Week 23.1 – China

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: While Twain was trying to figure out the secret of Yi Fan, the plane bearing Metalord and Digger went into a dive. And now…

Digger overcame his panic at the plane’s initial plunge to unbuckle his seatbelt and lunge up out of his seat.

“What are you doing?” Amanda shouted. She grabbed for his hand, but Digger dodged away and used the bolted-down lounge furniture to pull himself toward the cockpit. He had to start the engines and pull them out of the dive.

He reached the cockpit door and yanked it open. “Wait!” he heard from behind him.

Amanda was trying to reach him, but he realized that the strangled cry he’d heard had been Cole’s voice. Tiffany must have attacked him somehow, causing his power to fail and sending the plane into a dive. Which meant Amanda was probably an accomplice.

He slammed the door shut and locked it, then turned to behold a huge array of switches, completely incomprehensible to a layman. Or at least a layman without powers. He pulled himself into the pilot’s seat and flipped switches at random, letting his unconscious do the work. If Cortex was right about his powers, he might be able to start the engines without even knowing how.

He ignored the pounding on the door  and Amanda’s muffled shouts as he listened to the turbines try to start. He hoped there was enough fuel in the tanks to get the plane moving again. Once he had saved them from dying, he would worry about what to do with Tiffany and Amanda.

And then, just as the engines were catching, the lights flickered back on and the plane leveled itself back out. Metalord’s power had reasserted itself.

“See?” Amanda’s voice said through the door.

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]He pulled himself into the pilot’s seat and flipped switches at random, letting his unconscious do the work. If Cortex was right about his powers, he might be able to start the engines without even knowing how.[/blockquote]“See what?” Digger asked.

“We’re fine,” Amanda said. “Cole’s not going to let us crash.”

Digger got up and opened the door to the cockpit. “You mean, you expected that to happen?”

“Yeah, that always happens when he comes,” Amanda said.

“Wait, you mean he was…” Digger sat back down in the pilot’s seat.

Amanda sat beside him in the co-pilot’s chair. “Of course. I mean, I was practically sitting in your lap back there. You didn’t think we were really stewardesses, did you?”

“You’re not stewardesses?”

“No, we’re escorts,” Amanda said. “Don’t look so surprised.”

“And he’s paying you to come along for this entire trip,” Digger said. “That sounds like a lot of money.”

“Well, we give him a break on the price because we can do all the shopping we want, duty-free,” Amanda said. “I mean, we never go through customs.”

“This is crazy,” Digger said. “I’m on a plane with a crazy person.”

“He told you he gets bored easily,” Amanda said. “But the first time is always the worst.”

“The first time?”

“Don’t worry,” Amanda said with a wicked smile. “You ever thought about joining the Mile-High Club youself?”

Digger looked down at the waters of the Pacific, too close for comfort below, though they were gaining altitude again. “We’re not a mile high.”

“Shut up,” she said. She straddled his lap and kissed him.

Will Digger reach China alive? If he dies, will he die happy? Join us tomorrow for the next exciting episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…

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Super Movies – Hulk, Part 3

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Continuing our look back at Ang Lee’s take on the Hulk from 2003. The movie has finally gotten around to showing us what we’ve known was coming for almost 2 hours–that Bruce’s childhood trauma was watching his father kill his mother. It tries to make up for this complete lack of surprise by dressing it up with lines like “It was as if she and the knife merged” (get it? like he can merge with stuff now? get it?) and artsy staging that makes no dramatic sense (why, if she’s protecting Bruce, does she stumble outside and reach for the distant base?).

It just so happens that Bruce is dreaming of this same incident in the induced nightmare Talbot is putting him through. As he begins his transformation, Talbot orders them to extract the DNA he needs for experimentation. However, the drill does not penetrate Banner’s skin, and within a few seconds, the Hulk has burst out of the sensory deprivation tank or whatever, and he’s pissed.

Talbot orders him to be gassed, which was one of the few ways the military could capture Hulk in the comics. But now the opening credits come into play. One of the abilities David Banner specifically designed into his serum was a resistance to toxins. The knockout gas just makes Hulk sneeze.

The Hulk bursts out into the corridor, where a containment team hits him with a fast-hardening foam that immobilizes him. Shades of the Trapster! Talbot defies Ross’s orders  to attempt to extract a DNA sample personally.

What we have here is what Dr. Fredric Wertham called the “Injury to the Eye Motif.” I wonder if James Schamus or Ang Lee deliberately included this here because of its associations with Seduction of the Innocent, or if it’s just a coincidence?

Unfortunately, as the Hulk grows more frantic, he grows larger and bursts out of the foam. Talbot tries killing him with an incendiary grenade, but it bounces off Hulk’s rubbery hide, and Talbot is killed instead.

Ross orders the base locked down (Elliott gives a really understated but effective performance here, calmly giving orders while it’s obvious he’s saying “oh shit, oh shit!” inside). The Hulk bursts into the main hall, and wow, he’s big.

Not quite King Kong big, but really big. And though this was one major gripe from fans, I kind of like it. The biggest crutch in the history of Hulk comics was the line, “The madder Hulk gets, the stronger he gets.” Written into a corner with Hulk facing an enemy he can’t beat? Just make him madder. Problem solved. And besides, it’s not as if the Hulk’s artists were ever consistent on his size.

But here, the filmmakers have come up with a way to illustrate that “madder=stronger” correlation and have it make some sort of sense, and the fans went nuts.

