The Brown Wedge

The Fantastic Four

We went to see Fantastic Four yesterday and…it was pretty good! Really! It was fine. Underrated even! I’ll leave Pete or one of those, you know, film people to talk about it as a movie, and I’m going to talk a bit about its relationship to the Fantastic Four comics.

My first thought is that the film has been pretty fickle with its source material - this is not one for the purists, with its Sue-and-Doom relationship and metal-Doom and whatnot. Not that it matters: as we discussed in the pub after (those of us who cared, that is), this revisionism was sort of necessary. The FF’s actual origin involves them going into space not to save the world’s children but to BEAT THE RUSSKIES. Also Doctor Doom’s on-panel first battle with the team involves him tricking them back in time to find Blackbeard’s treasure, a frankly excellent motivation but perhaps not one to build a film around.

Anyway, I then realised that the film is actually very faithful to the comics - it just depends which comics you mean. The origin sequences and characterisations are much more like Jim Lee’s 1996 re-imagining of the FF for Heroes Reborn, and the metal Doom echoes the mutated Van Damme from Ultimate FF. The film has magpied from the various versions and origins of the team to leave a Fantastic Four who are probably as screenworthy as they’ll ever be.

Watching the movie some things seem intensely familiar, but something’s missing: the sense of grandeur that Kirby brought to the comics. This is very much Stan Lee’s Fantastic Four, full of squabbles and soap. You could form a checklist: Thing and Torch practical jokes, check. Thing and Torch fight, check. “I’m a monster”, check. Reed being nerdy instead of romancing Sue, check. Thing leaves the FF and comes back ten minutes later - YES!! And even better - Thing turns back to Ben temporarily, O fanboy heaven! Basically the meat-and-potatoes stuff that makes the FF the FF is all here, you need never read one of their comics after this. The Kirby gravy isn’t there, though - the micro-dimensions, planet-eaters, time platforms and great refuges that offset the bits of human business, replaced with a stock villain and an underwhelming fight. If there is a second film, that’s the one thing I’d change.

Rap Poetry Chaucer Yawn

This should not be a BBC News story. Does this Canadian bloke, Baba Brinkman, really think that he is the first person to think of turning Chaucer into a rap?
HAS HE NEVER MET AN A-LEVEL ENGLISH TEACHER.

This is COURSEWORK, not ART.

Expectations: John Wyndham

(I had the idea a while ago of using blogs to talk about my expectations of something before I read/heard/etceteraed it. This would, I thought, be an interesting reference point once I had, uh, consummated my whatevers with it. It might also be awfully boring to read. Hope not, eh?)

My mother read John Wyndham books - Triffids, Krakens, Lichens et al. - and no other science fiction. When I asked her about this she said that John Wyndham books weren’t science fiction. Which reminded me of a bit of doggerel Brian Aldiss quoted -

“SFs no good, they howl until we’re deaf
But this looks good! Well then, it’s not SF”

But Aldiss also didn’t seem to think of Wyndham as ‘real’ sci-fi. In his Billion Year Spree, BA describes JW as a “cosy catastrophe” writer. A sub-genre which seems to bear the same kind of relationship to proper meaty speculative fic as the much-derided ‘English murder’ story does to the crime novel.

What happens in cosy catastrophes is this: a Bad Thing happens to destroy or otherwise upset civil society, specifically middle-class English society. The protagonists then have to struggle for survival, a process which generally involves other middle-class English people and at least one inevitable military lunatic. The book ends with some promise of normality.

There are two basic things you can do with a catastrophe novel. You can use it to demonstrate the fragility of society, or you can use it to show the resilience of man in extreme circumstances. An ur-text for catastrophic fiction is The War Of The Worlds, of course, which takes the pessimistic approach. Cosy catastrophe, I’m led to expect, is more optimistic. So I wonder about the extent to which Wyndham fits this template - how far away from normal are we at the end of things?

