Agents of SHIELD (First 6 Episodes)

Nerdview: A good review is hard to find. A good review--that is, a quality review, not a positive review--seems to be even more rare amongst professionals and dedicated reviewers. Fortunately, the Nerdery is helmed by a literary nut. Each review, whether it is a game, movie, book, or television series, will have the four elements: bias, appreciation, personal enjoyment, and general enjoyment. Put in food terms, these are odor, beef, gravy, and cheese.

This is my first review Nerdview of a television series, and as such it's perfectly appropriate that I weigh in on the latest Marvel media property: Agents of SHIELD. I've got several other more important projects on the blog-burner right now, but this is probably the most immediately timely, as I can actually sound off on the series in the middle of its first season.

Expectations 'Odor': If you read my blog post earlier this summer, then you know that I've been looking forward to Agents of SHIELD for some time. I love the way SHIELD stories interweave the greatest characters and plots of the Marvel universe into a coherent story, especially in the post Civil War continuity (which at some point in the future I'll probably cover for those who aren't Marvel-fans). Secret War in particular was a great mini-series that showed how SHIELD and The Man push around superheroes to make the world safer--whether they like it or not. In particular, I like the SHIELD stories that expound on the ways mundane or low-powered agents of SHIELD are able to stand on the same field as Hulk and Iron Man. Sure, individual SHIELD goons don't last, but as an organization it pulls the strings of many of the heroes in the Marvel universe while still being a fundamentally mundane organization. As a fan of watching little guys push big guys around, it resonates.

So with Agents of SHIELD I want to see at least a bit more development of that theme: what place do NSA-types in suits have in a world of girder-grinding, lightning-throwing, super-sonic super-humans? But I also know that what we've got here is also a Joss Whedon series, and with that we're pretty much guaranteed several specific elements. First, that means a women-heavy cast of primaries, women warriors, and not necessarily in in believable roles or casting. I mean, Eliza Dushku kicking more butt than Tahmoh Penikett in Dollhouse--the heck?! Second, it means that disestablishment themes are probably going to either erode this version of SHIELD, or the team will be some sort of Black Ops splinter group to maintain Whedon's happy for rogue heroes. Third--and this is really something to be excited about--it means that the show will probably have different ages played on-screen and in the plots. Buffy the Vampire Slayer had Giles' personal life and character growth become a significant plot thread while also making us endure Buffy-as-waitress type plots. Firefly had Book alongside Kayleigh and River. Even Dollhouse, which revolved around brainwashed youth themes, showcased a lot of drama amongst the middle-aged conspirators being mocked by their own vapid creations. In Agents of SHIELD, then, we can look forward to Coulson and the youngest agents having distinct characterization and focuses in the meta-plot of the series.

But do I think Agents of SHIELD will be good? Yes. Great? Honestly, maybe. Just maybe. Because there's one element that I think could make a SHIELD show superb that I don't think Whedon would ever touch: the procedural. The thrill of investigation, of plots having certain core steps repeating to represent that the characters are in fact doing their jobs and not looking for this week's interesting thing. The Mentalist, Law & Order, and detective classic shows like Columbo are all great procedural series. In those shows you're guaranteed certain steps to get thrown into the matrix of a new mystery for nearly every episode, and it works. The most critical procedural to compare to Agents of SHIELD, of course, is The X-Files. Even though The X-Files featured outlandish plots, special effects monsters, and conspiracy theories, most of the episodes fell into a procedural format that established that even in the BS-filled land of The X-Files, they were still part of the FBI, which was a job and an organization that stretched beyond the cast of the show. Heck, they even had a petite warrior-woman mismatched with a physically uninspiring nerdy guy, all the better for Whedon to take notes.

But at least it won't be Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD.


Appreciation 'Beef': Bumbly bumbly bump. What's that? Oh, Agents of SHIELD is on? I mean, we're six episodes in and I'm still waiting for it to get started. I feel like these first six episodes have been part of a long, exceptionally badly-paced pilot episode. The writing is weak with only brief commercial-length moments of good scripting. The cast ranges from sublime to bland all the way down to absurdly annoying.

"As a fan of watching little guys push big guys around, it resonates."

In terms of the greater plot of the show, they've introduced a good number of elements from the greater Marvel universe, with Extremis, (proto-)Graviton, and the Chitauri being featured in the show so far. I'd probably suggest they slow down with their inclusion of these diverse elements, taking their time to establish more drama and mystery around them, but for the most part these kinds of Easter eggs are the most exciting thing in the show for Marvel-philes like me.

The action is fairly well-done, with Ming-Na Wen pulling off the physicality of warrior-woman Melinda May capably. Brett Dalton as Agent Grant Ward definitely does a better job of selling his stunts and action, but that's to be expected. So far two of the six episodes aired ("Girl in the Flower Dress" and "FZZT") have not featured much traditional action, and that's a positive trend I'd like to see emphasized in this series. In a world of superpowers and eldritch gadgets, combat should be brief and deadly, and there's a very real trend towards inserting bland fist fights to pad out the show where drama and actual investigation should sit.

Clark Gregg as Agent Coulson is great, and when he's actually placed in a scene where he gets to chew the scenery a bit, it's awesome. His moment with the terminally ill firefighter in FZZT was a gripping bit of drama that helped shed a little light on his seemingly spastic behavior--he's a man crushed by his own brush with death. I think the mystery around his revival/resurrection/reboot is a bit over-played, but since it is the only real over-arching mystery of the show right now, I guess I'll have to take it.

The rest of the roster, though, makes very little sense. First of all, six principal characters always feels light to me. (Heck, if you include Zordon and Alpha Five, the Power Rangers show started out with seven.) And that tiny roster is exaggerated by the red shirts of this show who are so paper-thinly developed that names and characterization are hardly ever given. In "Eye Spy" and "Girl in the Flower Dress" there are way too many scenes where there's no one on screen except two or three main characters, which is silly when you stop to consider the enormity of these plots, SHIELD itself, or even the density of SHIELD personnel in the movies. You can try to justify it by saying they need a small independent team or whatever handwaving goo-gawing you want, but in the end it's just a way to cheap out on production costs with a smaller cast, and it shows. Heck, half the episodes don't even show an actual flight crew for the massive plane they fly around--and if that bird can be managed by a lone pilot and no flight crew, then I'm a body double for Chris Hemsworth.

(I'm not, by the way.)

Setting the light weight of SHIELD in the show aside, though, the simple composition of the team is ridiculous, both in a contextual sense for the purpose of the team and in a meta-textual sense for the purpose of the show. They have a combat-competent leader in Coulson, but his almost petulant need to flout the regs is pretty vain since the show doesn't seem to have a boss for him to report to and have conflict with. As it is, having Coulson as leader constantly have to explain himself to basically all of his subordinates is not only tiresome, it's eminently stupid. Agent Ward is pretty strait-laced for a SHIELD agent type, but in a group full of recalcitrant misfits he ends up being either a sullen by-the-book regs-thumper or broody pretty boy by way of compensation. Melinda May is also very capable in combat, but reluctantly so due to her unexamined backstory. And in any case she's the only character we've seen piloting their plane, so the lady should be sitting in the plane most of the time anyways. Fitz and Simmons are a victim of their own silly premise--both annoyingly interchangeable, mutually-dependent, and inept at combat. The plot of "FZZT" revolves around the two characters being plot clones of each other, highlighting how they're doubly tiresome. So all in all, we have a SHIELD roster of a six person team with only three combat effective members, two of which do not ordinarily want to be in potential combat situations, and two who are incredible liabilities in combat situations.

"...we're six episodes in and I'm still waiting for it to get started."