So a bunch of soldiers come in to shoot Hulk, but the bullets bounce off his sea cucumber-reinforced hide, surrounding him like a cloud of gnats. When it appears the Hulk will destroy the base, Ross tells his people to shut down the lights and open the door. They’ll fight him outside. Good thinking.

Hulk runs and leaps away, adopting some cool Marvel-style poses in the air. He lands back at his old neighborhood, but as he’s remembering the day his father was taken away, as well as the cool old-school ultrasonic TV remote (the buttons on that thing would depress with a click that made your teeth rattle)…

The Army blows the whole thing up with cluster munitions. The Hulk is cut, but the cut closes and heals right away, thanks to starfish DNA (and I’m really liking the way the opening credits have set up all these abilities, so that now you’re seeing all this stuff brought full circle). Hulk leaps away again. He ends up in the desert, where he gets into a fight with a bunch of tanks.

And this is where you really see the Hulk as Hulk, bashing these tanks into scrap. I love this moment where he pauses after smashing one tank with the turret he ripped off another.

There’s one tank left, and you can tell he’s contemplating doing horrible things. But he just bends the cannon barrel and leaps away again.

Ross briefs the President on the escape (and just in case you’re not sure what the movie’s about yet, the Hulk’s code-name is “Angry Man”) and gets a task force to stop the Hulk. Meanwhile, the Hulk has stopped to look at lichen. Yes, more lichen.

Which is when he is attacked by four helicopter gunships. He tackles one and gets so mad, he punches it in the face.

He downs another by catching the Hellfire missile it shoots at him, biting off the warhead, and spitting it back at the chopper. Unfortunately, he gets cornered among some rocks which the remaining choppers bury him under. But after the copters have left, he digs out and continues on his way.

Ross orders up a couple of F-22’s to hit him, then. He jumps on one to keep it from hitting the Golden Gate Bridge and it takes him up into near-space, where he passes out and falls. As he falls, he dreams of being Banner, shaving and seeing the Hulk in the mirror (a callback to an earlier dream Banner had).

I love that the Hulk is so huge and intimidating that his fingertip is the size of Banner’s hand. And this is where the Hulk says his first line: “Puny human.”

Which leads to another fan gripe. The silent Hulk is a product of the TV series. I can only remember Ferrigno’s Hulk ever saying one word in the entirety of the series: shouting “no” when Banner’s wife played by Mariette Hartley died.

But in the comics, Hulk has always been a chatterbox, and for some reason, some fans wanted to see that Hulk on screen. The problem is that Hulk’s dialogue has mostly been pretty awful, the kind of stuff that can only work in a medium like comics where you’re not actually hearing it.

(Tanks shoot Hulk) You think you can shoot Hulk with tanks? Hulk will smash your puny tanks! (Hulk smashes tanks) Ha! Hulk smashed puny tanks! Hulk is the strongest one there is!

Seriously, Lee’s version of Hulk has many, many problems, but Hulk not talking is not one of them.

So anyway, Hulk splashes down into the bay and then tunnels underground to emerge on a hill in San Francisco. And finally, after Hulk has overcome every weapon Ross threw at him, the general allows Betty to try to calm Bruce down.

I love Hulk’s posture here, like a puppy who has just been discovered chewing up a shoe or something and knows he’s going to get it. Once again, when Lee’s Hulk isn’t raging, he’s like a big child, and it works for me.

So as Betty draws closer, Hulk grows shorter and skinnier until he’s normal Bruce again. He and Betty hug as they are surrounded by about a million soldiers and SWAT guys. And why one of them doesn’t just “accidentally” put a bullet through Bruce’s head right there is beyond me.

All told, the entire sequence, from first transformation in the tank, until he finally powers down and collapses in Betty’s arms, is about 25 minutes long, and it’s a good 25 minutes. This was the Hulk I came to see, fighting back against the forces of a world that just won’t let him alone, smashing up a bunch of stuff.

And seriously, the movie should have ended here, or at the very least, David Banner should have accompanied Betty so that the big final confrontation could work itself out immediately.

But no. Now we have to endure the suck. Every good thing from the previous sequence is going to be forgotten in this mess.

Betty convinces her father to let David Banner talk to Bruce. So they chain Bruce to a chair between two giant electrodes, so they can kill him if he starts to change again.

And what follows is the most painfully awful scene in the film. Nolte raves about soldiers and religion, telling Bruce that he needs to absorb the power from Bruce’s cells to control his own mutation. Meanwhile, Bana is snorting and whining and finally out of nowhere gives this primal scream. And then, desperate for a way to get out of the scene, Nolte bites into the power cable to the electrodes and absorbs the electricity to become a lightning creature.

Bruce changes to the Hulk, and though Ross gives the order to fry him, the soldiers can’t comply, because David Banner has absorbed all the power. And then a storm comes, and David drags Hulk with him along the lightning in a confusing montage of almost still images that flicker in and out  in less than a second.

Father and son end up beside a mountain lake, where the lightning creature becomes a rock creature until Hulk throws him into a lake. Then he becomes a water creature and drags Hulk under the water. And one thing that’s frustrating about this sequence is that the elder Banner changes form so often, it’s hard to grasp exactly what he’s doing.

And what he’s doing is absorbing Bruce’s power. So Bruce tells his father to take it all, and pours out all his rage into his father, who immediately regrets his decision. All of Bruce’s pent-up rage pours out in this weird green stream into the weird green Water David face, which then forms this weird hate blister hovering over the lake.

It’s a mercy when the military finally just nukes them both. But of course, they use a gamma bomb, and since it was gamma rays that helped create Hulk in the first place, chances are that Bruce will survive this.

