Paciocco's Mind

Saturday, August 13, 2011

Friday, August 12, 2011

Thursday, August 11, 2011

Why the Avengers movie might tank

Yes yes, I know - The teaser trailer was awesome and Joss Whedon and How Dare I and blah de blah de blah.

Yesterday's post on Green Lantern should have been a clue here as to what the problem might be.

The problem: The Audience, whom are not comic people, have to A) remember, and B) Give a damn about what happened in the following movies at minimum:

2008's Iron Man
2011's Thor
2011's Captain America: the First Avenger

Other movies that they might want to care about include:
2008's Incredible Hulk
2010's Iron Man 2

Now, while this is not necessarily a big deal, there's no proof that it won't be a small one either. Consider, the only modern example of this kind of crossover movie is the Aliens vs. Predator 'franchise'.

Scared yet?

This is also why I have serious concerns over the presence of Joss Whedon; because outside of Kevin Smith, there's no one in Hollywood I've found who caters more to the extremes of the fanbases while ignoring the larger audience than Whedon. Hopefully, he'll prove me wrong, and hopefully audiences will be able to follow along a clearly defined story.

Hopefully.

If the people making the film have taken this into account.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

GL: Why the Comic works (is also why the movie didn't)

It's actually not that hard; it's the difference between episodic fiction (TV and comics) and non-serialized (movies). You can only have a certain percentage of screentime devoted to introducing the characters, the situation, and the backstory. In serialized comics, you can spread this out over a very long period, as was done with the Rainbow Lantern concepts over about 3 years of storytelling.

The movie had to do it in less than two hours. See the problem? So because of that, the Green Lantern movie, even more so than most comic book origin story movies (and let's face it, most origin movies SUFFER for having so much time devoted to the origin stories) had to throw a lot of crap at the audience and hoped that they A) would keep and B) Give a damn. This is compounded by the fact that much of the Rainbow Lantern backstory derives in large part from the work of Alan Moore in his short stories - something a casual movie goer could not possibly care about (much to everyone's loss on that score).

Geoff Johns deserves some credit for Wold Newtoning up a unifed theory of Green Lanternhood and creating something that will make DC comics money in the years to come (though probably not so much money for him, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this generation of copyright management, as opposed to previous ones), but it's not the most accessible story for a wider audience.

The GL movie just proved why that's important.

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Whoa! whoa! Whoa!!

Guys,

Seriously, thanks for your comments and well words, but just to be absolutely clear.

IT AIN'T OVER JUST YET.

Over the years I've made about 3000 of these motivators. Maybe there's someone out there who's done more, I couldn't say. So I'm going to try and share all of them with you as best I can before I shutter things up. That means you'll have quite a few posts to trickle out before that happens. That's the whole point of my message to "stay tuned".

And I don't see it as quitting? leaving blogging? Yes, but I'm not sure I see that as quitting. To me, quitting implies that I'm beaten, that I'm too down and out to go. Quite the opposite; I'm more optimistic than I've been in years. The fact that that optimism isn't reflected in corporate supercomics? Totally not my problem. I'm not angry with them, I don't wish them anything good or ill, I'm just moving on.

After three thousand posters, I've gone through just about every permutation of a poster I can think of. You really can only use so many images of Iron Man in his armor standing about looking all tech and cool and then add some kind of caption to it. Granted, one wishes the cover artists could show a bit more variety, but that's a subject for another day.

I've said what I wanted to say, and will continue to do so until the end. Because as I've stated in the past, I don't have a deep personal connection to the larger concept of "fandom" because I disagree with a lot of common fan notions (i.e. those people who think Batman is cooler than Superman - AS IF!). The one time I really got mixed up in Fandom? A couple years back, and it just convinced me to do what I do, and hope the right audience would find it. Well, I look at the commenters and followers and I know that to be true. So thank you, and please, keep reading.

And Tom, thank you for the comparison to Chris Sims (but spell it right, he's quite touchy about that - ask the guys at the Daily Show). That said, as the years have worn on, I've become a bit disillusioned with Sims: yes yes yes, Smallville sucks and the jacket sucks - but I'll put down money that Sims will gush all over Grant Morrison giving Superman a baby t-shirt and towel cape in 'Action Comics' despite that being EQUALLY RIDICULOUS. Overall, I'd rather be Chris Bird or Tim O'neil instead - on target, insightful, and genuinely intelligent and persuasive.

Thanks again for your comments. Because of this, I've decided to move up my "secret origin" post to sometime this month instead of the late fall as I'd originally planned - you've all convinced me you need to hear the story of how this all got started....

Monday, August 08, 2011

What If We lived in a comic book universe? Part 106

Been a while since I threw out this feature.

Sunday, August 07, 2011

So, this is a thing that has happened

If you've been wondering as to the lack of post and posters of late, my reasons are pretty straightforward:

1) It's summer. There's sun and beaches and warm air.
2) Complete and utter apathy towards Big Two Corporate supercomics.

The second one may or may not be important to you, but let me explain. Normally, I go through the solicits for upcoming books, and if there's a cover that really grabs my interest as poster material, I plug it into the macro and ...well, see for yourself.

However it has now been about two months since the Marvel or DC solicits have any images worth posterizing. DC is all about the reboot, and I just don't care about that at all (and in an upcoming post, I'll explain as to why that may or may not be a good thing), and all the Marvel series are in ALL OUT WAARRRRRRRR! mode with three major "WAR" crossovers (Fear Itself, X-Men Schism, and "Spider-Island") which simply fail to grab my interest because it has become so repetitive and boring.

Now, the cover images make about 50% of my poster material (I don't have hard numbers - someone can do that if they really feel a burning need). But this is combined with my genuine apathy towards all but a precious few series that grab my attention (Love and Capes, PS238, Farscape, Dungeons & Dragons, and occasionally Mark Waid's Incorruptible and some of the Zorro and Star Trek material). And while I could expound on those books endlessly, I don't know if it's enough to sustain a blog. In reality, I've probably said most of what I want to say on the comics I've read, and what's out there (not much in my mind).

So, will I be closing down? Eventually, yes. It's inevitable as other interests and concerns in my life are taking over. The reason I restarted this blog a few years back was to share with people my poster images. There's actually a secret origin story for that, so stay tuned and you'll see it. I don't have a set quit date yet, as there are other posts I'll throw up - the secret origin, a few thoughts on the DC reboot, and other items of interest to me. But for the most part, the majority of the posts from here on out will simply be poster-only posts for you to enjoy and share with one another.

Thank you all and please, stay tuned and keep reading!