Fanboy Friday: The Personality of Peter Parker

So, if no one’s noticed by now I kinda like Spider-Man. Guy’s been my favourite super hero since I was very wee – I think there was about seven seconds when I was four that Captain America was my favourite super hero. But then Spidey showed up in the toy commercial and it didn’t matter that Cap had a sweet Cap-mobile with a battering ram. Spidey was my guy.

So, when Marc Webb’s Amazing Spider-Man came out last year, I was pretty disappointed. Thing is, I was raised on Spidey up through the Clone Saga BS in the nineties and I’ve got every trade paperback of Brian Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man. The Peter Parker portrayed by Andrew Garfield in ASM bore very little resemblance to the Pete I was used to from the comics I read. Comics Spidey was an earnestly good, kinda dopey nerd who might have a mouth when he’s beating up criminals but at home like is the pinnacle of a stand-up guy. Genuinely nice, unassuming, decidedly not bitter and while he might be angsty, he’s definitely not angry. Andrew Garfield, despite being a damn fine actor played a very different Peter – one who’s still a high school outcast, but appears to be an outcast for being counterculture rather than dorky. Garfield’s Peter has a palpable sense of anger radiating off him which I found off-putting – he was playing a teenager who is angry at the world for no good reason (which, to be fair, is quite teenagery). He was sulky even before Uncle Sheen (pitch perfect casting) gets knocked off, and snarky even when he isn’t Spider-Man – which I didn’t like because I’d always interpreted Spidey’s wisecracking as being a byproduct of the introverted dork Peter Parker only truly feeling socially confident when he’s got his identity hidden. So, suffice to say, I was unimpressed.

Until, that is, this past year when I started doing a systematic read-through of all the old Stan Lee / Steve Ditko Amazing Spider-Man comics from the early ‘60s. I’d picked up the first two Marvel Masterworks reprint trades of them at BMV last year because hey, history. Upon reading the original Amazing Spidey 1-24, I’ve rethought my opinion of Amazing Spidey, the movie. Andrew Garfield’s Peter Parker is significantly more accurate to the Lee/Ditko Peter than I’d thought.

While Peter is portrayed as a huge nerd in those original comics (who wears a suit and tie to high school? Huh? I think cool people. But jocks in the ‘60s obviously didn’t) he’s significantly more angry a character, even if it’s mostly in his internal monologue. An issue doesn’t go by without a panel of Peter, having just been mocked by Flash Thompson, thinking to himself “if only they knew my true power! I’ll show ‘em! I’ll show ‘em all!” like some kind of proto-Hayden Christensen. Come to think of it, Peter’s thought balloons in a lot of the early ASM comics reads a heckuva lot like the Superior Spider-Man’s thought balloons. There was a lot more of an angry, almost mad scientist quality to Peter Parker back in the Lee/Ditko books. Oddly enough this makes the whole “Peter Parker needs to learn to look out for more than himself” arc that is set off by Peter accidentally getting Uncle Ben killed a lot more prevalent because it’s an actual character flaw he’s working on eliminating rather than something that just disappears like poof when he learns “with great power there must also come great responsibility.”  

I always liked Peter Parker the Genuinely Nice Guy, but as I keep reading the Lee/Ditko books, more and more I’m getting to like the snarky egotistical kind-of-a-bit-of-an-asshole Peter Parker who will, eventually, grow up out of being a selfish teenager and become Genuinely Nice Guy Peter.

And, thus, I’m looking a little more forward to Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Paul Giamatti in a Rhino suit.

Oh, and one more thing – anyone ever notice that, despite supposedly being an irredeemable nerd, Peter Parker is swimming in ladies all the time? Not only that, he appears to basically be Archie Andrews. Though, in Stan Lee’s defense, at least he didn’t name the blonde Betty.

Fanboy Friday: The Old Republic Rises Again

Back when Star Wars: The Old Republic came out in the fall of last year, I was really really really excited for it. Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel are still pretty much my favourite video games of all time, and The Old Republic was being advertised as its sequel. I've never been attracted to MMORPGs because I hate people, but I was desperately itching for another KOTOR, and The Old Republic was being touted as very story-focused and amenable to curmudgeonly misanthropes like me who just wanted to play by themselves. So I tried it out.

I was very disappointed. However, not in the way I was expecting to be. I didn’t find the multiplayer aspect nearly as distracting as I’d thought, and the writing in the game was really strong – but what do you mean I have to grind through the same area for three more hours to level up enough to beat this story-end boss? But my character wouldn’t want to murder thousands more Sand People! Also I have things to do! Not cool, game. Not cool.

