SVK

SVK is a Warren Ellis comic book. The art from Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker is crisp and clean, and the concept behind the project is smarter than anything else available right now.

The titular "SVK", aka Special Viewing Kit, aka Strategic Vigilance Key, allows the wearer to see the thoughts of anyone around him. This is presented as thought boxes trailing from the brain and not the mouth, an extension of the classic comic book tool that has become outdated and outmoded. But instead of anyone being able to see these inner most thoughts, the reader must use their own SVK-- a ultra-violet light that when shined on the pages reveals the thought boxes that have been printed in ultra-violet ink.



Before I continue talking about SVK, a brief moment off topic. I remember a year or so back when Scott Snyder's Vertigo book American Vampire was announced, and Stephen King was involved with a back-up feature that would run through the first arc. I read an interview on The Daily Beast with King, discussing the process of writing a comic book script. King is an old school comic book fan, and his scripts were filled with thought balloons. The following is an excerpt from that interview:

“I got this kind of embarrassed call from the editors saying, ‘Ah, Steve, we don't do that anymore.’ ‘You don't do that anymore?’ I said. ‘No, when the characters speak, they speak. If they're thinking, you try to put that across in the narration, in the little narration boxes.’ ... I think it's a shame to lose that arrow out of your quiver. One of the nice things about the written word as opposed to the spoken word in a movie is that you can go into a character's thoughts. You do it in books all the time, right?”

Apparently, thought balloons are out of vogue with the modern comic book culture. A weird little anecdote, for sure. So SVK embraces this narrative tool wholeheartedly, giving it a modern twist that could have been kitsch and corny, but worked. Reading the thoughts of all these otherwise 2-dimensional characters moved them past what they could have simply been-- boring, staid, undeveloped personalities-- and into the realm of people with dark thoughts and hidden agendas.

Matt "D'Israeli" Brooker is a giant, his work beautiful and well thought out. He carries the weight of the story on his shoulders-- there's only so much invisible ink can do, you know?-- and it's brilliant. Chase scenes flow amazingly, you're there in the flow of it all; fight scenes are kinetic and abrupt-- as they should be. Ellis + D'Israeli (former collaborators on Ellis' 'big break', Lazarus Churchyard) need to do more together. Completely.

SVK itself is set in a Britain post-"incident". Whatever this incident is, we're not given the whole picture. Something big and loud and dangerous happened to the United Kingdom, and everyone's on edge. The main character, Woodwind, is a freelance operative, hired by people who want things doing on the hush-hush. He predicted the incident but his warnings were ignored by the higher-ups in the company he used to work for, and when finger pointing started, he was the first one thrown to the wolves. This act, obviously, made him even more of a cynical, suspicious old bastard that he originally was.

Ellis' main characters exemplify the working class hero, through his work on John Constantine when he helmed Hellblazer, to his earlier work with the creation of Peter Wisdom in Excalibur or William Gravel in the creator-owned Strange Killings series of minis and eventual Gravel ongoing. It enables him to bring his own voice to his work, and for the most part, it works.

The crux of the story is this. The SVK has been stolen, and Woodwind been hired to bring it back. So he goes about it in his own imitable way, but finds that there's more to the SVK than he was first told. It's an intriguing premise, and delivered with the usual aplomb that Ellis usually delivers. To be fair, Ellis has a penchant for going completely off the rails with his projects, his characters becoming grotesque parodies of who they could be. They usually share the same voice, the same sense of humour, and the same personality. It could be construed as a fault with Ellis' work, or identified as his voice, projected loud and clear through whatever the subject matter, but whatever it is, it's tropes like those mentioned that sometimes ruin my enjoyment of his work.

SVK is a done-in-one comic published by design company BERG, and it's a pretty package, beautifully printed and coming with an ultra-violet light. It's compact and sleek and it's everything I expected it to be.

And that's kind of the problem.

Warren Ellis follows a series of tropes in his work. The cynical, hardened "bastard" protagonist. Hard science fiction technology mixing with the real world. The cheeky sidekick. The government being absolutely corrupt. Ellis' work is a product of the era when he started writing comics, back when Thatcher was crazy and genocidal, addled in the brain but hiding it better than Regan. SVK uses every single Ellis trope around. He lifts characters from across his canon and inserts them into a new narrative. Woodwind is Gravel, the same look, the same attitude. Swap "combat magician" with "freelance science-fiction operative" and the deed is done.

The government is corrupt and overbearing, shades of Transmetropolitan bleeding through. They're removing the basic human right of not having someone read your private most thoughts and they'll do anything to get away with it, including murdering the operative hired to retrieve the item that allows you that breach of privacy! The villain of the piece, running a corporation and being devious behind everyone's back... he's The Smiler but sane. Kind of.