And then there's the sixth member of the team: Skye. Skye is a former info-terrorist hacker the team brings on…'cuz. Normally a television show brings an outsider into a team of specialists to give the audience--also outsiders--a sympathetic window into the specialists' world. I call this a schlub (see my post on Gerard Butler for another example), and Agents of SHIELD has no need for a schlub, because everyone is largely ignorant or obtuse to each other team member's area of responsibility. So what does Skye bring to the team? Smug uselessness and pathetic attempts to be sexy with a smoker's voice? At first I thought they'd use her to introduce a sinister traitor meta-plot to define the first season, as it was clear she was maintaining contact with her Rising Tide info-terrorist group. Instead, that betrayal plot gets ham-handed four episodes in with the revelation that she was just doing it for her boyfriend, and that her acts of treason that got federal agents killed were mitigated by her stupid hormonal love connection. Not only do Coulson, Fitz-Simmons, and the plot itself give Skye a pass on her crimes, but the cast collectively tells Agent Ward to just get over it by the next episode. What was the point of introducing the betrayal and treason plot if the end result was to ditch it at the earliest and clumsiest opportunity?

Ugh. I can rant about Skye all night, but I won't. I will just sum up with this thought. The crew of the Serenity, assembled by luck and lowest-bidding to accomplish odd-jobs of the criminal underworld, was better selected, more disciplined, and more capable of addressing most SHIELD-oriented threats than the team in Agents of SHIELD. They had four combat capable crew (five on River's good days), a dedicated pilot, tech person, medic, and a seductress who could stay in character long enough to actually pull cons off.

Personal Enjoyment 'Gravy': Agents of SHIELD has got me going through the motions. Don't get me wrong, I'm still watching this show every week, and I honestly believe there's potential in the show they've created, but so much of it is bumbling along right now that I feel like a Marvel-holic getting a watered-shot of a simulacra of the stuff to which I'm actually addicted.

Now, it may seem like I'm being a little harsh in light of the excellent Marvel movies, but wait: I'm going to get even more acerbic as I dial in my disappointment. We're six episodes into this series. Let's put that into perspective. By this point of screen-time (using show chronology, not airing chronology), Firefly had introduced Niska in "The Train Job", developed the entire crew's fabulous rapport in "Shindig", and blown everyone away with "Our Mrs. Reynolds". The X-Files had already given all of us the uber-willies in "Squeeze" with a boneless super-malleable cannibal serial killer, and established a good procedural investigative style and partner dynamic with "Conduit" and "Shadows". And Agents of SHIELD's stumbling is made even more unforgivable by the fact that The Blacklist, which started the same week, has been superb--especially in the ways that the Marvel show fails. They've got a great team that is diverse-yet-plausible, fantastic writing, good pacing, and several interesting meta-plots.

I'm waiting for Agents of SHIELD to come into its own, but I'm not holding my breath.

General Enjoyment 'Cheese': As it stands, I think Agents of SHIELD will only appeal to a very small section of fans of the Marvel cinematic universe. I'm not going to assume everyone is going to get annoyed by the same elements the same amount as me, but there are just too many compromises to something that needs a very focused formula to work as a show. It still has too many superhero and genre elements to appeal to viewers who don't like the movies or comics, but those elements are so watered-down and subverted by the cliched action of the show that the movie and comic fans are going to feel let down at best or outright alienated at worst.

I hope that people will, like me, give Agents of SHIELD a chance to fix their problems, but even more so I hope that the creative team behind Agents of SHIELD will actually take the effort to fix these problems to make a series worthy of Mordor five or more seasons.

After Avengers, Joss Whedon is the magical summoner of comicbook fans.

(Fourth post this week, so the deficit is down to 3 out of 31)

Nerdview of Thor: The Dark World

Nerdview: A good review is hard to find. A good review--that is, a quality review, not a positive review--seems to be even more rare amongst professionals and dedicated reviewers. Fortunately, the nerdery is helmed by a literary nut. Each review, whether it is a game, movie, book, or television series, will have the four elements: bias, appreciation, personal enjoyment, and general enjoyment. Put in food terms, these are odor, beef, gravy, and cheese.

This past weekend was the US release of Thor: The Dark World. As you could probably guess from my two reviews of Thor (regular and Thor-speak), from my glowing praise of Avengers, or my general love for Marvel, I have been anticipating this film for some time. What's more, the trials of parenting two babies demanded that I see the movie twice this weekend: once in 3D with my Friday gaming group, and once in 2D with my wife on Sunday. (Spoiler alert: I liked it)

Expectations 'Odor': As a Marvel-phile, I had a lot of expectations for seeing Malekith brought into the cinematic universe. In the comics, he's a magically-grounded half-dead dark elf, but based on the primordial narrative of the movie trailers, I imagine the film's origin for the dark elves would be more primordial, which can be a fine and elegant way to bring comic book issues to the theater. The first Thor movie had a bit more deliberate pace, with the most exciting combat front-loaded and the later action much smaller-scale skirmishes. Without the burden of origins and introductions for so many characters, I expected The Dark World to feature more evenly-paced, epic action sequences. Coupled with that, since the first movie already introduced us to so many Asgardians, I wanted to see the supporting cast develop and get their own moments to shine. Except for Jane Foster. I wanted her to get killed off and free up Thor for his true love: Sif.

Appreciation 'Beef': The first observation to make of Thor: The Dark World is that it has a definite sci-fi flavor to the action, as the opening sequence throws you into a fight that is part Battle of the Last Alliance, with fantasy-flavored Asgardians wading into dark elf laser fire while their dagger-like ships loom over head. The myth-as-science-fiction was established in the first movie, but in Thor it was more of a token explanation to make it easier for Thor to relate to Jane Foster. In Thor: The Dark World, however, that motif is brought to the foreground, as the bad guys use energy weapons, point-singularity grenades, have spaceships and agile fighters. Even the Asgardians show off some artillery and their own boat-like fighter craft. That, of course means dogfighting, and they actually do it quite well for a movie where such aerobatics aren't even expected.

Ornate and manufactured, but with a serial-killer sinister feel as well.

The overall aesthetic of the movie is just as well-done as Thor, with Asgard fleshed out a bit more this time around in its golden beauty. There's also glimpses of most of the other Nine Realms, but nothing to really evaluate other than variety. Though I must say that Svartaflheim (the titular dark world) was a really neat realization of that realm: blasted with ash and black sand, sky a sick not-quite-illuminated sickly mellow yellow with clouded veins giving the alien sky a thoroughly distinct look, and at the same time alluding to the twisted base perceptions of the dark elves themselves. Malekith and his people stand out against the fantasy look of the Asgardians with baroque sci-fi designs that reminded me of the Necromongers in The Chronicles of Riddick, which I really enjoyed. The dark elf foot soldiers in particular wear expressionless pale-faced masks with black eyes that I found really eerie and elegant at the same time.

Minor spoilers in the next paragraph.


I was pretty massively disappointed in Jane Foster as a character. And considering I was expecting, hoping, and needing her to die in this movie, that's saying a lot. To start with, she doesn't die. But we get teased as she comes oh so close to dying. What's worse, though, is that Jane Foster is by far the worst, most uninteresting character in the movie. She's snippy and childishly petulant for no reason, she drags down her scenes with cardboard delivery, and she's in general just a plain old plot cow. It's so bad that at one point in the film she's so useless she faints for no good reason other than to let Loki and Thor riff off each other while she kindly stays out of it.

That's right, I saw Battlefield Earth, and I haven't even purged it from my memory.

Foster's big fail notwithstanding, the rest of the cast is terrific. Chris Hemsworth is as at home and mature in the role of Thor as ever, showing genuine growth from the previous two movies. Tom Hiddleston as Loki reminds the audience of his chops, modulating between impishly mischievous comic, brooding schemer, and jealous brother. Plus, you'd have to be blind not to get lost in his smoldering stares in the first act cell-block scenes--just saying. And once again, Jaimie Alexander as Sif dramatically outshines Jane Foster on the screen. Physical, decisive, witty, and intuitive in her relationship with Thor, Sif in thirty minutes completely outshines her mortal competition for Thor's affections, and only the plot spares Foster from being shown up completely. Finally, Christopher Eccleston as antagonist Malekith gives a searing performance even through the hefty face prosthetics and voice distortion. Even when he's speaking in the dark elves' language, I got a kick out of his resonating, careful enunciation and the vile sneer he carries with his voice alone.