Which he does. A year later, we see him giving medical care to refugees in South America, until a troop of government soldiers comes to seize the medicine. Bruce gives the famous TV series line (“You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry”), and we’re out.

Bottom line: I don’t hate the movie as much as most of my peers. I like the fact that Lee tried to bring an emotional subtext to the movie. I like the way the origin was updated. I like the internal consistency of Hulk’s powers with the animal research his father did in the opening credits, even if it’s not classic “comics” Hulk. I like the extended battle with the military that is the true climax of the film. I don’t mind the Hulk Dogs too much, and I even like some of the visual gimmicks.

But the teasing reveal of the trauma that’s obvious from the opening sequence does nothing but slow the film down. The repetition of lichen close-ups just baffles me. And Nolte’s performance overall is weird, but especially so in the disjointed, slapped-together ending that ends up leaving a bad after-taste for the entire thing. Disappointing after such high hopes.

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Out of the Vault – Superman #308

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Two weeks ago, we discussed a Superman storyline from 1971 which supposedly ended in a permanent change to the character. Then last week, we saw the issue immediately following the end of that storyline, which seemed to have returned to the old status quo.  The previous “permanent” change was quietly forgotten.

So by the time I hit junior high, I made the switch to Marvel from DC. I was coming to appreciate the more sophisticated storytelling possibilities of the continuing serial over DC’s one-shot issues. I largely abandoned Batman and Superman then in favor of Hulk and Spider-Man. I still bought some DC titles, but they were the oddballs like Shade, the Changing Man.

I’m not sure what led me in early 1977 (or maybe at the very end of 1976) to buy this one issue of Superman. Maybe it was the awesome Neal Adams cover. But when I began reading it, I was totally confused, in part because it felt more like a Marvel comic than a DC one.

And there’s a reason for that. This issue was written by Gerry Conway, who had been writing The Amazing Spider-Man when I first began following that title regularly. And rather than the stalwart team of Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, the art chores here are by penciller Jose Luis Garcia Lopez, with Frank Springer on inks.

The story opens in the middle of an argument between Superman and Supergirl. In the previous issue, Supergirl had dropped the bombshell revelation that Superman did not actually come from Krypton. There had never been such a place, except in young Clark Kent’s imagination. There had been no exploding planet, no rocket ride to Earth, no Kandor, no Phantom Zone.

Clark was the son of Jonathan Kent, who had worked in a nuclear plant and had suffered a dose of radiation which altered his genes. Kara was not Clark’s cousin from Krypton, but the daughter of a co-worker who had gone through the same thing. And all of the Kryptonian history and relics and adventures were supposedly a product of Clark’s fantasies, a way of rationalizing his special abilities.

Their conversation is interrupted by the Protector, the villain from the previous issue whom Superman had just defeated. Why is he called the Protector?

Sworn to protect polluters. Yeah, I totally buy that. Anyway, it turns out that the Protector is also a radioactive mutant, and the help he seeks against Superman also comes in the form of a radioactive mutant named Radion.

So why all this emphasis on radioactive mutants all of a sudden? I thought then and I think now that it was in reaction to something that had happened over at Marvel. You see, there was a book at Marvel that had spent a few years hovering so close to cancellation that they hadn’t even been spending money to make new stories, just publishing reprints of past issues over and over again. But a couple of years before this issue came out, writer Len Wein had teamed up with artist Dave Cockrum (who had come over from DC, where he had made a big splash drawing the Legion of Super-Heroes) to create an updated team with new members.

That team was, of course, the new Uncanny X-Men, and by 1977, mutants were starting to get hot. They hadn’t yet become a dominant force in comics, but as you can see by this issue of Superman, they were getting attention.

So anyway despite almost 40 years of continuity in which Krypton was constantly being mentioned, Superman quickly decides that maybe Kara’s telling the truth. He even lets himself start thinking about a romantic future with Lois Lane.

But then Radion attacks a nuclear power plant, planning to overload it and cause widespread mutations. Superman almost dies trying to stop him. Radion retreats to his secret hideout in the mountains, where he argues with Protector until Superman shows up. He taunts Radion, and uses his heat vision to trick Protector into making himself a living mirror. And then…

And as dumb as this issue is in almost every way, I did kind of think it was neat that the finale featured Superman battling these two evil versions of himself, just three atomic mutants having a difference of opinion. Except that we know that Supergirl was lying, because she called a mysterious someone to report on her progress with the lie.

Turns out that Supergirl was working on the advice of a Kryptonian psychologist from Kandor who thought Superman had become too obsessed with seeing himself as Earth’s protector, and so they had concocted the idea of making him think he came from Earth as a way of humbling him or something. But it all backfired when a ragtag alien fleet came under attack and needed Superman’s help to save them. Superman refused, because the problems of a bunch of random aliens were no longer his concern.

So Supergirl confessed the lie, and suddenly, Superman was a Kryptonian again. He ended up saving the aliens, and the whole “Mutant Superman” thing was forgotten and never mentioned again.

Which was good, because it was stupid.

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Week 22.5 – Hiding Out

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: Yi Fan hid Twain in a gardener’s shed with strict instructions that he not go out after dark. So after dark, Twain went out. And now…

Twain climbed to the top of the stone wall and looked out over the village, which fell away in gradual terraces. Twain wasn’t sure, but this looked like the Foreigners’ Ghetto.