Also, the monthly subscription fee was insidiously making me not play other games or read books because I “wanted to get my money’s worth” - so I quit the game. I just wanted the story and to swing a lightsaber around. I’d read the Wookieepedia entry on the game’s story and be done with it.

However, The Old Republic recently went free-to-play. So I’d be able to play other games without guilt and I still reallllly wanted to have that KOTOR III experience. Also, the game sent me an email saying my R2 Unit missed me and it was emotionally manipulative and, and, and…

So I booted up the game again. Here’s what went down.

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, 3pm:

Alright, booting up the game. I’ve got a couple hours to kill so this... a gigabyte of updates are necessary? Ugh. I guess I’ll go to the gym and come back.

4:30pm:

Okay, time to bust out that lightsa- NINE MORE GIGS TO GO!? Update five of twelve?! COME ON.

9:30pm:

Five and a half hours to patch a game. Really. COME ON. Alright, now I’m booting up the game.

I decided to go with a dashing human Sith Warrior named Nyvaan. I wanted to call him Niven because I modeled his stellar moustache on actor David Niven, but unfortunately that name was taken and I had to Star Wars up his name with a ‘y’ and an extra ‘a’.

10:30pm:

In my first hour I killed some space bugs and decided the fate of three Imperial prisoners – sparing two of them (the light side option) and granting the last wish of the third - honourable death by combat. I find the idea of playing a good-guy Sith Lord appealingly contrarian, so we’ll see if the game tolerates this.

1:30am:

Welp, I obviously like this game. Got my first lightsaber, met a weird Sith Lord in renaissance armor, chose my prestige class – awesome. Until…

“After level 10, free-to-play players begin to accrue less experience.”

Really? Really. COME ON.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON, 4:30pm:

Belay that last order. You only gain experience at a -25% rate by being a free-to-player. That's not that bad. Especially because every so often you get quest rewards that boost your experience gain back to normal for an hour - which is good for people like me who like to artificially set a limit on how much time they sink into a game.

Still successfully playing a light-side Sith! I'm changing the Empire from within by murdering people quickly rather than needlessly! Am I not merciful?

THURSDAY AFTERNOON, NOON:

I'm beginning to be sold again. Not literally, I can't abide subscription-based gaming. I bought the game already! Let me play it! Thankfully, the free-to-play option gives me that right, and the restricted features for non-subscribers don't break the game and give me an irrational sense of self-satisfaction that I'm resisting them.

I'm still not a huge fan of the game's Warcraft style click-on-the-toolbar-in-the-optimal-order combat, but it's still kinda fun. At this point Nyvaan has ingratiated himself with his Sith Master enough that he can casually suggest that he try not being a total douche without fear of reprisal, and is a hero to the moderates of the Imperial military who just want to keep the peace with a semi-benevolent iron fist, rather than actively antagonize the citizenry with lightning hands. I really like that this play-style is an option.

Long-story short, it's entirely possible that I'll come up against an end-boss that my character can't handle and I'll quit out of righteous frustration, but for the moment The Old Republic is letting me have a lightsaber and pretend to be a Jedi in a very well written story without massively inconveniencing my experience by being an MMO. So I'mma keep playing. Again, until a Rancor stomps me out with one hit.

See you next week, nerds!

Fanboy Friday: 'Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon'

So, I had absolutely no interest in playing Far Cry 3. But then this trailer happened. An action-adventure-stealth based shooter based almost entirely on aping the conventions of a dumb late 80s action movie? Wherein you play a guy with a cybernetic eye for no good reason? And there are giant Gila monsters that shoot lasers out of their eyes? And the soundtrack is mostly synthesizers and this? Anyone who happened to catch my post on my love of the music and iconography of American cinema of the 1980s can probably guess that this not only piqued my interest but was immediately up my alley, aesthetically.

I think this is the first time I’ve wanted to (and been able to) buy downloadable content for a video game without buying the parent game first. Those inclined like me to buy a schlocky neon-drowned stealth-action romp like Blood Dragon weren’t all likely to have already bought a grim-and-gritty jungle warfare stealth-action romp like the original Far Cry 3. So, thankfully you can buy Blood Dragon without having already bought the original game. It’s a really cool and to my knowledge unprecedented move on the part of the publisher! Blood Dragon was a cool, weird idea for a game whose marketability hadn’t yet been tested, but the publisher was able to give it a chance by building it on top of an existing game. By using the existing infrastructure built for Far Cry 3, Ubisoft was able to take a calculated risk on a weird, niche game that probably didn’t have a tested target audience.  They minimized the amount of work and money the game needed to get made, and thus were able to release an affordable (15$! Cheap compared to the 50$ of the original Far Cry 3) and aesthetically unique game that probably wouldn’t have got green-lit if it needed the bloated budget of a typical triple-A title. And it’s worked out really well for them! Apparently Blood Dragon has sold five times better than expected and has already been tapped for a sequel – and it certainly got me to buy the original Far Cry 3 after the fact.

