Jim Dandy

The art is really good – Aaron Lopresti and Bernard Chang handle the bulk of it, and the storytelling and pacing are really well handled, but the panel borders stand out as especially interesting and visually entertaining. The guest stars are great – Black Canary brings Diana to Roulette’s fight club for a couple of issues, and there’s a big Power Girl punchup later in the run. This is just excellent, excellent Wonder Woman storytelling.

Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad on Comic Book Herald (end at issue #66)

John Ostrander, Kim Yale, and (mostly) Luke McDonough’s original Suicide Squad is a revelation. The concept is almost overdone at this point, and is a little bit ruined by putting big names like Harley Quinn on the team, but taking a batch of nobody villains and putting them on suicide missions to earn their freedom actually sets serious stakes, and this book does everything it should with those stakes. This is politics and espionage and force projection all wrapped into a story that makes the DC Universe feel more complete.

Movies

Suicide Squad 2 Cast, Release Date, News, Story, and More Details

By Mike Cecchini

Movies

The Many Deaths of The Suicide Squad

By Marc Buxton

Beyond the plotting, though, there are so many great characters that come out of these books. Amanda Waller is one of the single best characters in all of DC Comics, and this is the run that made her the badass who can face down Batman in the shower without flinching. Punch and Jewlee are hilarious running gags. Deadshot gets some incredible work. Hell, even Captain Boomerang gets multiple dimensions added to him (without ever losing his core concept: he’s a giant asshole). I promise you, I’m underselling how good this era of Suicide Squad is.

Legion of Super-Heroes

Legion of Super-Heroes Secret Files & Origins #2; Legion of Super-Heroes (1989) #122-125 alternating issues with Legionnaires (1993) #79-81; Legion Lost (2000) #1-12; Legion Worlds (2001) #1-5, The Legion (2001) #1-26, Legion Secret Files & Origins 3003; The Legion #27-33

If you loved Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning’s Marvel space work, when you read their Legion of Super-Heroes, you’ll be baffled at how Guardians of the Galaxy ended up on the big screen and not this.

The Legion of Super-Heroes is generally regarded as…not the most newbie-friendly superhero team in the world. Fair or not, this run of Legion comics is incredibly accessible and does as good a job integrating them into the larger DC Universe as any I’ve read. It’s also exactly like DnA’s Marvel cosmic work, in that it is wonderful space opera that happens to have superheroes. The first batch of stories deals with a wave of catastrophes hitting the galaxy in quick succession. Legion Lost has a group of Legionnaires get thrown outside of the galaxy as they’re trying to fix one of the first catastrophes. Legion Worlds serves as a series of check-ins with popular Legionnaires left behind in the United Planets and is a really effective way to hook you into the 31st century of the DC Universe.

And finally, The Legion is an outstanding team book following all of those. Legion Lost is an unquestionable highlight; Olivier Coipel’s art is incredible, and the story will make you launch your tablet/phone/computer across the room at a couple of twists. This run is incredible comics.

Justice League International

…you don’t have to read all of this, but if you feel like going for it, do it. You can stop at the red dots, though.

The Bwa-Ha-Ha era is half-superhero comic, half-workplace comedy, the template for greatness to come in Legends of Tomorrow, but a great superhero work in its own right. It’s an era of Justice League that takes itself (and its villains, and its stakes) much less seriously than just about any other era of the last 40 years. If you were raised on the post-Morrison “New Olympus” era of the League, the tone shift might be a little jarring. But that tone shift is part of what makes Keith Giffen, J. M DeMatteis, and Kevin Maguire’s run on Justice League special.

There are so many really good characters in this book, but one of the best parts is how much it does for both the League staples like Martian Manhunter and Batman, alongside the…less substantial…characters. Blue and Gold (Beetle and Booster, respectively) got their start here, and that one panel where Batman knocks out Guy Gardner that gets shared around the internet once a year is from this era.

Comics

Justice League Keeps Building the Wider DC Universe

By Mike Cecchini

Comics

New DC Universe Timeline Revealed

By Mike Cecchini

And besides being great comics, this run is also the favorite Justice League of a disproportionate amount of current comics writers, giving it an outsized influence on not just current books, but the rest of pop culture that superheroes have taken over – Wonder Woman 1984 is probably going to owe a HUGE debt to the Max Lord created by Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire.

