Fun Formalism

(FYI, it's not that formalism is intrinsically not fun, it's just that it's formalism)

So Brandon Graham posted a link to the torrent of his recently-concluded comic series King City from Image. It's really good and has been written about by plenty of people better than me. There are plenty of memorable moments, but the one that stuck with me the most was from a backup story in the second issue. Check out these first two panels.

They knocked me on my ass. Formalism is a slippery slope. I remember the sequences from Asterios Polyp where Mazzucchelli was screaming COMICS on the page so loud that sometimes I just wanted to tune him out, despite the mastery on display. Graham substitutes screaming with subdued effortlessness. While Mazzucchelli wanted to make sure you knew about all the tricks the medium was capable of, Graham cares only about using those tricks to do cool shit. When I read this sequence, it took me straight out of the flow of the story and the panels, just like when I read the Asterios Poly sequences, except the above gave me a huge grin, while Asterios Polyp left me staring at the page. Both are showing off in a sense, but Graham comes off like a guy you could talk to about ridiculous comics stuff all day, while Mazzucchelli would be too busy presenting a research paper at an academic conference.

Is there anyone out there making comics having more fun than Brandon Graham? If you're up for a fool's chase, start looking.

Mean Streets: Small Time is Fun Time

I haven't seen all of Martin Scorcese's movies, which is my fault. But of the ones I have seen, this one stands out for, surprisingly, it's relentless humor that stems from its hyperbolic characters endlessly crashing into the invisible walls around them. A lot of the usual is present: New York, Catholicism, Italian-Americans, and the life of crime on the street. It's the last one that's most important. At the start of the movie, Harvey Keitel narrates, "You don't make up for your sins in the church. You do it in the streets."

Speaking of narration, Keitel doesn't quite get into unreliable narrator territory. Delusional narrator might be better, which I guess is unreliable in its own way, but Keitel as Charlie isn't what I think when I use the term. He's not hiding anything from the viewer, just himself. There's no buried secret or big plot twist. He's just often full of shit when he talks to you. Okay, yeah, he's unreliable, I give up. Scorcese (and his co-writer Mardik Martin) is probably just as unreliable, naming the film "Mean Streets" when the group of guys that walk those streets are insulated and removed from what you expect when you see the words Mean Streets combined with Scorcese (oddly enough that might be a reaction that stems from everything that Scorcese did after this, ie every other movie he's made). Let me draw my own parallel (as if everything before is Scorcese's crystal clear vision that I'm reading off Wikipedia). It's purgatory, one of Scorcese's often-called upon themes, now affecting the living.

All the characters are stuck in templates that associate with the streets. We have a lower Mob member (Keitel as Charlie), loan shark (Richard Romanus as Michael), and a bar owner (David Proval as Tony) on one side overlapped with a colossal screw up/debtor who slips in and out with all of them (Robert De Niro as Johnny Boy). We get to see the most of Keitel and how he relates and interacts with everyone. It's there from the start, where he talks about how meaningless the church is and is then immediately there alone. It might be meaningless, but he can't move on by cutting himself off or just accepting it. Charlie can't make a stand on his relationship with his girlfriend because it goes against the wishes of his uncle who holds the key to his upward mobility in the mob, despite having real feelings. Most notoriously he can't jettison Johnny Boy, who owes money all over town and is the personification of dead weight walking. Too bad that dead weight is hilariously entertaining and an outlet for him. But it's not just Charlie. The main group of four characters seem like teenagers playing gangster, dipping their toes in but making sure to get the hell out before anything serious happens. They have their petty conflicts and arguments, but then they're out messing around, off being in and around oddball trouble and skirting away from the cops.

