Cheap Shot at Rob Liefeld

YOUNGBLOOD #1, Image Comics, April 1992
You might have noticed of the last couple of days have been about crap comics. And no serious crap roundup can occur without a fine product by Rob Liefeld. In this case, Youngblood. (Easy prey? Yes. But it's Friday. Leave me alone.)

When a bunch of "hot" Marvel artists started asking for more money & women and didn't get them, they cut themselves loose and created Image Comics, where they promptly started books that were - at least visually - derivative of what they'd been doing at Marvel. What they didn't really bring with them is writers and editors. Result? A new Dark Age of Comics that made the 50s and 70s look like Italy at the height of the Renaissance.

The worst of these new comics was Liefeld's Youngblood. Now, Liefeld is the artist that "popularized" a style of comics that combined overrendered art (mainly cross-hatching and speed lines in lieu of backgrounds), disproportionate anatomy (also known as "not knowing how to draw the human form"), and totally useless costume accessories (like huge epaulets, mismatched boots, and thigh belts - here's a tip: if you're not gonna sheath a knife in it, you don't need that thigh belt...)
(...unless it's to keep your muscles from blowing your leg up, I guess.)

Bad art, but it was popular at one time. Bad writing though? Well, I don't think it even qualifies as writing. Youngblood #1 features two stories in flip-book format. You spend 16 pages with the "home team" and 16 with the "away team". I say "story", but they're really each a collection of splash pages detailing a fight with villains that might as well be the heroes. Visually, there's nothing that makes them any different from Youngblood, and there's nothing morally different about them either. Not only is characterization at its absolute minimum, the heroes are rather reprehensible and thoroughly unlikable.

For some reason, I got the second issue too, which introduces even more characters I'll never care about, but it's interesting for its letters page. Now it's a well-known fact in the comics industry that Liefeld has an inflatable ego and that even his Image buddies eventually had to throw him out. When did he start deserving that rep? Short answer: Youngblood #1 with its ad for joining the Rob Liefeld Fan Club!
Dude... More to the point is that letters page from Youngblood #2, which I'm being very careful not to touch in case I get some fanboy jizz on me. It's two pages of the gushiest ass-licking I've ever read. Liefeld didn't just print the most complimentary comments, he published the ones that were openly having an orgasm over his stuff. Everything I hate about the comic, they love. One comment caught my eye in particular (paraphrased): "I love ALL the characters! And I don't even know anything about them!"

Ok, in my book? Not knowing anything about any of the characters after the first issue is a CONDEMNATION.

For example, the guy we know the most about is the Youngblood's leader, Shaft. What I know about Shaft:
1) He's a Hawkeye or Green Arrow rip-off.
2) His name must inspired by the fact that he's a prick.
3) While he can kill a guy with a thrown pen (sound familiar?), his real power is turning his face into a skull:
4) He takes hormone treatments and eventually hopes to have enough money to pay for "the Operation".
Shaft, you're being paged. Dr. Lovebaum is ready to see you now.

Awful art, bad computer coloring, unmemorable characters with unmemorable codenames (Combat? Vogue? Psi-Fire?) and unmemorable costumes, lettering that doesn't flow with the dialogue, gratuitous violence, stilted scripting, disjointed action, a "badass" character riding a lilac motorbike, and a Saddam look-alike being turned inside out at the end.

No, that cannot be considered its one redeeming value.

Star Trek 476: Learning Curve

476. Learning Curve

FORMULA: Lower Decks + Parallax + Hollow Pursuits

WHY WE LIKE IT: The Maquis way! -POW!-

WHY WE DON'T: The pat ending.

REVIEW: Centering the season finale on the characters, with no real antagonist and a gentle touch, is an odd way to go out, but I'm not complaining. Not when it comes to the entirely too plot-driven Voyager (at least, that's how I remember it). Janeway continues her boring cliché-ridden holo-novel, in which it is revealed that her idea of relaxation is helping raise some spoiled brats. You'd think she had more than enough of that at work with the Maquis. Ha! And so we segue into the actal focus of the episode: Starfleet-Maquis relations.