Deathstroke

Deathstroke: Rebirth #1; Deathstroke (2016) #1-18; Titans (2016) #11; Teen Titans (2016) #8, Deathstroke #19-20, Teen Titans Annual #1, Deathstroke #21-42 (and when they go up, read The Lazarus Contract crossover and through issue #50 of the main series)

Priest’s Deathstroke is the best book that came out of DC Rebirth. Under normal circumstances, Slade Wilson sucks. He too often falls into a murder daddy archetype, a super cool anti-hero who goes big on the violence and the dysfunction as background statuses, and not as relevant parts of his story. Priest turned all that on its head and turned in a 50 issue run (plus a couple of specials, annuals and crossovers) that was about a father who loved his kids and didn’t know how to tell them, who also happened to be a top shelf mercenary and supervillain.

Movies

Deathstroke Solo Movie Details Revealed by Gareth Evans

By Kirsten Howard

Deathstroke: The Most Versatile Villain in the DC Universe

By Marc Buxton

That’s not to say there isn’t some super cool ass-whipping in it. Batman and Damian Wayne are recurring characters, as Priest sets up a mystery that might undo Damian as a character and gives more depth to Deathstroke’s issues with the Teen Titans. There’s an entire arc dedicated to him fighting various aspects of his own personality, personified in other villains from the rest of the DCU.

And it’s all so clearly and aggressively Priest – it has all the same style as his iconic Black Panther run, but with different storytelling to fit Slade’s tale. This is one of my favorite comics from recent years.

Starman

Starman Reading Order on ComicsBackIssues

For about three quarters of my entire life, DC had an absolute stranglehold on legacy in superhero comics. The entire DC Universe was littered with stories about someone new picking up an old cowl and an old title and having to grow into that role, whether it’s Jason Todd as Robin, Wally West as Flash, Dick Grayson as Batman, Kyle Rayner, Connor Hawke, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown. The list is nearly endless. The thing is, it’s a really good story archetype and an excellent use of shared universe superhero trappings to give heft and depth to stories that are otherwise not really allowed growth.

DC’s Stargirl Reveals Justice Society of America and Villains

By Mike Cecchini

Comics

Inside the Return of the Justice Society of America to the DC Universe

By Mike Cecchini

No comics did it better than James Robinson and Tony Harris’ Starman. It tells us the story of Jack Knight, the extremely Gen X son of golden age Starman Ted Knight. Ted is retired and passed his cosmic rod onto his son David, who gets murdered at the end of the first issue. It’s a hit on Ted’s whole family by one of his old villains, and Jack has to take up the rod to survive. Then he gets thrown into the mythology of the DC universe explained through the Starman legacy. It’s beautiful, fun, sad, meaningful, and heartfelt, and I bet you $1 that you cry at least once.

The Question

The Question (1986) #1-15, Detective Comics Annual 1988 , Green Arrow Annual 1988 , The Question Annual #1, The Question #16-24, Annual #2, #25-36

Comics

The Question Bounces Through Time In New DC Series

By Jim Dandy

Everyone jokes about how much of scenic Gotham City is abandoned amusement parks and chemical plants, but Gotham City is a family-friendly resort compared to the Hub City of Dennis O’Neill and Denys Cowan’s The Question. “Atmospheric” doesn’t even begin to describe this run.

It takes The Question, a character created by Steve Ditko, co-opted and pastiched as Rorschach by Alan More and Dave Gibbons in Watchmen, and introduced him to the DC Universe proper by putting Vic Sage through a spiritual ringer. Everything about this book is incredible – Vic is a terrific character; his supporting cast is thoroughly real; the book ties into the greater DC Universe really well (via Richard Dragon, Lady Shiva, and the annual crossover in the middle with Batman and Green Arrow).

But the real star here is Hub City, a love letter that’s also hate mail to mid-80s urban blight as scenery. And Cowan and inker Malcolm Jones III’s art – it’s tremendous.

Orion

Orion (2000) #1-25

I’ve been a fan of Walt Simonson’s Thor since I first read it, because it’s obviously incredible. But I didn’t realize until Thor: Ragnarok and DC Universe came out that Simonson might be the best comic creator to follow up on Jack Kirby’s ideas of all time, and it was Orion that really did it for me.

