Review: Star Wars Legacy #1

I feel like I’m somehow turning into the Star Wars guy here. I don’t entirely understand how that’s happening, since I’m not exactly a big Star Wars fan in the first place, but something keeps drawing me back, and it’s not exactly a mystery what brings me back: I love the world of Star Wars, but not a huge fan of the Skywalkers et al. Star Wars Legacy #1 (written by Corinna Bechko and Gabriel Hardman, illustrated by Gabriel Hardman) is exactly what keeps bringing me back: a new adventure without any of the familiar characters, just the world. (Note: No, this is not new, but it’s being released for people who haven’t read the series before, like me, so I’ll treat it like a new #1 for a series.)

One important thing is to pay attention to the splash page at the beginning of the comic, which outlines the world that we’re in here. This is 138 years after A New Hope (an oddly specific number), so we’re off in the far future from the time we’re familiar with. I made the mistake of not reading it first time through and was overly confused when I read it then, which was fixed just by reading that first page. Lesson learned: it’s there for a reason.

For as much as it throws us into the far future, there is the smallest bit of connection to the originals: our protagonist is Ania Solo, obviously a relatively distant descendent of Han and Leia, but I’m fine with that small connection, which gives us something somewhat familiar to hang onto. It’s also a bit of a shortcut to getting us to care about the protagonist – we all like Han and Leia, so we’re more likely to care more about the protagonist because she has a connection to them. I’d be tempted to call it cheap, but it just works.

Despite Ania being the protagonist, a lot of the story isn’t just about her. This spends a good amount of time dealing with the fallout from destroying the Empire, even though it happened more than a century before. For this, the story follows Yalta Val, a knight who is trying to deal with that situation on the planet where Ania lives. This is not as interesting as her story, and it feels like a lot of Star Wars EU material is dedicated to deconstructing the simplistic way that politics were presented in the original trilogy, and so this kind of feels unnecessary, but it doesn’t completely detract from Ania’s story.

When I started reviewing The Star Wars, the art in that series bugged me for a little while, though I eventually got used to its style. I bring that up to contrast to this comic, which is much closer to a “standard” comic style, if there can even be said to be a standard style, but it just works. It allows me to immediately get into the world, and not attempting to strongly resemble actors or actual people allows me to immediately connect to these characters as new people in this universe.

Whenever I watch a TV pilot, a #1 in a comic series, or any introduction to anything serial, I recognize that it’ll be rough around the edges and have a few problems. So, I always give it a test: all problems aside, does this make me want to read the next issue? For this comic, the answer is yes, and so I’ll recommend it. Especially since it’s being reissued for $1, you really don’t have a good reason not to at least give this a chance, and now that I’ve finished this, I’m going to track down some of the next issues in the series.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) thinks he knows how deep the rabbit hole of Star Wars EU goes, but is probably wrong. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.

Review: Shaolin Cowboy #2

I read and enjoyed the first issue of Shaolin Cowboy, even though I didn’t review it. I’m not entirely sure how to summarize this series, other than the title is weirdly indicative of what’s inside, so just prepare for weird as soon as you open the book. The previous issue started with two full pages of just text, explaining the backstory, kind of, but also not really. So, what kind of weirdness does Shaolin Cowboy #2 (written and illustrated by Geof Darrow, colored by Dave Stewart) bring?

I’m really not sure how to explain what I just “read”. I use the term “read” very loosely, as there is not a single word in this issue. Not a speech bubble, narrative box, or even written sound effect. No words, only pictures. This picks up where the previous issue left off, with the Shaolin Cowboy fighting against zombies, or something very closely resembling zombies. As he fights them with two running chainsaws connected by a wooden pole, well, we get an idea of just how crazy good this guy is. No, I am not kidding, that is the entirety of this issue, watching the Shaolin Cowboy fight zombies. He never says a word, no narrator chimes in, and we don’t even see a thought bubble. He just fights zombies.

Yes, there is somehow a story in all of there, playing out solely through the artwork. It isn’t exactly the most complicated story, as you might guess, but it is there. You’ll probably have to look through it a few times, but there is definitely a story in there underneath all of the zombie dismemberment.