I wanted to love this project. I liked it. There was the classic Ellis of sheer beautiful humanity midway between Woodwind's smart arse assistant Bulmer and his mother, and the usual burst of violence that pervades his work. The end was an ambiguous one. Could I read more stories set in this universe? Yes. Was the book worth £10 (+£3 p+p)? I believe so. BERG, with SVK, have revitalised what was considered a tired old narrative tool. The thought balloon has power, when used well. With books from the Big Two (DC and Marvel) the thought balloon is used as a nostalgia tool. I remember Brian Michael Bendis' original Mighty Avengers launch, and the "uproar" when characters had minor asides inside their heads. These are the tools built by the comic book greats of the 30s, 40s, and beyond! Why should comic book writers and editors (and readers!) be ashamed of what came before?

I had an image from a Cho Mighty Avengers issue, but it went away. Bagley fill-in!

SVK was an experiment, and a successful one at that. If I hadn't read any of Warren Ellis' work before it would have blown my mind, but I've read versions of this narrative time and time again. Would a non-fan of Ellis' work pick up this book? Probably not! If a no-name creator had written this it wouldn't have sold out in the three or four days it did. It might not have sold anything; the result could have simply been deigned an oddity of the form. But sold it did, and I'm sure it's being well received everywhere. Deservedly so? At times.

I sometimes wish I wasn't as big a fan of Ellis as I am.

You can purchase SVK here, exclusively through BERG.

Supernatural S1E2 - "Wendigo"

"Wendigo" was quite a good episode, more of a re-pilot just in case you missed the first episode-- you can tell, either way. The exposition is all there again, and the threat clearly outlined after a certain point. And it's scary. It is. You get the creep factor even as you don't see the monster-- and as I pointed out last time around, the fact that you don't see the Wendigo itself (hell, you don't even see it until the last fifteen minutes).

In fact the episode sets itself up early on with the dream sequence that has a major shock that you don't see coming, because it just makes sense that Sam would be there in the cemetery. That shock came from nowhere and I loved it, because it's just... it sets up shop, I think. Supernatural is, as Eric Kripke intended, a horror film week to week, and the structure, the context I guess, is the underlying Winchester subplot. These guys tell great stories, and the characters are really well defined, that you don't care.

So the story mirrors the Winchester's situation perfectly-- a sibling is missing, and needs to be found. Dean seems to notice this, and needs to solve it, but Sam doesn't care. Sam, to be fair, is a complete bastard in this episode, not wanting to babysit, but it's understandable because he's just lost Jess and now their father is leading them on a wild goose chase. That would make me angry, I'm sure.

I like how in the earlier seasons the show really knew its demographic. The young folk always, eventually, believe Sam and Dean, but the old guard, the older generation, they always view them with disdain, and of course, again, rightly so. These guys are running around with fake IDs and causing trouble, people seem to be dying as soon as they arrive. I like that. Sure, as the series as a whole progresses that eschews, but right now it's fitting, and you can't help but enjoy it. It gets more obvious next episode, with "Dead In The Water" and the Sheriff a) being the cause of the ghostly lake and b) trying to protect his family and c) trying to get the Winchesters to leave.

Again, characters are well-defined by their actions-- Sam is angsty still, he takes... well, he's never unangsty, and Dean is a cocky sonofabitch, the fact that he's wearing biker boots to hike into Blackwater Ridge, he's eating M&Ms as supplies, his bravado in the face of the guide, Roy. In the earlier episodes, in fact, it feels like Sam is shortchanged in the character building department, because he's so well defined by his loss of Jessica and his need to find John. That's it. Dean, meanwhile, is fun, he's bouncy, and he's not buried under the broodingness that later becomes him. He's the comic relief to an extent, and with the overarching plot being so damn depressing, it's required.

I don't think it's the best episode, not as good as the first, and not as good as, say, "Scarecrow" or "Provenance", two episode I do quite like, but it does continue to establish the mythology. Watching from the beginning gives you a better sense of things, where the show is coming from, but that's something I'll discuss when I hit "Phantom Traveler".

6/10

Supernatural Reviews

I'm needing to keep myself focused with my writing, so I'm giving myself set aims for the time being just so I keep doing stuff. I'm working on a short film screenplay that I hope to somehow develop, and a few other projects with Mort, so that should be cool, but I'm also slowly going to make my way through Seasons One to Four of Supernatural, and hopefully, when I hit Four the Five boxset will be out. That should be fun. I'm going to write a review for each episode after I watch it, and rate it accordingly on a scale of 1 to 10. How's that for simplicity. Expect the first review ("Pilot", duh) soon. Thanks!