Sure, the small budget doesn’t always work in the game’s favour – the jokey 8-bit animated cutscenes are a creative way around not being able to afford new motion-capture, but since the game is a loving homage to films like Predator and Megaforce, the decidedly non-cinematic 8-bit sequences seem out of place to me. Other than that, the game is a blast. The eighties are about has far away from us now as the 50s were to when Back To The Future came out – the eighties are ‘period’ now, and not only that they’re a period that 20-and-30-somethings are beginning to remember fondly. As someone who grew up with movies like Road Warrior and The Terminator, the idea of being able to play a video game where I could shoot cyborgs with a neon laser rifle to electro-synth music was immediately appealing. Sign me up. With the popularity of retro movies and TV series like Super 8, Drive, and the BBC’s Ashes to Ashes, I’m surprised no one in video games thought of tapping into this wave of 80s nostalgia sweeping popular-and-nerd culture before.

And have I mentioned how amazing and ludicrous the game’s soundtrack is? Powerglove, the electronic band that did the Blood Dragon soundtrack, also did a remix for an indie solo artist from Greece named Kristine whose Modern Love EP is my new favourite thing. Apparently writing retro 80s pop-rock is a thing for some people? Definitely added most of that EP to my workout playlist, “Traning Montage II: The Re-Bloodening.”

You can see why I’m Blood Dragon’s target demographic.

Fanboy Friday: Why I Wander The Wastes

I’ve been watching a lot of AMC’s The Walking Dead lately and it’s got me thinking about the apocalypse. Not, like, what my zompirepocalypse action plan would be, I mean, I’ve got that dossier drawn up already (if you’re looking for the latest Apocalyptic Survival tips, check out Seth On Survival – that show is very informative, and the guy that hosts it is super dreamy.) No, I’ve been thinking about why I’m drawn to apocalyptic fiction and, by extension, why ‘the culture’ these days seems drawn to it too.

Poor T-Dog.

The Walking Dead is a pretty dour apocalypse. Zompocalypses in general are big downers. Even though TWD is a long-form series you always get a sense that the characters are living on borrowed time, that they're fighting to survive the next moment. Every time they try to build a more permanent foothold (Herschel’s farm, the Prison) it inevitable gets destroyed by a wave of the undead, asshole humans, or their own shortsightedness. While I watch The Walking Dead for the chills and superbly directed suspense (it’s rare for other modern horror to make me tense up as well as well as that series does), I also watch it because it’s a morbidly pessimistic dissection of society. A lot of season three especially has been about whether or not human decency is a detriment in the post-zombie world. The Guv’ might be a complete batpoop psychopath but Woodbury has (at least for its regular citizens) the best quality-of-life rating we’ve seen in TWD’s post-apocalypse. Rick’s descent from square-jawed, Jack Shepard-esque hero to benevolent dictator has seemed to be at least vaguely effective in keeping his group alive. The Walking Dead’s  main theme seems to be asserting that basic human compassion and decency would be detrimental to survival in ‘the wild.’ While I patently disagree (many disasters on that show could’ve been prevented with a little more good faith and open communication), watching the show’s narrative try to work out that question is super entertaining for both brain and heart.

Alternately, two of my favourite vidjagames are the two latest Fallouts (3 and New Vegas), and I play them for completely different reasons than why I watch The Walking Dead. In Fallout you wander the post-apocalyptic wasteland, righting wrongs (or just doing more wrongs and looting the bodies if that’s your thing) and shooting zombies and bandits. I play Fallout for the sense of freedom and adventure it instills – exploring a destroyed civilization, collecting loot, shooting things and occasionally (since I’m that kind of game roleplayer) helping NPCs out for good karma. In Fallout, the apocalypse is something that provides an escape – if civilization is destroyed, we are no longer bound by its rules and can therefore seek better and more exciting, bullet-filled climes. In this way, the apocalypse of the Fallout universe serves the same purpose that the frontier in a traditional western provides - it’s a blank canvas upon which we can set out on our adventurous lonesome and forge our own destiny free from the chains of society.

The Lone Wanderer and Dogmeat wander the wastes in Fallout 3. Any apocalypse that gives me a free puppy I'm probably okay with.