(Catastrophe fiction can also be Dire Warnings - vague jeremiads about the greed of meddling man experimenting with what he oughtn’t. I am not sure Wyndham falls into this category - though in the Day of the Triffids at least, he convincingly demonstrates that society is vulnerable to cultivating man-eating plants and then being collectively blinded by meteors).

So what are my expectations? Well-observed character pieces with a smattering of the fantastic for plot motion and titillation, I guess. Time to go down the bookshop and find out…

Black Lois Lane vs Tharg The Mighty

The I Love Comics bestest characters ever poll is underway, and from the votes so far it’s looking pretty interesting. There’s still the best part of a month to vote so if you love comics, give it a go.

Go on, nominate Gnasher

You have until midnight tonight to nominate characters in the I Love Comics BEST EVER CHARACTERS POLL!

Here’s a big list of who’s been picked so far. You get four choices.

Parapuns

There is a bad habit, one which unfortunately I share, of considering things which have only the most tenuous of links as plays on words or puns. Call them parapuns if you will (I will), as they are half-baked and rubbish. An example: well an example from my own writing leaps out at me for the pointless amount of work it made me do. Writing a thriller at the moment, there is a scene where a character comes across and ansamachine with 40 unheard messages. This number was plucked randomly to suggest “a lot”. Then via a comic pratfall one is accidentally erased, leaving 39 messages.

Suddenly the idea of “The 39 Messages” seemed hilarious to me. So much so that I then wrote an entire chapter with the messages in. Needless (though it spun out a few interesting ideas) and more importantly, there is barely a link between the 39 Messages and The 39 Steps. There is nothing there.

But of course mine is not in print and will be excised before it gets to that point. Pity be the publisher who though his stock of Noam Chomsky books were getting a bit high and he though of bundling four of them together. As “The Chomsky Quartet”. Play or words with the Brodsky Quartet, coincidence or just rubbish. Parapun at best.

DR WHO REVIEWS #5: almost all meat’s artificial these days

The Fall of Yquatine by Nick Walters. Eighth Doctor (if you stick with this for long enough you will learn that 8th Dr = ALARM BELLS), Fitz and Compassion.

8th Dr books are the ones you need to look out for. As far as I gather they pretty much fall into the latter category that I mentioned yesterday, of the Who books with serious ARCS and STORYLINES and Capitalised First Letters of each word of Great Portent. They also jettison all comprehensibility for the casual reader, which means you’re either dragged kicking and screaming into reading the lot to find out what the chuff is going on or you throw the book away in disgust.

I of course, have the luck of being the former. CURSE YOU!

Anyway. This being the second in a quite large story arc called ‘the future war’, it’s slightly hard to explain. The Doctor’s original TARDIS has been destroyed. No joke, no gimmick. Gone. His new TARDIS is a half-TARDIS, half-woman called “Compassion”. The Doctor is being hunted down by the Time Lords. No idea why, and not sure if the previous book tells us. DO NOT ASK ME FURTHER, minions. WOTAN SAYS DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH or join me in my madness :)

Thus, the strongest theme I found in the book were the conflicts between Compassion - the being she was before block computational devices turned her into a TARDIS type 120 (yeah yeah I know), and the ‘machine/animal’? that is the Time And Relative Dimensions In Space deus ex machina… unfortunately the book tends to set up the fact there is this conflict, and leaves it at that. A device for the reader to try and draw their own conclusions? Just a very slow burning question? To be fair, if I were a new TARDIS I’d probably not cope utterly well.

Another Compassion theme starts when the Doctor fits a Randomiser to Compassion to try and hide from the Time Lords. Unfortunately, he doesn’t ask Compassion, who is still half human. The subsequent bloody forced extra component drives Compassion furious, and she runs away from the Doctor. To try and remove it, she gets driven mad by pain and ends up killing one of the surgeons she hires to try and extract the Randomiser, which by then had fully integrated itself into Compassion’s body. This has the bonus effect of now not letting her control where she materialises, and she becomes trapped in the Time Vortex.