For as dismissive as I might sound, the artwork itself is very impressive. For having to draw hundreds of zombies in the issue, they never skimp on the quality, and they’re all drawn with great graphical (and occasionally anatomically disturbing) detail. You could breeze through this issue in a couple minutes, or get lost in the artwork for long stretches of time, which I must admit happened to me a few times, and I’m normally not the art guy at all.

Overall, if you didn’t get into the first issue of this series, this is not the place to jump in. It’s not the most accessible thing to people who aren’t already into the series. If that’s the case, check out the first one. On the other hand, I definitely recommend this issue, and don’t go with just the digital version – this one is all about the artwork, so buy a physical copy and go to town looking at all of it in its full size glory. Even though it’s a $3.99 book made up entirely of two page spreads, it’s completely worth it.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) has spent too long wondering if this should even be considered a comic, but stopped once that started to get in the way of the fun of actually reading it. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.

Review: The Star Wars #3

Despite it being a fresh start for the series, an alternate universe taking just the main ideas and reusing them in a different context, there’s just one thing that I can’t get away from with regard to Star Wars, even in this series. For the second issue in a row, I’m not entirely sure what to make of it, and I have a lot of that for the series itself. I love the potential that it has, but I’m never quite sure what to make of what they actually do with it. With that in mind, let’s look at The Star Wars #3 (written by J. W. Rinzler, illustrated by Mike Mayhew).

As I mentioned in the previous review, a number of more familiar elements are starting to show up in this series. While they provide touchstones to know where we are in the storyline, the fact that the story has been changed so much from what it was before almost makes it more disorienting than anything else. I’d call it something like the Uncanny Valley of adaptation – there’s an odd mix of the old with the new that’s too much new to be a recreation, but too much old to be a re-imagining, and it just seems to be lacking a real identity on its own. One particular scene in this issue is drawn almost exactly like it was shot in A New Hope, and that serves mostly to throw me off from finally being able to see this as truly separate from the original. Recreating scenes almost exactly while an entirely different story we never saw is playing out in other parts of the issue gives me a sense of whiplash when reading.

I think that what’s bugging me the most, if anything, is that there are a few too many storylines going on all at once. When I get to the end of an issue, while each story there may have come to a good stopping point to be picked up again in the next issue, the issues don’t feel like they’re full, standalone stories. Good or bad, this series is being written for the trade, at which point it should make a lot more sense. As for now, there’s a bit too much going on.

Also, I mentioned something that might be controversial among Star Wars fans in the last review, and I can talk about it here, as it continues on in this issue. I’m talking about R2D2 (or, as he’s called here, Artwo Detwo). In this, he can talk. Not just in beeps and whistles, but actual speech. Honestly, this doesn’t bother me at all, but I expect that there are going to be a lot of fans who react badly to this. So long as he and C3PO (I mean Seethreepio, since this galaxy was so long ago they never heard of shorthand) continue their banter, which they do, I’m okay with it.

I’ve mostly gotten used to the art in this series, which sets aside the fears I had early on that the art style just wouldn’t click right. What stuck out at me is that C3PO seems to have a slightly changed design – he was always intended to look like Maria from Metropolis, but it’s even more pronounced in this design. Again, it’s a change that I don’t really mind, but it also seems like it was a change made for the sake of making a change. 

Overall, I’m still a little torn on this series. I’m going to continue to follow it, since I’m enjoying it so far, but not enough to give it an unconditional recommendation. It’s also a little more difficult to make the recommendation at $3.99 for the issue, so I’ll have to leave it up to you: How much do you want to read good but not great alternate universe Star Wars? That’s what it ultimately comes down to.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is far prouder of a single joke in this review than he ever should be – hasn’t stopped laughing at it all day. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.

Review: Catalyst Comix #5

After a month with an extra Wednesday, Catalyst Comix has returned, marking one of my favorite times of the month. I made the mistake of looking at the solicits, however, and now have seen that this is a limited series, not an ongoing. We’re now at the halfway point here with Catalyst Comix #5 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Paul Maybury, Ulises Farinas, and Dan McDaid), which is rather depressing since I want this series to just keep on going, but we just have to appreciate what we have, especially when what we have is this good.