Personal Enjoyment 'Gravy': Having seen the movie twice in its opening weekend, I think it's fair to guess that I enjoyed this movie. It's got most of the elements I wanted, and in greater quantities. Odin gets some token raven-time (important for us mythology enthusiasts), Idris Elba gets a bit more screen time to be awesome and thunder great Heimdall lines, and Darcy returns and has a slightly expanded role. (If Jane Foster has to come back, then so should Darcy. Although in order to avoid upstaging Portman's Jane Foster, Darcy is in three layers, a scarf, and a wool cap for about 90% of her on-screen time. And she's still more watchable than Jane.) Thor is mature in both his powers and character, and yet there's still a sense of growth in both areas, which is especially apparent in his interactions with Loki. And Loki....oh Loki, you're so awesome. I can't really think of anyone I'd rather see staring down a Kursed Algrim.

But Jane Foster! Grrr, in a movie that grabs me by the nerdlies so easily, it's very frustrating to have to endure her throughout another film. Expect a more in-depth, spoilerific rant about it in the future. Suffice it to say for now that she is, at best, a non-entity in the movie and probably the only thing I can pick out as an outright flaw.

I want to make a note here: I don't think this movie is worth the 3D up-charge. I rarely noticed it even when I tried, and those times when I did notice the 3D effect was normally in foreshortening shots. There it created a powerful depth of field, but I don't think it enhanced the movie as much as Captain America of Avengers did. I mean, subtlety in 3D is nice, but if you don't consciously notice or get at least thirteen bucks' worth of wow out of the experience, you might as well enjoy the movie in its 2D format.

Seriously, how the heck is this not the leading lady?!

General Enjoyment 'Cheese': Anyone who enjoyed Thor should enjoy Thor: The Dark World. It does almost everything just as well if not better than the first movie. And for those who didn't like the first movie will likely still find stuff to enjoy. The action is much more kinetic and spread out, the emotional content is dialed in even more in this movie as it doesn't have to deal with stranger-on-earth tropes as such, and there's a lot of great performances spread out throughout an excellent cast.

Who definitely won't like this? People who don't like the juxtaposition of mythological figures and science-fiction elements. This seems to be a common cry amongst professional critics--I guess they weren't listening to Thor in the first movie.



After the disappointment of Iron Man 3, it's nice to see Thor: The Dark World getting it right. They change Malekith quite a bit to fit him onto the screen, but he's still riveting and adroitly meets all the thematic demands set by the comic book version of himself--unlike the Mandarin in the last Iron Man flick. Everyone other than Jane Foster shows growth in this movie and is an improvement over their earlier portrayals, while Portman's character is a dull cloud in the middle of an otherwise sterling film. Regardless, though, she can't sully this movie for me, and it's definitely set the bar high for the next Marvel movie. It's doubtful I'll get to see this again in theaters, but if the opportunity came up I'd definitely accept. In the meantime, I'm counting down the days to Winter Soldier.

144

Marvel Hype: Cinematic Universe Phase Two

(...And Maybe A Little Bit of Phase Three?)

I'm not sure how necessary this is to constantly reiterate, but for those of you just joining or with the attention spans of Labrador Retrievers: I am a Marvel fan. I love the comics, I love the cartoons (erm...animated features, I mean), I love the movies. I love Marvel.

And right now, I am excited.

Why am I excited? Well first of all, this past week was Thor's day. No wait--that's not just a terrible pun/allusion to the etymological origins of the word Thursday--it's the night of the US release of the second Odinson movie, Thor: The Dark World. Apart from being a mega awesome sequel title (woot for sequels without numbers in the title!), the trailers for this film have had me totally stoked. I really liked the first movie, and this one looks poised to amp up many of the elements I loved about the first. Plus, with Jane Foster getting thrown into the thick of things for this movie, odds are good she'll get elf-kacked and replaced by Lady Sif--booyah! Either way, expect a movie review to be posted early tomorrow.

Most importantly, though, is the revelation that 3D screenings of Thor: The Dark World will have an exclusive peek at Captain America: Winter Soldier. Not only does this movie look poised to hit all the right notes in this first trailer, (Robert Redford?! Booyah!) but Winter Soldier is one of the coolest Cap-related storylines, and one of the greatest overall plots in the Marvel Universe. If you haven't read it, you owe it to yourself to check out the story arc--it's the first twenty issues or so of the Captain America series that began in 2004, written by Ed Brubaker--fantastic plot that brings back classic elements of Captain America and brings them to the fore with a shiny new appeal. It's like meeting your first crush years later and finding out she's just as cool as before, only now more clever, passionate, and into yoga. All-round win.

Throwing further fuel onto the fire of my enthusiasm, Marvel cinematic news is that James Spader is going to be portraying Ultron in the Avengers sequel, Avengers: Age of Ultron. What?!

Whaaat?!

I mean, first of all, I want to throw a Marvel-fan hissy-fit over Ultron being the main villain in the next Avengers movie, which will come out before Ant-Man. I mean, Ant-Man is the creator of Ultron, and a lot of his (really really compelling) character quirks as a villain are directly precipitated by Ant-Man's personal character. This is totally putting the cart before the horse. (I wanted to say 'literally' there for emphasis, but the grammarian butt-hole living in my head wouldn't allow it) So clearly Ultron isn't going to share a remotely similar origin story to the comics, but does that mean that Hank Pym is going to be fundamentally changed as a hero in Ant-Man? Pym is very much defined by his world-threatening failure in Ultron's creation, and it's often as depicting his more self-destructive character flaws. The suggestion, then, is that those demons won't exist. What's next, are they going to make him a decent guy who treats his woman nice, is loyal, and always takes it slow?

Bah, who am I kidding? This is Joss Whedon we're talking about. You can say what you like about his creative choices, but he makes really interesting bad guys. Heck, if they made a Whedon Villains special like a Disney Princesses video, I'd buy it. And James Spader, too? I mean, they've already let slide that they scanned his face for VFX, so it's safe to say we're going to see some awesome acting from the man who is the pillar of Blacklist's early success. But I also used to be a big Stargate fan, so the role I'm really wanting to see him channel is Daniel Jackson, the rambling archeologist outcast.

Most recently, Marvel announced last week that they'll be partnering with Netflix to create four 13 episode serials over the next two years. Focusing in turn on Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Iron Fist, and Luke Cage, the four mini-mini-series will culminate in a cross-over mini-series that will be called The Defenders. I already jumped the gun getting excited that Luke Cage would feature in Agents of SHIELD, so getting to see Power Man doing his street tank thing will be awesome. Not to mention the prospect of Daredevil being redeemed from the Affleck treatment he got in 2003. If they feature the lawyer aspects of Matt Murdoch, the Daredevil serials should be really engrossing--that pseudo mundane aspect of his character has always appealed to me. Same goes for Jessica Jones' wry private investigator angle and the post-tights drama that defines her. And Iron Fist's handwaved wushu business should be a fun splash of highly choreographed action to contrast the other three.

"Heck, if they made a Whedon Villains special like a Disney Princesses video, I'd buy it."

Oh, the next phase of Marvel's cinematic universe is already shaping up nicely with Thor and Captain America, and even Phase Three should be killer with The Defenders adding a lot of street-level mysteries and small-screen drama.

The SHIELD That Could Have Been

I think I've done a fair-to-decent job of confirming my status as a Marvel fan. I've now written detailed reviews of five of their movies (Thor, Captain America, X-men: First Class, Avengers, and Iron Man 3), and I've plugged their Marvel Unlimited online comic service. In my haul of swag from my C2E2 2013 roundup, you saw that I'd bought a half dozen pieces of Marvel art and literature, and that's only a modest addition to my collection of Marvel stuff that I haven't mentioned on the blog before. I have at least a dozen Marvel t-shirts, and I'm proud to say I have Captain America plates, coasters, and even boxer briefs. And if anything ever were to drive me to exhibitionism, I'm pretty sure it'd be my love for those Captain America undies. Except when I'm changing at the gym and I forget I wore the Cap skivvies that day--then it can be awkward. But you get the idea.

I love the Marvel characters, the major arcs (even when I don't), and I love what they're doing with the cinematic universe. But sometimes loving someone means caring enough when to tell them when they suck. Marvel made the movies Daredevil, Wolverine Origins, and Ghost Rider; there's no escaping that. But that's nothing compared to that one time they tried to make a SHIELD television series.