While the idea of a lone post-apocalyptic cowboy wandering the wastes doin’ his own thing because he damn well can is a kind of utopian libertarian fantasy wherein all our society-prevented freedom is returned to us via the apocalypse, other optimistic apocalyptic fiction can be about society rising from the ashes. The term “cozy catastrophe” was coined by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss to describe stories like Day of the Triffids wherein modern society is destroyed, but its destruction allows for a kind of wiping the slate clean. Free from the constraints of the ‘old world’, the survivors of the apocalypse are free to rebuild society better than it was before. This is basically the opposite of what The Walking Dead seems to be trying to do since every attempt at post-zombie civilization crumbles to sobbing pieces, but the hope in the ‘cozy catastrophe’ is pretty darn appealing to my sensibilities – I mean, I’m the guy who got in an argument with a T.A. over my optimistic interpretation of the end of Dawn of the Dead (I know I’m wrong. Whatever. I’m free to read the text as I see fit, dammit)!

That being said, realistically, I’m definitely very much in favour of society. I vote NDP for pity’s sake – give me my socialized health-care and running water any day of the week over wandering an apocalyptic wasteland. But, that doesn’t mean that the wasteland can’t provide a good escapist romp.

Also, I just need to say it... poor T-Dog. I miss 'em.

Fanboy Friday: Theorizin' 'Bout F'nales (Doctor Who S.7 Edition)

Every year it's the same tired story. The showrunner of the venerable and excellent telly program Doctor Who starts setting up a running arc throughout the season, hinting at a massive conspiracy that we believe will ultimately come into play in the season finale, culminating in the realization that Amy Pond's home town was actually the Eye of Harmony the whole time or the return of the Eighth Doctor or Adric or Nega-Rose. But of course, every year it's the same thing - all the theorizing comes to naught, and it ends up just being a regular season finale with a big space battle and the Big Bad being defeated by the Power of Love or whatever.

But that ain't gonna stop me from theorizing.

This week on Fanboy Friday I'm going to be talking quite a bit about the seventh season of Doctor Who, and, specifically, what I'd be doing with their upcoming season finale were I to be lucky enough to be wearing Stephen Moffat's big imposing Scottish TV writer shoes.

Despite my opening preamble, I'm actually a big fan of the Who finales. Doomsday was fantastic, the whole Utopia/Sound of Drums/Last of the Time Lords three part finale was impeccable save the moment when the Doctor was saved by the whole world clapping it's hands and saying "I believe in Time Lords" (I paraphrase, but still). During Moffatt's current tenure as showrunner, the season finales have actually been kind of amazing. Season five's finale might've been about saving the whole of time and space from evaporating, but the action of the episode was contained and quite intimate. The whole thing took place entirely in a museum with just the four main characters running away from a petrified Dalek. Amazing!

This season, we've got two mysteries going already. The prophecy at the end of last season about how the Doctor will be forced to answer "The Question" (the question being "doctor who?") and this will have some kind of universal ramifications. The other mystery which wasn't really a mystery unless you're like me and read entertainment news, was that the actress playing the Doctor's new companion, Jenna-Louise Coleman, was in the first episode playing a differently named character, who is revealed to actually be a Dalek, and subsequently dies. How exactly is that actress going to go on and play the new series lead if she's killed in the season premiere?

I think I have a pretty ingenious solution to this. So! This season, each episode keeps drawing attention to the fact that the Doctor has been going on a tear deleting any record of himself from databases throughout the universe because his legendary reputation was doing more harm than good. Hence everyone asking him "Doctor who?" like, every episode this year. So. I presume this is setting up how that question will be important - the fact that people know or don't know who the Doctor is is important. And, at the end of the Dalek episode, Jenna Coleman's character uses her crazy hacker skillz to delete any record of the Doctor from the memory of the Dalek race before she dies. This is pretty big since it's established in that episode that "Doctor" is a synonym for "Predator" in their language - the Doctor's existence is tied to the Daleks' entire worldview. 

My theory here is that when Jenna Coleman joins the main cast, she'll be the same character as in that Dalek episode, but picked up by the Doctor before she crash-landed on the Dalek planet and became assimilated (because he thought she was so cool, and decides to use his freakin' time machine to save her from her grisly fate).

This, of course, will lead to the Daleks remembering who the Doctor is, because Jenna Coleman was never Dalekized and never deleted the Doctor from their database. The Daleks will, as per usual, come up with some kind of Season Finale level evil scheme that the Doctor will only be able to stop if his anonymity remains intact - leading to a fateful, terrible decision where he'll have to either consign Jenna Coleman back to her original, tragic fate or let the Daleks win.