MEANWHILE! The happy clappy woo and yay planet Yquatine is a very poor anagram of the word ANTIQUE plus an extra y - (do you SEE) - is bimbling away, being the centre of the Minerva System, and the President is keen on taxation routes. As an aside, can I just give a holla out to Dr Who writers - use new ideas please, your anagrams are boring and I’m not just saying that as a Scrabble player. However a Menace is going to Attack the System &c &c. To be fair, they’re quite a creepy menace and there’s a real sense of horror as the planet in it’s first timeline is totally destroyed and acid rain washes down on the devastated planet. But as Monsters remain Monsters and the Doctor remains the Hero, off they pop at the end and I won’t spoil it for you exactly how he does it…

Another split up adventure again! Not having read many books, I must ask if is this entirely normal? The Doctor tries to save the planet, Compassion gets stuck in the Time Vortex with an uncontrollable Randomiser, and Fitz is thrown back in time a month before the planet gets destroyed and works in a bar until the day he knows will arrive serving drinks and pies to all sorts of rather yawnsome aliengs.

One of the great things I always think about Who is happens to be the interaction between the Doctor and his assistants, but the books seem to be trying to take this apart as often as possible - in order to fit in as many different aspects as possible I think they’re actually reducing what makes Who great. The story suffers from being disjointed, a slightly redundant feeling ‘love story’ between the President and a surgically enhanced lady into which Fitz pointlessly gets involved and I’ve been left with the feeling that the book is acting as a sort of “placeholder” to realistically give Compassion some time to adjust to being an actual TARDIS.

On the whole, I judge it decidedly average, but with enough redeeming features for it not to fall down into baaad.

DR WHO REVIEWS #4: We Travel

Cat’s Cradle: Time’s Crucible by Marc Platt. Seventh Doctor with Ace as the companion. Stupid Ace. Hey, whoever said these reviews would be impartial.

I’m starting with this bonkers New Adventure as it’s the next in published order leaving off from Dan’s reviews. The Seventh Doctor isn’t a favourite, Ace is lame to the izzay and to make matters even worse, it starts off by being set in Ealing Broadway. West London! I ask you! Who gives a fig, well NOT I, I’ll tell you that for nowt.

Unfortunately, this is a very very odd one. It’s easiest to think of the book having two strands, one which is significantly interesting (and the reason why I chose to read the book in the first place), and another one far more FSVO “prosaic”. These two strands which Marc tries to weave to form a coherent whole are the stories of pre-Rassilon Ancient Gallifrey (ie the planet of the Time Lords before they were time lords, ruled by an ancient and superstitious matriarchal culture and making their first experiements into time travel itself) and the story of Ace being stuck in GASP! PLANET UNKNOWN, hijinks ensue ect ect.

I say “Ace” only, because the random thing about this book is that for at least a good half, if not more of it, the Doctor doesn’t feature! As Ace wakes up in a dusty and grinding empty industrial City, she’s alone with no TARDIS, no Doctor, but for some reason, a rusty old bike. No, god knows. She eventually meets other prisoners on the planet - amnesiac refugees from Ancient Gallifrey, and their backstory is explained through the eyes of Vael - an angry and powerful Gallifreyan Individual, who had the power to block out the Gallifreyan communal telepathy.

It’s clear that the author has spent FAR TOO LONG thinking about Ancient Gallifrey - hey no bad thing, someone’s got to do it - but it’s disappointing that it all comes together into a complete incomprehensible mish-mash of the “present day” story with Ace as the protagonist and the Doctor … well the Doctor’s tactics pretty much amounted to “burn the big thing and run away”. A sly comment on the Dr’s real actual lack of subtlety behind his oh so clever fancy talk, or just a bit lame? I think I know which side I’d come down on.

However, the pre-Rassilon Gallifrey stuff is amazing and it’s fair to say I completely gobbled it up. I’m a big sucker for Big History backstories, on saying that READER BE WARNED upon reading the Lord of the Rings I took this as far as the Silmarillion and the appendices. Experiencing the curse that sterilised Gallifrey, gaining some idea of the character of Rassilon and most laugh out loud entertainingly - the founding of the bonkers Sisterhood of Karn was just the sort of thing I wanted from the book.