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Simonson puts Orion, son of Darkseid raised on New Genesis by Highfather as part of the peace treaty between the two factions of New Gods, on his prophesied track to kill Darkseid, and finishes it pretty early on. The fifth issue is just Simonson drawing a huge blowout fight between the two, and it’s predictably gorgeous. But he sticks with the story past that battle and digs deep into Orion’s character, the mythology of the New Gods, and some of Kirby’s best creations (the Newsboy Legion has a running subplot and it’s awesome). It also has backups from some of the biggest superstars in comics (Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons, among others). This is a hefty run of comics, but you won’t be able to put it down.

The post Best DC Comics to Binge Read on DC Universe appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thegeekcurmudgeon · 8 years ago

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The Steam-Driven Time Machine: My Adventures in Steampunk

As revealed in my previous post, I’m moderating the Steampunk panel at this weekend’s Comicpalooza. Newer folks may wonder why I’m moderating such a panel. (Or not, but I’m going to share this with you anyway).

Way back in 2008, I produced this little essay for Ann and Jeff VanderMeer’s bestselling, seminal anthology Steampunk. The magnificent book came out just at the beginnings of the latest Steampunk craze. After nine printings, one could argue it helped fan the flames of the movement.

Without further ado, here’s the unabridged piece.

The Steam-Driven Time Machine:

A Pop Culture Survey

Rick Klaw

When I was a child in the seventies, it seemed like the 1961 Ray Harryhausen special effects-laden The Mysterious Island played constantly on the TV. Not that I minded. Michael Craig leads a crew of Confederate P.O.W. escapees as they pilot a hot air balloon toward points unknown. Crash landing on an apparently deserted island, the castaways encounter giant animals: a crab, a flightless bird, bees and an cephalopod, all presented in Harryhausen’s dynamic stop motion animation. The group discovers the presumed dead Captain Nemo, who had mutated the animals as part of an experiment. Throw in the pirates that attack the island and you have the recipe for a near-perfect movie. By nine years old, after many repeated viewings the film entered my personal zeitgeist, informing my later tastes and many of my creative decisions.

Mysterious Island was my first exposure to steampunk, long before K. W. Jeter coined the word in the late 1980s.

Personally, I think Victorian fantasies are going to be the next big thing, as long as we can come up with a fitting collective term for [Tim] Powers, [James] Blaylock and myself. Something based on the appropriate technology of the era; like “steampunks,” perhaps… (Locus, #315 April 1987)

Featuring interviews with Jeter and Blaylock plus a cover by Tim Powers, the Winter, 1988 issue of Nova Express introduced me to the term “steampunk.” By that time Powers and Blaylock were both part of my reading repertoire. Jeter joined a few years later.

Among many of the advantages of living in Austin as a young science fiction fan in the late eighties and early nineties was the strong and fairly well organized creative community. The local science fiction literary convention, Armadillocon birthed though probably as a surrogate the Cyberpunk movement, as it was the first North American convention to feature William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Lewis Shiner, and Pat Cadigan as guests of honor. Austinite Lawrence Person’s previously mentioned ‘zine Nova Express further encouraged science fiction critical studies with insightful interviews and reviews by professionals and fans alike.

Some twenty years later, pop culture has embraced steampunk. Publishing, film, and even the Internet embolden the term as a branding tool. Nary a week goes by without Boing Boing (www.boingboing.net), the venerable group blog, posting about some sort of steampunk inspired gadget, cartoon, or essay. A search of their archives generates almost 1500 articles. Subjects vary greatly: laptops, keyboards, watches, Transformers, planes, Car Wars, submarines, and so on. Many articles showcase functioning modern technology using steampunk methods and materials. Others present actual working machines from the 19th century. Images presenting artistic depictions of steampunk, paintings, sculptures, architecture and the like. Reinterpretations of popular shows such as Star Trek and Star Wars litter the listings. Original short films featuring steampunk tropes offer many amusing and sometimes exciting diversions.

The user-generated online encyclopedia Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org) contains lengthy, extensive entries for both “Steampunk” and “List of steampunk works”, citing an array of sources. The English language version of the Polish site Retrostacji, Steampunkopedia (steampunk.republika.pl) offers the most comprehensive steampunk works chronological bibliography available on the web along with numerous links to steampunk-inspired videos. Sadly, the site stopped updating in February, 2007.