But no matter how careful you are you can get sucked in or trapped. The characters seemingly are in a holding pattern, but little things cause them to break it. Since Charlie wants to appear serious and stay in the good graces of his uncle, he won't be seen not only with his girlfriend with epilepsy, who is disapproved of, but with Michael in front of his uncle, who's waiting for payment from Johnny Boy on debts. They're all pawns, but Charlie doesn't want to show his uncle his other buddies, because then he might realize he's just like them. For his part, Michael is willing to let the debts grow and grow and take Charlie's promises that Johnny Boy will get back on track. Charlie is unwilling to compromise on Johnny Boy to an asinine degree. Yet amidst all this is more running in place, goofballs who want to declare their membership entering through the side door. Charlie approaches one of the girls he fancies that dances at Tony's about being the hostess at the restaurant he's about to acquire (through no action of his own, by the way) and sets up a meeting with her at a place afterwards which he promptly jettisons while in the cab as he drives by. The guy can't even have a real affair! Tony has a tiger in a cage in the back room of his place. Not as a power symbol or anything, but so he can get in the cage and cuddle with the motherfucker! Michael accosts Charlie's girlfriend about Johnny Boy's whereabouts, knocking the groceries out of his hand before she runs him off. Oh, did I mention he picks up the groceries for her and puts them back in the bag?! These guys can't even shake down a woman for God's sake! All of this belies a point: Mean Streets is hilarious.

Some of it is clearly intentional, some maybe not. But I certainly found myself cracking up out loud much more than I would have expected, and the majority of it was non-cynical (a first?). Two scenes stand out. In the first, the four go to a bookie who hasn't paid the return on a bet he owes for Tony I believe (it might be an unnamed guy, I watched this four days ago and should've done this sooner, but I'm lazy/I suck). Everything starts out okay in a underground pool hall until Johnny Boy sets off a brawl. I'm almost lukewarm to call it that because the entire scene is ridiculously awkward, and not in a realistic manner. It's more like the fights I saw in high school, where people jumped around, avoided contact if at all possible, and blustered more than injured (except for that one time a guy I went to high school with repeatedly smashed a guy's head into a dumpster...he's a later Scorcese guy I guess). It also reminded me of a theater production, except it was choreographed by a drunk. And what happens? Everybody makes up when the cops show up and it's all good. The other is when something occurs (shaky ground, I think a shooting, which I'm going to get to) and everybody flees the scene, with two gay patrons from the bar forcing themselves into the car with the four others. While the former was stilted, this is plain comedy, with everyone being either nervous, appalled, drunk, horny, or a combination. I cracked up through this whole thing, until the two non-treehouse members get booted unceremoniously.

So we have characters stuck in the junior version of a hostile environment. They might be okay with it, but at some point someone is going to barely cross out of the safe zone. Except in a case where tension is building by inches, it explodes. Michael finally comes after Johnny Boy and then the blood finally flows, in a precursor to a scene involving two of the same actors three years later in Taxi Driver. But even when the blood flows and someone has actually done something, the ambulance is there to play us out. Because it's too late for all of them. The barriers are there, inescapable, and the streets are keen to insure the status quo. Oh, and that shooting? Everyone is in the bar doing nothing and David Carradine is drunk as shit laying on the bar. A random kid comes in and sits. Carradine rolls off and lurches into the bathroom, where he is promptly shot in the back by the kid. However, Carradine doesn't care. He assaults his attacker, following him out in the street until he tackles him with his dying breath after the kid empties all six shells from the revolver. Here we have a man tanked to the gills, who takes six bullets while he gives his last breaths trying to enact equal punishment on his attacker. He's committed, unwavering, and pushing through the worst of what the streets have to offer. He's everything that everyone else in Mean Street's isn't, what they do and don't want to be.

Call of Duty: Black Ops/Template 1 (Version 4.0)

1. Hundreds of guys vs 4 (we fixed the infinite respawn problem, so it's all cool now)

2. Follow until the leader stops moving for some reason and then you're supposed to move up and take charge all of a sudden.

3. Stealthily kill between 3 and 6 enemies before you are discovered/outnumbered. Standard fighting against regular guys commences.