Just a shame I had to go through so much fogged up GUFF to get to it. But I suppose he had to explain the bad TARDIS science somehow.

Another thing that the book explained to me Was the important Of capitalising the First Letter of every Vaguely portentious sounding Word. In the Beginning there was the Process. To be sure, it can be a good tactic, but when sledgehammered into the mind like so, it has the only effect of making you read the book mentally in a big HUUGE AND BOOMING BRIAN BLESSED VOICE.

Luckily, this only appears to be the distracting case in the books which focus more on the Importance of Time and Chaos over ROMPING YARNS with GIN SOAKED TIMELADIES.

Sounds good, you think?

Watch this blog!!

Diggerdydum diggerdydum diggerydum DIGGERYDYDUM

WHO REVIEWS - THEY’RE ALIVE!

Way back in the mists of time, a certain Dan Perry of this Man2Man Parrish stated his intention of reviewing all Dr Who books, in chronological order via publication for the delectation of Brown Wedge Readers. Unfortunately, he managed a mere three of these reviews, leaving your humble Narrator to pick up the threads in 2005.

Dr Who novels and I do not go way back, you must understand. In fact, we are recently very new bedfellows. Yes, of course I’d read Who On Earth Is Tom Baker, CLEARLY I’d read the gloriously violent The Boy Who Kicked Pigs, but books? SURELY THIS IS TOO MUCH.

And then of course, the new series of Dr Who started on BBC1. Ooh Christopher Ecclestone, the ladies sighed. Then it was all, OOOOH, CAPTAIN JACK, which was a free for all between ladies and 51st century guys alike. And then… Gallifrey? DESTROYED? What the fvck? What the fvcking fvck?

Whilst in the pub with PEOPLE WHO SHOULD KNOW BETTER, I asked them thus: is this a book thing? Does that explain it? What happened? Isn’t Romana the president(ess) of Gallifrey? Where? What! What’s happening!

You see, I actually had read one Who book before. 50p in the charity shop, Chris Boucher (one of my fave Who writers on the telly), Tom Baker and Leela story, marvellous. I enjoyed it and then thought no more of it. But that was a one-off! That didn’t affect the Doctor’s life, it was just a JAPE! You mean there are whole ARCS in these things?! Oh man!!

So, investigate I did. I picked one Missing Adventure, one New Adventure, and two BBC books. Please note that my Who reviews will be in no sort of chronological order bcz I reject yr puny timelinesbecause I can only review the ones I’ve actually got and I can’t guarantee the quality.

In that respect, very much like the novels themselves.

ENOUGH BLUB. LET’s BLOG!

Jack-a-boring

So Jackanory is to return. Excellent commissioning work from Alison Sharman, new Children’s BBC controller, ignoring advice and putting something on BECAUSE SHE LIKED IT WHEN SHE WAS A CHILD. We should hope for revivals of Andy Pandy and the Woodentops forthwith (actually she is not THAT old. Think more Xtreme Mary, Mungo & Midge). This commissioning nouse also brought back her favourite Ask The Family, her hunches are not always cast iron.

Jackanory is surely a fantastically cheap programme to make. You need
a) A sleb who can read
b) A book for them to read

Whilst a) might be difficult if Fran Cosgrave is the only level of celebrity you can get, there is still plenty of give in the format. The take is in the fact that actually most kids books only appeal to a smallish subsection of the audience. Therefore a terrific Agerton Sax reading would be followed, when I was small, by some godawful girlie book, or even worse: something about horses (My My Friend Flicka Hell).

None of this explains why it was cancelled in the first place. From a public service point-of-view Jackanory delivers everything but audience. It is interesting the way this is tied to a resurgence in children reading. The reason for this is Harry Potter of course. Ironically, the month Bloomsbury bought Harry Potter was the month of the last Jackanory.

A word of caution though to the BBC. It is ALL about the readers. A good book helps, but there is a reason by Bernard Cribbins did it so often. Oh and Media Guardian: the “I’ll Tell You A Story…” theme tune was dropped in the mid-seventies.