Amazing Grace continues to surprise me with how good it turned out to be. Even though this is the awkward second act of the main story, which isn’t quite as good as the previous issue, it still has a surprising amount of wit and really good dialogue. It does feel a bit like it’s setting up the final issue of its run as the main story more than telling its own story, but the dialogue and even the narrator makes up for that. Yes, I’m praising the yellow text boxes and the narrator, who has become irreverent and just plain bizarre, which is what I loved about the narrator from the beginning but, for some reason, was missing early on in this storyline. 

Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker – I mean, Agents of Change – seems to really be building up for when it takes its place as the lead story. Looking back on previous issues with this idea in mind, the rough spots at least make sense. Unlike I’d assume from the beginning, my nickname for this series seems to be mildly inaccurate – I’m not giving enough credit to Ruby, who’s being positioned as possibly the de facto lead character – though that is a difficult label to give someone when the story is more of an ensemble piece, she’s gone from afterthought to basically front and center. While the story by itself here isn’t the greatest, it does sow a lot of seeds for the run as the lead story, and on those terms, it does a really good job.

Ballad of Frank Wells keeps going in different directions that I expect it to each issue. When I think that there’s somewhere they’re specifically going or a concept they’re going to take and go with until the end of the series, they change things up slightly. Last time, I was slightly confused and disappointed by the ending, since it seemed like something intended for fans who already knew the characters, which locked me out of getting what might be a twist at the end of the issue. They pick back up with that in this issue, but only after yet another different direction they take the plot in – this series somehow manages to be really dense despite just 8 pages an issue – but they don’t fully explain who the new character is, so they’re either leaning too much on previous knowledge or waiting to put in more detail later. Those issues aside, the fact that they keep taking it in new directions even with the limited space makes the story really interesting, and it seems to have evened out the somewhat rough transition to the shorter format that the last issue struggled with.

Overall, I definitely recommend this issue like I have with every other issue in the series. They just keep doing a great job, even when there’s the occasional stumble in storytelling. I’m still surprised that Dark Horse is only charging $2.99 for this comic – it could easily be $3.99 given the number and consistent quality of the stories. It’s basically a steal for $2.99, so just buy it. Pick up the back issues if you haven’t been following them, too. They’re all worth it.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) isn’t sure how, but he managed to keep the running gag count to a minimum in this review. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.

Between Seasons: Buffy Season Ten speculation

Last time, I spent a long time recapping the end of Season Nine, finally freed from the shackles of avoiding spoilers. Now that I’ve wrapped up the season and put it behind me (at least, until the final trades come out), it’s time to look ahead, carefully consider what has come before, and be completely wrong about the future. This is just part 1 – my speculation got so out of hand it’ll be split across two articles. For now, I’m going to focus on what creative teams and series will be present.

Left to Right: Scott Allie, Jane Espenson, Drew Z. Greenberg, Joss Whedon, Nicholas Brendon, Andrew Chambliss, Ruth Gage, Christos Gage, Victor Gischler

The closest to any concrete information we have right now is the Season Ten Writers’ Summit (see picture). This was the meeting where they determined the direction that Season Ten would take, and I think it’s safe to assume most, if not all, will be writing for the next season.

My first reaction is that Christos Gage is coming back. He’d confirmed that on Twitter way back in April, if not earlier, but concrete proof is good. Angel & Faith was easily the best series in Season Nine (like I’ve never shut up about), so while we don’t yet know what he’ll write, just the fact that he will be is a positive (in my dream world, he’d write it all). If he was announced as writing the main Buffy series, my opinion would go from “I’ll read it, I guess” to “Have to read it!” immediately, but I won’t get my hopes up too much.
Victor Gischler was a surprise to me. Yes, he was a part of the previous season, but I didn’t know that the Spike miniseries was well enough received that they wanted to make sure that he came back. That’s not to mean that I don’t want him to come back, I just don’t know what to think about it quite yet. (Notably, Jeff Parker, who wrote Willow: Wonderland, is absent.)