4. Explosion/non-interactive event leads to blurry fall, disorientation, regain composure/awareness just in time to: get saved by ally, save ally with handgun, run to escaping vehicle, or get beat up by non-ally.

5. Shoot regular guys until: mounted machine gun, enemy vehicle, or heavy fire from structure occurs. Proceed to pick up explosive ordnance conveniently lying on the ground and blow it up. Resume shooting regular guys.

6. Enter vehicle. Blow up other vehicles and regular guys until vehicle is destroyed.

7. See Step 4.

8. Listen to stupidly stereotypical bad guys (probability: 45% Russian, 45% German, 10% Asian) speak perfect English in stupidly stereotypical accents. Note: If bad guy is Asian, perfect English requirement is lifted. Stupidly stereotypical accent still applies.

9. Enter the Matrix temporarily and shoot guys. Quickly leave the Matrix.

10. Apply list to next mission.

They Live: Or How Roddy Piper Gave Up the American Dream by Beating Up Keith David

Caveat: None of this makes sense, but a few quick words on the alley fight scene from They Live.

"I still believe in the American dream. Everybody goes through tough times." Nada (Piper) says something to this effect early on to Frank (David) while they stare at the city from the slums. Let's get half-assed political real quick. They Live came out in 1988, in the very last twilight of Ronald Reagan's "Morning in America". Collectivism was getting the tar beaten out of it. Nada discovers a crazy conspiracy and has to let other people know, Frank being the one he desires first because he has something of a relationship with him. But how does someone who in an individualist, and not even a strictly hardline one at that, go about getting someone to do something? They can tell them but they won't do it for them. Similar to how the the government was getting deregulated and the safety net was getting the axe (even though the state was still getting bigger). Get your ass in gear but don't expect much help if you can't.

Therefore, "Put on the glasses." Nada says it over and over when he has the upper hand in the fight scene. There are countless times when he could just force them over his eyes and the problem is solved but that isn't how he wants it to go down. He wants Frank to do it for himself. Back and forth they go. And finally, Nada just puts the glasses on him. He's finally given up on what he believed. It seems easy to think that happened earlier when the police destroyed the slums where he resided and enacted beatdowns on the inhabitants. But no, there's still room to maneuver. After all, the police are a protective side of the government. They might be a bit draconian, but they're on our side and the government's side. At the same time they're a functionary of a society that is corrupted and part of the state that apparently hasn't been hit by the deregulation bug. But Frank? He's just one man, working hard to support a family and minding his own business. He's the mold of the single go-getter. Sure, he complains about his situation, he's skeptical, but he's the one getting shit done. Nada is similar, he just has the rug pulled out from under him so harshly and quickly that he doesn't know how to react. He's also much more curious than skeptical, which is what gets him into trouble to start with. They're close enough to where it makes sense for them to paradoxically team up, so Nada knows he has to get to Frank eventually. Society, government, consumerism...sure, they're all manufactured lies. But a man like Frank? Nada knows he's as real as it gets, so he can only push him so far. The individual is still alive. Until Frank, in the ultimate act of individualism, refuses to cave. He fights and fights but he won't put on the glasses. So eventually Nada puts the glasses on him. Then the dream is dead.

L.A. Noire - An Experience in Gaming

L.A. Noire is a game built for me. It takes a broad classical adventure gametype and drops it into late 1940s Los Angeles. Your role is a detective, working your way through various sections of the LAPD, catching cases in the moral shithole you'd expect. The game is James Ellroy-lite, though it mainly fails to transcend the cliches he blasts open so spectacularly. Still, a "crime" game? Yeah, I can get behind that no matter what. Collecting evidence, interrogating suspects, breaking cases? Distill it however you want and I'll lap it up. My threshold for enjoyment is perilously low. But really, L.A. Noire has been billed as much more than that, both by its creators and players. A lot of talk has centered on it being the first video game to transcend that pesky "game" label. Instead, it holds the category of "experience".