Yes, that's right. Agents of SHIELD is not the first attempt to bring the Marvel espionage organization onto the small screen. In 1998, Fox aired a made-for-television movie starring the director of SHIELD when he was but a mere agent. It's clear that the film was meant as a television pilot, but thankfully the world dodged that bullet and nothing more came of it. It did get released on DVD a decade later, becoming instant bargain bin fodder for Marvel nerds with $5.28 burning a hole in their pocket, and thereby allowing me to inflict it upon you.

"Except when I'm changing at the gym and I forget I wore the Cap skivvies that day--then it can be awkward. But you get the idea."

Let me stress that this DVD that I own is a total cheap cash-in on the success of Iron Man. How bad of a cash-in? Well, it goes right down to the fundamentals of SHIELD--an acronym that remains constant despite representing five or more titles over the years. In the plot of Iron Man, they established the current full title for SHIELD: the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division. This is the full name that is dropped on the back of the DVD case. But, being made in the late 90s, this explanation for SHIELD hadn't been used yet, and in the very movie they drop that it stands for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage, Law-enforcement Division (and that was actually outdated in the comics as of 1991, too). So the people blurbing the back of my DVD of this little gem didn't even bother to pay attention to the movie, and that's assuming they had the cajones to actually sit through it.

Now before you think about how intensely critical I can be, let me give you a rundown of the movie. First we have a terrible call-to-action scene, in which it seems two SHIELD mooks--one of them a traitor working for Hydra--are the only guards for a detention facility that houses the cryogenically frozen remains of Baron Strucker, a Macguffin-cicle whose DNA is the secret to a biological holocaust weapon called the Death's Head. When the shady mook shoots the legitimate SHIELD guard, Hydra waltzes into the base and shows how this is the easiest key-to-doomsday in the history of the genre. Five minutes into the film, with no protagonists introduced, the villains already have everything they need to accomplish their terrible goals. Fortunately for Nick Fury, the bad guys want to dick around and showcase staggering incompetence on both sides for 80 minutes, which leads us to our hero...

Pick-axing in a cave. No one else around, no visible machinery to process whatever he might find. No explanation other than the hand-waved assumption that Cold War badass spies must find manual mining a therapeutic retirement hobby. Plus, Nick Fury is played by David Hasselhoff, and it's a great opportunity to establish one of the primary themes of the show: Nick Fury sweats pretty much all the time. At least by setting Fury's golden years (hehehe, see what I did there?) in the Yukon, this movie departs from bad television form by at least having one scene filmed in the right country. Everything is clearly Toronto forests and studios, whether it's the European op or the eventual attack on New York--or generic American city with buildings up to three stories high and a really fuzzy New York skyline dropped in.

In case you've never seen rural Canada before, this is what it looks like.
Also a good substitute for every television location ever...

Fury also gets to show off his remarkably-adroit-but-toothless combat skills. Angry at having his daily communion with the rock interrupted, good ol' Nick runs out into blinding daylight and proceeds to kick the keester of the poor prissy schmuck standing there: British agent Alexander Pierce. Nick kicks the guy in the low chest for an opener, lays a fist across the face of the dry-skinned buffoon, and then flips him hard onto the rock-strewn ground. Pierce gets up and has not a mark to show for it. And besides a slight pant that may be from getting the faintest drubbing of all time or may simple be British indignance, Pierce is able to then hold up a conversation perfectly fine.

Our titular hero wastes no time in establishing that this Fury is so badass he isn't afraid to sound stupid, provided he confines his language to a hard-G or soft-PG rating. "You're gonna have to tell SHIELD to shove one up their collective end-zones," in response to Pierce letting Fury know he's been reactivated. He uses the classy term "sexpionage" to introduce female lead Contessa Fontaine to the audience and establish that he is too masculine to think that using that sort of terminology might inhibit his chances to suck the beauty mark off her face by film's end. Later, to mock the over-accredited Pierce he chest-kicked as a d-bag howdy-doody, Fury cracks, "How's your needlepoint?" Or "When the Iron Curtain was sent to the cleaners I was suddenly out of style." And when he's in the scariest MRI machine envisioned by man:

So...much...chest hair.

And, best of all, when he's introduced to the team's completely useless psychic and she mentions that her powers are heightened by implants, he conspicuously checks out her mammalian bits so that she has to specify that her telepathy is heightened by neural implants. Oh well, if the setting has Jean Grey, Emma Frost, and Betsy Braddock, you could understand how he might think bra size might correlate to ESP potential.

Also let me take a moment to mock the realization of the helicarrier in this boondoggle. The SHIELD mobile headquarters looks like that of an helicarrier-via-erector-set, or more accurately like a model badly cobbled together from sets of two or more different scales. It's dumb, ugly, bulky, and gives no sense whatsoever of how big the helicarrier actually is since no useful details can really be discerned.

Anyways, back to the plot, as it stands. About forty minutes after the baddies waltzed in to secure their Death's Head freezer pop, they issue a demand for one billion dollars or they will unleash their super-virus on Manhattan. Now, I don't know how money transfers of this scale work--I never worked that high up in banking--but I do know that the national deficit of the US at the time was around five trillion dollars. So in my mind a one billion dollar demand is fairly easy when you're threatening to kill off about three percent of the nation's people in one blow (later they suddenly inflate the bad guys' scheme to imperil forty million people, so that's more like one-sixth of the US population at the time). Nobody talks about paying the amount anyways, and they immediately have their psychic Agent Obvious tell them that the crazy blonde daughter of Baron Strucker has no intention of accepting the ransom anyways. So they give a ransom demand only to immediately invalidate it as irrelevant to the plot in the same scene. Well, at least they padded the movie with another two minutes while giving the bad guys a chance to tip their hand to their enemies.

The good guys follow the recommendation of Nick Fury, their dunce-in-the-hole, and seek out Arnim Zola so the bad guys can boost him under their noses and then give the Hoffster a poisoned kiss. Hitting all the bases here. Nick gets a terminal diagnosis that conveniently has no cure but Madame Hydra's blood and on a deadline that neatly coincides with Hydra's doomsday plot anyways.

Hot on the heels of Nick's bad judgement getting him sally-straddled by a one hundred-ten-pound blonde with poison lipstick, the rest of the protagonists still decide to follow his plan and split into two teams for the finale of this movie. Contessa "Do-these-lips-make-my-face-look-small" Fontaine leading a bunch of redshirts in a search for a deadly virus-carrying refrigerated garbage truck, while Nick, Irrelevant Psychic, and Agent British go after the enemy command center. Contessa's team basically owns by fiat after she surprises a Hydra goon playing wall-ball instead of guarding by substituting his ball with the world's weakest hand grenade. Seriously, the grenade barely disintegrates itself and does like no damage to the goon, but he and several adjacent guards go down anyways.

Nick's team gets all the excitement. First, the two junior agents watch as the ailing Fury takes out multiple guards with his fists while they have (apparently) silenced weapons handy that they use later on. Then the trio get held up by laser sensors for about two seconds before Agent British busts out his Laser Repellant and they slip through to meet a lone goon waiting for Fury to ask, "How's Hydra's dental plan?" A few more unexciting exchanges later, the eponymous hero is confronted with the dreaded does-the-doomsday-password-end-in-six-or-nine puzzle. As the final twenty seconds on the countdown burn through precious moments of my life that I'll never get back, Irrelevant Psychic is no help and allows Fury to heroically waffle on the six-nine decision until the timer hits maximum drama. The villainness is then caught, Arnim Zola shoots himself with the most fiddly booby-trapped gun ever, and Fury gets to drop a "pop-cicle" joke before Madame Hydra escapes with her father in the world's slowest elevator.

Eat this, Adam West's Batman!!!

What's most amazing to me about Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD is how many recognizable names are in the credits of the movie. David S. Goyer wrote the script--about the same time he was doing the original Blade script and seven years before Batman Begins. Director Rod Hardy has captained episodes of The Mentalist, Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, and JAG, so it's not like he hasn't met with televised success before or after this particular feature. And there are several forever-supporting actors that you're likely to recognize. Ron Canada, Tom McBeath, and Gary Chalk, for instance, all have significant television resumes that include Stargate SG-1, for whatever nerd-cred that presents in your opinion. And yet this movie blows so completely that no one thought to make it a DVD until ten years after the fact when it was certainly forgotten and could cleanly trade on the name established by the first Iron Man movie. Does the Hoff really drag a production down that much? Specifically, does chest hair and peculiar sweat scenes drag a production down that much?