After his failed conquest of Mongolia and northern China, the Cobalt Czar had decided to solidify control over the territory he still occupied. So he started on a program of economic development, with the aim of having his occupation recognized as a legitimate country. To that end, he had hired, bribed or kidnapped a number of foreign nationals with important skills or powers. The healer who had repeatedly healed Twain’s broken arm had been Bulgarian. And pretty much all of them lived in the same small village, where they shared nothing in common except their non-Mongolian-ness.

But though Twain thought of it as a ghetto, it was not poorer nor more restricted than the rest of the Czar’s domain. In fact, due to the high concentration of people with important professional skills, the village was actually more prosperous than the others in the region, which didn’t make them any more popular with their neighbors.

Twain sat on the fence, trying to decide what to do. On the one hand, there was no better place for him to blend in and disappear. But on the other hand, there might be no better place for him to learn what he needed to about the City of the Moon than the house of a highly-placed official in the Czar’s organization.

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]..Her father was apparently highly placed enough that he would be above suspicion. But if he discovered Twain hiding out in the shed, it would not only be bad for Twain, but also bad for Yi Fan…[/blockquote]But Yi Fan was a problem. Twain now understood why she was so confident that no one would search for him here; her father was apparently highly placed enough that he would be above suspicion. But if he discovered Twain hiding out in the shed, it would not only be bad for Twain, but also bad for Yi Fan. He didn’t want her to get into trouble for helping him.

He froze as headlights appeared around a corner down the street. The headlights swept directly across him, but he was partially concealed by overhanging tree branches and his clothes were dark. As long as he didn’t move, they likely wouldn’t notice him. After all, they weren’t looking for him and he wasn’t in a place where they’d normally expect a person to be.

The car turned the corner just before reaching Twain. Twain recognized a streak of white hair sitting in the back seat. It must be Yi Fan. Curious, Twain dropped back inside the compound and made his way around to where he could see the front of the main house.

The car stopped and a beefy, dark-haired Caucasian got out of the passenger seat and opened the rear door for Yi Fan. She got out and snapped something in Russian at the man, who bowed and followed in her wake as the car pulled away toward the garage.

Twain was startled by her authoritative air. Yi Fan was obviously more than jsut a rebellious, privileged daughter. Who was she exactly?

What will Twain learn about the mysterious Yi Fan? And in the meantime, what’s going on with Digger and the crashing plane? For at least one answer to one question, join us Monday for the next exciting chapter of Run, Digger, Run!

To read from the beginning, click here…

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Week 22.4 – Hiding Out

Posted on March 15, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: Yi Fan told Twain she was helping him because he told her he loved her. And now…

“When did I tell you that?” Twain asked.

“A couple of weeks ago,” she said. “You told me then that you wouldn’t know me the next time we met. I found that hard to believe at the time. Now I see you were right.”

“And did I tell you why I wouldn’t know you?” Twain asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

Yi Fan nodded. “You said you had traveled back in time, and that the present you hadn’t yet learned to love me.”

“Did I?”

Yi Fan blushed. “It sounds boastful, doesn’t it? To say that you’re fated to love me.”

“Not if you’re repeating someone else’s words,” Twain said. “Especially my own.”

“So you believe me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Twain answered.

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”left”]“You said you had traveled back in time, and that the present you hadn’t yet learned to love me.”[/blockquote]Her expression hardened, and her face flushed. The scar stood out stark against her reddened face. She put her fingers up to it as she turned away. “Of course not. No reason you should. The sun’s going down and I have things to do. I’ll have food brought to you. You may think it’s safe to leave this building and wander around under cover of darkness. I assure you it’s not.”

“You’re telling me I’m your prisoner, then.”

She paused with her hand on the door handle. “I’m telling you not to be an idiot.”

She left Twain alone in the shed.

He wanted to leave immediately, but he decided to wait until they’d brought him food, at least. A couple of the old men who’d helped him out of the crate returned just as the last light was fading away. They brought a lamp and some bedding–a sleeping mat and some heavy quilts– and a bowl with rice topped with sesame-flavored beef and cooked lettuce. If Twain had needed any more evidence that Yi Fan’s family was well off, the food proved it. Rice was scarce this far north, unless you had money and connections.

Twain waited a respectable amount of time after he finished eating to walk out the door. One of the servants was waiting for him, to keep him from wandering the grounds. It took a while for Twain to make him understand “bathroom,” but finally the guy called someone on an intercom and jabbered at him in Mongolian. A few minutes later, another servant brought him out a chamber pot. Twain retreated into the shed to use it in peace and contemplate his next move.

A couple of hours later, he turned out the lamp, then waited a half-hour more before slipping out the window. He crept silently away to a stone wall that surrounded a sizable estate with a mansion in the middle. It wasn’t huge by American standards–a little smaller than Caveat’s house in Connecticut–but signified incredible wealth and importance out here.

If Yi Fan’s father’s house was this lavish, it could only mean that the man was highly placed in the Czar’s organization. If so, this was the last place Twain wanted to be.

Where will Twain go? Is it safer to stay or to go? Learn more in tomorrow’s exciting episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…

Posted in Run Digger Run | 1 Comment

Week 22.3 – Hiding Out

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: The mysterious Yi Fan smuggled Twain to a safe place in a crate. And now…

He was in some kind of workshop or gardener’s shed, cinderblock walls hung with tools. Dust tickled his nose and danced in the late afternoon sunlight slanting in through a high window. The men helping him out of the box were old and shriveled, with the deferent air of servants.

Yi Fan dismissed the servants in Russian,  then spoke to Twain in Mandarin. “You’ll be safe here.”

