Comicsgirl

Tank Girl DVD Buy at Amazon

This was a part of a failed attempt to do another comic-book movie double feature through OnDemand, but I decided I really didn’t need to see Batman Forever again.

I really sort of thought I hated Tank Girl. Well, maybe “hate” is a little strong, but the bits and pieces I’d seen of this movie before didn’t really make me want to watch it all the way through.

I don’t know if I’d exactly call it “good” even now. But I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.

The plot is standard post-apocalyptic stuff — band of surviving outsiders fights against the evil powers that control everything — but honestly, that there is even a plot is pretty much secondary to everything else here — the Burning Man aesthetic, the soundtrack full of awesomely angry women and Lori Petty running around being insane as she plays Tank Girl. While the production values are pretty much straight out of a cheap British sci-fi TV series, it serves the movie well — it’s fun, ridiculous and pointless. Tank Girl changes clothes and hairstyles constantly and usually inexplicably. There’s a random musical scene where Tank Girl forces everyone to sing Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall In Love.” Her quest to save her young friend Sam is what drives most of the movie, but it definitely feels like an afterthought.

While Tank Girl and Jet Girl suffer harsh treatment at the hands of men, they’re never broken. The men (even bad guy Malcolm McDowell) are all pretty ineffectual. And it’s delightful to see a movie where women aren’t pining over or pursuing men (yes, the girls hook up with the mutated kangaroo Rippers, but that’s kind of just happens and not much is made of it). It’s not so much a “girl power” movie as much as it is a movie about women just being women (although one’s more than a little crazy). I liked the transformation — as obvious as it was — of Jet Girl from a mousy, put-upon girl to someone who was confident and capable. (And I was also delighted to see how many women worked on the movie.)

I know the movie doesn’t have much to do with the comic and I’ve read the Alan Martin and Jamie Hewlett didn’t have the best experiences with it, but I liked how integrated the comic art was in the movie. It definitely gave the movie a trippy, self-aware quality that made it work. If this movie took itself seriously, it would not have been nearly as fun.

So I didn’t hate it. I had fun watching this. It’s nothing I’ll necessarily seek out again, but I’m happy to have watched it all the way through.

Not a clip from Tank Girl, but the video for Gorillaz’s “19/2000.” It’s related enough and it has Miho Hatori.

Blue Monday Vol. 1 The Kids Are Alright Buy at tfaw.com!

This is sort of half-review, half-revisit. One of my former roommates loved Chynna Clugston and had several volumes of Blue Monday around. I probably read The Kids are Alright for the first time six years ago and enjoyed it, but I kind of forgot about it. Then a friend left it for me and I decided to see if it was what I remembered.

I was a young teenager in the early 1990s, but I was a bit more of the introspective grunge/goth mode than the cool mod kids featured here. Still, I can obviously identify with the time period.

This time around, reading it, it struck me as a little dated. I think some things are pretty timeless — Clugston’s manga-inspired art is likable and animated and her teenagers are the right mix of vulgar and innocent — but I felt a little old for it and I was wondering if the audience who would get the most out of this book now would have any clue who Adam Ant is or why Bleu would care so much about seeing him in concert (I do not underestimate teenagers’ knowledge of history, pop culture or otherwise, but today’s teenagers were still toddlers when Adam Ant’s Wonderful came out. I just wonder how much they’d actually care). I guess the storyline that six years ago felt a little bit more immediate just feels sort of irrelevant now.

Still, there’s a lot I like about this book. The girls trashing their friends’ house is a fun sequence and the implausible slapstick keeps things light, as is the teasing interplay between the girls and the boys. This definitely reminds me of how my high school friends and I interacted with each other. Clugston paces her story well and the page layouts are inventive. Ultimately, though, it wasn’t as entertaining as I remember it.

For me, it works as a nostalgia piece — reminding me of when I was a teen, and also the state of mind I was in when I first read it — but it doesn’t do anything for me now.

I’m glad, though, that Clugston is revisiting these characters in new Blue Monday stories. They’re great characters. But they’re maybe just not for me at this point in my life.

Creator Tim Broderick writes about taking his daughters into the comic book store and having them not see much that appealed to them, even comics like Wolverine: First Class, which are supposedly intended for them.

I’ve been in some good comic book stores — even when I was a young teenager, I remember going into one of our local stores with my brother and the staff was always nice to me and let me feel like I belonged there. I like the casual coolness of the area’s Big Planet stores and I certainly adore the boutique vibe of Isotope Comics in San Francisco. And yes, I’ve been in some bad comic book stores — ones where I’ve been ignored because I was neither a boy (of any age) nor a mother so I didn’t register. I’ve been in your stereotypically dusty, dimly lit stores.

But this isn’t so much about comic book stores. This is about what’s in them.

