If you’re not particularly interested in comics and especially the formal elements behind what makes comics work, you’ll probably be bored by this awesome essay. I wasn’t though. Jeff Smith is pretty amazing at what he does, and it was nice to see why.  Also “Josiah” is about as cool as it gets as far as first names go, although I personally think that “Optimus” is pretty good too.

I think I found this through either Tom Spurgeon or Sean Collins, but I can’t remember, so I’ll just link to them both. No wait, it was actually Journalista, now that I think about it. If only there were some way I could “undo” those links–maybe soon technology will find a way.

Before I begin, it is important for me to make the point that I am not in any way educated, know next to nothing about film theory, and am utterly in awe of anyone who can wrestle a film crew and 3 months of often incredibly boring sweat into ANYthing, regardless of the relative quality of the product. But this movie provoked so many different streams of thought in me I thought it would be ridiculous not to think harder about them, and I’m too vain not to share. Please presume that my intentions are mainly self-educative, and only very slightly in trying to make myself look more clever.

OKAY! With that out of the way:

The Prestige has some good qualities, for sure, but they are largely drowned out by the indefatigable mediocrity of the movie in general. I was especially surprised at the overpowering so-so-ness of it, mainly because I’d heard so much good stuff about it. Probably the best part of the movie for me was Christian Bale, who I think I’ve liked in everything I’ve seen him in, although I don’t think I’ve ever seen him in a really GREAT movie. Where most actors do “brooding and pensive” by just sort of squinting at things more, Bale has a real intensity on film that pulls the story around him a little bit, whether he’s the good guy or the bad guy.

I’m not here to smear the movie. It’s not necessarily BAD, although anything that costs millions of dollars to make should always be GREAT, right? Right? And even if it’s not, if you’re going to poo-poo one movie, there are probably a few thousand worse ones that you need to get to first. But my problems with The Prestige are more focused than normal, and in most cases relate to what–even to a total amateur like myself–seem like egregious and needless mistakes in storytelling.

TOTAL SPOILERS BELOW.

The main problem with the story, and the uber-problem that it’s smaller problems orbit around, is patent unbelievability. The plot hinges on the idea of a magic trick as both a metaphor and a very real plot device–but fails on both counts to deliver anything like its promise.

First the metaphor, the idea of “the prestige”, the part of a trick where the effect of the illusion is produced, and even the most cynical skeptic is forced to wonder at the skill of the illusionist. At the beginning of the movie, when Michael Caine is pretty much just straight up telling us what the movie is all about in one of many many convenient expositional voice-overs, I was kind of excited. I love this sort of thing, and am the sort of person who LOVES to be surprised, and is not at all interested in knowing how a trick is performed. I like the magic, y’know?

But the great failing of The Prestige is that EVERY trick is explained. From the lowest where-did-that-bird-go trick to the big trick(s) at the end, and everything in between. And so, in a movie that ostensibly is about magic, and more specifically about how that magic drives everyone in the movie completely nutty, you’re left with no feeling for the magic itself. I can’t think of a single thing I walked away from that movie wondering about–isn’t a movie a sort of magic trick in itself? The Prestige lacks wonder. 

Okay, now the non-metaphor, although it too is wrapped up in metaphor.  One of the numerous “main” questions of the film’s plot revolves around how the Christian Bale character is pulling off this nutty trick.  The answer:  there are two of him.  If you haven’t seen the movie, I may have just ruined it for you.  Or if you’re like me, you figured it out barely halfway through the movie, and then spent the second half dreading it–”could this really be the answer?”  And again, I’m not the sort of person who is trying to guess endings and stuff.  I like to relax and be stupid when I watch movies. 

Even worse, when this big “prestige” is revealed, it is almost immediately trumped by the other “prestige”–you can see the diminishing returns at work here, I bet–which is so bizarre that it renders the first one completely forgotten.  Oh yes–and this one is ALSO revealed much earlier in the movie, so the “reveal” itself is highly anticlimactic. 

DOUBLE SECRET SPOILER WARNING!

