Hey! It’s the Monday Blog…on TUESDAY! That’s just crazy!

I wasn’t feeling particularly bloggy yesterday so I played hooky. But I’m back this morning…at 5:30 am…My cat decided that she wanted to go outside and she wasn’t going to let me sleep until she got to go outside. I love sleeping and when I get woken up a full hour and a half before I have to wake up…well let’s just say I’m not feeling particularly cheerful this morning. My vision’s a little blurry as my eyes are having a hard time focusing this morning. Fun stuff.

This weekend, I finally finished writing the Deema’s Poppa storyline. It’s set to conclude on August 8th. That’s nearly 3 months for a storyline I somehow thought I could fit into a month and a half. Oh silly me! Anyway, I’ve only got two one-shot gags before I dive right into the next storyline which I estimate will last at least two months. (I’ll find it pretty funny if it concludes in less time considering how short I thought Deema’s Poppa was going to be).

The original plan was for the next storyline to be a big summer adventure. Strictly speaking, summer will be halfway over before it even begins and it’ll take a couple of weeks for things to get rolling, so it’s looking more like a fall adventure.

The last two weeks have featured the cast sitting around the dinner table. That made for some crowded shots in some panels. I’m glad that Manga Studio allows for moving layers around so I can maximize the exposure of each character.

I’ve noticed that I’m favoring thicker brushes when drawing. I used to use the .5 mm brush almost exclusively. Now I try to use the 1mm brush as much as possible. It works well for a close-up panel with two characters. More than that, I shift down to a .8mm. The .5mm is still useful for full-body panels with several characters. Whatever brush I’m using, I normally have to shift down a size when drawing Zoë because she’s just so much smaller.

I’ve been having trouble drawing smooth curves lately. If I don’t zoom in as close as possible, I have a lot of trouble drawing Deema’s and Barnaby’s heads which are full ovals. Maybe I just need to change the nib on my pen. I’ve been hesitant to actually change the nib, because I’m worried about what it means if I do and my curves don’t improve. Well, I’m biting the bullet and changing my nib as we speak. We’ll see what happens.

Okay, that’s all for now. Have a good week folks!

For the second summer in a row, La Cité de l’Énergie here in Shawinigan  is putting on a show based on the Amos Daragon series of fantasy books. The author, Byran Perro is a local boy who made good so it makes sense that they’d want to feature his work. Now, to be up front, I have some friends who are extras in the show, so I may be a little biased when I say it’s a good show that’s worth seeing. But it’s really not that bad and worth seeing once, so there.

I attended the preview showing for friends and family last year and again this year. There’s not a whole lot that’s been added so if you saw last year’s show, you’re good. For those of you who haven’t seen it, how can I describe it? It’s an impressive undertaking with acrobats, giant puppets, choreography, animated projections, fireworks and water fountains (it’s riverside).

The sets are large and well designed. Rather than pausing between each act to reset the stage (though the sets do get moved around), the whole auditorium rotates from one set piece to the next as required. I had never seen a show at La Cité de l’Énergie before so the first time the stage moved I was quite surprised. I guess I spoiled it for the rest of you though, didn’t I?

My favorite of the acrobatic acts is the very first one. The others are good, don’t get me wrong, but the first act really wowed me.

I haven’t read the Amos Daragon series of books. From the narration I’d say it feels a lot like a shonen manga in that it seems designed to stretch the story out for as long as possible. Amos, a twelve year old boy (though you’d never guess it from the presentation), is the chosen one who will bring balance to the powers of light and dark. He must collect the four magic masks and the sixteen power stones that fit within them. The masks don’t play a super big part of the story in the play. Amos only receives the one mask and stone here. Perro definitely didn’t reinvent the wheel in the story (he named one of his gorgons Medusa for crying out loud).  Actually, if I were grading the show purely on the story, I’d say stay away. The presentation though is what elevates the material to something worthwhile.