Jane Espenson, Andrew Chambliss, and Drew Z. Greenberg were also present. I’m not surprised, but not happy. It’s no secret that I hated the Billy storyline, which was written by Espenson and Greenberg. The main Buffy series was a bit of a mess in general, and most of it was written by Andrew Chambliss, so this looks bad all around. They’re not bad writers, they’re TV writers, and that doesn’t translate directly to comic writing. I wouldn’t have a problem with them being to help with story (which is obviously the main reason Joss and Scott Allie are there), especially since Espenson has been around since the second season of Buffy, but their track record with the comics doesn’t leave me with an abundance of optimism.

I’ll be back to the picture in a moment (I know that everyone wants me to mention one specific thing), but there is one (at the time of writing) recent announcement that might have an effect on this season. Georges Jeanty has been announced as artist for a Serenity series (I’ll talk about that once there’s something concrete to talk about), so I don’t know for sure if he’s going to be back for Season Ten. Given that he’s been drawing the comic for the last six years and seems to love it, I doubt he would, but it’s still a possibility.

Okay, I’ll finally talk about the elephant in the room (though he’s not that large): Nicholas Brendon. Anyone who’s seen the series will recognize him as Xander, and that’s what makes this so interesting. The comics (well, some questionably canonical ones) aren’t strangers to having actors help with writing (Amber Benson and Juliet Landau wrote comics that involved their characters), but their quality is debated at best. Nick does have some experience writing comics, specifically a web comic called Very Bad Koalas (which I admittedly haven’t read), but his presence is already controversial before having written anything, which is just par for the course as fandom goes.

This does lead into the other thing that I want to talk about with Season Ten: the structure. After Season Eight lasted forever, going off on tangents (and off the rails) that left everyone confused by trying to shoehorn everything into a single series, they divided Season Nine into two series running simultaneously with occasional miniseries along the way. That seemed to be a success, and I’m assuming that they’ll do something similar this season as well. The question is, what series are they going to do this time?

The reason that relates to Nick Brendon is that implies a miniseries focused on Xander (something on the scale of the Spike or Willow series), which I wouldn’t have expected based on the comics alone. Yes, they did a lot with his character and I want to see what they do from here, I just didn’t expect that based only on the comics.

The most obvious prediction is that there will be a Buffy Season Ten comic. That is not a question at this point – there will be something with Buffy as the central character, given that she’s the namesake not only for the series, but also the entire universe (it is called the “Buffyverse”, after all).

I’m also going to assume that there’s going to be an Angel series as well, not just because of an Angel spin-off being the status quo, but also the ending of Season Nine. Angel is going back to basics, helping the helpless, and him starting over in London would be a good place to start a new series (more on that later).
Besides that, I don’t know if they could make a third main series for the season. There’s the possibility, but I feel that most everything would work as recurring characters in one of those series or miniseries along the way. Now, why do their stories fit that mold better? What are those stories going to be? I’m saving that speculation for the next article, where I participate in even more baseless speculation.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) knows that it’s likely things are going to be Jossed, probably as soon as the first issue of the next series comes out. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season Nine Volume 4: Welcome to the Team

I wasn’t kind to Volume 3 in this series, but it deserved it. Let’s not look at that, instead focusing on this volume. Buffy Season Nine Volume 4, Welcome to the Team (written by Andrew Chambliss, illustrated by Georges Jeanty), builds up to the inevitable final battle in the last arc, and manages to tell a pretty good story along the way.

Interestingly, this is the first time (that I can recall) something that started on Angel crossed over into the main Buffy series, referring obviously to Illyria. In spite of the novelty of that, it’s difficult to look at her presence as anything except a plot device for Simone and Severin’s plan. Even though they tie it in a bit more by the end, she seems to be there just because she’s the only character with the possibility to turn back time. Also, writers? Just because we didn’t like how Season Eight ended doesn’t mean that you need to be so literal about attempting a retcon.

Unfortunately, Billy is still here, but he’s been relegated to background character by this point, and he’ll soon be out of the series completely, which cannot happen quickly enough.

The marketing for Season Nine focused on returning to what made the show great, specifically the character-driven storylines rather than the other way around. Despite my negativity about this series in general, this arc balances the character and plot pretty well, making sure that everything that happens is rooted in the characters, and that the characters’ motivations have tangible effects on the plot.