Using the collaborative wiki-method, ﾆther Emporium (etheremporium.pbwiki.com) claims “to provide a onestop resource and archive for all things Steampunk”. Potentially very interesting, the sparse site supplies some intriguing information and views from the nascent steampunk subculture. Another online cultural source, SteamPunk Magazine (www.steampunkmagazine.com), dedicated to “promoting steampunk as a culture, as more than a sub-category of fiction”, produces a pdf format magazine and for-sale print version under the auspices of the Creative Commons license, an agreement that allows anyone to share and distribute the work as long as it is not for commercial or financial gain. Each of the three currently produced issues contain fiction, features exploring different aspects of the subgenre, and interviews with steampunk luminaries.

Even Wired (www.wired.com), home of the techno elite, lists some 930 archived pages about the subgenre. Often sharing similar coverage with its cyberculture cousin Boing Boing, the subjects run the pop culture gamut. Oddly, the domain name steampunk.com works as the home for The Speculative Fiction Clearing House, a portal for science fiction websites. The site has only a tangential relationship with the subgenre.

Back in the late eighties, I encountered my first steampunk role playing game. Featuring Victorian space travel and steam powered devices, Space 1889 (1988) was the first primarily steampunk rpg. At the time, I immersed myself in the rpg community, envisioning myself more of a gamer and possibly role play games creator than an essay or even a fiction writer. This delusion lasted for about two years, after which I decided to devote my creative energies toward other writing and editing pursuits.

Prior to Space 1889, steampunk elements frequently cropped up in games. Most Dungeons & Dragons campaigns contained various steam-powered devices, usually projectiles or vehicles. Hero Games’ pulp era adventure game Justice, Inc (1984) featured many steampunk-type props, most notably steam-powered robots. Cthulhu By Gaslight, Victorian era rules for the Lovecraft-inspired Call of Cthulhu game, premiered in 1986. While set in the 1890s, the supplement relied less on steampunk– beyond an odd section on time travel– and more on real-world settings.

In the ensuing years, steampunk routinely appeared in rpgs. Within the popular gaming universes such as Warhammer, GURPS, and Dungeons & Dragons, steam-driven devices and Victorian era tropes became commonplace. The cross-pollination of the American Old West and anachronistic devices thrived within several games, chiefly Deadlands and the Japanese title Terra the Gunslinger.

Even LARPers got in the act. Premiering May 21, 2004 near Baltimore, MD with a three-day episode, Brassey’s Game, a steampunk live action role playing game (LARP)1, involved approximately 30 players in Victorian garb, who relied on heavy character interaction. The initial campaign ran for six weekend-long episodes. Six other stand alone Brassey’s Game episodes took place during the first campaign. Since its introduction, several other groups from various parts of the US, using modified versions of the original rules, participated in their own Brassey’s Game events.

Another element of my seventies childhood, The Wild Wild West, the first, best, and longest running steampunk television series, forged my future love of the weird western. The show related the adventures of two Secret Service agents- James West, a charming, womanizing hero, and Artemus Gordon, inventor and master of disguise– as they protected, often in secret, the United States, its interests and citizens. In four seasons from 1965-1969, the duo encountered all sorts of odd villainy including a brilliant but insane dwarf, recurring arch-villain Dr. Miguelito Quixote Loveless, and bizarre weaponry such as cue stick guns and a triangular steam-powered tank with a barbed tip. Combining the best elements of traditional westerns and James Bond, The Wild Wild West spawned two late seventies TV movies with the original cast, a dreadful 1999 big screen movie, two separate comic book series (1960s Gold Key and 1991 Millennium Publications), and four novels, as well as influencing a generation of writers including Joe R. Lansdale, Norman Partridge, and Howard Waldrop.

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr., the direct thematic descendant of The Wild Wild West, premiered on August 27, 1993, starring the cult actor Bruce Campbell of Evil Dead fame as the title character. Set in the 1890s, Brisco attempts to capture the members of the Bly Gang, the cutthroats responsible for his father’s death. The series sported an intriguing cast of characters: Lord Bowler, bounty hunter and rival, lawyer Socrates Poole, Dixie Cousins, con-woman and Brisco’s great love, and inventor/scientist Professor Wickwire, brilliantly portrayed by John Astin and supplier of Brisco’s steampunk-like gadgetry. Even with clever story lines, the show lasted for only one season.