I should add, that the show is in French (we ARE in Quebec). The show starts at sunset, (fireworks and projection and all) rain or shine, and is 90 minutes long with no interruptions so there’s only one presentation per evening. It runs Tuesday through Saturday from July 2 to August 17. If you’re in the Shawinigan area this summer and you enjoy outdoor theatre, stop for the show.

I went to see Man of Steel on Sunday. There were a lot of thoughts running through my head afterward so I decided to expound on some of them here.

First off, I liked the movie. If I had to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, I’d give it a 7. That’s not a overly positive score, but then I said I liked the movie, not that I loved it. I find it interesting that after the movie was over, Frank said that the Man of Steel trailers did nothing for him, but that he was pleasantly surprised by the movie, while Fab said that the trailers really had him looking forward to the movie, but that the movie itself left him disappointed.

It’s worth mentioning that I saw the movie in French. Why is this important? Well, because I didn’t get to experience the actors’ full performances. I got the dub actors’ interpretation of the original actors’ performances. In most cases, I’d say this is a drawback. In a few rare cases, such as most of the acting in the Star Wars prequels, the dubbing is actually an improvement. I can’t imagine the cast of Man of Steel was on that level though I won’t know for certain with Man of Steel until I see the move in English. I will say that the French dub actors’ performances were very good.

Superman isn’t the easiest hero to adapt for the big screen. Heck, he’s not the easiest hero to write for in the comics. Unlike a Green Lantern or a Spiderman however, it’s not because his powers are hard to depict visually. It’s capturing the right spirit that’s a challenge. Superman is an ideal. He’s a hero because he can’t imagine not being one. It’s in his soul. I think that Man of Steel strays from the ideal of Superman to try to make him more relatable.

The movie explores the effect of free choice on a person’s development. In Kryptonian society, people are genetically produced to fulfill certain roles in society. Jor-El, for example, is of the scientist caste, Zod is of the military caste. Jor-El decides that Krypton’s missing out so he and his wife conceive a child naturally (which hasn’t been done in ages). As Kal-El isn’t programmed to BE anything, he can be ANYTHING. Jor-El sends his son to Earth where there is no predetermined fate for a person (well that and Krypton is about to blow up).

Inevitably, people are going to compare Man of Steel to the Christopher Reeve Superman movies. If you go into Man of Steel hoping for a Christopher Reeve-style Superman movie, you’re going to be disappointed. I also think you’re not giving Man of Steel a fair shake. The Christopher Reeve movies were made in a different time. They wouldn’t sell today. Don’t believe me? Look at Superman Returns. You can’t blame Hollywood for wanting their movies to succeed. That involves making some changes to the formula. I don’t have a great attachment to the Christopher Reeve Superman films. I actually find them a little painful to watch today. I think that allowed me to be more receptive to Man of Steel.

Henry Cavill plays a good Superman. Any problem I had with the character had to do with the material he was handed and not with him as an actor.

I’m going to admit something here: I have a crush on Amy Adams. Funny thing is, up until three days before the movie came out I had no idea she was in the movie. I didn’t keep abreast on the casting or production news on Man of Steel and she wasn’t featured much, if at all, in the trailers I saw. It was a surprise for me to see she was playing Lois Lane. After watching her be so sweet in The Muppets and Enchanted, I don’t know that she would have been my first pick for Lois, who’s a much more worldly character. After seeing the movie however, I loved her in the role. Actually, Lois was possibly my favorite thing about the movie. And she’s INVOLVED in this movie.

The problem facing any Superman story is crafting a credible villain. Superman is so powerful that you have trouble believing the villain across from him is a threat unless you throw kryptonite into the mix, but that’s just a crutch. Who can you bring in to face Superman then that won’t require a lot of exposition to set up as credible? Well, how about an evil Kryptonian? All the time spent explaining what Superman can do, serves to also show you what Zod can do.