“Where’s here?” Twain asked.

“My home,” she answered.

And now everything started to make sense to Twain: the rebellious attitude, the servants, the shed. She was a child of privilege, rebelling against her rich parents and the society circles they moved in. She had brought him home, but obviously couldn’t have him in her parents’ house, so had hidden him out in a shed on the grounds. She looked a little old to be still living with her parents, but things worked differently over here. What did her father do, Twain wondered, that he had packed up his family and left China to come live under the most tyrannical dictator on Earth?

“I appreciate the help,” Twain said, “but how long do you intend to hide me out? There are things I came here to do.”

“Like what?” she asked.

“Better if you don’t know,” Twain said. “Safer for you.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]“K-Killing?” Twain stammered. “I didn’t kill anyone.” “Nevertheless, they are dead.”[/blockquote]“Well, whatever you plan to do will have to wait,” she said. “There’s a manhunt going on right now. We’re no longer in the same village, but it might expand this far.”

“It’s that serious?” Twain asked.

“Killing the Czar’s men carries a heavy penalty,” Yi Fan said.

“K-Killing?” Twain stammered. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

“Nevertheless, they are dead.”

Twain stepped back from her. “Did you kill them?”

“It doesn’t matter who killed them,” Yi Fan said. “Enough people saw you fleeing them that they believe it was you, and trust me, they will not believe you when you say you are innocent.”

Twain leaned back against a workbench. “What have you done to me?”

“Made you safe,” Yi Fan answered. She stepped closer and held her arms out as if to embrace him, but stopped when he flinched back. “No one can connect you to me, and no one will search for you here. They won’t search for more than a couple of days. It’s a small country, and everyone will believe you have fled. It’s what any sane person would do.”

Twain nodded. She made sense, although the talk of murder made it harder to trust her. “Why are you helping me?”

Yi Fan sighed. “Two reasons. Number one, I’m curious about that kung fu you used on those men.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve seen it before, a long time ago, and I want to know more about it.”

Twain was startled by that. That form was only known to a select few men and women around the globe. She shouldn’t even have recognized it.

“And what’s the second reason?” he asked.

She smiled sadly. “Because you told me you loved me.”

How could this be? I think we all know the answer, but just in case, be here tomorrow to find out if I’m right in our next episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…

Posted in Run Digger Run | Leave a comment

Week 22.2 – Hiding Out

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: Twain was escorted to safety and hidden away from the Cobalt Czar’s men by the mysterious and beautiful Yi Fan. And now…

A little over an hour after she had left, Yi Fan opened the door to the storeroom and waved Twain over. In the hallway, an old Mongolian man stood next to a large wooden crate. “Get in,” she said in Mandarin. “We’re getting you out of here.”

“To go where?” Twain asked.

“Someplace safe,” she said.

“How safe?”

“There are always degrees of danger,” Yi Fan said. “But let’s not pretend you’re that concerned about safety.”

“How would you know what I’m concerned about?” he asked.

Her eyes twitched as if the remark hurt her, but she forced a smile. “If you were only worried about staying safe, you wouldn’t have come here. Now get into the box, quickly. I’ll answer all your questions once we’ve reached our destination.”

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”left”]…the crystal grew warm against his chest and it almost seemed as if it were illuminating the inside of the box…[/blockquote]Twain had to admit, she had a point. He had come here knowing he was walking into danger. And if he planned to continue, it made more sense to confront that danger with an ally rather than alone. At the least, she might be able to help him skirt some of the more obvious dangers.

He shrugged and stepped into the crate. Before he could sit down so they could nail the lid on, Yi Fan stopped him with a hand on his arm. “What’s that?” she asked, nodding at the canvas bag holding the mask. “You didn’t have that before. Where did it come from?”

“I found it in there.” Twain looked toward the storeroom he had been locked inside. “I grabbed some food for the trip. I’m hungry; those guys interrupted me before I could finish eating.”

She didn’t look as if the remark convinced her, but she nodded and let go of his arm. He sat on the floor of the crate, and the old man nailed on the lid. He felt the crate being carried out, and then it was loaded onto a vehicle. He wasn’t sure which direction they drove, but whereever they were going, the roads were bad. Which meant it could be anywhere in the whole damn region.

He didn’t know how long they drove, but he spent at least the last half of it curled up on the floor in a cramped fetal position. Lying down made him less apt to be hurt from the jouncing. He spent the time thinking about the fight in the alley, not that he could remember any details. But as he tried to replay it in his mind, the crystal grew warm against his chest and it almost seemed as if it were illuminating the inside of the box. Not physically, but more as if he were dreaming of light while awake. If he didn’t know better, he would have said he was catching a serious buzz from something.

Eventually, the vehicle slowed, and then stopped, and the box was carried into another building, Yi Fan shouting clipped commands in Russian. The top of the box was lifted, and hands helped Twain stand up on cramped legs.

Where is Twain now? What does Yi Fan want with him? Find out more in our next episode, tomorrow-ish!

To read from the beginning, click here…

Posted in Run Digger Run | 1 Comment

Week 22.1 – Hiding Out

Posted on March 12, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Previously: Twain escaped from the Czar’s men and was led to apparent safety by the mysterious Yi Fan. And now…

“Wait here,” said Yi Fan. “I have an errand to run, and then I’ll make arrangements to get you someplace safer.”

“How do I know you won’t just bring them here?” Twain asked.

She looked confused for a moment, as if the question made no sense. Then she smiled, but there was no humor in it. “How do you know I haven’t led you into a trap already? There could be a dozen of them waiting outside that door right now, getting ready to burst in and arrest you. If you didn’t trust me to help, why did you follow me?”