Perhaps the most unexpected use of weird western steampunk tropes occurred in the second season of the animated Adventures of Batman & Robin. “Showdown” with a Joe R. Lansdale teleplay from a story by Kevin Altieri, Paul Dini, and Bruce W. Timm tells of the immortal Batman villain Ra’s al Ghul’s 1883 confrontation with the DC Comics gunslinger Jonah Hex. The battle centers around a plot to blow up the nearly-completed tracks of a transcontinental railroad using dirigibles loaded with cannons and other explosives.

Because starring in one Wild Wild West-inspired short lived TV series is never enough, Bruce Campbell portrayed the title character for two seasons in the disappointingly inane Jack of All Trades (2000). Jack Stiles, a secret service agent stationed by President Thomas Jefferson on the fictional French-controlled island of Palau-Palau, defends American interests while serving as the aide to a French aristocratic. Jack employs many steampunk-type weapons and gadgets. Loosely based on the classic 1919 novel, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World amazingly ran for three seasons (1999-2000) with poor special effects, bad acting, poorly crafted storylines, and some minor steampunk elements. The 1982 Q.E.D., set in Edwardian England, last for only six episodes. Voyagers!, a time travel adventure series with periodic steampunk bits, managed 22 episodes over one season (1982-1983). Steampunk materials appeared in several episodes of the various Doctor Who incarnations.

Under the premise that Jules Verne actually lived the adventures that he wrote about, The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000) delivered steampunk action with airships, steam powered devices, and even a steampunk cyborg! Playing upon the inherent metafictional possibilities, several episodes featured “real life” authors and personalities such as Samuel Clemens, Queen Victoria, Alexander Dumas, Cardinal Richelieu (a time travel episode), and King Louis XIII. The promising show never jelled and was canceled after one season.

The Japanese have also embraced steampunk television, albeit the animated variety. Based on the long running manga Fullmetal Alchemist, set in an alternate late- 20th century society that practices alchemy and uses primarily early 20th technology, enjoyed a 51 episode run (2003-2004) and an 2005 anime feature film. Steam Detectives (1989-1990) follows the adventures of a young detective in a reality where the only source of energy is steam power. Set on a floating world with stylized Victorian fashions, Last Exile (2003) relates the story of airship pilots Claus and Lavie and their involvement in a plot about a mysterious cargo.

Another steampunk show derived from the works of Jules Verne, Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1989-1991) inspired a feature film sequel (1992) and a manga series. Set in 1889, circus performer Nadia, young inventor Jean Ratlique, and the famed Captain Nemo attempt to save the world from the Atlantean known as Gargolye who is bent on restoring the former underseas empire. Translated into eight different languages, the series achieved worldwide popularity.

Based on a series of popular video games, Sakura Wars relates an alternate 1920s reality that uses steam primarily to power all sorts of modern devices. Developed into numerous video games on several platforms, a manga, a tv series, five OVA2 tie-ins, and a feature length movie, Sakura remains a uniquely Japanese cultural phenomenon.

Back in the seventies, Mysterious Island opened my eyes to new worlds as I encountered many more steampunk films. The 1930s Universal monster pictures with lighting-powered monsters, chemically induced madmen, and animal-mutating mad scientists exploited the yet undefined genre. Beneath a Victorian backdrop, Victor Frankenstein empowered his creatures in both Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) using the highly unlikely method of electrocution. In the latter film, Dr. Pretorius joins forces with Frankenstein, attempting to create life through alchemical means. Director James Whale recognized the inherent Victorian melodrama and the treated the films accordingly, thus creating two masterpieces.

Two of H. G. Wells’ science gone-amok novels inspired a pair of 1933 Universal movies. The Invisible Man, directed under the masterful hand of James Whale, relates the story of a man who goes mad after imbibing his own creation: an invisibility potion. Starring Charles Laughton and Bela Lugosi, The Island of Lost Souls adapted The Island of Dr. Moreau for the first time. The story of Dr. Moreau and his rebellious mutations, like that of The Invisible Man speak to the Victorian notions of science and sadism. The Island of Lost Souls has been remade poorly twice as The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977, 1996).

Fittingly, the first film recognized as steampunk was the 1902 fourteen-minute French animated short Le Voyage dans la lune (A Trip to the Moon), based on Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells’ The First Men in the Moon. Wildly popular upon its release, the Georges Méliès film– one of his hundreds of fantasy films– achieved canonical status within science fiction.

Hollywood rediscovered Verne with a vengeance in the 1950s and 1960s, making numerous film adaptations including the steampunk films 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Fabulous World of Jules Verne (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Mysterious Island (1961), Master of the World (1961), Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), and tangentially Captain Nemo and the Underwater City (1969). Wells was not far behind with most notably The Time Machine (1961). One of producer George Pal’s special effect spectaculars, The Time Machine thematically remained close to the source material especially the portrayal of the machine itself. An awful version of Wells’ book was made in 2002.

The seventies witnessed a severe drop in steampunk related films as whiz bang space science fiction became the norm. A notable exception, the entertaining Time After Time (1979) suggested that Wells invented a time machine and traveled to 1979 in pursuit of Jack the Ripper.

In 1986, Hayao Miyazaki released his groundbreaking anime Castle in the Sky (aka Laputa: Castle in the Sky). A magical tour-de-force featuring floating cities, airships, and pirates, the film follows a young girl, Sheeta, and boy, Pazu, on their quest for the mystical, missing city of Laputa. Miyazaki returned to steampunk in 2001 with his masterpiece Spirited Away, the highest grossing movie in the history of Japan. Easily the most awarded steampunk work in any medium, Spirited Away won the Academy Award for Best Animated Film, the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival Silver Scream Award, the Nebula Award for Best Script, the San Francisco International Film Festival Audience Award Best Narrative Feature, five Mainichi Film Concours Awards, two Awards of the Japanese Academy, four Annie Awards, and many others. Miyazaki’s eagerly anticipated follow up was the steampunk Howl’s Moving Castle (2004), based on Diana Wynne Jones’ popular young adult novel. Successful both financially and critically, Howl’s plays as a traditional European fairy tale but with steampunk elements.

Sadly with a few exceptions, Miyazaki’s works represent the abnormal in modern steampunk. While movies such as Vidocq (2001), The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (2003), Hellboy (2004), Van Helsing (2004), Around the World in 80 Days (2004), Steamboy (2004), and The Brothers Grimm (2005) display strong stylings, they all fall short on substantive storytelling.

The third and perhaps weakest of Terry Gillum’s Trilogy of the Imagination, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988) recounts the legendary tales of eponymous Baron. Littered throughout with steampunk tropes and devices, Gillum displays a magical world in this delightful, if overlong film.

The French duo Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro created the strange, surrealist masterpiece 1995’s The City of Lost Children (La Cité des enfants perdus). Unable to dream, a mad scientist steals the dreams of children. The kidnapping of a circus strongman’s little brother leads to some bizarre and fascinating confrontations between the strongman, the children, and the scientist. Beautifully imagined within a late 19th century industrial city complex, The City of Lost Children magically envisions a dark steampunk society.

The disappointing film version of The Golden Compass, the first novel of Phillip Pullman’s extraordinary trilogy His Dark Materials, premiered in 2007 amidst a maelstrom of controversy, as various Christian groups–most notably The Catholic League– urged their members to boycott the movie citing the story’s perceived anti-God bias. The protesters had little to worry about since director/screenwriter Chris Weitz stripped the original tale of any complexity and relevant subtext, presenting a dull, lifeless movie. Even with gorgeous visual effects (particularly of the dæmons and the airships), superior acting (especially Dakota Blue Richards’ authentic portrayal of a fierce twelve year-old girl), and a $200 million budget, The Golden Compass offered yet another 21st century steampunk film failure.

Some thirty-five years after my initial discovery, steampunk still fascinates. I eagerly await to read about the new devices listed on Boing Boing. Even given the poor quality of most steampunk movies, films with airships and Victorian stylings still excite me. Clearly I am not alone as evident by the sheer amount of steampunk material continually being produced and the very existence of this anthology.

Vive la vapeur!

1a form of role-playing game where the players physically act out their characters’ actions.

2Original video adaption, a phrase coined by the Japanese for direct-to-video films.