Michael Shannon brought a lot of menace to Zod compared to the effeminite sophistication of Terrence Stamp’s Zod. There’s a layer to the character. Stamp’s Zod is evil for the sake of being evil. Shannon’s Zod is trying to preserve his ideal Krypton because he doesn’t think anybody else can.

Russell Crowe was solid as Jor-El. I didn’t like the direction they went with for Jonathan Kent (more on that later) and it didn’t help that I don’t care for Kevin Costner at all. Diane Lane fares much better as Martha Kent.

The rest of the cast is just sorta there. They play their part to move the story along and not much else. The exception is Perry White. It feels like they gave him more to do in the final battle because they had to justify casting Laurence Fishburne. It didn’t work for me and the whole sequence should have been cut for time, because…

The movie is LONG. Two and a half hours is too much. It needed to stay under two hours. The problem is that other than the aforementioned Perry White hero scenes, there isn’t a lot of fat to trim off. I’m hard pressed to think of scenes that were completely unnecessary for the story this movie wanted to tell. The best I can think of is that a lot of scenes just go one or two beats too long. You can argue that those beats set a mood, but a superhero movie needs to keep things moving along at a relatively brisk pace.

If they couldn’t trim those mood beats, then they needed to cut back on some of the action sequences. I didn’t really need to see Jor-El zipping around on his flying lizard. It doesn’t add anything to the movie. There are only so many shots of people crashing through buildings a person can sit through before it gets monotonous.

Ironically, I feel that if the movie had been cut down to two hours and then later we were presented with this movie as the director’s cut on DVD, we’d be saying that we couldn’t imagine seeing the movie any other way.

Okay, now to discuss some specific problems I had with the movie. There’s some spoilery stuff here, so be warned.

Remember when I was saying that Superman is a hero in his soul. I’ve always felt that was due to his upbringing by the Kents. Well, in Man of Steel, Jonathan Kent actively discourages Clark from being a hero. He says the world isn’t ready for someone like Clark. Look, he’s not wrong. Society is a lot less trusting than it was back when Superman was created. Somebody that powerful would have a lot of people worried. I just find that this was a case where being “realistic” detracts from the beauty of Superman’s story.

So you know your planet is dying. You have this defeated tyrant that you want to punish. So you agree with the decision to send him into this giant space platform in suspended animation with all of his cronies where they’ll avoid being blown up when the planet dies and end up being the sole survivors of your race (other than your son). Doesn’t it seem like Lara should have pushed for something that was more like a punishment?

Jor-El believes in free will. So he conceives a son and sends him to a place where he can grow up as he chooses, but he leaves a recording that tells him that really, what he wants is for Kal-El to be the Kryptonian Jesus for humanity.

I don’t know where the whole Superman as religious allegory for Jesus thing started. It existed before this movie and it’s carried through in Man of Steel. I don’t buy it. Jor-El sent his son to Earth to save him from his dying planet. Why does it need to be any more complicated than that?

This one is nitpicking, but there’s a scene where the filmmakers decided we needed to know what exactly the Kryptonians were doing. Dr. Hamilton looks at a screen and immediately understands what’s going on. I get he’s smart, but it’s somewhat of a stretch. That’s bad enough, but the army guy standing next to him says something to the effect of “Oh my God! They’re remaking Krypton!” Like he knows what a “Krypton” is! We the audience know, but it doesn’t feel like something HE should be saying. “They’re remaking their own planet,” is a better line. Little things like that just snap me out of the suspension of disbelief. Admittedly, this could be a fault of the dub though.

DC and Marvel have different approaches to their movies. I think Marvel’s movies are more “fun” overall. DC seems mired in making their movies more “realistic”. I will give DC credit for aspiring to do more than just tell a story. They touched on some interesting themes in Man of Steel. It feels like they were more concerned in making an IMPORTANT Superman movie, than an ENTERTAINING Superman movie. I liked the finished product well enough, I just wish they’d taken themselves a little less seriously.