Here’s the thing:  halfway throught the movie, the Hugh Jackman character convinces Nikola Tesla to create a big sciencey device for him, although he has no idea what it does, nor does he even ask.  Check it:

You don’t have to be the Amazing Kreskin to figure this one out, y’know? Tesla builds a device (twice?) that can basically duplicate a thing completely, plus conveniently send that duplicate off a little ways so you don’t see it right away. Organic matter? No problem. Thoughts, memories, the soul itself?  No problem!  The audience’s suspension of disbelief?  Well…

Because what does noted scientist Tesla do?  As the terrible henchman of cruel Thomas Edison himself are about to burn his laboratory to the ground?  He packs up this incredible device and gives it to this obsessed lunatic magician, and then trundles off in a stagecoach somewhere, possibly whistling “Lady Stardust.”

For me, this was the end of the movie.  The leaps of logic necessary to get to the next phase, where Hugh Jackman is setting up his big prestige using this fantastic Jules Verne device, were maybe too great for the spindly legs of my imagination.  Which leads me to the other big problem I have with this movie:  the lack of any motivation for ANY character.

I like characters.  I like books where the author creates a character so vivid that you are forced almost against your will to love or hate them, or often both.  You identify with a character; you can understand and often sympathize with their motivations, and it adds depth not only to that character, but in the world that they inhabit.

But in The Prestige, we are asked again and again to believe that each of the main characters will do extraordinary things for no reason.  And each time we are asked this, it becomes harder and harder to suspend disbelief. 

For instance:  for part of the movie (or all of it?) Hugh Jackman is motivated by the accidental death of his wife by Christian Bale’s hand in a trick-gone-wrong.  Motivated so much that he blows off part of Bale’s hand later, and the two immediately just start trying to kill/maim/ruin each other from then on.  Bale never says, “hey bro that was a total accident I tried that rope and she winked at me to do it and then well you saw what happened anyway sorry.”  Instead they decide to spend the rest of their lives trying to ruin each other over it.  I could buy it if this was the only big leap–in fact, if it was the big leap of faith in the movie, it might seem more possible.  I certainly have done ridiculously petty things for almost no reason before.

But the lengths to which they go beggar the imagination, for such a slight.  Not to mention that Hugh Jackman takes up with Scarlet Johannsen in short order, and mentions of the dead wife pretty much stop after that.  Christian Bale chops his (secret) twin’s finger off so they can switch places, and then spends the rest of that twin’s life switching back and forth so he can appear to be teleporting onstage.  Whaaaaaat?!  Hugh Jackman, who somehow makes an incredible sum of money offscreen at some point, spends months in another country convincing the world’s foremost scientist to invent 12 different brand new technologies so that he can really zing his great rival. 

And apparently, Hugh Jackman will drown himself over and over and over again in order to make this work.  So he’s so driven that he will KILL HIMSELF nightly BY DROWNING in order to “win.”  Really?  Because of some dead wife he’s already forgotten?  At the beginning of the movie these guys are little more than magician’s apprentices, but we’re supposed to believe that they’re infused with some love of magic so great that they would bend time and space itself to have the best trick?  I don’t buy it. 

In short, the “prestige” of The Prestige, the moment(s) around which the plot of the movie turned, were so dumb as to retroactively render the entire movie inert. 

I have a lot more to say about this, but I will have to save it for Part 2.  I still have drawing to do this morning.

Losing your job can be tough, for sure. And in these times of trouble, many are finding themselves suddenly, often disastrously, unemployed. But how much harder must it be when your place of work is a secret base inside of a volcano? Hm? You didn’t think about that, did you?

Well, I did. Thanks this week to my main bros Chris Holston and Elroy Sugarthroat of Bullship for help with my acronym. The strip was originally going to be entitled “E.V.I.L., Inc.”, but then one of the students in my comics class said there’s ALREADY a popular strip with that name, so I had to punt yesterday. For their assistance, they have earned a six-pack of refreshing Miller Lite, to do with what they may. Congratulations also to Elroy on the recent birth of his GORGEOUS daughter Ruby Luna, who was such a delight to hold on Wednesday that I totally missed the entire Lost premiere.

In a new series (which will likely run 3 or 4 installments and then fizzle out, like all my other series) entitled “Portraits of Greatness,” I am focusing the laser-like beams of my gorgeous blue eyes on historical figures of yore. In this case, this yore goes all the way back to the humble-but-dramatic beginnings of the United States.  Check it out.