The Steam-Driven Time Machine: My Adventures in Steampunk was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon

#ann and jeff vandermeer #Comicpalooza #essay #steampunk

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golshxd-blog · 5 years ago

Photo

Incy Wincy

Philippe Berend

The second theme is Paris. The song says, “Paris sera toujours Paris”. But if Notre-Dame can burn, what is really safe, really there “forever”?

Michael Fleischer

Michael writes: “a photo of a place dear to me – the lake close by where I grew up I Denmark – where I spent my youth fishing, swimming, kissing and more…”

Jean Pierre Guaron

My present Dobermann, Cris – taken with the D500 and a zoom AF lens (AF is an overwhelming reason for not going with the larger gear, like the D850 and the Otus’s)”

Brian Nicol

Pascal Jappy

I suppose starting with the most endangered is probably the most in line with the challenge.

Art. Probably not at any risk of disappearing. Our societies are crumbling faster than sand castles at high tide at the hands of populist devils. It’s sad and will only get sadder as the years pass.

Oh, and what’s life without a cat? Why not forfeit cookies and milk while we’re being barbaric. I mean …

Bob Kruger

Jim used to rent a “villa” every winter in the Conch Republic, aka Key West, Fl. I memorialized his veranda during his last visit.

I took this picture of an abandoned fish house from around the corner where I once lived in Pamlico County, NC, an un-destination if ever there was one.

How many childrenonce traveled to school on this relic, now forgotten,in Florence, NC.

Family cemeteries tell their own stories.”

Paul Perton

Paul sends this series of portraits without words of this wonderful land he has to leave behind for a while. No words are needed.

Nancee Rostad

Nancee sends those 3 gripping images of desolation.

Lad Sessions

Hope one of these strikes cords of affection in your heart too.”

They sure do …

Kristian Wannebo

Kristian’s series is entitled “Forest, left alone”.

Shot with DxO ONE

John Wilson

June Challenge: and now for something completely different

Nope, that is not the name of a contributor. April Flowers, Theresa May, June Challenge, July Andrews … ya know …

No, this is the RFP (fancy!) for your photographs for the new DS challenge for the month of June. Just sounds better the short way. June agrees.

Carter and June

So bring it, or bring them. Juno, I can’t wait to see what you found 🙂

Posted on DearSusan by pascaljappy.

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aion-rsa · 6 years ago

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Why The Fantastic Four Will Thrive in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

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The Fantastic Four are joining the MCU, and it's the one good thing that will come out of the Disney/Fox deal.

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Feature

Books

Mike Cecchini

Fantastic Four

Jul 27, 2018

Marvel

Stan Lee

Jack Kirby

20th Century Fox

The Fantastic Four are going to have their day now that Disney and Fox shareholders have approved the merger of the two studio giants. This is a deal that is terrible for cinema and even worse for news, but one that is certainly good for superhero fans. It just might require a different approach than Hollywood is generally willing to take with superhero movies as we know them. For the sake of this article, please spare me the "we already had two great Fantastic Four movies with The Incredibles," argument, because we all know that.

The failure of Josh Trank's 2015 Fantastic Four movie with critics, fans, and at the box office was a damning indicator of just how far the Fantastic Four brand has fallen since its comic book heyday of the 1960s and '70s. But maybe the issue is simply that the Fantastic Four don't lend themselves quite as easily to familiar superhero movie tropes as some of their more successful counterparts. The 2015 movie was the third big screen incarnation of the Fantastic Four, and the fourth movie overall. The first was the Roger Corman production, made for approximately one million dollars only so that a film studio could keep the rights out of the hands of Marvel long enough to make a more suitable movie. That movie was both faithful to the source material and sincere in its tone, but it may or may not have ever actually been intended for release.

In the mid-2000s, we were given two Fantastic Four movies from 20th Century Fox and director Tim Story. Fantastic Four and its sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer were similarly faithful in look and tone to the classic Marvel comic book. They were also dull, by-the-numbers blockbuster fare with a cast that (the fairly inspired choice of Chris Evans as Johnny Storm and Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm aside) failed to capture the vitality or chemisty of the FF's traditional family dynamic. Worse, like the 2015 movie, they utterly wasted one of the greatest comic book villains of all time, Dr. Doom.