The storyline of Dawn fading from existence starts in this volume. Many fans have issues with this storyline, which surprises me as most hate Dawn. I’d think any possibility they might kill her would be embraced, but that’s not the case. As I’ve mentioned ad nauseum in these reviews (only two more Season Nine publications and I can put this to bed), the way magic works here is wonky. At the end of Season Eight, Warren died instantly when the seed was smashed, as he was being held together by magic, and back in Volume 3 of Angel & Faith, Connor’s fake family’s fake memories went away at the same time. Given those examples, a lot of fans argue that Dawn should’ve started to fade or disappeared completely the moment that the seed was smashed. The fact that she’s fading at all doesn’t make that much sense, as it seemed like she became fully human earlier in the series, but I’m willing to let logic go for a good story.

What really sells me on this volume is Xander. In exchange for saving Dawn, he teams with Simone and Severin, betraying Buffy. Looking back from the perspective of seeing the end of the series, the biggest flaw was the lack of big character moments. Most the characters stayed in the same place throughout the season even though they should have been evolving, but Xander manages some real development here. Sure, it might be pushing him in a direction that people don’t want to see, but this is what I find most interesting in characters: being pushed to do things they never want to do and think that they never would by circumstance. It shows a lot more dimension to a character, and adds the possibility of later conflict that could make things really interesting, which is exactly what they do with Xander here.

Willow returns after her excursion to Wonderland, but the main trio isn’t reunited quite yet. Plus, she doesn’t do much here, so talking about her in any detail doesn’t really make sense until the next trade, when she’s a big part of the story again.

Looking at the extras, Georges Jeanty meticulously keeps his sketches in a way that reminds me of what I see in Rebekah Isaacs’s books, and I’m glad because I love extra features. He especially loves brainstorming ideas for variant covers, to the point that he’ll come up with eight for one issues and they need to cram them all onto one page, making them too small to see much, but you can still see the main idea behind his unused covers. It has a script page with his highlighting and layout sketches, which really helps you get into his head and understand how he goes from words to images. As I’ve said before, I love getting into the heads of the creators, and while the notes were written by someone else, they still give insight that I wouldn’t get from just reading the comic.

Overall, I give this a tentative recommendation. I’m tentative because I know where this is going and I don’t want people to get too invested, but taken on its own, there’s nothing really wrong with this volume and enough right that it’s pretty good on its own. The $17.99 cover price might be a little bit higher than the individual issues, but add in the extra features and the fact that trades just look better on a bookshelf that individual issues, and I think it’s worth the extra money. If you’re interested in the story but don’t want to pay all that, you can buy the physical issues individually for $2.99 each, and there’s a digital bundle of all five issues for $8.99, and if nothing else, it gets a definite recommendation for that price.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) is a little surprised at the fact that he’s recommending this, but if it works, it works. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings or check out his personal blog.

Review: The Star Wars #2

I was frustratingly vague in my review of issue #1 of this series. A lot of that was due to the fear that Dark Horse would send someone with a lightsaber to my apartment if I spoiled anything, but also because the idea alone carried the issue and my recommendation. However, now that the novelty has worn off, does The Star Wars #2 (written by JW Rinzler, illustrated by Mike Mayhew) carry itself with the story rather than just the concept?

I just had to post the Ralph McQuarrie cover.

I don’t hold Star Wars up as the foundation of my childhood or The Holy Trilogy (that belongs to Lord of the Rings), so I really wanted to see the different interpretations of these characters. While I still like it, this series is caught in a weird Catch-22 – it wouldn’t exist without the Star Wars name and is too much of a rip-off to exist on its own. Problem is, existing in the middle tends to just make things more confusing. The biggest issue is how much the characters are modeled after the actors – this Princess Leia looks like Carrie Fisher while acting nothing like her Leia, this Annikin looks like an older Hayden Christensen but is nothing like him. Just a change in the art, designing those characters to look different than their (somewhat) counterparts from the movies would go a long way towards avoiding confusion.

Big Star Wars fans are about to be pissed off at really stupid things, which I realize now should be the definition of fans. There are some familiar characters introduced here with a very different take than people are used to. Now, that can be said for everyone, but these are particularly beloved characters, and anything that’s changed about them is going to bring the angry fans out in droves, assuming that they’re reading this in the first place. While it caught me off-guard, I believe that changes shouldn’t be condemned automatically, and since the spirit of the characters is still intact, I’m willing to roll with it and actually enjoy seeing a different take.

