It's pretty sad when an 80s cartoon for kids does a better job of something than a modern theatrical movie intended for older audiences. Specifically I'm referring to the portrayal of female characters.

The comic series did an even better job than the cartoon. In a 1986 interview Larry Hama had this to say on the female following of his G.I.Joe comic series - "Most of the girls that write in say that the reason they like the comic is that the women characters are simply part of the team. They’re not treated as any different from the other team members. They don’t go around with their palms nailed to their foreheads. They’re competent, straight forward, and they go ahead and get the job done. They also participate emotionally. They have their likes and dislikes. They’re not ill-treated and they’re not running around being worrywarts." I couldn't find the exact quote but I seem to remember somewhere him saying that he just writes female characters the same way he writes the male characters, and he couldn't understand why that was so revolutionary.

Back to the films, I didn't complain too much on G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra about the portrayal of women even though it did have issues. Scarlet was adequately done, but didn't totally make up for the fact that the first film completely undercut the Baroness, changing her from a competent, self-driven villain into a brainwashed damsel in distress. Though, seriously, having only two female characters of note is also a mighty large black mark against it.

Then G.I. Joe: Retaliation comes along and again only has two female characters, one a collection of tropes and the other a pointless ninja.

Starting with the second, they seemed to have included Jinx because they needed to have more than one woman in the movie but they didn't really have a place for her. She doesn't actually contribute to the plot in any way and could have been completely left out without any changes being necessary. And I don't know if the demure acting was from the actress or due to direction, but it flies in the face of the fiery attitude shown in the original character portrayals of the comics and cartoon.

While Jinx seemed to be an afterthought, Lady Jaye is an example of overcompensation due to a lack of understanding. She's an expert sniper, whiz at computers and communication equipment, and can go undercover and manipulate bad guys with “the power of her hotness.” This wouldn't seem so out of place in G.I. Joe, an organization full cross-functional experts, except for the fact that her male counterpart teammate, Flint, doesn't do much of anything except contribute the single most offensive moment in the film. To add depth to Lady Jaye's character they gave her a backstory where her dad wanted a boy so she was driven to prove him wrong by getting promoted past him, but was denied this closure by his premature death. Can you hear my eyes rolling? Daddy issues? Evidently it never occurred to them that a woman could be successful and driven on her own merits, and need not prove herself to and require the approval of men.

Speaking of the men, there's a scene where Flint uses the reflection in some surface (don't remember exactly what it was) to watch Lady Jaye strip out of her hot red dress of infiltration without her know it. So was he caught and clocked in the face for his transgression? No, no he wasn't it. Despite the fact that Lady Jaye knocking the arrogant Flint down a peg or two was a part of the character dynamic in the comics and cartoons, the incident instead goes undiscovered and we are shown that it's ok to be a voyeur. What? Seriously? Yes, seriously, because obviously the prurient needs of men is more important than showing respect to women. This is why we can't have nice things.

Look, I didn't expect much out of the movie, I just wanted to see Dwayne Johnson in a fun action role and that's what we got. (And he was, as always, a lot of fun to watch.) We got a typical action movie, and as such it carries all the problems, cliches, and tropes that they entail. Like the Michael Bay Transformers movies, the G.I. Joe films only have a surface understanding of the property and completely miss many of the deeper qualities that have made it endure for decades.

Iron Man 3 is a pretty divisive movie. I enjoyed it. Many dedicated fans of the comics are upset with a character change made in it. Critical viewers have also pointed out how that change also introduces a ton of plot holes into the proceedings. But without it I wouldn't have enjoyed the film nearly as much. It would have left me uncomfortable, and probably not intentionally so. With the reveal, though, that part of the movie appears to have been on purpose and that they were knowingly taking things over the top.

Overall, it helps if you aren't too attached to the source material, and don't think about the film too awfully close. It's not bad, but I'd never label it a great film. I think it's better than the second one, and I would probably place it just under the first owing to the number of elements that I enjoyed.

The general description for Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye is that it is about a group of Autobots traveling through space as they hunt for the legendary Knights of Cybertron and have adventures along the way. That’s a generic enough charter that it leaves a lot of room to explore different genres of tales as it goes. But really, as someone said very well on TF Wiki, “mostly it's about lonely nobodies hanging out pretending they have friends.” And, damn, it so really is.

One of the things the writer did recently, which has been very excitedly picked up on by the slash fiction writers, is introduce the concept of Conjunx Endura, an acknowledged relationship status that grants specific rights and responsibilities. From James Roberts himself, "That’s the beauty of writing about alien civilizations: sometimes, when it comes to relationships, there is no precise human equivalent. That said, I’ve made it clear through the stories – I hope – that Chromedome and Rewind each regard the other as the most important person in their life." But the choice of term is not one so vague as he implies, conjunx is a Latin word that literally means, “One who is united in marriage, a consort, spouse, wife; more rarely, a husband.” He’s established formalized emotional relationships between gender-neutral characters. And it’s character stuff like that which makes it my favorite book.