"The Losers" - Review

The Losers is one of the best comic book adaptations that I have ever seen, and full of every single great thing I love in a film, let alone in-between the pages of a Vertigo comic. The original Andy Diggle and Jock book is a superb piece of story telling, but that's not what I'm here to talk about. No. The film takes all the cues from the source material, builds on it, and changes in ways that don't make the overtly familiar viewer resent Hollywood (which was my problem with the recent A Nightmare on Elm Street remake). I enjoyed this film. I really did. I had one problem, and it was minor, so I think I'll get it out in the open first:

There was an over-reliance on slow motion, something that's been rife in film making since 300. Rife in comic book adaptations even. I blame, obviously, Zack Snyder for this. 300 just... mainlined it, and then, since, it's become overused and clichéd, and I just don't enjoy it like I should do. Sure, it did punctuate moments, such as the rocket launcher moment with Aisha near the end of the film, but the sex scene was really... shlocky. It took me out of the story. Shame.

Now, everything else.

The core cast were brilliant. Anyone who knows me knows that I adore Jeffrey Dean Morgan, and turn as Clay was brilliant. Haunted, tragic, funny and full of all the other qualities one needs to be a leader, he lead the cast through every scene, and it was a delight to see him in a fun role after the horror of The Comedian in Watchmen. His relationship with Idris Elba's Roque was one of a few divergences that I adored. In the original comic they were distant from one another, but in this... wow. They felt like best friends from the get, and the betrayal at the end of the second act was a gut punch, even though I knew it was coming. Chris Evans was wonderful as Jensen, filling the role with a sense of humour that was terrible and wonderful to watch. He seems to be really good at inhabiting these roles, and after seeing merely a moment of him in Scott Pilgrim Versus The World as Lucas Lee with That Eyebrow was an air-punching good time. Colombus Short was acceptable as Pooch, kind of the emotional centre of the group but not very watchable, while Óscar Jaenada did exactly the same as Evans and made Cougar bad-ass to the nth degree. Zoe Saldana was enigmatic and capable of flashes of emotion that were impressive... all in all, the main actors behind The Losers feel like they're at the top of their game, and I think the reason I have a reason with Short is that he didn't have enough to do. Sure, he had his moments of bad-assery like everyone else, but it was just... a bit vacuous. Shame.

It was great that Jock's visuals were incorporated into the film itself, with freeze frames punctuating the identities of The Losers. The fact that the screenwriters were comfortable enough to keep so tightly to the source material goes to show that Andy Diggle's original work-- the same kind of respect paid to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in Snyder's Watchmen. I hate a comic book adaptation that is embarrased of what came before. It's why I'm dreading Jonah Hex. I'm terrified of that film. I want to enjoy it, I want to see a "superhero" Western, but apparently they're giving Jonah supernatural powers, and that's not the character. What's the point? The direction as a whole was really strong, and the use of music was fantastic. I adore Journey in any context and Jensen singing along in the lobby? Oh, come on. Partnered with the telekinetic bit, taken from the comic itself? Perfection.

In the original comic book series Max wasn't revealed until the tail end of the run, a mysterious and scary man-in-black that we didn't fully understand. The film makers chose to make him a very real figure, and you can tell that Jason Patric is having a whale of time performing as the villain. He's hilarious, with a hair trigger fuse that is unleashed throughout the piece. The head nod was a great comic moment and the umbrella was obvious and executed perfectly. If The Losers are some of the best heroes a story could have, then Max is one of the best villains.

I loved The Losers, and I'm going to see it again as soon as I can. This film, and I called it within the first ten minutes of viewing, is better than The A-Team remake. It's everything The A-Team is going to want to be. I might be proven wrong, but I don't think I will.

9/10

"The Human Centipede: First Sequence" - Review

Oh, my God.

What...

...what...

I have...

...what?

I've wanted to see this film for some sick reason for months. Since I first saw mention of it, since I first saw some promo images. I've been chasing the internet down to find some way to view it, and now I can... 'happily'... say I have done. And what did I think?

...