I doubt it. As much as I want to pan Hasselhoff specifically, I can't. This movie/pilot was a conceptual failure from the start. SHIELD exists as the interconnecting web of global plots in the Marvel universe, and trying to make a story about SHIELD when there was no established greater Marvel universe to connect was inherently dumb. Like trying to interior decorate a house that's under construction, SHIELD has no place without a stable of superheroes hedging them in. With one very irrelevant exception, Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD had no superpowers whatsoever, and made no references to any superhumans of either good or bad moral persuasion.

"Fortunately for Nick Fury, the bad guys want to dick around and showcase staggering incompetence on both sides for 80 minutes..."

But I'm thankful for Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD, and I'm glad I own it. As a fan of the Fox-aborted television series Space: Above and Beyond, Firefly, and Drive, it's nice to see that at least one decision to pan a new television series was not only justified, but may have saved the free world. Consider: if this show had been allowed to continue instead of purged with fire, the mainstream Marvel movies that would be coming out in the next few years, X-Men and Spider-Man, would've had to cater to the show's creative decisions in some way. Those movies would have suffered for it, Marvel's comic-distribution wouldn't have gotten the boost it did from those movies' popularity, and they never would have been in a position to take a risk to the tune of $50 million on Iron Man or any of the other Avengers-related films. Robert Downey Jr. wouldn't have been thrown into the public light as an all around awesome human being and nerd despite his Hollywood chops. Samuel L. Jackson's highest profile nerdy role would remain Mace Windu. Hugh Jackman would still be kicking around the Australian stage. And Scarlett Johansson would be flitting around art movies getting paired up with creepy old men for romantic interests instead of becoming a genre-crossing meta-hottie.

My goodness, I am thankful for Nick Fury: Agent of SHIELD. And I'm thankful for David Hasselhoff--without him, somebody might've decided the show was worth picking up, and that would be an evil too dark and terrible to imagine.

Child Cancer Patients Given 'Supercure'

(Disclaimer: supercure might be advertising and/or chemotherapy)

Stolen from the Editor's Desk: There are a lot of opinion columns, write-in articles, and advice editorials in the greater medium of the written word. Virtually none of these advisors are particularly qualified, either. There's nothing to stop them from giving bad advice. Except me. Stolen from the Editor's Desk involves me taking some sort of advice column and tearing it a new one, all for your sake. Bad advice, meet the nerdery.

This "Stolen from the Editor's Desk" is a bit of a stretch, since this is in response to a proper news article. But at the same time it's well within the spirit of the series, so forgive the slight stretch in categorization.

A children's cancer center in Sao Paolo, Brazil is taking a novel approach to helping kids cope with chemotherapy. The hospital staff is telling their young patients they're getting a "superformula" and emblazoning their chemotherapy supplies with Justice League character symbols.

Warner Brothers' team-up with the Brazilian cancer center goes further than that. They're kitting out rooms of the hospital as superhero game-rooms with comic book decorations. Furthermore, they're penning a series of special comic book issues in which DC's title characters get cancer (or some similar ailment) and then go through their own version of chemotherapy, after which they promptly return to full crime-fighting health.

Now, one of the key problems with treating long-term patients is morale. There is a measurable correlation between optimism and recovery outlook. That's why hospitals all over the world engage in different programs designed to cheer up their patients--whether it's individual volunteers or organizations like the Make-A-Wish foundation. For children fighting cancer, they have to cope with invasive, painful testing and medical treatment as part of chemotherapy, so for them maintaining a hopeful and determined perspective is especially important. I get that.

But how do you treat those children in order to give them hope?

Do you make them as comfortable as possible and try to equip them to deal with any outcome? Or do you tell them that if they cooperate and do the right thing, well...look how easy it was for Batman? It seems to me like there are better ways to make kids have fun with the process--why not give kids the opportunity to customize their chemotherapy kits, rather than giving them commercially-produced kits that bear the promise of a brand.

And it's not like these superheroes are necessarily meaningful to the kids getting them. What if a kid asks for Captain America? Sorry, have Green Lantern--he's kind of a supersoldier. What's that little girl? Want a heroine who's not laden with a history of bondage imagery to encourage you to get better? How about Wonder Woman? Because all they have is the Justice League represented.

Which leads into the creepiest thing about this scenario: this is a commercial deal (however charitable) between a company and a cancer center. It boils down to placing advertising in a place of healing for children that are not only suffering, but are more likely to be the focus of news reports regarding their condition. I imagine the cancer center probably opted for this deal out of a chance to get a free or cheap way to meet their patients' needs, and that's admirable. But isn't it telling that this news is an international story so quickly? And what's even more damning, in my opinion, is that the attached video announcing this deal is in English, and the Portuguese version of the video was posted almost a week later. That's right, the version most likely to be viewed around the world was made first, and only six days later did they post a version in the national language of Brazil itself. And who's producing these Youtube videos in question? JWT, the fourth-largest advertising agency in the world. This is a transaction as much as it is a proper act of charity.

I'd like for this to be a Marvel vs DC issue, I really would. Not because I enjoy kicking DC when they're down--though sometimes I do--but because this is more an issue of the way these high-profile medical facilities' decisions get treated. Like when Penny Arcade strong-armed their Child's Play charity to reject donations from "Retake Mass Effect" because he disagreed with their message about a video game.

I don't know, maybe this should be a Don't Be That Guy article. Don't use sick kids as marketing gimmicks.

C2E2 2013 Roundup

UPDATE 5/26/2013: So after rereading this post today, I realized I'd neglected to expound on a lot of key stuff. Some of it I will save for a future post, as I'm having trouble bringing over some of my shaky Cloverfield-esque video, but for now I've expanded the Cosplay section of this post a lot, including a video of the Silent Hill nurse disturbing GenCon.

Today is a very special post.

A titanic post. And not because it's a lumbering, arrogant compensation-device bound to hit the biggest humiliating force of nature in the ultimate example of post-industrial hubris. It's a titanic post because it's huge.

Today's blog is about my impressions of Chicago Comic Entertainment Expo (C2E2) 2013. In a lot of ways, C2E2 was the final impetus that got me back to blogging here on the Nerdery. It's a fantastic convention here in the Midwest that has grown by leaps and bounds since it started in 2010. I'd heard about it in previous years, but never really felt the pull to go. That was largely true this year, too. Despite how much I'd loved attending Fire and Ice, I knew C2E2 would be vastly different and the basement-dwelling homebody nerd inside kept telling me I didn't want to go to such a vast, impersonal convention. Plus, I hate going into the city, and it'd be expensive, and a dozen other chirps of procrastinating unambition from the drowner within. No, I wouldn't go, and I was pretty certain I'd be a happier nerd for it.

That worked well enough until my wife happened to win a pair of weekend passes to C2E2 from a local radio station. Whoa. My cheapskate crutch snapped under its own weight as now the only real cost of C2E2 would be entirely volitional--I'd only spend money if I couldn't keep a steady grip on my wallet. So we'd be going, I reluctantly agreed. Reluctantly still, because that infernal pasty guy who never leaves the game room still wasn't that excited about going. But he was okay with doing research. And research is what did him in.

"It's a titanic post because it's huge."

Just looking over C2E2's website was enough to melt away the pasty contrarian in a wash of pure white fire. Hundreds of artists in Artists' Alley, a huge swathe of the convention floor dedicated to tables for artists from all sorts of comics, each with prints to sell and commissions to take. "Oh, I do love the artwork," crowed the little drowner, rubbing his clammy murderous hands together. "Maybe I could get something with the Avengers in it--or Ms. Marvel. I likes Ms. Marvel..." The creature's resolve was already cloven. Then I went over the guest speakers and panels. "Marvel vice presidents and editors talking about future of comics?" he drooled into my inner monologue, dropping his articles like a slob. That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers. Once I clicked on the featured guests, the fight was done. "Ron Perlman?! Hellboy?!" screeched the drowner in helpless fanboy giddiness as I dropped my blessed silver claymore down on his clavicle, splitting him wide. There would be no second thoughts, no hesitation. I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine. Oh yes, I would make his signature sit on my Hellboy Director's Cut and it would be most sweet.