Damn you, James Roberts,

No, not for making me cry. Again. And I most certainly did with Transformers: More Than Meets The Eye #15. I've come to accept that every issue is going to do that.

No, I'm cursing you for being the Terry Pratchett of Transformers writers, and crafting hands down the best book I'm reading right now. And I'm reading quite a few comics, I pick up about a dozen a week. Heck, I've been in stores with fewer comics than I have. Yes, I've been a Transformers fan since 1984, and I have almost all of the American available comics as well as many of the British ones in the Titan or IDW collections, but I'm not comparing this to other Transformers comics. This leaves them far behind. I'm comparing this to every other comic I'm reading and have read, and this is one of the best.

And that right there is the problem. I try telling people about this spectacular series I'm reading, with characters more complex than you see anywhere else, with tone shifts that are both unexpected yet logical, and with every single issue being a completely satisfying experience while building upon the full tapestry of the higher tale, but all they can think of is the 80s cartoon or at worst, and most likely these days, the Michael Bay movies. So therefore I end up looking like a raving idiot.

Thanks a lot, James.

And keep up the brilliant work.

Most sincerely,
Jeremy Wiggins

----
Letter sent to IDW Publishing

So. Guardians of the Galaxy #1. You may be wondering what I thought in regards to the fears that I had going in.

Well, one fear I didn't express, because it seemed kind of snarky, has been assuaged, namely that Steve McNiven may not be as good as he used to be. See, there were quite a few, by which I mean a lot, of panels that just didn't work in issue #0.1. Typically it had to do with faces and expressions during the conversations and quiet moments. Well, this issue got around that by not having much in the way of quiet moments so the art was, for me, unquestionable.

The other unspoken fear was that Iron Man was included because Bendis didn't want to give him up after leaving the Avengers line of books. Well, that may actually be the case. I don't know, possibly there's more to it than that and Iron Man is going to have a purpose in the story they are going to tell. But here, after a prelude issue that was 100% Star-Lord, we got a book that was Star-Lord, guest starring Iron Man, with cameo appearances by the rest of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The balance is just off at this point, focused on the most human, a.ka. relatable, characters at the expense of the others. That's what lazy writers do, underselling non-human characters and relegating the others to secondary characters. Bendis should be better than that. So I am disappointed with that. Significantly so. It's a bad sign, especially from someone that has a long history of writing ensemble team books.

The fear that I did express in the previous entry was that the individual issues wouldn't be satisfying and that it would be light on plot. Well, the issue is made up of only two scenes, but it's still somehow overall satisfying. So, all right, I'll try to continue keeping an open mind.

The first issue of the latest iteration of Guardians of the Galaxy comes out this week. I’m a little nervous about it.

The 1990s series was my gateway drug into super-hero comics. Prior to it the comics I read were primarily licensed ones for science fiction or quasi-science fiction properties. There was Transformers, of course, as well as Star Trek: The Next Generation, Ghostbusters, and the Archie published Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That first issue of Guardians pulled me in with the future setting, aliens, space exploration, and cool outfits, and then proceeded to introduce me to the melodrama of superheroes. The series featured some 31st century versions of modern characters, like Ghost Rider, and also referenced events like The Dark Phoenix Saga which got me interested in checking those out. As if that wasn't enough, the desire to see more of the Guardians themselves made me dig back relatively far back as their previous appearances were from the late seventies and early eighties. Thus I was pretty quickly introduced to some solid Bronze Age comics. The Steve Gerber penned run in Marvel Presents is a perfect example of the kind of trippy social commentary they were doing at the time. Meanwhile, The Korvac Saga is to this day still one of my favorite Avengers stories.

The initial writer/artist of the 90s series, Jim Valentino, left after about two years and the follow up creative teams never really settled on a direction. I stuck around for a couple more years but eventually gave up. Rather tellingly the series lasted less than a year after that.

A few years ago another Guardians of the Galaxy series came out. This one was from the writing pair of Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning. I was already a big fan of theirs going into it. They were well known for their science fiction work, had done fantastic stuff with Legion of Super-Heroes in the 90s, and were in the midst of a deservedly critically praised Cosmic Marvel multi-part epic, of which Guardians of the Galaxy was just a piece. While only using one of the original members they were able to demonstrate that they were not ignoring the history of the book yet at the same time crafting new, enthralling tales that built upon that major Cosmic arc but were still eminently satisfying as individual issues. The series lasted two years and came to a deliberately planned end. Damn, that book was good.