Twain couldn’t answer. “Okay, I’ll wait,” he said.

“It could take a while, but I’ll try not to be too long.” She turned toward the door, then impulsively turned back and kissed his cheek before leaving.

[blockquote type=”blockquote_quotes” align=”right”]…he chose weapons he could conceal: a taser, a collapsible spring steel baton and brass knuckles with an ultra-high discharge capacitor. The capacitor only held one charge, but it would one-punch anybody human and a good percentage of supers as well…[/blockquote]As soon as she was gone, Twain groaned and flipped, the two heavy duffel bags falling to the ground with a thump. He’d been riding unarmed and apparently helpless, hoping that looking harmless would allow him to go mostly unmolested. But now that they were on the alert and searching for him, he wanted to be prepared.

At the same time, he didn’t want Yi Fan to ask too many questions, so he chose weapons he could conceal: a taser, a collapsible spring steel baton and brass knuckles with an ultra-high discharge capacitor. The capacitor only held one charge, but it would one-punch anybody human and a good percentage of supers as well.

The only thing he kept out that couldn’t be concealed was the mask. He just couldn’t bear the thought of having it impinge on his consciousness anymore, plus if things got really hairy, he would need it. It was packed in a courier bag that he could sling over one shoulder to keep it conveniently at hand. He set the weapons and mask to one side, then lifted the duffels and flipped. The taser went under his shirt in back, the baton went in one pocket and the brass knuckles in the other. he slung the mask bag over his shoulder, thn settled in to wait for Yi Fan to return.

What was her story, anyway? She seemed to know him, yet he had never seen her before. But given the way she had hidden him away and talked about getting him out of the area, it looked like she was part of some covert rebellion against the Czar’s regime. He could use that if he could get more details from her.

But something else was bothering him as well: the way those men had shown up at a yurt in the middle of nowhere. It was as if they had been looking for somebody in that specific spot at that specific time. As if they had been looking for him.

Had the Czar been warned that he was coming? And if so, was that Digger’s doing somehow, or had the old lady Ying Chan betrayed him to the Czar?

Who can Twain trust? Join us tomorrow for our next exciting episode!

To read from the beginning, click here…

Posted in Run Digger Run | Leave a comment

Super Movies – Hulk, Part 2

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Tony Frazier

Continuing a three-part look at Ang Lee’s Hulk from 2003. Before we get back to the movie, a few observations about what’s happened so far.

At this point in the picture, I’m sort of on the fence about it. On the one hand, I like Sam Elliott and Jennifer Connelly. I mostly like the way they’ve updated the origin story–the genetic research angle and Banner’s sacrifice to save the assistant. I like the way they’ve set up the themes and the emotional conflicts, although there do seem to be a few too many players to keep the story moving. I like Danny Elfman’s score, so different from the oom-pah stuff he does for Tim Burton. I even like some of the flashy pseudo-comic book visual styling.

But the pace is too slow. It’s 45 minutes in, and we’ve only just gotten our first glimpse of the Hulk as he busted up his laboratory, then fled into the night.

The next morning, Betty comes by Bruce’s place (she still has a key) and discovers Bruce passed out with his clothes torn to shreds. As they discuss the previous night–Bruce claims not to have gone to the lab, but to have had a vivid dream–he brings up his father just as there’s a knock on the door. Betty answers it and sees General Ross. She turns to Bruce and mouths, “My father,” although on cursory viewing, it looks like she could be saying, “motherfucker,” which would be just as apt. The General looks pissed.

He has Bruce’s wallet, which was squeezed out of his pants when he suddenly grew the incredible buttocks that allow him to jump miles at a time. Found in the lab, you know, the one where he just told Betty he didn’t go. Ross takes Betty out of the house and tells her that Bruce is forbidden fruit until they get to the bottom of what happened in the lab.

So Betty immediately looks up the janitor to find out what his story is. The visit starts out cordial enough, even though it’s obvious the dude is a creepy mess (sadly, my place is not appreciably neater than his).

He starts ranting about how the world will never understand his son because of his special unique specialness, and then he starts this creepy flirty thing, squeezing in beside Betty on the couch (so he can steal her scarf). Betty gets out of there pretty fast.

Meanwhile, Ross is interrogating Bruce and dancing around the fact that Bruce saw his mother get killed (but never actually saying it, because I guess it’s still supposed to be a surprise twist later), a memory Bruce has obviously repressed. Unfortunately, the audience saw this coming since the prologue, so playing coy about it now serves no purpose. Then Ross turns all rage-face crazy-eyes as he tells Bruce to stay away from Betty forever.

So Betty heads out to a cabin in the country that we recognize from Bruce’s flashback, while David Banner tosses Betty’s scarf to his dogs and tells them to find and kill her. Then he calls Bruce and tells him that Betty will die unless Bruce releases what’s inside of him. David Banner wants to study what makes Bruce tick and harvest it for his own benefit; his estranged son is no more than another lab animal to him.

Glenn Talbot chooses just that moment to show up and start knocking Bruce around because General Ross has locked Talbot out of the project.  And now, with Bruce frantically trying to get to Betty while serving as Talbot’s punching bag, we finally get to see the kind of Hulkout we’ve been waiting almost an hour for.

Bruce’s face turns green and he throws Talbot across the room, followed by this interesting visual effect where the room seems to shake with fear at what’s coming. And then we go from Eric Bana in greenface to a CGI Bruce transforming into a big and pissed-off Hulk. And he seems to have gotten a haircut in the process.