And so I went from being staunchly opposed to going to being ravenously excited about the proposition of meeting the man who is the hub of my Movie Web (it all begins and ends with Ron). Not even the brutal and graphically rendered slaying of my slacker subconscious could allay my enthusiasm for leaping into the unknown and coming out with my trophy in the form of Ron Perlman's handle scrawled on my DVD set.

Seriously, my mouth is watering right now.

So I went after all. The first day, Friday, I brought my 14 year-old brother in law because my silly pregnant wife was having a sympathy attack over my two year-old who'd been sick that week. Seriously, the sympathy attack is one of the most illogical and destructive beasts of living with a pregnant woman--and the sympathy never flows towards you, either. It pretty much always opposes your enthusiasms and has water in its eyes even when 'everything is fine'. Bah, I didn't have time for that on April 27--that was my day to capture Ron Perlman's script on my tomes of Hellboy! So I picked up my brother-in-law and we rode the train down into the city, while I gave him a primer on the birds and the bees of comics, Nerdery, and what wonders we would inevitably see (since I knew so much).

"That was a sign of weakness, as even the demented internal voices of the Nerdery's fragmented subconscious are grammatical sticklers."

Saturday my son was feeling better--actually, my son was feeling better on Friday, but after a day of sympathy attacks my wife was feeling better--and so I took the missus with me on the continuing nerd fest while my son terrorized my parents for the day. It was great, and we got to see even more awesomeness, despite being hamstrung by my wife's over-encumbering pregnancy. Although I did find that drafting behind her made navigating the dense crowds of the convention much easier--no one wants to bump into a strange 8-month pregnant lady at a nerd gathering.

Then on Sunday we brought my son. Decked in a Spider-Man hoodie and wide-eyed over the spectacle of getting to ride a train for the first time in his life, and into a tunnel no less, my little sidekick was beside himself with manic joy at the con.

It sucked.

For those of you who are considering bringing a toddler to any convention, let me prepare you for it. First of all, the ladies will constantly be complimenting you on how cute you are with a blonde-haired blue-eyed toddler in your arms. And it is cute. Guys will say it's awesome to see your little Web-head going fwip-fwip to show how he uses his web-shooters. And it is awesome. You'll also have to lug a thirty-five pound snatching kleptomaniac around all day, wrestling him into your arms while he donkey kicks your junk in an effort to get to the toy retailers' alley or to sprint ahead of the line to sit in the Mach 5. You get to watch his hands so he doesn't yank people's hair as countless strangers with fascinating heads pass within claws' reach. Yeah, maybe it is cute. But it's also a pain in the arms, back, and gonads, and people give you funny looks for every tantrum he throws rather than thank you for restraining him from ripping their redheaded wig off at the scalp.

And to top it all off, when my son saw a perfectly realistic Spider-Man posing with other people, he was totally speechless. The shrieker gasped and his slack-jaw look of wonder had all the pronouncing power of an old fish. Just flapping lips, wide-eyes, and a faint press of air that could only vaguely be translated into words.

"Hey, who is that, Bucky?"

"Spider-Man."

"Well then, call him."

"Over here, Spider-Man."

"No, Buck, he can't hear you. You gotta call louder." A small pinch on the thigh, trying to either throw some sense into him or encourage him to narc on me to the red and blue hero.

"Spider-Man. Spider-Man come 'ere." As faint as ever, though plaintively urgent this time.

"Hey, Spider-Man! Can we get a picture?" I called out as the cosplayer turned his back and began to move on. I trotted up to Spider-Man and showed him his quiet doppelganger. My son's arms swung wide and he pitched his body forward to embrace Spider-Man and transfer into his arms.

"Spider-Man," he said, voice now contentedly smaller than ever as my wife and I got some of the only pictures of him both awake and still from the whole day. When that was done, he hugged Spider-Man around the neck.

"Bubye, Spider-Man. See you later."

Yeah, maybe it is awesome. But I still don't recommend it.



In the interest of breaking down my impressions into easier-to-digest chunks (yeah, right, like I do that), here's the major categories of attractions at C2E2 that thoroughly enchanted my weekend.



Celebrities

There was a tremendous amount of star power at the con. Convention veterans like Burt Ward and Julie Newmar were there, as well as a bunch of stars from The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. Felicia Day, Sam Huntington, and Patton Oswalt were also there meeting fans and signing autographs, but the biggest three in my esteem (other than The Man himself) were the Babylon 5 trinity: Bruce Boxleitner, Mira Furlan, and J. Michael Straczynski. I'm actually a very belated fan of Babylon 5, only recruited through Netflix Instant Watch, so I didn't have any signable goodies for them. If I did, you can bet I would've hit them all Friday morning after stopping off at Ron Perlman's table.

Ah, Ron. I was pleasantly surprised that going straight for the autograph tables immediately after getting to the con Friday morning was the way to go. There were hardly any people at all getting autographs yet. Except for Ron. Out of maybe 40 fans getting signatures at that point, I'd guess that twenty of them were in line for him. I felt perversely proud of Mr. Perlman for it.

"I would meet the Perlman and would make his signature mine."

Now, I had a really stupid pact in my mind to be charming and erudite when I met one of my cinema idols. There was a vague scenario sketched in my mind where I could say the right words that would get the celebrity to want to strike up a friendship with me and go play wargames or something. Unfortunately, the Ron Perlman fan in front of me was a svelte She-Hulk wearing booty shorts and a tattered tank top, so by the time I got up to the front of the line of fans all I had really determined was that I should not make an ass of myself. See how that went with my poignantly-remembered transcript:

Taking my Director's Cut in hand, Ron says, "Where would you like me to sign it?"

"Right there on the front," I answer dryly. At this point, I'm thinking: Man, his head is really a normal size. Yeah, I know. Somehow, over the years of seeing him tower over other actors in these grand roles, I'd gotten the impression that he'd make me feel like Frodo's scale double once I met him, never mind the reality that he's only an inch taller than me. So for an awkward silence, I just chanted: Don't talk about the size of his head, Ben. He will totally go Angel on you if you freak out on him. Be cool. So I was being cool. I was also suddenly aware that I was standing in front of Ron Perlman and I wasn't talking--not cool! "I really love the video commentary on this set. Your comments are especially well-informed and they show how well you know and appreciate the material," I say, silently complimenting myself on not sounding like a lunatic.

"Yeah? You know, I don't think I've ever sat down and watched the video commentary since we recorded it," he says with a smirk. Ron can smell loon.

"Really?" I ask, idiocy welling up within, boiling over. "Well, if you want to watch it you could borrow it. I'm going to be here all weekend." Now, I had thought that would be a clever way to ingratiate myself to the celebrity, still clinging to the delusion. Of course, I went home and started blogging zombie party favors, so you know the story doesn't work out that way.

"Oh, that's okay," Ron said with that Vincent smile. "I'm pretty sure I have a copy at home."

Oh my giddy-odd. Did you really just say that? He probably thinks you're a loon. Just get the picture taken with him and go.

"Mind if my brother takes a picture of us?" I say through the stupid-stupid-stupid in my throat.

"No problem," he says, magnanimous in the face of demented fanboy.

Wow, his hand is like not really warm or cold. It's a just right hand. Shut-up! Don't say anything but thank you!

"Thank you."

"You're welcome."

Ron Perlman's frakkin' shaking my hand!!!

Artists

Walking through Artists' Alley is a real chore. And I don't simply mean because it's super-crowded navigating the rows of tables and aisles choked with fans to find the artist you're looking for. I mean because there's so many awesome pieces of art on display. Each table sports a dozen or more display pieces, and then they have entire portfolios of art prints that you can pick up right there. I really liked chatting about the art with the creators--especially the couple that were really impressed by the details and elegance of their work. Even surrounded by fans, they were genuinely impressed by viewers who saw and loved the details. And then there's the great commission prices for artwork. You can watch artists at work on those commissions, sketching iconic characters in real-time while you chat about the latest scandal in nerd interests. You know: Star Wars being ruined for kids these days, the New 52, and Michael Bay. Yeah, it's definitely a part of the con where I could envision spending an entire day next year. (Oh, did I mention I am definitely going next year? Spoiler alert: I'm going next year.)