Last month we got Guardians of the Galaxy #0.1 from the new series’ creative team, Brian Michael Bendis and Steve McNiven. The oddly numbered issue is a bit of a prequel, focused on the origin (as in conception, birth, and early childhood) of the team’s leader, Peter Quill a.k.a. Starlord. The story, as mentioned in a text piece in the back, was originally intended to be an eight page tale in a teaser anthology. But Bendis decided there was too much there and convinced editorial to make it a whole issue. Unfortunately he was wrong. Five pages can be cut in seconds, and I could easily cut this down to eight pages without breaking a sweat. Of course the fact that this wasn’t even a necessary tale and could have simply been a small bit of exposition means there just isn’t as much substance as Bendis thinks there is. And that has me worried. Bendis used to do a pretty good job of judging how much story there was in a tale, but I haven’t seen that skill so much in a number of years. I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe I just haven't read the right things lately. Back when I read Ultimate Spider-Man the story-arcs were of a variety of different lengths ranging from two issues to eight or so and that worked. And while the arcs on his Daredevil run were typically all the same length none of them felt too long or drawn out. But with his later work on Avengers there were quite a few times I felt like things were being padded, like the focus was on the next crossover event but they needed to have some books on the shelves between them. And I know that there is a crossover, possibly even an event, in the near future for Guardians of the Galaxy. So, yeah, I'm worried that the book will be light on plot and that individual issues will be about as satisfying as just watching the ten minutes between commercial breaks of an hour long TV show. I'm not a Bendis hater, I've thoroughly enjoyed some books that he's written, and he's not the only guy "writing for the trade" so I can't completely hold that against him. That mentality comes from editorial as much as it does the writers. But I want Guardians of the Galaxy to be one of my favorite books and I just don't see that as likely.

There is some supremely unexpected news on the horizon, Neil Gaiman is co-writing issue #5. Wow. OK. That should be, well, that should be quite good. There's no word yet on if he's doing more than just that issue.

I guess at this point I'll just take it one issue at a time and hopefully Bendis will prove me wrong.

I finally read Camelot 3000 recently. It's really something I should have read a long time ago. First off, it's got a solid pair of creators. It's written by Mike W. Barr who consistently turns out enjoyable stories. And then the art is by Brian Bolland who's never had a bad page printed, ever. Secondly, this book occupies a significant place in the history of American comics. It was one of the first lengthy limited series at 12 issues. (That size is sometimes referred to as a maxi-series to keep it from being confused with a mini-series which is typically three to six issues long.) It was one of the first mature readers titles from one of the big two publishers, and also one of the earliest direct market exclusive books. All in all, it was well past the time for me to read it.

And I found it... refreshing. The series was published December 1982 – April 1985 (yes, there were some delays between issues) so it hit the market before the more well known mature titles of the mid-eighties like Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Watchmen, and Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns. Having grown up in an era where anything geared towards an older audience is some form of meta-commentary on the medium or deconstruction of the characters and tropes it was just refreshing (there's no word more appropriate) to read something that was more concerned with telling a good story than it was with talking about itself. I'm not saying it's simple, it's not. And there is a layer of context wherein the story presents itself as just one of countless iterations of the Camelot legend, one that will be repeated again and again. But its main purpose isn't to prove how clever it is, it's to be an entertaining read.

So, the story itself resolves around King Arthur and his knights being reborn in the year 3000 to defend the Earth from an alien invasion. Fairly straightforward. Some of the knights return in bodies that they aren't thrilled with and that leads to some interesting drama. One finds himself in the body of a genetically engineered, mute brute while another has become a woman, complete with a husband. Both find themselves being treated differently by their former bothers-in-arms. This causes some issues to say the least. Meanwhile other things follow the classic Arthurian pattern so you know that Lancelot isn't going to behave himself.

I don't really want to talk too much about the plot and story itself because I think it's a worthwhile read. So I guess that's the point of this. Go read it. Get it out of the library, borrow it from somebody, or actually go ahead and buy it. It's worth your time and your money. The copy I read was a borrowed one but I do plan on on buying one for myself.

In honor of this being our tenth anniversary, Becca and I are planning on having a commitment ceremony later this year.

We have the date set, October 12th. Currently we're looking at having it at the Beachland Ballroom, our favorite local music venue. They've been a bit slow getting back to us on the finalized details, hopefully we don't have to switch locations. Our focus is mainly about the party, and Becca's sister is helping immensely with the planning and organization.

I bought the first piece of my outfit today, a vest from Gentleman's Emporium.

So there, it's official.