The story in this issue is also a little unclear. The biggest problem is that it’s trying to hit on a lot of beats from the original movie (as much as I’d like to avoid the comparisons, they’re simply impossible not to make), but they play out in a different but unforunately unclear way. I’m also wondering how much ground of the original trilogy is going to be covered in this series, in their very compressed way. I thought this was just going to cover the ground of Star Wars, but this issue is making me think it’s going to cover a lot more.

Overall, I give this a tentative recommendation, only $3.99 after all. I have enough faith in it for now that my subscription is still going, but the novelty is wearing off and the rest of the story hasn’t yet stepped up to compensate. If you’re not in on it yet, this won’t convince you, but if you’re already reading it, you’ll want to keep going.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) tried writing this review purely in beeps and whistles, but the speech recognition software didn’t like that idea. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Review: Catalyst Comix #4

I’m continually surprised by this series. For something that I knew nothing about and only picked up because it was a #1 issue, Catalyst Comix has become my most anticipated comic each month (and will probably hold that spot until they announce what Christos Gage is writing next). The biggest way that it surprises me is that Catalyst Comix #4 (written by Joe Casey, illustrated by Paul Maybury, Ulises Farinas, and Dan McDaid) manages to completely flip something I expected about the series in the best possible way.

She’s become awesome enough to deserve this cover now.

I’ve completely turned around on the Amazing Grace storyline, which is now the A storyline. I remember dreading this while reading a previous issue, but it turns out that was just a slow start. They spent so much time saying that Grace is amazing (hence the nickname) without showing her doing anything. That changed completely once Mr. Seaver came in, putting her in opposition against someone, and the story has only improved from there. This issue continues the crazy battle of the minds that started in the previous issue, and the banter between the two of them just keeps getting better. I especially want to comment on the art, as part of this seems to have been an excuse to give Paul Maybury free reign to come up with interesting areas to draw, making full use of Grace’s ability to teleport wherever she likes. I’m usually not a big art person, but I can’t wait to get a hard copy (my tablet’s resolution just can’t stand up) so I can look at it in more detail.

Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker – I mean, Agents of Change (that joke is still not old) – have gone back in a more interesting direction, showing that the last issue was only a small hiccup. The problem with these smaller stories is that sometimes 8 pages is too little to tell a significant piece of a story, and the last one suffered from that. Since the end of the second issue showed that they’re all in some sort of virtual reality, I wanted to know more, but the last issue didn’t really advance the story. This issue does, showing us that even though they’re called the Agents of Change, they’re not causing the change in the way you’d expect. I get the feeling that things will really move forward when they take over as the A storyline, but I still like the bits and pieces of story in here.

Finally, after starting off as being the A story, The Ballad of Frank Wells has been moved to the C story, and the transition is a bit abrupt. The story pieces given here have to be shorter, but I still love how they use Frank to fight much more mundane problems. It’s an interesting return to essentially the root of superheroes as we know them – while these are big, world issues, he’s fighting mundane people like dictators and corrupt businessmen, far from his apocalypse-averting heroics from the first issue, which highlights the shift in his character. I wish that they’d spent more time on showing the shift in his character across a couple issues rather than montage, but I still quite enjoyed reading it. The ending kind of disappointed me, as it seems intended for people already familiar with the original series, but as I’m not, it just went over my head.

Overall, I definitely recommend this issue. I still cannot believe that Dark Horse is selling this for $2.99, given that it’s three simultaneous stories in a 32-page book, and that’s not even considering how good they are. Grace’s story has gone from uninteresting to my favorite, Wolfhunter and Elvis Warmaker continue to make me want to repeat their names over and over, and while Frank Wells doesn’t handle the transition as well as I’d like, it’s still entertaining, so go and pick this book up.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) has found that an unintentional side effect of reading this comic is having church music stuck in your head all day. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Prince Avalanche — A Funny Road Repair Comedy

This poster, weirdly, is a fairly accurate summary of the movie.

