Michael Hutchison: January 2008 Archives

I've had some problems posting tonight.  Javascript-related.  Whenever I went to the "New Entry" page, my Firefox would crash. What I did was disable my add-ons...and sure enough, here I am writing and posting without problem.

Next step is to turn them all on one-by-one and see which one it is that is wrecking the javascripts.

Solving this groovy mystery may also help Tom Russell return to the fold.

In other news...a new plugin has been unveiled which may finally help me to fix up our archive system.

Cloverfield is tanking.  With the excellent trailer and all the hype, it looked to be a boffo blockbuster.  The first weekend pulled in huge numbers. Most critical reaction was positive.  However, negative word of mouth from all who left the theater at the end (or before the end in order to puke from motion sickness) has brought its second weekend's take plummeting down into single digits.

Despite the poor reaction, one person who liked it is author Jonah Goldberg.  His article on the meaning of Godzilla movies is worth checking out.

Recently, DC Comics announced that "Joker: The Last Laugh" was finally going to be published in Trade Paperback form.  This is a long overdue trade.  As Chuck Dixon (one of its co-writers) has often noted publicly, the book outsold "Our Worlds At War" at the time.  It was published right away as a trade paperback in Italy and in Germany and sold well.  Nevertheless, for reasons probably editorial in nature, the series was not collected in English.

DC's reasons for holding back on the release are its own. The reason for releasing it now is obvious: To tie in with the new Batman movie featuring the Joker.

I'm glad to see this happen.  Standard disclaimer here: I'm buddies with both Chuck and co-writer Scott Beatty, and I've been Scott's webmaster for a couple years.  But I was a fan first, and my feelings of elation about the release are unrelated to the fact I know both Scott and Chuck were disappointed it took this long.

The plain truth is, this mini was exciting and funny.  Chuck and Scott whipped up a mess of new side villains to play around with.  Shilo Norman, the former Mr. Miracle 2, is given a new job as the designer of prisons for super-villains.  (I liked that so much better than the bizarre and silly "Seven Soldiers" revamp.)  There's one sequence involving Multi-Man which I will not reveal except to say that the cover price of the trade is worth it just for that.  And it centers around a unique idea: When the Joker is given only a short term to live by the doctor at Slabside Prison, he decides to exit the world with an all-out bang involving a prison escape and the release of dozens of "Joker-Ized" supervillains.

In execution, the book had many minor problems editorial in nature.  The first chapter was published in the Secret Files instead of issue #1, leaving many readers confused.  Some of the ideas they wanted to do were nixed. (Scott even told me that if they'd had their way, the Joker would have killed Elongated Man and left his corpse stretched across a suspension bridge!  And yes, somehow these guys are still my friends.)  The ending is good but it seems dictated instead of organic.  Most of all, the whole "Jokerized" villains plotline was a mixed bag.  Some editors and writers really ran with it, making a lesser villain a newly terrifying menace, while others simply put a Joker face on one of the standard big villains.

For that reason, the new "Last Laugh" TPB will not feature any of the crossover stories; it simply reprints Joker: The Last Laugh issues #1-6.

...and that's the problem, really.

The series was actually supposed to be seven issues.  An editor decided to make it six and use the first chapter (giving all the setup) as a main story in "Joker: Last Laugh Secret Files and Origins".  However, it's not an extraneous set-up; it's vital to the story.  At present, it doesn't sound like the story will be included in the trade paperback.

I would urge you all to sound off about this on the DC boards and other message boards, or send an e-mail to DC Comics.  They need to include that story so that the readers can get the complete picture.

Heath Ledger has been found dead in his apartment of an apparent drug overdose.  He was 28.

The star played the Joker in the upcoming "Batman: The Dark Knight"; fortunately, it had just finished filming. He was also in "Brokeback Mountain," "Monster's Ball," "The Patriot" and "The Brothers Grimm."  He came to fame in two of my personal faves, "10 Things I Hate About You" and "A Knight's Tale."

It is unknown at this time whether the overdose was intentional.  Being on top of the movie world isn't all a bed of roses, as the cases of Chris Farley, River Phoenix and recently Owen Wilson have shown (just to name a very, very, very few of the ones we even know about).  Most of us think that if we had all the fame and fortune, what need would there be for intoxicants to have a good time.  Still...one has to ask why Ledger would do such a thing at this point in his life.  Curious, too, that his housekeeper found him when telling him that the masseuse had arrived.  Who makes an appointment and then kills himself?  The pills were supposedly painkillers (again, at the time of this writing), so it's entirely possible this was accidental.

Heath was handsome and charming, and could act his way out of a paper bag.  His latest role, as a creepy, disgusting Joker with stringy hair and mottled paint, was clearly an attempt to broaden his range instead of taking pretty boy roles.  While it'll be strange to try to hype a movie where one of the stars came to a tragic end six months earlier, "Dark Knight" could serve as the capstone of an all-too short career.

(All I'm saying is...well, he didn't end his life making "Wagons East," let's put it that way. )

R.I.P.


UPDATE: I spoke too soon.  He was making a Terry Gilliam movie when he died.  Bad enough it's Terry Gilliam...whom I like, but his record of cursed, dark failures is pretty long...but the title is The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.  Imaginarium!??  Didn't Doctor Magorium's Fantasmaporium bomb badly enough to send the message about phoney-baloney portmanteau titles?  Why not just call it The Contrabulous Fabtraption of Professor Horatio Hufnagel?

I'll watch for updates on the Imaginarium front, and any announcements about whether his death affects Dark Knight.  I'll also announce any updates on the cause of death.  Needless to say, many are stunned at this turn of events.  Heath is gone too soon.