A caveat up front: I'm not here to be the dreaded defender of the games industry from all those proles and their Modern Warfare fix that destroys my chances of getting the latest JRPG translated. However, I do think the attempted re-branding of L.A. Noire is related in a way to how mediums are often interpreted. You see it a lot in comics, where people talk about sequential art as just a storyboard for a potential movie, everything already laid out, both interchangeable, completely missing the unique qualities that separate them. Sadly it's not just a question of the form, as the countless godawful movie pitches as comics, ready-made to lurch onto the screen attest. I rarely see anyone talk about the relationships movies have to comics on a formal level. This has started popping up in games discourse too. When surefire successes like Halo and Call of Duty drop, the developers are aiming for the blockbuster action setpieces you're used to seeing every summer at the megaplex. They're quick to trot out the dreaded (by me at least, YMMV) word: "cinematic". As in, they want the games to feel like movies. Once again, I'm not going to overextend in the other direction and say all this pap is diluting the industry and pretty soon you'll be watching a game more than you'll be playing it. But just look at how non-interactive cutscenes have become a standardized focal point of games. Sure, they've always been there, but now they're at the forefront of hype and advertising. Cinema's influence is more and more apparent.

That aside is meant to show that labels for media are often changed to denote an uptick in quality, relevance, or importance. Look at "graphic novel". No more of that comics crap, this shit is real. It's like a novel, but with graphics! Let's not focus on how inadequate that term is, being tied to the novel format, but on how it took something and tried to take the same contents of what it always had been and then drag it out of the doldrums and into the light. The same thing is happening with L.A. Noire. This is no game, it's an experience! Now I get to try and destroy that connotation.

After all, what is an experience? You experience anything. A song, a comic, a novel, a movie, a TV episode, a painting. But wait, games are all about inserting actions you make into that experience, thereby personalizing it. Well maybe. I've got two big problems with that. The first is that anyone's experience with anything is different. Sure, commonalities, themes, reactions, they certainly spread across all manner of people, but deep down everyone feels differently about the same thing. How you're feeling at the time, a personal situation that mirrors what you see, someone you just saw, these are just a few of the countless things that affect how you experience anything. So saying L.A. Noire is an experience is really as one-dimensional and unhelpful as you can get. Everything is personal to some degree.

Second, and this is the bigger one, games are at their heart no more personal than any other medium. A stock line might be, "Well, you're controlling what's happening, so you're invested in the action way more." And to an extent that's true. But anything can get you to care about what happens or want to see what happens next if it's compelling. And games operate in the relatively confined, linear world that other things do. Within reason, a book only keeps going as you keep turning the pages, music has to keep playing to finish, and games only play out if you do what is prescribed to you. Princess is in another castle? Keep jumping on stuff and shooting fireballs. Zelda's been captured? Use that hookshot and work through those temples. Some guy that might be a clone of you is about to melodramatically threaten the entire world with a weapon of mass destruction? Hide in boxes and use the codec. If you don't, you're getting nowhere. The rules change specifically from game to game, but the one that differentiates games from other mediums is everything the creators wanted you to see is there and you must work through it in the order that they prescribe. You can open a book and read a random chapter. You can look at any page in a comic separately. You can look at a painting an artist did at any point in their career. Now that may not be the most compelling or fulfilling way to accomplish something, but the option is there. How do you get to the final boss? You beat all the other bosses, overcome all the other challenges, acquire the upgrades. Your choice is severely restrained, if there is one at all. Sandbox games and other types certainly give you more options and things to do, but there is always a larger plot that is meant to be moved along at some point. You might also rebuke this by mentioning that you can play a single level or section of a game just like you can read a single chapter or single page, but the key difference is access. Unless that level or section is the first one, it's almost always going to be blocked until you've gotten there.