Human Centipede, the first of a proposed two-piece film series (ohhhh God), has claimed to be '100% Surgically Accurate'. Okay. That's... something. There was surgery, horrifying surgery, well researched surgery... and I don't think that this was a good film. No. I'm getting straight to the point. It was unnecessary. I don't understand it. It was porn. If you've read my other reviews, you know I detest the term "gore porn", but this... I don't... I just think it wasn't necessary. Who wants to see two women and an angry Japanese dude sown together arse-to-mouth. I don't know. I don't. It was such an aggravating film because it was so weak and flimsy. The main character... Doctor... Heller? Keller? See, I don't even know, it was so weak. The plot follows thusly: Doctor makes a Sweet Three Dog. Sweet Three Dog dies. Doctor wants Human Centipede. Kidnaps people. Makes Human Centipede. Stuff happens. Rectum blood, shitting in mouths, face pus, I just... seriously, I don't know why this was made.

The story telling was shit, and the characters flat. I don't understand why anyone would care about the female victims because they were so damn shrill and irritating. They feel entitled. They're ignorant to the country they're travelling through and don't understand that you can drive on a flat tire (it's just not advisable). There was one moment of character development, without context, that cost me a lot of my caring, right near the end when the film needed it the most. An ill-advised speech that came from nowhere that lead to a very selfish act that made me feel very betrayed by such a shoddy technique. I won't ruin it, because I think you should see it so you can share my anger, but really... why?

The main character of the Doctor was played by a German freak of nature that was actually scary, but I can't remember his name.

See? See my problem? You remember the horror of it. And it's not horrible horror it's visceral, bloody, sticky, I-don't-know-why-anyone-would-want-to-make-this-film horror. I've seen "Saw". I like the story around it. I don't care for the torture. I don't. But I like the story, so I can watch. This had no story. It was flat and flimsy, I can only remember the name of the writer/director (Tom Six?) because I want to punch him in the balls for being a sick freak, and it was not a good horror film. Unless...

...Right. Change of subject time. I hate films where the protagonists don't stand a chance. "Hostel" seems like that, and I don't like the "Hostel" films. People always need to be able to fight back. And this film... when you're sown arse-to-mouth what chance do you have? You're trapped. You're being tortured. And that's it. So if that scares you, then this works as a concept, but it was stupid, it was pantomime, and I could care less.

So, the characters were idiots. I didn't care. The concept is disgusting, and there were maybe one or two moments of strained "Oh. Ha."s that maybe alleviated the overall crushing depression of the film. "You'll be Part B!" caused a bit of a laugh out loud moment, but meh. The characters were idiots. I didn't care. Not going to buy it on DVD (unless it has deleted scenes and a commentary explaining why why oh God why).

So that's my opinion on that. Wow.

3/10

"A Nightmare on Elm Street" - Review

I wanted to love this film so hard. I'm a massive fan of Robert Englund, who has to be one of the best, most "distinguished" horror actors of all time, and the franchise, I have to admit, amuses me to no end. Englund distils a manic, brilliant quality into his version of Freddy Krueger that is both sympathetic (come on, you route for the guy some time) and harrowing, very similar to what Robert Knepper did with T-Bag in the TV-show "Prison Break". You're psyched to see Kruger step into shot because you know he's going to do something awesome, but something was lost in translation when it came to the film I saw.

I'm glad that the team behind the recent remake of "A Nightmare on Elm Street" (the same team behind the "Friday the 13th", apparently) have driven the point home that this is a scary story. Because it is. We're supposed to be safe in our dreams and if I saw a badly dressed burn victim prancing about in my dream scape I'd probably wake up screaming. So that works.

But the thing is, the original "Nightmare" was terrifying in it's own tongue-in-cheek kind of way. Krueger was a monster, yes, and he did awful things (I'm not going to take about the sequels), and you were terrified of him. Brilliant. There were amazing set pieces to that film that burned themselves into your memory, that stayed with you (and countless other film makers after who copied the scares to lesser effect) for years to come. I know that a lot of my knowledge of horror and scares comes from that film-- "This-! Is your God!", the boiler room scenes, the bedroom scene where one of the earlier victims is pulled into the air, the arms reaching out at Nancy... So much awesome that has never been properly repeated to better effect.

The remake was rubbish. It should have been brilliant because it had so much to call upon to make a brilliant film, but no. It was cheap. It recycled the old scenes that I loved from the original and made them rubbish. I can't even construct a logical argument about how much it irritated me, but I'll try. The thing is... this film should stay with you. The first one did. The remake? Not so much. It was a recycling, a bad rehashing, and I wanted more from it. It took liberties with characters that didn't need to be taken, it, at times, felt like a shot for shot retread, and the only scene that stayed with me... was a brilliant "wet dream" bit that was pure Englund. So glad that was there-- my memory of the original is hazy in parts, but it felt like the only new bit that mattered, and even then, I could be wrong. "Nightmare 2010" could actually just be a vapid, two-dimensional void of a film. What a waste? What a money maker. It was unnecessary, and it's only going to act as a sequel machine, a new franchise reboot that the studio can milk until we've all got a bad taste in our mouths.