George Washington was the very first president of America, and by all accounts quite a good one. Who can say though–it’s hard to imagine a war steeped more in legend than the American Revolution. Nor a figure more legendary than Washington himself–in this day of instant information, I wonder how different these first years of the nation would appear.

I must say that I robbed the Wikipedia article on Washington pretty liberally, so thank you to the entire Internet for helping with this one. I also learned from this article that a) Washington did NOT have wooden teeth, which was personally disappointing to me; b) the famous I-cannot-tell-a-lie story is also bogus, which I don’t care so much about; and c) he freed all his slaves upon his death.

This last is interesting for two reasons: one is that Washington was one of the wealthiest persons in the entire country when the Revolution started, and owned at least 100 slaves. It may just be my own predilection for hating rich people, but it’s more impressive to me that a rich person put his personal wealth on the line to fight in a revolution, AND that this same person freed his slaves at the end of his life, which on the surface seems very altruistic. Washington was apparently edging toward being an abolitionist toward the end of his life.

On the other hand, it was also a somewhat political decision–due to slavery laws in Pennsylvania and other mid-Atlantic states, owning slaves was problematic from a purely profit-based standpoint for a figure in Washington’s position, and his own slaves were getting older and thus more expensive to maintain. Ah, the problems of wealth!

Okay, I’ve smeared the guy enough already. He has a lot of favorable things, too–to me the best being his bravery and tenacity in the face of occasional shocking failures. To be so wealthy and to risk it all for your ideals is admirable. But to then do so again and again despite privations and misery is more heroic.

I have been thinking a lot lately about Barack Obama.

What is it that made Americans vote into office this largely untested, unproven man? This young man–what is he, like 47?  That’s like a baby in political years, I think.  And of course, most surprisingly, this black man.  The son of a Kansas woman and an African immigrant? 

I am not a person who thinks much about politics, and even when I do, I am at heart a pragmatist.  Which is to say, beating up on George Bush or his mistakes is just boring and unproductive:  I am not someone who is extreme or passionate in his political opinions.  I remember mocking the tax refund back in 2001, and then gleefully spending it the very instant my check arrived.  I could probably easily be convinced that invading Iraq was the right thing to do, if I thought it would help me put a down payment on a house or make me [even more] attractive to women.

So I have been surprised to find myself such an ardent and passionate supporter of Barack Obama, who against all odds was elected President a couple of months ago.  But I have been even more surprised at the number of other people, many of them far far less obviously “liberal” in their political thinking than I am, who also have found themselves not just supporters, but enthusiastic supporters, of this man.

I can figure it out for myself, I think–as a pragmatist, the way Obama has already made it clear he plans to work with conservatives rather than against them is very exciting to me.  You can complain about all the things you would have gotten done if only the other side hadn’t blocked you, but compromising a little and actually getting things done is way better.  His lack of interest in chest-beating, in name-calling, is refreshing almost to the point of being alien, at least compared with many of his forebears in the political arena. 

But the thing that is harder to figure out is the emotional power of Obama.  The thing that turns me and millions–seriously, think about it, millions–of people into supporters.  The thing that causes what, 60 or 70 thousand people to show up for a speech?  In Germany?  And while he was still only a candidate, not the designated president-elect?  The thing that made people stand in line for hours and hours just to early vote.  The thing that has people still excited even though the country is deep in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression?

Barack Obama is a STATESMAN. It was politics that put him where he is, and it will be politics that allows him to push policy through Congress and effect the sort of change he was voted into office on–politics that is often ugly and cynical but (apparently) necessary in our idiosyncratic system. But it’s Obama’s Buddha-like calm, his unnerving confidence, his palpable sense of force that makes us listen.  It’s the way he speaks honestly, and then stops talking when he’s done speaking honestly. 

Not since Martin Luther King Jr himself has a single man of any race been able to capture the hopes and imagination of the world in such a way.  Not since the mighty final chorus of King’s great speech have so many people believed so strongly in a man.  Not since Martin Luther King Jr was gunned down in cold blood, in a decade where it seemed all great men met this fate, has such a redemptive voice of peace held such sway over so many.

Next week Barack Obama will be inaugurated President of the United States, and the hopes of an entire nation will walk up the steps and take that oath with him.  This is the first epochal moment since 9/11, the first moment that history will look back on and differentiate clearly between “pre-” and “post-.”  From this moment on, every child born will be born into a world where a black man, the son of an immigrant and a single mother, can become the most respected man in the world, and hold the highest office in his country. 