To be sure, games have mixed it up. Choices in video games have become all the rage lately, but they've been around forever. Do you wait for the train or keep going in Final Fight 3? Do you save Kid or leave her in Chrono Cross? Do you go light side or dark side in Knights of the Old Republic? The game plays out differently and it makes you feel like you have some control, like you're shaping things. But of course you're not. You make a choice, and one formulated avenue is brushed aside for another. Then you replay the game and go the other way so you can see it or to just get the achievements/trophies. Character customization, depending on the game, is one place where games can allow for strong user involvement and individualization, even though it often can paradoxically become almost non-existent in the games where it has the largest potential, like in World of Warcraft or other MMOs.

So now that my opinions are out there, what about L.A. Noire itself? It is really an experience, a new take that transforms games and elevates the form to new heights? No, not at all. In fact, by trying to paint itself as something other than a game but coming up short, L.A. Noire blatantly (and I would guess unintentionally in some ways) screams that not only is it not an experience, but that it is a G-A-M-E through and through. A few thoughts on why that is.

Choice is certainly a major factor in the game. In a certain case, you might have to find close to 20 clues at various crime scenes and interview people, asking close to 20 questions. If you miss a clue you have less information to work with which cuts back on the options you have during an interview. Whenever there are clues to find there will be a certain backing music, and once you've found all the clues for a certain area, a sort of "victory chime" will play and the music will go away. Finding the clues is usually only a matter of walking up to the few noticeable objects in an area and then pressing the corresponding button when the controller vibrates to let you know this is something you can examine. It's a very simple process. Sure, you can turn off the music, but then how do you know if you've gotten all the clues? That might not be a huge deal, especially if this was an "experience" but the game makes sure to point out how you did after the mission is over, when you get what is basically a score report, showing your stats for the case. It's tied to the linear nature of games. By placing a statistic on how you play the game, the developers are trying to railroad you into playing the game how they have designed it and grading you on it. Why not remove that from the equation? Because that's how games are made and how people consume them. If Team Bondi really wanted to push, that would have been a great way to start. You work the case and it ends and you move on to the next one. No report that shows you how your "experience" was wrong.

The interrogations have a similar problem. They likewise show up as a statistic on your case report, but there's little subjectivity present when they actually take place. Whenever you ask someone a question, you can respond by believing they're telling the truth, believing they're lying, for which you have to have a piece of evidence to back it up, or doubting them, which basically is when you think they're lying but you don't have evidence to back it up. It's a pretty good system that usually works well. Sometimes it's hard to decide on which piece of evidence to use if you believe the person is lying, but that's about it. Whenever you select a response you get a "good chime" if the answer is correct and a "bad" one if it is wrong. More blatant examples of the game telling you there is a specific way to play each case and even though it continues and changes in ways, you still got it wrong. Why not strip all that away and just let the case play out within an overriding framework that hides as much from the player so the gameplay gets further into opacity (I'm trying here, I swear, it may not look like it) and unpredictability.

One of the reasons this is all a problem is because L.A. Noire has an overarching story that goes on in the background at first and slowly moves into the main part of the game. Sure enough, you can't control any part of this narrative. So even when your character does stupid things that are barely explained (HE'S FLAWED, SEE BRAH? SHIT IS DAYEEP!) you get to watch and marvel at the dismal goofiness happening. So no matter how you do in a case, that story has to continue, which, in a surprise to no one, involves you climbing the ranks of the department and great scenes where you're lauded as the crime solver of crime solvers even if you punted the entire previous case. Even worse is when you see or hear details in a case that you want to act on but have no ability to. Obviously we're not near a point of interactive games, but this is really frustrating, especially if you're supposedly in an experience. It comes across as the developers cutely playing with you, knowing that if you do notice, you don't have the capability to act.

A final point of frustration: the telephone. Throughout the game there are various spots where you can use a telephone to contact dispatch or records and information. You sometimes will also get connected to other members of the department or be given messages or updates. The thing is, you can only use the telephone when the game allows you to. It feels badly artificial, especially when it blatantly shows up on your minimap whenever you're "supposed" to use it, and always very convenient to your current location. There are also a few spots in the game where it is far from obvious that you should use the telephone, but since the icon pops up, you know you'd better dial away (it's not like you always know who you're calling, in another annoying quirk) because you risk losing out on information if you don't. At times this can make you feel like the game is on auto-pilot, playing itself.