One of my favorite pieces of art was one I found on Friday, by Stephen Bryant. I was drawn to his table by his painted covers, in particular a piece called "The Power of Three" featuring Hellboy, Abe Sapien, and Liz Sherman. Having just come down off my I-met-Ron high, I picked it up right away and started talking with the artist and assistant as I went through the rest of his portfolio. Then I found my favorite picture of the con. Entitled "Iron Man: Dreaming Big", it featured a young boy lost in a thick volume of Essential Iron Man, with a image of the cinematic Iron Man floating above his head, springing from his imagination. Oh, I love that piece, and so that got added into my impulse purchase as I gushed to my brother-in-law over it and proved much more socially competent with Mr. Bryant than I was with Ron. Then, joking as I realized I was breaking my own personal promise to 'not spend that much,' I grabbed a print from Stephen for a friend whose birthday was coming up. It depicted Deadpool in Eddard Stark's classic "Winter is coming" pose. The best part? I had been at the con like two hours and already spent almost as much money as I would've on the two weekend passes. Oops.

So then the rest of our time we spent in Artists' Alley on Friday was ulterior-motive scouting. For those of you who aren't married, that's when you look for products to show your spouse to make them assume you must've spent a lot more money than you really did. "Hey, I know I picked up three art prints, but if I was really out of control I would've picked up a dozen. See? Look at all this great art I didn't buy...Can we get that one, too?" So on Saturday we grabbed another 5 or so art prints, this time impelled by my wife, and we really only stopped because of failure to visualize where they could go in our house.

Artists' Alley: totally worth a day on its own. Don't go there at all if you don't want to spend money. Just don't.

Panels

The panels were great, and varied from intriguing and intellectual to creators having mass love affairs with their fans. The rooms where the panels were actually located, however, were harder to find than a matte surface in Abrams' Star Trek reboot. If you're going to the con for the first time, know that all of the panels are held upstairs, and--while there are stairs leading up inside the main convention floor--the stairs you want are actually up the escalators before even entering the main floor. Yeah, those other stairs just lead to a sort of island food court that is designed to fulfill the same function as the Lost Woods in the Zelda games--be as confusing as possible in a confined, closed space.

The panel with the Marvel leadership was great, and since that was a Friday panel, I had the pleasure of sharing it with my brother-in-law who was pretty ignorant of all things Marvel that weren't in the last batch of movies. (I say was pretty ignorant because I think he went home that day a genuine Marvel fan.) It was a great time that made me proud to be a Marvel fan. In a fairly packed room, the Marvel heads were funny, personable, and showed they not only knew their fans as an abstract demographic but also were able to read us as a collective batch of Midwest nerds sitting in front of them. I loved it, and by the time I left they had sold me on Marvel Unlimited and gotten me excited for the upcoming Project Gamma.

But of course, my absolute favorite panel was Ron Perlman's Q&A on Saturday. In a massive hall filled with probably fifteen hundred people, Ron fielded questions direct from fans in a frank, crassly charming hour or so (too too short). There were a lot of good questions asked, and it was clear the room was full of true fans. A couple of fans just gushed over Ron more than ask questions, and he handled it with hilarious and dirty back-talk. He even shared a few details that I'd never heard before, one of which was clearly a tender subject for him, so it all felt intimate despite being so grand. I wanted to ask him a question or two, and I would have done so, but by Saturday it had dawned on me how dumb I came across the day before. So I kept my trap shut.

An aside: my wife would tell you that at one point I got quite animated and pointed to some random fan thinking he was Guillermo del Toro popping in on the Q&A, but that's ludicrous. First, I totally never said that. Second, I don't get dumber the closer I get in proximity to Ron Perlman, but I might get more loony. Thirdly--and I'm not admitting anything--but it would've been an awesome publicity stunt if the director of some of Ron Perlman's biggest movies, including his next one Pacific Rim, had just shuffled into the room and stolen the show for a few minutes, right? I mean, it's not a totally dumb idea. But I never said that, so it's all just my wife's gravid eccentricity.



Cosplay

Oh my, the cosplay. I'm going to have a lot to say about this in upcoming posts, so I won't go into much detail about what cosplay is or anything other than to say that I was overwhelmed by how much good cosplay was on display at C2E2. And I don't just mean hot costumes. I'm talking about people with cinema-quality outfits, or with realizations of costumes not yet seen in live action that absolutely blew me away. Even before getting into the main hall on Friday morning, there were at least a dozen people I wanted to take pictures of. I snapped a few, but not nearly as many as I would've liked. Partly because I was keeping an eye on my brother-in-law, and partly because I was certain that I'd see all of the really good cosplayers in the costume contest they'd have later that night. In short, I was a putz. Don't be a putz. Take tons of pictures. Because you will see hundreds of awesome, well-done costumes, and the contest itself was only 30 people. Granted, I saw great cosplay on the stage, but I missed out on great photos for second-guessing myself.

I don't think anyone suffered more for their cosplay than this girl. Chelsea from Lionheart Cosplay and Makeup Effects went as a female Carnage--the insane symbiote that makes Venom into an occasional hero by comparison. She had white-out contacts, painful-looking dentures, and that latex tongue hanging from her jaw. Probably the greatest crime about the whole affair is that a lot of the fabulous, scrupulous details of her costume were really hard to notice and appreciate from a distance. When I talked to her after Friday's contest, it was clear that the entire getup was exhausting her in real-time. Lionheart, indeed.

The greatest thing about the fantastic cosplay at conventions like this is that it's by far the most social aspect of the experience. You might not have any interest to talk to some random comic book guy, but when you see someone dressed up as a perfect Hudson from Aliens, or the Red Ranger's T-rex dino-zord, or frakkin' Captain Planet, you just have to talk to them. I myself really enjoyed dragging my shy brother-in-law to the side of the stage after Friday's cosplay contest and talking to some of my favorite cosplayers from the night. I won't go into too much detail, but I'll say I met some really cool people that I hope to meet again and even feature on this blog in the coming weeks.

One of those people was Courtney from Cosplay4UsAll. She dressed up as the nurse from the horror game series Silent Hill, and in that costume she won the crowd's approval for best cosplay in Friday's costume contest. Besides having a great costume, she also had far and away the most disturbingly accurate twitch-walk that perfectly emulated the horrors from the Hill. The contest's MC (I believe her name was Trin) simply wigged out as Courtney shuffled up onto the stage, and as we all cheered I'm pretty sure she was planning an escape route. I love the roleplay aspect of cosplay, and the fact that Courtney stayed in character for her stage walk was fantastic. Included below is a brief video of her creeping around GenCon 2012. Even after the show, when I met her and the rest of the family composing the Cosplay4UsAll team, she stayed disturbingly mute. It was only when we I started talking about video games that she had to break character to brag on some of her Mass Effect and Borderlands cosplay as well. Even then, she kept it hushed so other people wouldn't see her talking. Great people, and I'm already working with them on another project. Filmatleven.

My brother-in-law, being a typical high school boy with little or no knowledge of true Nerdery (I mean it, some of his honest questions absolutely killed me--like when he asked if the vintage Captain Power toys were from the 60s), really loved this Deadpool cosplay. Wise-cracking, uber-violent, and gun-toting, Deadpool is a fun Marvel character that is known for breaking the fourth wall with almost cartoony antics. So when this cosplayer, Michael, dressed as the "merc with a mouth" he went over-the-top, and was naturally pitch-perfect as Deadpool. A scratch-built 60-pound cannon, Deadpool's "The Solution" was a big crowd-pleaser. At least it was once it got assembled and lugged up onto the stage.

Finally, I was really impressed by the large number of quality Iron Man costumes at C2E2. Friday alone we saw at least three or four Iron Man cosplays that were good enough to make you do a double-take. I found it particularly fun when we stopped to have a bite to eat and an Iron Man tromped through the food court area, liking stalking up on a blonde or a cold one. Or looking for a mechanic to help him take a bathroom break. Either way, it was one of the nerdy little moments that was ridiculously common at C2E2--like seeing Ms. Marvel in her Warbird outfit resting her heels while munching on some celery. So mundane and disarming. So priceless.