The captain gives Tuvok the very special assignment of breaking--I'm sorry, training four of the least cooperative Maquis crew members. In the incident that sets it off, I can see where Dalby is coming from. Dude saw a problem and fixed it, so what's the big problem? Tuvok, of course, completely misses the point and tries to deal with Dalby and his three other charges as if they were cadets. They're not, and he'll require the advice of Neelix and the behind-the-scenes help of Chakotay to make any headway. This was back when Chakotay was cool, and his lesson about what the "Maquis way" is supposed to be it reason enough to watch Learning Curve. Another high point is Dalby's chat with Tuvok over a pool table, probably the most realistic scene in the episode (and a good indicator of the Maquis experience), and there are some cute humorous moments throughout having to do with lack of discipline.

Meanwhile, the bio-neural gel packs have gotten a virus or an infection, disrupting systems shipwide. It's the usual malfunction B-plot TNG used to throw out at us all the time to pad character-centric shows, but at least it examines this new piece of technology for the first time since the term was thrown out in Caretaker. That Neelix's cheese was responsible is perhaps silly, but not impossible, and the sweat-drenched resolution, with a dripping Kes and very dry Doctor, makes for a fun ending.

Obviously, Tuvok is going to show the Maquis he isn't an uncaring robot by saving one of them, because it's more about Starfleet officers getting the Maquis' respect than it is about learning discipline and protocol. Hopefully, that too-pat ending doesn't mean the Starfleet-Maquis conflict is entirely resolved for the rest of the voyage. If it is, Voyager's just gotten rid of it's built-in twist quicker than any season of Big Brother. Chell will be seen again, but not the other three, which is really too bad. Since it's impossible for the ship to transfer personnel, I would have thought building a supporting cast would have been more important than on DS9.

LESSON: Starve a fever, hyperthermically feed a cold.

REWATCHABILITY - Oh screw it, I'm gonna say High: It's not a big blow-out and the big baddie is a block of cheese, but the focus on the characters and the gentle humor make it one of the better episodes of the first season.

Independent Comics Can Suck Too

TROSPER, Fantagraphics Books, 2001
Superhero books don't have the market cornered on crap. Take Trosper for example. Really indy stuff like this - by master surrealist Jim Woodring - doesn't usually make the racks in ye olde comicke booke store. You have to order it special, sight unseen.

Based on the rantings and ravings of pretentious underground comix lovers just like me, I ordered it. After all, I'd enjoyed Woodring's Frank comics. Operative words are: Sight unseen.

Turns out Trosper is an extremely brief read. Pleasant enough to look at, but completely wordless. That wouldn't be too bad if it had more than 18 FREAKIN' PANELS!!! It comes with a jazz CD by Bill Frisell, so maybe there's more to this little hardcover comic. And again, the CD is pleasant enough, sounding to my ear like the Rheostatics tuning up in reverse (they're my favorite band - much is forgiven on that basis). But clocking in at only 6 minutes or so, it still can't even be listened to in time with the reading of the book! It's a 15-second read!

The story? It's about a little elephant who's playing with a ball, when things go awry and he gets chased by Woodring's trademark vaginas and penises until he finds another ball...

So I guess it's about the Child going through Puberty and Sexual Development (all of which makes you Emo), then finding the Inner Child again as one grows Old and loses one's Libido. (Us pretentious Fanboys think things are more profound when they start with capital letters... or more Profound, at any rate.)

Bottom line? Here's what I paid for it*:
And that content/price ratio, my friends, is why I have to call bullshit on Trosper.

*I'm Canadian.

Star Trek 475: Jetrel

475. Jetrel

FORMULA: Duet + The Alternate + Ties of Blood and Water

WHY WE LIKE IT: James Sloyan's performance.

WHY WE DON'T: The Kes-Neelix Hallmark card romance.

REVIEW: Meant to be Voyager's version of Duet, with a national guilt over concentration camps replaced by America's national guilt over dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it's not quite as resonant because the writers forgot what made Duet so good. That episode was really just two people talking. This episode seems to go out of its way to introduce technobabble elements and effects sequences that quite simply divert attention from its main thrust.

Because at its core, this is a good story. James Sloyan is impeccable as Jetrel, even if initially too close to Dr. Mora for comfort. He knows his invention has made him a monster and has accepted his coming death as justice. He stands as a monument to blind, amoral science and knows it, even if he chalks it up to scientific inevitability. The scene where he doesn't apologize to Neelix - because how could he ever - is a standout. Neelix as his adversary is petty, but justified, and his descriptions of metrion cascade victims are harrowing.