And this is where words start to fail, because I feel so many conflicting emotions on the movie’s Hulk. On the one hand, I love the design, so reminiscent of the classic Hulk of my childhood by artists like Herb Trimpe and Sal Buscema. And there are times, especially in the big action production number we’ll discuss next week, when that carries over into action as well, when the Hulk will strike a pose and I think, “That could have been ripped straight out of the comic.”

But unfortunately, this Hulk seems to be standing really close to the center of the Uncanny Valley: not convincingly real, but not cool or stylized enough to make us forgive that.

Hulk tosses Talbot through the window and smashes out the wall in pursuit (amusingly, he still has one sock on). The guards outside open fire, and we can see the Hulk’s skin dimple as the bullets pepper him.

As he gets angrier, he gets bigger (he loses the sock here) and finally leaps away.

And now comes the scene that everybody complains about. Betty hears a sound outside the cabin, goes out and finds a gigantic Hulk, whom she somehow recognizes as Bruce even though he bears no resemblance to Bruce (Mark Ruffalo’s Hulk in The Avengers is the first Hulk I’ve ever seen, comic or movie, where Banner’s features are recognizable in the Hulk’s face). But their quiet moment is interrupted by the arrival of Daddy’s dogs.

The Hulk Dogs originated from a storyline in the comics, and I actually don’t hate the scene. The dogs’ appearance, mutated and over-muscled, but also mangy and diseased, is pretty intimidating. And the effects in the sequence are pretty amazing, like this moment where the poodle menaces Betty in the car, spittle covering the windshield.

The fight itself is pretty savage, but with some slapstick moments thrown in. The Hulk gets bitten in the crotch  and takes revenge on the wrong dog. Here he’s about to punch the pit bull in the balls.

And I think that may be the real problem with the sequence: that uneasy tension between savage fight and slapstick sight gags. Also the fact that although the Hulk was the most complex CGI character ever animated, they didn’t manage to make him look completely real, and so the thousands of man-hours spent developing the technology and doing the animation were dismissed by fanboys.

Once the dogs are dead, the now-naked Hulk stumbles to the lake shore and transforms back to Bruce. Betty is terrified of him, but also feels sorry for him. So she puts him to bed and the next morning, while he’s still asleep, she calls her father for help. He sends a tactical team to shoot Bruce with tranq darts.

Next thing you know, Bruce is locked in a steel box and being flown by cargo helicopter to a secret military base in the desert.

There are lots of split-screens and a bunch of cool hardware and this odd Bollywood-style warbling on the soundtrack, an interesting choice that seems thematically unrelated to anything else in the movie, but I still think it works for the scene. This base is huge and awesome.

Betty thought her dad would help Bruce, but the General plans to keep Bruce sedated forever while letting Talbot extract his DNA to experiment with. Meanwhile, the tactical team is assaulting David Banner’s house. He’s not there, though. He’s in Bruce’s old lab, cobbling together a new makeshift gamma machine and huffing nanomeds.

The experiment doesn’t turn him into another Hulk however. Instead, he begins exhibiting strange properties like merging with inanimate objects, taking on their color and physical properties.

He kills the security guard who interrupts him, but not before giving with a few crazy lines about how he partakes of the essence of all things, and I’m getting seriously tired of the old man by now..

Back at the base, we learn that this is the same base where Bruce’s father worked decades ago, or at least in the same area. Betty manages to take him for a walk to his old house, where he tries to remember what happened, but the trauma is too great. General Ross sends Betty home and turns Bruce over to Talbot. Talbot beats him up and zaps him with a cattle prod, but Bruce manages to hold off the change. Talbot knocks him out.

Meanwhile, David Banner goes to Betty and confesses the deep dark secret: that he killed Bruce’s mother in front of him. About freakin’ time, Movie! He promises to turn himself in without a fight, if only he can see Bruce one more time to make amends. And as he’s telling the story of how Bruce’s mom died, Bruce apparently dreams it in the isolation tank where Talbot is trying to force the change.

Which leads us into the final sequences, next week.

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Out of the Vault – Superman #243

Posted on March 10, 2012 by Tony Frazier

So last week, we discussed the Sand Superman, an alien entity that came to Earth and stole much of Superman’s power in 1970, leaving him weakened. The storyline ran for eight issues (interrupted by a couple of reprint Giants), and ended with Superman supposedly losing a third of his power forever.

This happened during a period that I’ve been wanting to write about for a while, but haven’t due to still not having all the relevant books out of the Vault (and some may have been sold or lost long ago). DC took the costumes and/or powers away from several of their superheroes during this time period, from 1968 to 1973 or so. The Metal Men disguised themselves as humans, the Teen Titans gave up their costumes and powers  to help inner-city youth and stuff, and even Wonder Woman ditched her powers and costume to become an Emma Peel-styled secret agent and martial artist. That last is significant, because Diana Prince and her mentor, I Ching, helped Superman resolve the problem of the sand creature once and for all.

But though the end of the story seemed to indicate that Superman had been permanently reduced in power like so many of his peers, it conveniently ignored the fact that 2/3 of infinity still equals infinity. And so, in the very next issue after the resolution of the sand creature storyline, Superman is once again seen flying between worlds and surviving a super-nova just as he would have before the supposed depowering.

The story is “The Starry-Eyed Siren of Space!” by Cary Bates (who had been the writer on Superman before Denny O’Neil’s run), and re-reading it now, it’s pretty apparent what Cary Bates was watching on TV at the time.