This is rather weird for me to write, and not just because I don’t write many movie reviews. Prince Avalance (written and directed by David Gordon Green) is just a really weird movie. Beyond the fact that I enjoyed it and think you should see it, trying to get all of my thoughts straight about this film is rather difficult due to it being, well, kind of weird–but I will attempt it anyway.
This movie stars two very funny people: Paul Rudd (who I never recognize, but especially here because he looks more like Ben Affleck) and Emile Hirsch (who looks more like Jack Black). Your mileage may vary on if that’s good or bad, but it’s something I have to talk about because it caused me quite a bit of confusion for most of the movie. In this, they play construction workers, posting signs and repainting lines on the road after a wildfire destroyed large parts of Texas in the 1980s.

They also don’t get along, at all. Alvin (Rudd) is a little too tight-laced, while Lance (Hirsch) is a slacker and only there because his sister, Alvin’s girlfriend, thought he needed to get a job. For 80% of this movie, it’s all about the two of them going out and repairing the roads, and it’s much more interesting than something fitting that description has any right to be. Somehow, they manage to make scenes that consist almost entirely of hammering road signs in or talking while painting the lines funny, which is a natural result of handing a funny script to two funny people.

Okay, but what about the other 20% of the movie? Occasionally, Alvin and Lance try to deal directly with the aftermath of the fire on an emotional level, and those scenes tended to fall flat. It’s not that they never got emotion right – there are some really good emotional scenes between the two of them – but it’s whenever they deal with the fact that they’re cleaning up after a wildfire that killed people and destroyed lives that the movie loses it. I have to give them a lot of credit for filming it in Texas after an actual wildfire, which gives the movie an authenticity that I never questioned while watching it, but somehow those scenes just fell flat anyway, even while filming in the wreckage of what used to be an actual house. There’s no consistency or cohesion between this part of the story and the scenes of Alvin and Lance just being themselves, but luckily the less successful of the two takes up much less of the running time.

I’m not crazy, right? They look like Jack Black and Ben Affleck.

I know that sounds like I’m condemning the movie, but don’t hear me wrong. This really is just a small portion of what’s in this film. As you might guess from my description of their characters, Alvin and Lance are two guys who shouldn’t ever get along (and they don’t, mostly), but they’re forced to. This probably sounds very familiar, but there’s something to be said for very strong execution. There’s no moment of revelation that completely changes them, just a gradual understanding of each other that moves them just a slight bit closer at the end from where they were in the beginning. They also never sacrifice the humor for character development or vice versa – one of the best scenes in the movie just involves the two of them sitting in a truck listening to a German educational tape. It sounds ridiculous, but it’s a hilarious scene that also shows a lot of character development, and this, along with many funny and meaningful scenes, hold this together and allow you to ignore the missteps along the way.

That is the movie in a nutshell. Two funny people being funny and genuine people, with some slightly out of place serious moments that fade into the background over time. It’s definitely a movie I recommend seeing, which you can on several On Demand services, so there’s no reason you can’t watch it.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) had to tone down the weirdness of this movie to make the review coherent. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.

Between Seasons: Buffy Season Nine Wrap-up

Now that Buffy Season Nine has ended, the wait begins for Season Ten. So far, nothing concrete has been announced, so we’re at the perfect point to appraise the season and blindly (and likely incorrectly) speculate forward. This article also serves as a companion piece to my Angel & Faith #25 and Buffy Season Nine #25 reviews, now having the liberty of spoilers.

I’m starting with Buffy because I want to get the negative out of the way. Xander betrayed Buffy to Severin and Simone to help them turn back time and undo the ending of Season Eight. During the ensuing conflict at the Deeper Well, Willow created a new seed that restored magic to Earth, but the sheer amount of energy released killed both Severin and Illyria. Simone was turned by Maloker, the demon who created the first vampire, then killed by Buffy. Everyone else escaped unharmed, and once they returned home, Willow stopped Dawn from fading away, bringing back everyone’s memories in the process. Buffy and Willow discovered that the Vampyr book is now blank, and the final issue closes on a vampire standing, unharmed, in sunlight before turning into a bat and flying off.

The first problem I have is that everything kind of returns to normal at the end. Dawn doesn’t die (I don’t hate her, but killing her would’ve made things interesting) even though they set up everything so that they could. The only thing that made an impact was that they killed Illyria, but only due to my fondness for the character – in this series, she was a plot device at best. The characters haven’t advanced, instead resetting to themselves at the beginning of Season Nine or (in Willow’s case) right before the end of Season Eight. With a major exception, everything stays the same.