I think this would be great, especially because the importance of the question "doctor who?" is only established by facts that came into play after we found out what the question was in season six (Jenna being Dalekized, the Doctor becoming anonymous, etc). It wouldn't rely on any arcane backstory from the classic series or back in the new series catalogue! That and it sets up a neat, timey-wimey but emotionally trying conflict for the Doctor to go through.

But, then, of course, Christmas happened. In the Christmas special, Jenna Coleman shows up again as a presumably different character in Victorian England who also dies but who has the same last words as her Dalekized counterpart. And then it's teased that she's playing yet another character who lives in the modern era. Which kinda blows my idea out of the water.

I really hope this multiple characters played by the same actress who are somehow linked isn't explained with some kind of mystic silly shared soul or essence thing, and that they aren't 'destined' to all meet the Doctor and die similar deaths or something. There's enough fate-based material to play with just by having a Time Machine as a weekly prop without bringing in actual Fate. I'm sure the Moff has something up his sleeve, but I, for the life of me, have no idea what it is.

But, again, theorizing has never actually helped when it comes to Doctor Who (or any other sci-fi series. I mean really, Starbuck's dad should've been a secret Cylon. Really.) Fingers crossed for an exciting second half of season seven!

Also, since if you got to the end of this post I assume you watch this series, when Amy and Rory got trapped in the late 30s, why couldn't the Doc just go get them in the TARDIS? I know there was all that "I can't go back to 1938 New York, too much time distorion" malarky, but, couldn't he have just gone back to 1938 Detroit, and got in a cab? Or go to 1941 New York? All I'm saying is that it really seemed more like a major inconvenience rather than a "we can never meet again" thing.

END OF RANT, NERDS!

Fanboy Friday: Amazing 'Ending'

If I’m gonna keep calling this Fanboy Friday I really oughta write it / post it earlier in the day. Hm. Hm. Lessons learned. Anyway!

Spider-Man has always been my favourite super-hero. Considering that, you'd think I'd be upset with the current developments in the Spider-Man comics. I'm not. Lemme tell you why.

For the uninitiated, in the last story arc of the long-running series The Amazing Spider-Man, Doctor Octopus was on death's door, dying of cancer, and used his mad-scientist skills to switch bodies with Peter Parker to both save himself and finally murder his arch-enemy in one foul swoop. This sounds like standard super-hero/sci-fi fare to me. You’d expect an eleventh hour solution to this story – Spidey gets his body back, maybe manages to save Doc Ock from cancer in the process, and is left to pick up the pieces Octo-Spidey made of his reputation.

But he doesn’t. The Amazing Spider-Man, which debuted in 1962, ends with issue #700 and the ‘death’ of Spider-Man, ignobly with his mind stuck in the cancer-riddled body of his greatest enemy. A new series picks up from that story and follows Octo-spidey’s attempts to be a super-hero. Why does Doc Ock suddenly want to take up the mantle of super-hero, you ask? Because the eleventh hour solution to the body-swap dilemma had Peter transfers all his memories, including the death of Uncle Ben and the “with great power comes great responsibility” malarkey into Octo-Spidey’s brain. Basically, Doc Ock is now trapped in Spider-Man’s body and has been artificially given a conscience. He decides to deal with this nagging, awful feeling in his brain (it's called morality, Otto) by becoming a superhero and not only that, trying to prove he can do it better than Pete did (hence the name of the new series, The Superior Spider-Man.)

I got this mug from my cousin for Christmas and I’m really happy about it. Despite this weird new storyline, I’m definitely still saying Go Spidey!

You’d think I’d be pissed off by this. My favourite super-person (since before I could read comics!) is dead and his life has been taken over by an imposter. I’ll tell you why this doesn’t bother me. Anyone remember the ‘Death of Superman’? That (actually pretty compelling) tale from the early nineties where Superman got punched to death by Frankenstein and almost single handedly caused the comics-collecting price bubble to burst by flooding the market with eighty different collector’s edition lenticular cover varients that Dads everywhere (including my own) all bought as an investment for their kid’s college tuition?

That sure lasted. Superman bounced back a year later (sporting a bitchin’ Fabio haircut) and all was right with the world. Same thing happened to Captain America a couple years ago after he was assassinated. No matter how many press releases you put out calling this “a game changer” and/or “the new status quo,” you’re not gonna convince me that death is gonna take on ol’ Webhead (especially with Andrew Garfield playing Peter Parker, not Otto Octavius on the big screen for the foreseeable future). People come back to life in comics all the time. Spidey will find his way back to the land of the living soon enough, and in the meantime, The Superior Spider-Man #1 has convinced me that its gonna be a really fun story-arc getting him back.