So Superman is caught in the shock-wave from a super-nova and flung through space out of control until he arrives near a strange planet he has never seen before. He feels a strange compulsion to fly down to the planet, and once there, to tunnel down below the surface until he reaches a strange subterranean chamber, where he meets…

The alien mind-creature, Kond, who lives in a glass pyramid and bears a strange resemblance to…

The Providers, from “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” an episode of the original Star Trek. Kond’s mate Rija has gotten bored with being a brain under glass and abs-Konded, making herself a physical body so she too can experience the carnal pleasures of the flesh, as the disembodied egos did in the Star Trek episode “Return to Tomorrow” (among others). Kond believes Rija is making a horrible mistake; as a flesh being, she will not only age and die, but also lose her incredible mental powers. Kond begs Superman to find her and convince her to come back.

So Superman flies back up to the planet’s surface, where he sees a woman being chased by a T-rex skeleton (slightly modified to look “alien”). Superman bashes the monster to pieces, but the bones reform into a new shape.

That’s pretty badass. I mean, what’s cooler than a dinosaur skeleton? A dinosaur skeleton Transformer.

Superman realizes he can’t beat the thing in a fistfight, so he grabs it by the tail and flings it into space. Then he meets the woman he has saved, who is obviously Rija. And she looks familiar.

And maybe it’s just me, but I see a real resemblance here to Nancy Kovack from the Star Trek episode, “A Private Little War.”

Besides looking like one Star Trek babe, Rija also has the same power as Elaan from the episode “Elaan of Troyius,” whose tears have the power to make men their love-slaves. Rija asks Superman to take her away with him, and hypnotizes him into kissing her.

Of course, Kond is mentally watching the entire thing, and the kiss pisses him off. So he decides to take drastic action.

Kond disables Superman with his mental powers and goes to confront Rija. Rija, not realizing that this is not the same Superman, has been trying to call Kond in his glass pyramid, but getting no answer. So she tearily confesses to Superman that her seduction of him was all a ploy to make Kond jealous, but now it looks as if she has lost him forever. She wants to die.

Which is when a strange energy creature appears and attacks the duo. Kond tries to fight it, but…

The monsters continue to multiply with each attack as Superman watches helplessly from a distance. Finally, Kond’s concentration is so broken that Superman can move, so he uses his super-breath to create a vacuum around Rija’s head and kill her. The monsters disappear (since they were monsters created from Rija’s subconscious by her death wish, which is totally not fair–monsters from the id is Forbidden Planet, not Star Trek), but before Superman can revive Rija, Kond does it himself.

Kond and Rija decide to keep their fleshy bodies, and before Superman leaves, Kond gives him four magic potions, which will eliminate all disease, pollution, crime and starvation on Earth. Superman leaves Kond and Rija to their blissful love story. Hope it doesn’t turn out to be titled “Kond of Steel, Rija of Kleenex.”

Superman returns to Earth, only to find it’s not where it’s supposed to be. Turns out the super-nova hurled Superman back in time (just like the Enterprise being hurled back in time after an accidental encounter with a black star in the episode “Tomorrow Is Yesterday”). He uses his super-powers to return to the present day, only to find out that the “stresses of time travel” have reduced the potions to dust. Mankind must do without a magical cure to all the world’s problems.

So yeah, I’m pretty sure Cary Bates was watching a lot of Star Trek reruns right about the time this was written. And before I discuss the back-up features, one other small observation: drawing a monthly comic book is not an easy job, especially if you’re constantly having to design new aliens and monsters. There are limits to imagination, which may explain why the next issue of Superman, “The Electronic Ghost of Metropolis,” featured this monster…

Which looks an awful lot like the energy creatures from the story we just looked at.

Anyway, on to the backup features. Yes, plural, because if you remember last week’s Vault, Superman #238, with just one back-up story, cost just 15 cents. But notice the cover above bears a price of 25 cents. DC upped the price, but also padded the book to more pages by adding reprints.

The first back-up is a new World of Krypton story, about a scientist in Krypton’s primitive times who invents some neat mechanized wings that allow him to fly. But the exhaust forms permanent, instantly deadly trails through the sky. Unfortunately, a thief steals the wings, planning a crime spree. The scientist must defeat the thief and then destroy the wings, because scientific discoveries are dangerous, y’all.

This is followed by a back-up story from Superman’s early days, featuring an early appearance by Superman’s greatest enemy, Lex Luthor.

The story isn’t very good, but does give you an idea of the brutal simplicity of Joe Schuster’s art. Look at Clark Kent’s face here: slashes for eyes and mouth, a blob to model the shadow under his nose.

The story in brief: Luthor has created an atomic ray that melts and softens things. Lois and Clark run across the area where he tested it, full of bendy trees and melted blobs of rock. Lois and Clark escape Luthor’s thugs, so Luthor attacks the Daily Planet with the melting beam, to keep them from publicizing the story until he has perfected the beam and profited from it.

Superman saves the building from collapsing, then goes after Luthor. Luthor zaps him with the beam, and Superman falls onto a power station. The shock from the transformer wakes him up, so he goes after Luthor again. And this time…

That’s the Golden Age. Look at all the stuff that happens in four panels. Luthor has an atomic grenade! Atomic grenade is useless! Luthor’s down for the count, and between one sentence and another, Superman has transported him to prison (conveniently skipping over the idea of a trial)!

Next week, another bizarre Superman storyline from later in the 70’s.

Posted in Out of the Vault | Tagged , , | 1 Comment