Neelix meets the man responsible for a weapon that killed over 300,000 people, including his family, a man hungry for redemption. There's enough juice in that conflict to last us the whole show. Unfortunately, both characters are saddled with extra material that just doesn't work. Turning Neelix's righteous anger back on himself because he was a consciencious deserter and using that to motivate forgiving Jetrel at the last minute is psychobabble I don't think even Troi would have touched (good nightmare sequence though, almost justifies the Sandrine's sequence). And the so-called romantic scene in which Kes hands out this pop psychology revelation is very badly written, with the two "lovers" coming off as pretty happy Neelix is going to die from space cancer.

Jetrel, for his part, tries his best to be Aamin Marritza by keeping a couple of hidden agendas close to his vest, but since it all comes down to using the transporter (what's Janeway doing letting him look at her technology?) to recreate the vaporized victims of the metrion cascade, the last act falls apart pretty quickly. When even Janeway doesn't think your technobabble makes sense, you're in trouble.

LESSON: When there's no possible shot, call a safety. How that relates to the theme of the episode, I have yet to figure out. (SAFETY!)

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Almost a Medium-High, but it makes a number of missteps.

What If... the Hulk Visited Zork?

QUESTPROBE #1, Marvel Comics, August 1984
Billed as a Scott Adams/Marvel Comics limited series, Questprobe was meant to go 12 issues over 4 years, but only managed 3. Why? Because it was quintessentially a bad idea, that's why. Scott Adams... Scott Adams... Sound familiar? It should, but this isn't the same guy who's responsible for Dilbert. Crossing Hulk with Office Space might've been something. Not funny, but something. But I won't bash Dilbert here. I think the Internet has got it covered.

In any case, this isn't that Scott Adams. This Scott Adams was a programmer of games in Basic in the late 70s and early 80s. In '84, he took some Marvel-inspired text games he'd made in '78 and updated them with graphics for the likes of the Commodore 64. In the tie-in comic, the featured hero would eventually enter a black portal. If you wanted to know what happened to the character, you'd have to play the game. It's the Matrix franchise at least 15 years before its time.

Have you spotted the problem? It's a text-based adventure game. The first of which stars the Hulk. The HULK. Clearly, they went with Marvel's best and brightest puzzle-solver. I hope there's a lot of smashing to be done! Let me tell you, I've played the game on my old C64, and there isn't. There are, however, obtuse puzzles like this one:
The same objects recur in the game, and no, I have no idea what to with them. The egg smashes itself!

The plot of the comic revolves around a pacifist alien race confronted with its own doom when a "black fleet" approaches. Only one of them does something about it by heading to Earth to copy our heroes' powers. I kinda like the guy's look:
Man, that's a 'fro made of light! Writer Bill Mantlo strikes again! He's not as interesting with a helmet as the Chief Examiner though (a name he seems to have picked off tabloids in the grocery store checkout line). He finds the Hulk rampaging through the Grand Canyon and tries to make him jump into the portal. Since he seems to have control over the damn thing, I don't know why it just doesn't fly straight at the green goliath, but there you go.

Finally, to save a girl wearing what must be the heaviest lifejacket in the history of comics, he does go through it. And it leaves you wondering if you missed the only interesting bit of the story. But if you've only played the game, you have the feeling the comic must have been the interesting bit.
And what happened to the Questprobe series? Hulk was followed by Spider-Man, then the Fantastic Four, and while they were working on the X-Men, Scott Adams' company folded. The X-Men comic was eventually published in Marvel Fanfare. Computers just started developing too fast for poor ol' text-based adventure games. I guess that's why we don't remember Scott Adams' name along the likes of Bill Gates and... um... Bill Gates.

They brought John Romita Sr. out of retirement for THIS?!?

Star Trek 474: Faces

474. Faces

FORMULA: The Enemy Within + Phage + Caretaker + The Enterprise Incident

WHY WE LIKE IT: Exploring B'Elanna's background.

WHY WE DON'T: Vidiian gross-outs. The reset button.