A lot of critics and fans have been saying that this new Spider-Man isn’t likeable – but really, that’s the point. He’s still Doc Ock. And I for one loved to hate Doc Ock. He’s my favourite Spider-Man villain, and seeing him flounder and desperately attempt to not cackle maniacally while trying to be heroic is hysterical.

Octo-Spidey (I’mma just keep calling him that) is great. Despite how often the comic tries to convince you that re-living Peter’s memories has somehow reformed him, I don’t buy it. Doc Ock isn’t a super-hero. Doc Ock wanting to help people doesn’t make sense and he’s consciously aware of it. His entire attitude towards super-heroing seems to be like he’s compelled against his better judgement to do it. I’m really enjoying the feeling that he’s only taking up this super-hero thing because he’s had the original Spider-Man’s conscience duct-taped onto his mind - he’s compelled by a part of someone else’s personality!

There’s a scene in Superior #1 where Ock runs away from a fight, basically going “screw this!” because he’s getting his ass handed to him (by Speed Demon no less), and he could care less about the robbery he’s trying to stop. But, sure enough, against his will he flings himself back into the line of fire to save a cop, asking himself in as many words “why on Earth did I do that?”

It’s great! I’m really hoping this is leading to an arc where Ock, the longer he lives his life as Spider-Man, slowly moves away from being a super-hero merely because he’s compelled to do so and more towards being a person who is truly reformed and does good of his own accord. I think it’d be a really interesting journey to take him on to have him very slowly and methodically realize the true meaning of “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Unfortunately, I’m unsure this is the direction they’re gonna go in. The twist at the end of issue #1 (SPOILERS) reveals that Peter Parker’s full personality is still kicking around Doc Ock’s subconsciousness, manifesting on the page as a kind of blue wavery Force ghost. While I’m happy to find out Pete’s still ‘alive’ (and, therefore, ostensibly gonna be back in the driver’s seat of Spider-Man’s body before too long) I really hope Peter’s phantasmal presence won’t rob Ock of any agency in his choices to do good. I think it’d be cool to have Ock slowly integrate his bequeathed conscience into his own personality as he learns what it means to be a hero – but if that conscience is literally another person in his head, staying his hand and preventing him from being a villain, it kinda robs him of any character development.

Another potential, very gross snag in where this series could go is the Mary Jane problem. Octo-Pete is, as of issue #1, is trying to ‘re-kindle’ his romance with Mary Jane. If by re-kindle I mean not tell Mary Jane he’s actually Peter’s greatest enemy trapped in Peter’s body. And then ogle her chest. Gross.

Since I’ve never thought of Doc Ock as being evil enough to be a rapist, (especially not now he’s supposedly the protagonist of this series) I'm going to be very, very upset if anything sexual happens between those characters before Ock comes clean because that’s what it'd be. Rape. And that’s incredibly gross. Especially if the writers take it lightly and act like it’s no big deal. I’m really hoping, if the look of horror on MJ’s face on the cover of issue #2 is any indication, that this’ll be dealt with in an appropriate manner very soon. What I’m hoping for is that MJ realizes something’s wrong with her boyfriend, forcing Ock to come clean and feel awful when he realizes what he was really doing and she inevitably lambasts him for attempted rape. Basically, they need to handle it like that episode of Buffy did when the Trio were horrified to realize that if they’re mind-controlling a woman to have sex with them its no longer consensual.

Long story short, Pete will be back in the driver’s seat soon enough, and until then, the Superior Spider-Man limited series (it’s gonna be a limited series. Trust me) is off to a good start, and, barring any gross sexual-political missteps (which, I’m sad to say is a distinct possibility) this is gonna be a really fun series. I’m still kinda disappointed that the “new Spider-Man” didn’t end up being a time-displaced Miguel O’Hara, a.k.a. Spider-Man 2099, as had been red-herringed on twitter, but, ah well. Can’t win ‘em all.

Also, the Living Brain is in Superior #1. That’s reason enough to pick it up.

Fanboy Friday: Marvel NOW! First Impressions

All New X-Men #1 and Captain America #1 - images copyright Marvel Comics

Welcome back to Fanboy Friday! I seriously thought I'd post something else this week, but... I didn't. And I do love comic books.