See related

The Roger Corman Fantastic Four Movie: The Most Faithful FF Ever

Why the X-Men Don't Belong in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Full Marvel Movie Release Schedule

The Tim Story films weren't particularly interested in reinventing the wheel, and their deviations from the letter of FF mythology were no greater than those that made tried-and-true box office titans like Batman or Spider-Man more suitable for the big screen. Unlike a proven ticket and merchandise mover like Spider-Man, there's an increasingly vocal sentiment that the Fantastic Four are inherently old fashioned and faintly ridiculous, and that modern audiences simply don't have a place for them in their already superhero saturated hearts. On the surface, when your "coolest" member is a guy who can burst into flame, that kind of pales in comparison to some of the sexier heroes out there. The relatively grounded approach to Trank's Fantastic Four may have been an attempt to combat this, and it certainly calls back to what Bryan Singer did in the first X-Men film, which moved along at a similarly glacial pace during its first act and did away with the characters' more colorful garb.

But it wasn't that grounded approach that sunk the new FF franchise. The Tim Story movies, as faithful as they were to the comic book aesthetic, both made more than twice their budget back at the worldwide box office, but nobody, not even the most fervent superhero movie apologist, was ever particularly enthused about them. They earned middling reviews and tepid fan reaction, and there was never any sense of urgency to get Fantastic Four 3 into production.

While the Marvel Studios house style that blends witty banter, cosmic adventure, and family friendly bloodless violence is perfectly suited (even inspired by) the Fantastic Four, they've had enough on their plate over the last few years without trying to cram the X-Men or Fantastic Four onto their release schedules. But the release of Avengers 4 in 2019 not only marks the end of the latest "phase" of Marvel movies, it also ushers in an era where trilogies for heavy hitters Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man have run their course while audiences have thrilled to multiple Avengers movies. What was once impossible is suddenly commonplace, and this is where the Fantastic Four will have a chance to distinguish themselves.

Watch Fantastic Four on Amazon

The next Fantastic Four movie must genuinely offer audiences something different. And "different" is exactly what made The Fantastic Four "The World's Greatest Comics Magazine" when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were at the controls for over 100 issues. Nobody needs another origin story (for this or any other franchise), and the elemental iconography of the Fantastic Four doesn't really need much more explanation than "a guy who can stretch, a woman who can turn invisible and project force fields, a human torch, and a tragic but powerful rock monster." Superheroes are now such a part of the cinematic vocabulary that spending thirty minutes explaining the hows and whys of superpowers is as wasteful as explaining how the hero of a Western learned to shoot and ride a horse.

So while every Fantastic Four movie has nailed the broad strokes, what is always lacking is the real soul of these characters and their world: one full of impossible adventure, surprises, and technology. The Four have never been known for solving their problems by hitting them, so you can eliminate the idea of a noisy, city-destroying climax. The FF is about big, cosmic, timey-wimey ideas, and the smart, quirky, friends and family who have to work through it all together. Need an example of how audiences might relate to that brand of non-traditional superheroics? Doctor Who is adored by loyal fans and it's a perfect example of how to depict awkward smart people finding (mostly) non-violent solutions to reality-warping problems.

The Fantastic Four comics of the Lee/Kirby team at their peak in 1966 to 1968 contain page after page of budget busting visuals and concepts that would send any Hollywood bean-counter to the poorhouse. Instead, we've been stuck with dull backlot slugfests (FF 2005), a purple cloud instead of Galactus (Rise of the Silver Surfer), and a hastily devised green screen nightmare (FF 2015). I'm giving the 1994 film a pass because that movie is lucky it had craft services, let alone special effects.

It's difficult to imagine a potential movie franchise more antithetical to current superhero movie trends than the Fantastic Four. The team is, quite literally, a family. Their adventures are almost uniformly intergalactic or interdimensional in nature. Half of the members have power sets that don't lend themselves to the brute force that has become shorthand for most superheroing. Done right, the Fantastic Four can and should be the property that Kevin Feige and Disney executives look to when they fear audiences are tiring of superhero movies. The FF is another Guardians of the Galaxy in waiting, and unlike those blockbusters, it comes with considerably more brand recognition out of the gate.

It's not rocket science or interdimensional travel. Someone will figure it out. See you at the Baxter Building in Marvel Phase Four.

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