Throughout this it might seem like I'm being unfair to L.A. Noire, especially since overall I like the game. I just really hate the experience wording, it being one in long trend of trying to replace unique forms with watered down versions of other, supposedly better ones. Just for fun, and because this really went off the rails near the end, here's my dream take on how L.A. Noire should have played out.

No overarching story. Instead, you have various cases set around a locale (in this case Los Angeles post-WWII). You could switch up the playable characters and the supporting cast to keep it interesting, with enough differences so that they aren't the same person with a different graphics model. There's not success or failure indicators in the quest. The evidence and interrogation methods can stay. Instead of focusing on a greater story, spend more time putting in multiple angles and directions that each case can branch to.

Movie Junkyard: 44 Inch Chest

Here's an interesting one. Is 44 Inch Chest a good movie? Who cares, when you've got these people on the screen just saying shit. Here's the whole movie. Ray Winstone plays Colin, a car salesman whose wife tells him she's found someone else when he comes in from the lot one day. He hooks up with the greatest crew of friends in the UK, who kidnap his wife's new guy. They then take him to a low-key spot and mentally and physically torture him. That's all in about the first ten minutes. The rest of the film takes place in that same building or in Colin's mind, as the group collectively decides what to do with "Loverboy" as they affectionately call him, locked in a cupboard for a good portion of the film in the same room as everyone else.

Just from looking at it, 44 Inch Chest screams "gangster/crime" flick. I don't know enough about anything resembling a film scene to know if Winstone has become typecast as someone who plays hardasses, but from this, Sexy Beast, The Proposition, and The Departed, it's arguable he's earned it. The supporting class is a lineup of character actors that should make the House of Windsor proud (and at least one of them indirectly has). Ian McShane, John Hurt, Tom Wilkinson, and Stephen Dillane. You couldn't get a better group of wise-ass gangster types on the screen if you tried and they're all incredible, as is Winstone. But this isn't your typical "gangster/crime" film, and it's quite a bit different from the ilk popularized by Guy Ritchie in the late 20th century, which have in their own way defined the expectations of what you expect out of a British crime film. It's worth noting that Sexy Beast, which also starred Winstone and was written by the same writers as this movie (Louis Mellis and David Scinto) takes a similar broad theme, one that centers on the drop-off years of professional criminal enterprise. It uses the familiar plot mechanism of a retired heist runner getting drug back into the old world through a heist that he can't avoid. 44 Inch Chest comes devoid of even that convention. There's no world to get drug back into because it doesn't exist anymore. What I see is a group of gangsters who are past any reasonable connection with the criminal world, underworld, or whatever you want to call it, yet it's still what defines them. They're all OLD and tethered to their own unknowing, complicated place where they only let allowable others in (Tom Wilkinson's mother he watches over, Ian McShane's hedonistic victims and accomplices). Colin's wife's adultery gives them an opportunity to recreate who they were. Sexy Beast is about whether you can go back and survive, but 44 Inch Chest is something much different and possibly worse. What happens when you've survived and don't have the capacity to go anywhere because your time has passed?