For better or worse, I believe in this man as well, and above all else wish him safety and success.  This one voice let us keep for a little bit.  And in the spirit of Obama, I wish myself the grace and tolerance to be patient with the man when he has to make odd decisions for the greater good.  If there’s anything we need right now, it’s surely greater good.  Godspeed, Barack Obama, and rest in peace Dr. King, the intellectual antecedent of our next President.  I can’t tell you how pleasurable it is to describe him thus.

Ah, science fiction. Or if you prefer, “speculative fiction.” Throughout the 20th century–and indeed, into this 21st century we are in the early midst of now–science fiction has provided a platform for the feverish and far-reaching imaginations of our most brilliant, often most socially awkward thinkers. And generally bearded, in any case.  The thinkers, I mean.

And now, into this long and glorious tradition, which includes names like Phillip K. Dick, Frank Herbert, and Jules Verne, I add my own. Witness my entry into this exciting new world, with the creation of a new world, one set in the future, one where humans can be cloned from their very DNA!! Now that your pulse is racing and your mind has been blown, I invite you to travel deep, deep, into the heart of time and space itself, where light itself is bent and broken under the awesome gravity of the universe’s center!

Witness: SUPERGENIUS IGNATIO ABELARD!!

Dylan Chorneau is one of my oldest and best friends in the world, and about as close as you can get to a brother without being one, speaking as someone with two actual “real” brothers. I have a pretty tremendous group of friends, not only for just being sweet people, but for being ridiculously talented. But even in this impressive group, Dylan stands out as a guy who’s just DRIPPING with raw talent. Dylan’s the kind of guy who just has a lot of talent lying around in little piles on the floor, and occasionally will decide he wants to pick some of it up and shape it into something. And so he does.

Case in point: I’m not even mentioning the fact that Dylan is an incredible painter who works in pretty much any medium he can find, and can talk to you without blinking about the various methods of the Dutch masters or Velazquez, for hours. Okay, so I just mentioned it; but the point is that I’m ONLY focusing on his photography here, and I think he’s only been taking pictures in an applied way for the last year or so, give or take.

The one at the top is a portrait he recently took of another friend of ours’ children. I mean, look at it. Jeez Louise. Especially if you knew these kids–the idea that they stood this still for ANYthing is pretty extraordinary. But even better is the looks on their faces. These kids have some pretty magic DNA running in their veins already, and Dylan caught some of it here. He’s the kind of guy who approaches a portrait as a PORTRAIT, which I don’t think many people do anymore.

So for the last several months, Dylan’s been carrying this medium-format camera around with him, and he’ll just stand around and quietly snap pictures of people. The camera itself is a curiosity not only because of its shape and deceptive “old-timiness”, but because it lacks something that every other camera and phone in the world, or at least in most bars, etc., lacks: a digital screen on the back where the subject can IMMEDIATELY check out how they look. And/or criticize the picture: “Oh, you gotta delete that one, you gotta delete it. Let me try again.”

So it makes it even more remarkable when, a couple of weeks later (after he’s actually DEVELOPED THE FILM [???!!???]), one of these little photos will appear on Flickr. The fellow above is named Keith; Dylan and I talked to him at a New Year’s Eve party, and when Dylan took his picture, he made that face. It takes a certain kind of dude to wear that expression for a picture at a New Year’s Eve party, and I only point that out because Keith was super friendly, and Dylan and I talked to him for awhile.  But the weird thing is, Dylan took ONE picture. ONE! And it came out. That’s the kind of dude Dylan is, maybe (that’s him, below).  Dylan Chorneau is a one-click dude.

So anyway, Dylan is, in the words of Charles Bukowski, “my buddy out of nowhere,” and I thought I’d sing his praises a little bit. It’s certainly more fun to talk nice about my friends than most other things I could write about. Check out his Flickr stream for dozens more pictures, most of which are just as nice as these. And if you snoop around a little, or just click this link, you’ll come across some of his paintings, which are equally if not more amazing. You may thank me below.