This past year has been a weird one for comics. DC Comics' The New 52! initiative rebooted their entire comics line with vaguely revamped origins and costumes, for better or worse. Despite it blatantly being a marketing ploy designed to bring in new (and especially lapsed) readers, I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Though I've followed several super-hero series in trade paperback, I haven't bought single issues of comics in years. The last time I followed comics month-to-month I was in grade school and my Dad bought me Amazing Spider-Man for a year back when Spidey was a blonde clone. I decided to give single issues a chance again when DC promised that this weird New 52 thing meant I wouldn't have to be jumping to wikipedia every other panel to follow a current comic book.

So, on account of pulling in lapsed nerds like me, DC has been kicking Marvel's proverbial ass this year when it comes to single-issue sales, in spite of The Avengers. Thus, Marvel NOW!

What a dumb title. Anyway, despite the suspect branding (to be fair, The New 52! isn't that great a catchphrase either), Marvel NOW! is a slightly different beast than DC's New 52. While DC tried to go for broke and completely Batman Begins-style reboot their continuity (to a debatable degree of success), Marvel isn't rebooting anything. A ton of their books are getting cancelled and restarted with new #1 issues, but the story isn't starting from the beginning - the company is just shuffling around creative teams and starting some continuity-light story-arcs to try to bring in new readers. Though this approach sounds less attractive to me than DC's reboot, I've always been a bigger Marvel fan, so I decided to pick up All-New X-Men #1-2 and Captain America #1 last week.

All-New X-Men is written by Brian Bendis and drawn by Stuart Immonen, a creative team from Ultimate Spider-Man, another very successful reboot series that I've been reading in trade for years, so I immediately had high hopes. The elevator pitch for All-New X-Men is also an incredibly ingenious way of preserving continuity while remaining attractive to new readers. It's a time-travel story where present-day Beast brings the original X-Men from the 1960s comics (Cyclops, Jean Grey, non-furry Beast, Angel, and Iceman) to the currently confusing Marvel Comics Present-Day to try to convince present-day Cyclops (who has apparently gone crazy and killed Professor X and is a mutant war-criminal or something?) to stop being a total jerknose.

First off, I haven't been following this whole Avengers Vs. X-Men thing that happened over the summer, and I was immediately skeptical that this story (and most of the new X-Books) seemed to hinge heavily on that crossover event. These are new #1 issues! No previous knowledge required! I was promised no wikipedia was necessary!

But, despite being heavily centered around previous continuity, All-New X-Men manages to satisfy both long-time fans and people like me who are using it as a jumping-on point. Those who've been following the comics get to keep this crazy Cyclops-is-a-bad-guy-now timeline - and for new readers, who probably view the "present day" Marvel Universe as a trippy, weird dystopia that's completely different from the X-Men comics they used to buy, the old-timey X-Men characters have the exact same perspective! By providing the original '60s X-Men as viewpoint characters who are just as confused by the present-day continuity as the new readers, the staff at Marvel get to have their cake and eat it too! It's not a reboot, but it's a great jumping on point.

I was especially tickled when Marvel's weird augmented reality iPhone app informed me the first scene that takes place in the past is a direct lift from a 1963 issue of X-Men written by Stan Lee. Neat! There's also a throwaway scene with Wolverine teaching some kids about how to fend off a ninja attack that's hysterical, that leads into Wolverine finding out Jean Grey (young, time-displaced Jean) is still alive that's actually quite affecting. My one worry so far is that it might be a wait-for-trade as the book moves pretty slowly on account of Bendis' trademark cinematic writing - by the end of issue #2 it barely feels like we've hit the first commercial break. It's the kind of book you might want to mainline six-issues at a time, so, we'll see. But, still, an all-around great book. I recommend!

Captain America #1 is also pretty fantastic, though less ingenious than All-New X-Men, conceptually. It's literally just a continuity-light first issue - no wikipedia trips required! So, that's a plus. Cap has an opening fight against an eco-terrorist named the Green Skull who talks like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, so that's pretty cool. My one quibble, which has been pointed out in other reviews, is that the opening flashback to Cap in the 1920s watching his mother being beaten by his father (so his mom can show lil' Cap you should never back down) feels weirdly serious and dark for a book whose story-arc title is Castaway In Dimension Z.  But in general, it's a book that is yet again a great jumping-on point for people who've only really gotten into Cap as a character post-movies.

Long story short, apparently I'm a sucker for targeted marketing. REBOOTS! But, hey, if it gets me editorial staff that realize comics don't need to rest so heavily on 50-odd years of continuity baggage, that's fine by me. I'm definitely gonna keep picking up more Marvel NOW! books, and I'm particularly excited for Dan Slott's The Superior Spider-Man coming in January, because it's entirely possible that series might also heavily use time-travel. And I do loves me some time-travel.