In that way, the film is what I'm going to inadequately call, not post-modern, but "post-gangster". A group of friends gets together to torment a guy who fucked one of their wives. Oh, and the husband? He's a car salesman who brings home chocolates and flowers for his wife, for God's sake. Sure, he might be unloading the cars illegally, using the business as a drug front, or just totally lying about it. It doesn't matter, there's no edge or tough guy cred there. And the guys are loving it! Sure, they sympathize with Colin, but what else are they doing? Absolutely nothing. We get a great scene where Ian McShane's character of Meredith recounts how he made a big score of cash, by basically getting lucky and playing some idiot who fails miserably at roulette and then later talks about buying shoes. This is what these guys have been reduced to. The kidnapping presents a warped passage back into the old ways, something halfway exciting that reminds of how awesome they used to be. Berating some tied up schmuck is as glorious as they come these days. What does everyone do but Colin? They stand around and talk about the old crazy characters and ridiculous stories. It's their personal version of world building within the film, the world that simultaneously was and is their own, even if others can't see it. And after pledging to give Colin some time alone, they eventually just come back in, because they can't wait to see what happens next and don't want to miss the action.

Just look at what the movie shows us. Basically nothing. The characters only exist outside their own creation when they drag Loverboy out of his place of work. And look at how they do it. They pull up in broad daylight and kidnap him at an indoor/outdoor corner cafe in front of everyone. They don't care, they're stuck in the old ways. Then it's straight to an empty neighborhood. When Colin walks around outside he doesn't see anyone, because all these guys are isolated from the new world. No one else is inside the house they're in. We get a few flashbacks through Colin's mind and that's all the deviation. The shots at the end of various parts of the rundown building? Seems like a reflection of the characters themselves. They're cracked and decaying but they still exist, even if no one is around them.

SPOILER

And that's why Colin lets Loverboy go. After a tremendous monologue on the nature and difficulties of a genuine loving relationship, where the camera is on Winstone's face, close-up, for almost the entire several minutes, everyone comes back in the room and Colin gives his decision. Why? Maybe because through the flashbacks, where Colin violently beats his wife to get her to tell him who Loverboy is, he then realizes that he's already tried to come back to the old world and he just can't cut it anymore. Any semblance of real transition stopped when he took it out on her. His friends encourage him to be a man, but what has that got him? She's gone and it doesn't matter what happens to Loverboy. Colin is back in the old world now, and Loverboy is what he thinks he used to be. Why kill him when he's still got his good days left and he's of the times? Or maybe Colin realizes that, as it seems he's the only one of the group to actually have come up with some semblance of life after gangster, that he should be happy with the years he had. Or does Colin realize he's back in the world, but also figures out that it's enclosed and their little sham is up? He's not a gangster anymore. He and his friends might act like they are for a few hours, but that doesn't change anything. They're all just moping along without any concrete endpoint. In the old days they would've just killed him. But Colin is smart enough to realize they're not there anymore and the uncertainty is just enough to make him think, "what's the point?"

All this is probably crap. I am far from the people I usually read. Watch 44 Inch Chest and don't think about any of this. Just listen to the dialogue and the killer actors that spout it.

Comics Junkyard: Moebius

This is going to be the first of hopefully many more posts that focus, in some way or another, on comics. I've recently reoriented my priorities and decided I want to focus more on comics in my free time. I'm not planning on doing many, if any, reviews because I don't think I can effectively write them nor do they really serve a purpose in a vacuum. Instead I'm going to look at sequences, panels, layouts, and the art in general. I have to preface this by saying I have no background or really any capacity at all to discuss art on the comics page. So what I'm going to talk about are the things that strike me about whatever I'm discussing. I'm hoping I can go beyond "this looks cool", but I'm also not going to write too in-depth on anything. So with all that, why not start with an absolute legend of comics, just so I can trap myself right at the beginning.

Moebius is a beast, plain and simple. He's influenced so many people it's ridiculous. I remember ten or eleven years ago when I was first getting into comics as a young teenager, I saw Ladrönn's promotional images for Hip Flask and was blown away. At the time I hadn't seen what I'll inadequately call the "Euro Sci-Fi" style, even though now I can tell that Ladrönn had clearly seen Moebius (which doesn't detract from him at all, and he might show up in one of these some day). I don't know if Moebius was the one to really create the style, but at this point it's immaterial; it's his style.