Now, I can try and be positive. The directing was solid, and the 'dream-scape' transitions made me so happy, because they felt slick and stylish without foregoing the source material. Dissolves and fades, when done right, are some of my favourite directorial tools, because you can't overuse them else they become obvious, so when used, and used well, I fall in love with the film on that basis alone. The dream scenes themselves remind me of some of the best visuals from the "Silent Hill" film, but then again that reinforces the fact that "Nightmare 2010" is so derisory that there wasn't a point in making it.

Jackie Earle Haley is, as ever, a tour de force of energy and fear that you just can't go wrong with casting. He's been my favourite thing in countless projects over the years-- Watchmen, Little Children, Human Target-- and that trend continues here. He's such a small man, and he's so powerful with his ferocity, that I sometimes can't believe it. I'm aware that the film makers made a concentrated effort to get his Krueger's voice away from Rorschach's, but it was a complete failure, because all I could hear was him shouting "WHERE'S MY FACE!" whenever he pushed himself over his vocal edge. Not bad, but when you make such a big deal in interviews that you're trying to make a difference, don't fail at it, yes?

Haley's make-up was daunting as all hell, moving away from the demonic visage that Englund originally brought to the role and going for a more visceral, obvious, burn victim style that was scary as all heck. I mean... wow. Whenever he was on screen I was scared. I'm not joking, it was terrifying to see this man run around with a hole in his face and his mouth barely moving (a flaw, I'm sure, but I could see past it... (well, apparently not...)). It looked like this man was in pain, and you could kind of understand why he was doing what he was doing...

...If you believed he wasn't a paedophile. I loved the doubt. For a moment, you wondered... are they really going to go somewhere different and have it be that he was unjustly killed? God. That would have been daunting, right? But no, the Hollywood cop-out ensued and he was a dirty kiddy-toucher... a role that Haley seems to be dominating recently, have you seen "Little Children"? Wow. I mean, his Fred Krueger, pre Molotov-ing, was that creepy/kind loner that he's masterful at. I don't think I could stop praising his acting. Haley plays sociopath to the hilt, and I wouldn't have it any other way. And the twist that Freddy was luring his victims into remembering him more so he could exert more influence over them was brilliant, I think that's a new twist that I quite enjoyed. And the way he was pushing Nancy harder and harder so she'd go into a coma? Brilliant.

Oh, and speaking of Nancy...

The worst thing in the film were the protagonists. I don't have any love for the new breed of actors that have come out of television recently... Kyle Gallner has appeared in "Smallville" and then had a major role in "A Haunting In Connecticut", so he had the chops, but he was just... no. Hated him. AS Nancy, Rooney Mara was doing something awful with her mouth that made every line delivery an incessant drawl that pushed me near over the brink of insanity. For some reason the writers stripped the Nancy character of any strength until the very end... she cowered and she cried, but the original Nancy attacked Freddy with a pipe, I'm sure of it. Maybe that's me misremembering, but what was the point of this film at all?

5/10

Hello Darkness, My Old Friend.

First Psychotronik Comics Presents #1 review now online here (scroll down), check it out, tell me what you think! Here's something I found pretty awesome:

“The Lucifer Cage: The Day the Earth Went Away.” by Charlie Wilkins and Craig Cermak is my second favorite of the four tales in this collected crypt of Comic Related horror. Once again perfectly placed in the book. Starts out very strong...but then falls a little short with a story that ends up relying on a plotline very much in the vein of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser films.

I did think that the photo of writer Charlie Wilkins hanging with the Man Behind the Mask…Mister Alice Cooper was pretty freakin’ cool.


I was surprised at how young Charlie was…..in two ways. That a guy like him gets into music like Cooper….extra-points just added to your coolness score, Charlie…and a guy as young as he is…writing stuff like Lucifer’s Cage…more coolness points. This young man has a lot of time to grow into the writer he hints he can become with this story.

I have never seen Hellraiser. Always wanted to, never got round to it. The point he’s talking about (the box) is named after Danzig's second album Danzig II: Lucifuge, and then wikpedia’d about, but it’s an awesome piece of criticism, and everything negative he talks about is something we were aware of and working to fix. I am happy like a little girl!

Follow the link for a Podcast which involves an interview with Brandon Herren, the mastermind behind Psychotronik, and Chris Paugh, the wacky sidekick (if you're reading this Chris, you know I jest...), and realise that all this talk of me being a published writer? Not bull shit.

Brilliance.