See you next friday, nerds!

Fanboy Friday: Top 007 Bond Songs

Welcome to the first edition of Fanboy Fridays here on Jetpack Wonder Stories. Every Friday I'm going to try to write about something nerdy that I like, because I'm a huge dork and also like alliteration. Thus;

I have a special fondness for the James Bond franchise. When I was but a wee tween back around the turn of the century, the Connery/Moore/Dalton films (on glorious VHS) were a staple during summers at my cottage when we'd finally exhausted the supply of half-decent movies available at the video store in town. Around the same time I used to spend the summer making epic feature-length films in the backyard with my Dad's camcorder. When I re-watch them for giggles I can definitely see just how much the genre conventions and plotting of the 007 films influenced my young writerly mind.

And the songs. The songs. During this same period, my taste in music hadn't yet evolved into anything more than a protoplasmic ooze. The six cassettes I owned in the summer of 1999 were the original Broadway cast recording of The Buddy Holly Story, the Phantom Menace soundtrack, two greatest hits collections (the Mamas and the Papas and Louis Armstrong, respectively and bizarrely), and, of course, a two-cassette collection of the main title songs from the James Bond films. Thus, that world of blaring brass sections and wailing melodrama had a significant influence on my taste in, and love of, music. When a new 007 movie comes out, I'm almost as excited about there being a new opening titles sequence as I am about the film itself.

In honour of the just-released Skyfall (run, don't walk, to your local cinetorium and see it. Really.) and the fact that I've now published a blog on the internet and thus my opinion matters (I am definitely 100% qualified for this), I bring you my top double-oh-seven Bond Songs (see what I did there? Ha! Ha! Ha.)

In descending order!

#007. K.D. Lang - Surrender (Tomorrow Never Dies)
Surrender is an almost perfect Bond song, which is sad, because it was bumped to the end credits of Tomorrow Never Dies in favour of Sheryl Crowe's kinda-satisfactory theme tune. Penned by David Arnold (score composer for all the Brosnan and some of the Craig entries), it's full of brass and very blatantly recalls the classic John Barry themes from the Connery era.

#006. A-Ha - The Living Daylights
I'm a big New Wave fan and I've always been kinda confused as to where exactly that predilection came from. Recently I've decided that A-Ha's The Living Daylights is definitely (at least in part) to blame. I specifically remember playing Game Gear games with this song on my Walkman and feeling like a complete little nine-year-old badass.

#005. Adele - Skyfall
I wish I'd called this sooner, because Adele doing a Bond song makes pretty much every kind of sense. Her voice is a perfect successor to Shirley Bassey's work on Goldfinger and Skyfall is an impeccable song right from the opening horn thing.

#004. Shirley Bassey - Goldfinger
Speaking of which, this song is a classic in every sense of the word. Big, brassy, lyrics that are pretty much literally about the plot of the film - it's great. Also, I'm indebted to John Barry's Goldfinger soundtrack in general for being such a heavy influence on the excellent Janelle Monae.

#003 - Chris Cornell - You Know My Name (Casino Royale)
I hate Soundgarden. There is nothing at all interesting about them. That being said, Chris Cornell can hang out at my house and drink my beer for as long as he wants for writing this song. "Arm yourself because no one else here will save you" is one of my favourite lyrics from any Bond tune, and a go-to watchcry of mine if I ever need a shot in the arm of sticktoitiveness and/or pull-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstrapsitiveness.

#002. Carly Simon - Nobody Does It Better (The Spy Who Loved Me)
I am not a big fan of the more ballad-y Bond theme tunes (Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, et cetera), but this song... is perhaps one of my favourite songs ever, even more than my #1 pick. Nobody Does It Better is an incredibly sexy song and is excellent even out of the context of being a Bond song. Just like...

#001. Paul McCartney & Wings - Live and Let Die
...this song. Nothing will top this song. Pretty much the first rock-and-roll James Bond theme, it is still, to this day, absolutely and utterly fantastic. The fact that it gets airplay outside of being a James Bond theme does it so much credit - it is objectively a fantastic song in its own right, and has been the best of influences on later songs in the series, from A View to a Kill to You Know My Name (which is heavily influenced by it.)

Honourable mentions go to Duran Duran's A View to a Kill for also being partially responsible for introducing me to New Wave, Tina Turner's Goldeneye for being written by Bono and the Edge (I love U2. Deal with it, internet), and Madonna's Die Another Day for being objectively one of the worst songs ever recorded and yet incredibly, insufferably catchy.

Oh, and this. You're welcome. See you next friday!