It's just been announced.  The Oscar list is up.

Here is "Dirty Harry" at Libertas' take on it.

It's...well, it's not much...but it does seem to show a more "realistic" approach to the film quality. 

Trailer online

I've been showing this one to everybody.  It's the Evil Eye!



Hat tip to Steve Czaban, whose videos page is always a riot.

FoxNews has an AP story about the current wedding wipe storyline in Spider-Man comics.

A great quip:

"Considering I have been reading Spider-Man for exactly 20 years now, and that seems to be the amount of time Joe Q. has decided to rip from Spider-Man continuity, can I simply return all of my Spider-Man comics for a full refund?"

Found dead in his apartment.

It's amazing how quickly Wikipedia entries get rewritten in the past tense once the obituary hits.

Here's one of the wittier movie reviews I've read in some time.

There’s just one problem. Carter’s a married man with three grown children and yet with less than a year to live he bids his loving and faithful wife goodbye to fulfill all the dreams his familial responsibilities kept him from realizing. The script works hard to rationalize this but in the end it was impossible for me to accept Carter’s choice as anything other than a terribly selfish one, making The Bucket List another piece of damning evidence that those who make the movies today are so hopelessly out of touch with the rest of us it’s no longer funny. The trial to prove this correct would be a short one: “Your Honor, I found a dying Morgan Freeman unsympathetic.” Case closed.

As you all have gathered, I'm consolidating all of my web sites under the one roof of TheHutch.com.  Originally, you wouldn't have even noticed, because I'd intended to redirect MonitorDuty.com as a sub-domain.  However, I could never get it to work right.  In order for the subdomain's blog to work, I'd need to install the blog software again in the subdomain.  Blech.  The whole point was consolidation and streamlining.  So we're thehutch.com/monitorduty from now on.

Don't worry.  I'll come up with some nice intro for the MonitorDuty.com home page.  Someday.

The only content on my other server is Fanzing.com, and that will be moving soon as well.  The domain will still work for that one.  As an added bonus, I'll be able to give Fanzing a home page again.  (For the last 5 years, Fanzing.com and Monitorduty.com were aliases for the same site.)

That poor old site needs a revamp.  Unfortunately...ALL of my sites need a revamp.

Look for Fanzing' s new home page very, very soon.

The fifth anniversary of Trogdor.

Or as it's called at Homestar Runner.com, Trogday.

My @fanzing.com e-mail is all bouncing.  Second time in two weeks.

Use my thehutch.com e-mail if you need to contact me.  (The first part's the same as the second part.)

Meanwhile, I'll fix this tonight.  

Christian Schneider has a an interesting article today (cross-posted to the PRI blog) about how our possibly-next-President Barack Obama may not even be a blip on the RADAR screen if not for a certain sexy Borg.

This isn't the first time geek culture has affected the presidency, of course.  Let's not forget, Green Lantern Alan Scott's failure to stop the plans of Ian Karkull put George H.W. Bush in office.

"Cat Sweaters" is one of the funnier podcast episodes that Bob and Brian have done recently.

I always wondered why the decision was made to do Batman in such a campy, silly way for the Adam West show.

Turns out, Batman was originally intended to be an edgy late-night drama.  They even did a pilot that was much darker than the rest of the series.

The adventures of LITTLE BATMAN!



You've gotta admit, this kid has Adam West down pretty well!

 

"Hwaugh Hwaugh Hwaugh Hwaugh Hwaugh!!!"



That little boy is a better actor than his mom is!

Finally, a tip: when playing Batman, be sure to shave.

Mark Waid continues to be one of the absolute treasures of the comic book industry. 

I hadn't been reading the new "The Brave and The Bold" series, and I have a feeling that I will need to hunt down issues 1-8 if they are anything like #9.

Here's what is in this single issue:

• The Challengers of the Unknown in their old purple outfits.  No post-modern team of past-their-prime lost men, no X-Files-ish group, no Chaykin, just the plain old Challs.
• Robby Reed with his HERO dial.  He's not a grown-up mess trying to chase down the dial.  The dial is just a cool McGuffin generating an excuse to whip up new superheroes, not a dangerous superweapon.
• The Metal Men.  The real ones, bearing no resemblance to the current characters in the mediocre mini-series.
  
• The Blackhawks.  No Chaykin adult nonsense full of womanizing and communism.  Chop-Chop is even called "Chop-Chop", and he has his old costume.
• The Boy Commandos.  Kids.  With Guns.  Shooting at people with the guns.  Killing people with the guns.  It's a team as outrageously incorrect for our time as you can get, and there they are in all their glory.
• The Hawkman and Atom team is reborn for our age, with the new Hawkman (yes, he's been "straightened out" for several years, but I'll always miss the Silver Age character) and the All-New Atom.
  

If I ran DC...(well, if I really ran DC, Mark Waid would just be in charge of the universe)...but if I ran DC now, I'd find some way to give Mark his own spin-off line where he could publish all the "old school" comics he wanted.  No post-modern spins on superheroes, no need to revise origins, no need to reinvent the works of others ...just an emphasis on telling a good story.

I wish Mark Waid had been assigned the Metal Men mini-series.

Miss me?    

Sometimes a blog just ain't worth the trouble, eh?

I tried to update our Movable Type, but the new beta didn't work right for us.  Sorry for the infrequent posting while I got this problem straightened out.    

• I will figure out these new templates and get my logo back
• I will perfect the author archives so that they better serve our readers and our authors
  
• I will improve the monitorduty.com home page
• I will finally do a podcast
• More contests
• More product reviews
• I will find more contributors
• I will do my multi-part takedown of "Identity Crisis"