Sadly, while Moebius' influence might spread the world over, his work is hard to come by in English. Various companies have started publishing ventures to get his work into the US as far back as the 1970s (I wonder if you can find this stuff in the UK), but the majority of it commands high prices, though some of it is cheaper depending on the book. Thankfully Humanoids, the publisher that is synonymous with most of his work in France, is now directly publishing stories in America for what is the first time since their short partnership with DC in the early 2000s and two Moebius books have already been released.

Fortunately, I have the internet and silent stories to placate me for now. Major props go to Grantbridge Street & other misadventures, where you can find not only Moebius but all kinds of other awesome comic gems. The images that I use in this post came from there. So for the inaugural edition I'm going to look at an Arzak story that appeared first in english in Heavy Metal #3. From what I've found, there are four short Arzak stories that are explained by some as delving into the dreams or subconscious. If you're thinking, "oh great, has there ever been a more boring cop-out or pretentious story mechanism than dreams?", you're not alone. Don't worry though, because if these are Moebius' dreams, we should all want to get inside his head.

Page 1. Not a lot to say here, but I think overall the colors are excellent. The warm earthy yellows and light browns come across as perfectly natural.

Page 2. What really strikes me here is the back of the scarf in the second panel. The way it rests as the car stops instantly caught my eye because of how well pronounced it is. Moebius might be known for the fantastic, but he can get down with the technical just as well.

Page 3. More on color. The figure pops so well when he enters in panel 1 when removed from the heavy light outside. I also like how the interior of the hallway somewhat mimics his green and purple scheme. It's almost like he's emanating outwards (is he?). And in panel 2, look at the juxtaposition of the figure on the foreground on the left and the pipes or hoses running out of the structure in the background. Everything else is diminished and the reader sees a sense of awe through the figure, even if the figure doesn't necessarily show any.

Page 4. The figure in panel 1 is a level of detail that is exemplary. Detail is something that I think is unique to an artist. The best artists can control it and make it work no matter if their work is "detailed" (Geoff Darrow, Frank Quitely) or not (Eddie Campbell comes to mind, though I could be completely off base there, though it's immaterial, because he's a master). With the inferior artists it overcomes any sense of style and is simply detail (David Finch and Alex Ross are two examples that while different, are still quite similar). Panel 2 is the greatest naked flying kick ever. I also like how the besides the two moving figures, the background doesn't change between panels 2 and 3, but the perspective moves slightly upwards two dimensionally, possibly to represent the arc of our goggled friend after he's been kicked. Also, the spherical object in mid-air in panels 2 and 3? I was fixated on that when I first looked at this page. At first I thought the person (thing?) sitting down was tossing it, but now I'm not sure. It really doesn't matter, because this is Moebius throwing in these small incidental details that help to fill out something as outwardly simple as the whole story. It sounds stupid to call it making the story more realistic or to claim world building, so I won't. It's just Moebius.

Page 5. Look at the angle Moebius shows when dude hits the ground in the first panel. I get the (probably) unjustified feeling that if this were drawn stateside, the figure would just fall over dramatically on his face. But how he slides and hangs on to the case? Is the case so heavy its dragging him, or is he just hanging onto it above all else? All I know is I really like that angle.

Page 6. Oh look the horde has finally awoken and...nothing. He just calmly enters and Moebius pulls the rug.

Page 7. Well here's Arzak. Once again, I dig the little details. The footprints in the ground in panel 2 where Arzak has been just pacing in the same circle, with the dust cloud added for good measure. And that face in panel 3. That's a gritty veteran's face if I ever saw one. "Well there ain't any new shit for me anymore, ain't no problem I can't fix, and nothing a little squintin' can't account for." Moebius also gets to draw a cool sci-fi apparatus that requires two hands, so even Viv Savage can use it.

Page 8. That middle panel is pure satisfaction that doesn't require some elaborate reaction. "It's done like I knew it would be, problems solved until the next one shows up." The briefcase is put back on the rear of the car and we're done. The side of the car we only see in this panel contains the best type of restrained madness.