That major exception being the return of magic. I’ve talked a lot about this in my reviews, but while the Buffyverse is weird without magic (even though it still kind of had magic – I don’t think the writers even understood it), I wanted to see what they did with it. You change something that big about the world, the characters have to react. There were hints of it at the beginning, but overall this series just seemed aimless and lost without magic. Given the Fray series, I was even thinking it might be a permanent change, since a major part of the backstory there was the loss of magic at some indeterminate point in their past. Instead, they spent one season dealing with the loss of magic by coming up with every way they could think of to work magic into it anyway and restoring it completely at the end. Between this and Giles’s resurrection, it feels like the mission statement of Season Nine was “retcon the ending of Season Eight”.

Vampires changed, too. Part of this is me just not liking the change – I’m not above admitting personal bias. I just don’t see the point of it. The vampire rules in the series has always been a little fuzzy (some vampires get immolated almost immediately in any sunlight, but some can run around in daylight protected just by a blanket), but the general rules never changed. Yes, different worlds have different magic rules – Angel didn’t burn up in the sunlight when they went to Pylea – and the creation of a new seed in a much different place points to things being different. It’s not a question of logic, but story. This is the third season in a row that the finale made a fundamental change to the universe, and they keep changing the rules too much and too quickly, not allowing us to get comfortable with what they currently are and exploring the Buffyverse with those rules. Now, yes, this does open up more possibilities, and I can guarantee you that there are certain jokes that must be used (I could write them ahead of time). There’s a lot of room to write a good story with all of this, I just don’t have much confidence, especially after this season squandered good ideas and a relatively strong start.

Enough of the negativity, I should talk about something that I liked. It’s not perfect and I’ll never claim it is, but now is time for me to gush about Angel & Faith again.

While Whistler, Pearl, and Nash collected enough magical energy to set off an explosion likely to kill two billion people, Angel focused almost solely on the resurrection spell to bring back Giles. They succeed, but Giles is brought back in the body of a twelve-year old, leading to easily my favorite issue of the season. Whistler is successful up until the point that he’s given some magical power back, at which point he realizes what he’s doing to the world and kills himself to spare two billion people. Nash was also killed in the chaos with Pearl disappearing, likely to become a pain in the ass later. Faith leaves to join Kennedy’s bodyguard/mercenary company, Giles goes back to America to find Buffy, and Angel stays in London, returning to the basics of helping the helpless.

The first difference is that this is really an ending. Sure, the only deaths are villains (Nadira somehow survived having half her body burned up), but the characters are really in a different place now from the beginning. Angel was completely consumed by his mission to resurrect Giles, and Faith was so far in his debt that she helped him despite her misgivings. Now, Angel has returned to doing the small things, and Faith has taken control of her life back again. Giles has changed greatly in that he’s, well, alive again, but he’s going to find Buffy now, compared to their almost total lack of interaction in Season Eight.

What strikes me after everything wrapped up is that the ending was really all about Whistler. He’s the one with the power and ability to bring magic back, and ultimately he’s the only one who can decide what happens. I didn’t notice it as the story played out, but now that it has, it’s so obvious that I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before.

All that said, the biggest reason why the ending worked is that everything that happened in the series had consequences. With the possible exception of issue #5, everything had a marked effect on the characters whether or not it seemed major at the time. The biggest thing that kept its impact was Giles’s resurrection – a lot of people thought that he was going to die in the final battle (again), but instead of wasting his character, they keep him alive and (presumably) have something major planned for him in the next season, but more on that later.

I skipped over the Willow and Spike miniseries on purpose. I already reviewed them, and they weren’t part of the end of the series, so I’ve already said what I have to say.

So, that’s my last word on Season Nine for a while. I may come back to it in the future, but for now, just wait two weeks for the beginning of my blind and likely incorrect speculation about what Season Ten will be.

Zac Kandell (known mostly on the internet as Mischlings) just wants to warn you about long-winded, rampant speculation coming soon. If you find what he says interesting, follow him on Twitter at @Mischlings for more, shorter thoughts.