REVIEW: Faces is basically a device for B'Elanna to have a interior monologue... externally. Splitting her up not only into two bodies, but two natures as well, allows her to confront the violent Klingon half that so often caused her trouble, and at the same time reconcile herself with her braver, stronger side. Much of her every day anger seems to stem from self-loathing, as she blames her Klingon side for her father's abandonment. It's a strong, dual performance from Roxanne Biggs-Dawson, who looks - and acts! - totally different in either form, without sacrificing her B'Elanna-ness.

It's a good thing the premise works as a psychological metaphor (not unlike The Enemy Within), because it can't quite stand up to scrutiny despite the Vidiians being so medically advanced. For example, though there are precedents for transporter duplication, why don't the Vidiians use this technique to multiply their organ stores? Why does turning B'Elanna into a pure Klingon alter her accent? And if it's all a product of super-advanced Vidiian technology, why can it be so easily undone by the EMH? Aside from a requisite reset button, I mean?

The main thrust of the plot is focused on escape from the Vidiians, and here the Klingon B'Elanna fares better than her human half, breaking free and toasting rodents when an offer of "voracious" sex doesn't quite work on Sulan. He's more of a villain than the previous Vidiians, but still a pathetic figure, kind of like the Hunchback of Notre-Dame. One of my early misgivings about Voyager at the time was that it too readily tried to pain itself as "adult" by veering into the grotesque (a form of visual violence). The killing of Durst and grafting of his face on Sulan is pretty horrific here. And I can't help but think of it as gratuitous.

The other characters go through the paces either trying to escape or getting their people out (I feel sorry for the rest of the prisoners who were just left there at episode's end). Chakotay made up like a Vidiian is hardly as iconic as the Romulan Kirk, and barely necessary to the plot. At least it gives him something to do.

LESSON: Introducing a background character and doing away with him or her an episode or two later has now become standard practice.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: The dramatization of B'Elanna's internal struggle is well done, but there's quite a bit of headless running around surrounding it. And I can't help but fear that the reset button at the end is just giving the writers permission for all sorts of wacky transformations down the line.

Star Trek 473: Cathexis

473. Cathexis

FORMULA: Lonely Among Us + Return to Tomorrow + Clues

WHY WE LIKE IT: A good, tense mystery.

WHY WE DON'T: The title. The holo-novel.

REVIEW: In psychodynamics, cathexis is defined as the process of investment of mental or emotional energy in a person, object, or idea (from Wikipedia). As a special service, I'll be offering definitions for Voyager episodes with glossary-promoting titles. I know Bragga's gone on record saying he does this on purpose to be "educational", but I'd rather the show get some of the science right instead. Such titles read like the authors are showing off, and don't relate very well to the episode ("which one was this?").

Cathexis isn't a bad episode actually. It recycles the "possessed by an alien entity" trope to good effect, creating plenty of paranoia as crew members apparently do things without remembering they have. The mystery is further deepened because there are two "ghosts" at work, one working to lure Voyager into a trap, the other trying to prevent that. The twist is that both seem to be a danger to the ship. The measures taken by the crew are interesting, and the ways the aliens use to counter them give them cold sweats. Is Tuvok, in fact, investigating himself?

One of the aliens, of course, is Chakotay's disembodied consciousness. In the least successful element of the episode, Chakotay returns to the ship brain dead, and yet no one ever gives up hope of "reintegrating" his consciousness into his body even if it's been vampirically sucked out of him. His medicine wheel is an interesting prop, and it's nice to see B'Elanna respect one of her commander's customs.

With Kes feeling Chakotay's vibes, it's really a haunted ship story, so it makes sense to start Janeway's holo-novel in this episode. It's quite clearly a take on Jane Eyre, and aside from the always creepy presence of Carolyn Seymour, isn't something I'm looking forward to. I'm not a big Brontë fan (not even a small one, I should say), but beyond that, I'm not sure what it wants to say about Janeway's character. Knowing in advance it'll be abandonned before coming to a close, it also feels like another missed opportunity for Voyager. Every season could have featured a grand holo-novel and paced itself through that (a bit like the never-seen Alamo program on DS9). Alas...

LESSON: Never give them up for dead.

REWATCHABILITY - Medium: Nice suspense, mystery and paranoia, though perhaps the twists aren't hard to see coming. Good, but rather inconsequential with its invisible enemies.