Matchstick Menis not a good movie. It was boring most of the way through, all the plot twists make the movie worse, not better. Literally each time–”oh, now it’s worse again.” It’s a dumb premise, and the “daughter” in the movie is so Lolita-ish that you spend most of the time wondering if her and Nicholas Cage are going to start making out. Well, I did, anyway.

And the ending was so awful that I felt betrayed by Nicholas Cage himself. As if all the promise and miracle of Raising Arizona had been squandered for all time by his part in this movie. And maybe a couple of others, truth be told.

This was an excellent use of the Netflix “instant” queue. Thank you Xbox 360.

There was ONE good scene in this movie, and YouTube has kindly furnished it for us. See above. For a scene from a GREAT film starring Nicholas Cage, see below, although he isn’t in it.

My intense love for this cartoon makes me want to make some pretty hyperbolic statements. Even now, even two sentences in, I’m still struggling. It’s too hard for me to separate in my mind the INTENSE nostalgia and just… satisfaction this thing brings out in me, from a more critical (and still satisfied) adult perspective.

For one thing, and in a somewhat bizarre but entirely appropriate coincidence, I’m finishing Neal Stephenson’s novel Anathem right now, which is all about causality, quantum theory, polycosmic so-and-so. So it’s hard to watch a cartoon that is, at its heart, a long sequence of cause-and-effect events, strung together over one of the funkiest backbeats I think I’ve ever heard.  It’s hard to imagine the novel and the cartoon being any more different, but if I could include both in a mixtape, well…  But I’ll say more about Anathem in another post.  I’m having enough trouble describing this cartoon.

While its usually hard to remember how something felt when you were a kid, I can watch this and instantly go back to seeing it 30 years ago, marvelling at how right each successive event was.  While I don’t have OCD, I do take intense, often time-consuming and distracting pleasure in organizing things, filling out forms, basically putting things in their places.  And while I’ve never really enjoyed getting high, going “out of my head”, et cetera, when I was a kid this was like getting high to me.  This cartoon was like an OCD birthday party:  basically dozens of shots of things happening JUST BECAUSE, the way they were supposed to, the ball each time finding its way into its various temporary homes. 

WHAT IN THE WORLD was the chain of events that created this cartoon?  Besides the animation itself, right out of some back page in The Push Pin Graphic, there’s that extraordinarily funky music.  Is that the funkiest backbeat ever?  Hard to say, but GOOD GOD, I can’t get it out of my head.  I don’t want to get it out of my head.  Can you imagine being part of the group of people that made this?  Sitting around the table saying, “and then a monkey jumps out of the elephant and tees the ball up; maybe Teddy Roosevelt can catch the ball in his mouth?”  Someone in the comment section at the Youtube post says that it’s THE POINTER SISTERS singing?  If this came out today, it would cost 20 million dollars, win an Oscar, and launch its own line of merchandise.  But in the 70’s it was just 2 minutes and 42 seconds on The Electric Company (or Sesame Street, maybe both), broadcast to a bunch of 4 year olds, each of whom stored the memory somewhere deep and secret, to be unearthed and treasured periodically for the rest of their lives.

Unearth this:  the last 10 seconds of the thing MIGHT be among my favorite pieces of art of all time.  I know, it’s crazy.  But if you judge art based on its power to inspire, to mystify, and most of all TO PLEASE, something about the end of this cartoon hits me deep, somewhere in my lizard brain.  Almost as if I’ve been there, almost as if I’ll be back soon. 

TWELVE!

Ah the New Year. I have mentioned elsewhere how excited this new year, still only 5 days old, completely without expression and unable to do much more than squint, drink milk, and look pink, has made me. Normally I don’t bother with New Year’s resolutions, especially now that I’ve quit smoking. But something about this year, which I have decided will be the Year of the Dharbin, is really getting me all jazzed up inside.

It has been a long ugly time since I was excited about the future–it has usually seemed like a place to batten down the hatches in preparation of; less a place you can’t wait to enter. And regardless of how preposterously silly it is to give into this childlike excitement, give in I shall nonetheless, and I’ll stick my thumb in your eye meanwhile if you give me any more of that sass lip.

And if I think that such a year demands not one but SEVEN resolutions, then that is my call to make. My friends, this after all is the Year of the Dharbin. Enjoy the strip, and please feel free to chime in below with your own resolutions, which I will greet with excitement and enthusiasm, as they deserve.