And yes, I like Ms. Marvel. Shaddup.

If you were thinking about going to C2E2 before, it should probably be a foregone conclusion now. It's a fun convergence of a lot of nerd elements, and the chance to rub elbows with so many nerds in such uninhibited surroundings alone is worth it. Also, keep an eye out for more pictures and a lot more coverage on cosplay as Nerd Butter in the next week or so.

Comic Books--Focus Groups for Blockbuster Movies

Once more I'm going to share my thoughts on a well known loaf of Nerd Bread: comic books. Comic books are making a huge resurgence in popularity and cultural relevance these days. For the last year or two, some of the biggest movies (and even one really successful television show) have been comic book adaptations. The Avengers movie stands head-and-Hulk-trapezoids over the rest, but Spider-Man, X-men, Batman, and The Walking Dead all got a huge amount of audience keisters and dollars. Iron Man 3 (assisted by Avengers' awesomeness, if we're honest) is currently beating its way past $1 billion in global ticket sales. And with Man of Steel set to come out in June and another round of Marvel awesomeness hitting us in the fall (note I'm ignoring The Wolverine with that timeframe), the fact is that we've got another year with television and cinema dominated by comic books' huge appeal.

But comic books themselves are still considered a little bit niche. Ask the average non-nerd what Spider-Man's secret identity is, and they will almost certainly say Peter Parker. But if you ask them about the Superior Spider-Man, Superman: Red Son, or the New 52, they will shrug and answer "Peter Parker?" "Isn't that what makes Krypton special?" and "Are they the people trying to get Washington DC and Puerto Rico recognized as states?" respectively. Even though comic books are powerful cultural troves, they still are themselves fringe texts--still Nerd Bread.

But why are comics still considered nerdy when their characters are so well-known and popular? Well, I think a large part of it goes into my definition of a nerd--enthusiasm. Comic books are full of art and intricate plots and involved stories. They have vibrant, distinct characters that sometimes come off as offensive and over-the-top to the uninitiated reader. One issue of a comic is, by design, generally never enough to satisfy a reader, and so those of the right persuasion find themselves digging in for more and more while others sniff and back away.

And--a little critically--there's the issue of comic book marketing. As a monthly storytelling medium, comic books are a constantly shifting and reacclimatizing landscape. Being out of the loop for just a couple of years can yield a lot of surprising new changes, as I know first-hand. This leads to comic books appealing to younger readers more readily, as they're more often eager to join the cult of the new and are less offended by changes to established characters, teams, and plots. Older comic book readers exist, but it means that it takes a bit more effort and therefore makes adult comic book fans even more peculiar and nerdy in contrast to their peers.

"Even though comic books are powerful cultural troves, they still are themselves fringe texts--still Nerd Bread."

So why are comic books' stories and characters so relevant to the culture at large when the actual reading and ingesting, the true fandom, is still considered the province of nerds? Part of it has to be the appeal of an entire genre that is so visually attuned to tell its own stories. You can read a comic book and get pictures that bear composition as beautiful, evocative, and meaning-packed as any Oscar-winning cinematography. The visuals and style of heroes are often done with painstaking and self-conscious awareness of its fan preferences, meaning that the very best and longest-lasting heroes often have an almost symbiotic appeal to their fans. These elements mean that when transferring that appeal to the screen, directors already have a firm idea of the mass reaction they can expect from their choices--especially as they maintain fidelity to the original text.

Comic books also have some of the best economy of story-telling, which is an important factor in television and film. They might have meta-plots that span over months or years of publication, but at the same time every comic book issue needs to tell its own contained story in less than 30 pages. You need to fit drama, intrigue, and action into those 30 pages to qualify as the best of comic books today, and to be something really special you need to integrate the artistic vision and small story into something eminently relatable to the audience. These are key points that any movie-maker can appreciate, and a lot of them could gain an invaluable education from reading comic books for its own sake.

And finally, comic book fans are in it for the long haul. When you make a movie about X superhero--even if it's bad or disappointing--you can count on just about any pre-established fan of X's comics going to see the movie. I mean, why wouldn't they? They've probably already shelled out hundreds of dollars over years to read about X, now they just need to spend a little more to see him on the big screen. Of course they go. And if it's even reasonably good, every self-respecting comic book nerd will be evangelizing the movie to their friends--to see the movie, certainly, but also and more importantly in a clever attempt to coerce their buddies into becoming comic book aficionados as well. A well-done comic book movie has legs that no marketing budget can duplicate--the enthusiasm of nerds.

"Older comic book readers exist, but it means that it takes a bit more effort and therefore makes adult comic book fans even more peculiar and nerdy in contrast to their peers."

As a totally free add-on, I'm going to share with you a new discovery I made thanks to C2E2 this year that puts decades of comic books within your reach without bankrupting you, making you a pirate, or putting you at the mercy of your local library's selection.



Marvel Unlimited: The Netflix of Marvel Comic Books

Capture of the Marvel Unlimited web-reader of Ultimates #1's cover

Marvel Unlimited is an online app-and-browser-based service for reading comic books. For either a $10 monthly subscription or a $60 annual one, you get access to a digital library that you can read online that contains 13,000 issues of Marvel comics that range from decades-old to published just a couple months ago. It's a great service, and thanks to it I've been reading at least two new comics a day for the past two weeks.

I've been out of comic books for a while, and even when I was a regular reader my selections were pretty careful--I buy graphic novels (multiple issues bound as one), and the thought of putting something unsatisfying on my bookshelf always made me cautious. So there were a lot of comic books I always wanted to get into that I never did because I wasn't sure if I'd love them or because their graphic novel collections were hard to find, and so on. And that was before I'd fallen out of comics altogether for five years or so.

But at C2E2 I heard about Marvel Unlimited, and let me tell you: it's a great deal. I've been able to backtrack on my favorite series to 2008 and start catching up from there, or even further back for those series I always wanted to read but never bothered. And if there's a particular hero you like to follow who appears in different comic book series, like Ant-Man or Captain Marvel, you can browse for them specifically and follow their appearances throughout different series over the years. It's a great resource.

Ultimates #1
Allied soldiers assaulting the Nazi superweapon

And if you're curious about it, they have sample issues you can browse and see how you like it. Once you're hooked I recommend you start with one of my favorite Marvel comic book series: Ultimates, written by Mark Millar and illustrated by Bryan Hitch. As part of Marvel's Ultimate universe, it's a great place to launch into comics. You see, the Ultimate universe is a fresh take on Marvel's most popular comics that started about the same time Bryan Singer's first X-Men movie hit theaters. Starting from the ground up, the Ultimate universe tries to be as friendly to newcomers as possible while also taking the chance to take well-known characters into fresh directions. Ultimates is the Ultimate universe version of the Avengers, and it has some of the very finest art and storytelling. Some of the plot will be familiar to fans of last year's movie--the Chitauri do come out of the woodwork, and party conflict revolves around the Hulk. Some of the creative decisions of the movies were also lifted directly from Ultimates. Millar specifically cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury by having Hitch base his visualization on the actor, for instance, and Captain America's World War Two uniform in the first issue of Ultimates inspired the outfit Cap wears to raid the prison camp in The First Avenger. But it is by far a different, darker story than the one in Joss Whedon's movie, too.

Ultimates #1
Why aren't you reading this book by now?!

Ultimates is also a little richer than the movie in that it features a slightly larger roster of the Avengers, too. Hank Pym, or Ant-Man, and his wife Janet, the Wasp, are main characters alongside the ones you'll recognize from the movie. The art itself is very gritty and realistically proportioned, with fabulous use of shadow and color that keeps everything distinct and diverse in the classic four-color composition, while also evoking deep shadows and moral shades of gray with its meticulous realization of lighting. Inker Andrew Currie really lends a lot to the visual impact of this book, drawing sharp lines and highlighting fantastic expressions without overpowering Hitch's characters.



So give Marvel Unlimited a try, and if you've never read Ultimates I strongly recommend you start your online library there.