I don’t tend to think of teenage girls as of one mind — I was watching The X-Files and not Dawson’s Creek as a teenage girl. Yes, maybe I would’ve been inclined to pick up Wolverine: First Class because I liked both Kitty Pryde and Wolverine. But that was me. That’s the kind of teenage girl I was. I would not say I was typical.

Quite possibly, it’s an excellent title for teenage girls (although Broderick said his daughters didn’t care for it) but as he pointed out:

Even “First Class,” supposedly written for girls and targeted to that audience, featured an aggressively-posed Wolverine – claws out with a grimace on his face – while Kitty Pryde, supposedly the narrator and main character, was secondary.

He then compares it to the cover of the book Twilight (oh, our favorite easy example of Twilight) as well as the movie cover. Both are romantic and a little mysterious. Put side by side with the cover of Wolverine: First Class, I think the choice for most teenage girls is pretty clear.

There are wonderful comics for girls out there. But if they’re not presented in an appealing way, how are teenage girls going to pick them up? (Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane seems like it did a little bit better in terms of appealing to girls. I don’t know how many girls read it, though). And this is even if you get them into the comic book store in the first place (but that’s something of another matter).

Lots of buzzing today about ABC ordering a pilot based on the comic Fables. I’ve only read a bit of Fables, but I liked it, and I think it could work as a series, if done correctly (but can’t we say that about most adaptations?).

I do think the TV format is better suited to comics than movies — after all, both are serial. Stories can develop over time and everything doesn’t need to be packed into two hours. Still, they’re a commitment and I think we’ve all drifted away from a TV series after a while. Of course, we do that with comic book series, too.

I’d like to see this work so I’m going to hope for the best

Since it was a somewhat snowy night and I seem to lack in plans, money, and well, friends, I decided to make good use of Comcast OnDemand since I pay for it (well, it comes with the digital cable, which I do pay for. You know what I mean). Lacking in the aforementioned money, I stuck to what was free.

I picked two movies, both based on comic books. First up was Elektra from 2005 (Buy on Amazon).

I somewhat apologetically like this movie. Yes, I know it’s not very good, but since it basically has TV-level production values, it does play better on the smaller screen (but yes, I did see it in theaters). I think Jennifer Garner gives the role much more gravity than it deserves and really, I don’t think it would be better with someone else in the role. I liked the girl-power message, as cheesy as it was. The effects aren’t great, but there are a few good action sequences. I was, admittedly, working on a couple of projects while I had this on, but it made for good background entertainment.

It always felt like a TV pilot to me so I always kind of wished the story of Elektra and Abby got to continue and I still do. I know that not much of it had anything to do with the actual comic-book character of Elektra, but so what? This is, by no means, a great movie, but I don’t think it’s nearly as terrible as people made it out to be.

(And I’d personally love to see an Elektra animated movie from Marvel. I know there’s little chance of that happening, but still. It would make me happy.)

Here’s a clip via YouTube:

Next up was Art School Confidential (Buy on Amazon), based on the comic by Daniel Clowes.

I basically hated this movie.

Let’s start from the beginning. I went to a small school that was in a town called Farmville. Yes, Farmville. It’s about what the name implied (although with a somewhat troubled history). I’m not claiming my college experience was typical — while I hung out with a lot of art and theater majors, a big night out for us was drinking a couple of Miller Lite tallboys and listening to a Bill Hicks CD — I do feel like I was surrounded by people who were interested in learning about the world.

I am a fan of Ghost World — the movie, and to a lesser extent, the comic (I think the movie is better). I am not a particular fan of Daniel Clowes but I respect his work. I have not read the comic that Art School Confidential is based on, so I cannot compare the two. But I severely disliked the movie. If I hadn’t already felt committed to this blog entry, I would’ve stopped watching it.

It begins as a parody of academia — certainly, we all know that colleges are filled with obnoxious pseudo-intellectual people, don’t we? But did any of us actually run into these people at school? I personally knew a lot of great artists. Maybe they were pretentious, but I felt like they were trying to say something and had the space to do so.

Perhaps what I disliked the most about this movie was that it was all about the boys. And that’s not always a bad thing — there are plenty of good movies about men out there. But this felt like it didn’t take any of the women’s view into account. It was all about the male gaze. When the angry Shilo was on the screen, I was yelling “I want to see a movie about her!” at my TV. Even Professor Sandiford, played by John Malkovich, was entirely more interesting that our main character.

I’m fine with black comedy but this movie’s fetishizing of violence — particularly, although not limited to, against women — turned me off (and the final assertion that it’s somehow “attractive” I didn’t buy at all).

This movie just did not work for me. And if you want to read a much more intelligent version of my thoughts, read Cynthia Fuchs’ review at PopMatters.

All in all, I think I would’ve rather watched Elektra again. For all its flaws, at least it was an entertaining movie.

I couldn’t find anything interesting from this movie on YouTube, so here’s the trailer. But it’s bad, so don’t watch it: