Monday, October 20, 2008

not here yet

The 24 Hour Comics Day comic is still at the store. Sweet Enemy was off today, so there it languishes. It should be back tomorrow and, in between freelance stuff that has piled up, I'll scan it. To placate you, here's the page that started it all that night. I sat there in the store sketching randomly to get the juices flowing and it was this guy who reminded me of something I saw a couple of weeks ago. I'll share the whole story of my 'thought' process when I post the comic.



Also saw Iron Man on Saturday night. It was good. Very nicely comic-booky (Sweet Enemy called the Good Version vs Bad Version as soon as she saw Stane). It was, to me, not as good as Ed Norton's Hulk. The production design was fabulous (especially the updating of the original suit), but it was lacking. The character of Tony Stark was perfectly developed (and wonderfully acted), but everything else seemed flat. Pepper Potts was slightly three-dimensional, but Obediah Stane was barely even a sketch of a character. His betrayal was no surprise and his death provoked no feelings whatsoever. Rhodey was a wasted character. It felt like a walk-on on a weekly TV show: see, it's my best friend who, for some unknown reason, hasn't been here, ever.

I am also a nitpicker (as I was with The Hulk), so here's some nitpicks:
Good:

-- MAN! Is Tony Stark's chest cavity ever deep! I'm no doctor, so maybe most people's are, but dang it seemed very, very deep! Even so, how do his damned pectoral muscles work with a hole larger in diameter than his sternum is wide?

-- The magnet made sense when it was car-battery powered and sitting on his chest bolted to his sternum, but why would it have to go so damned deep? And what was that wire plugged into (and how did Stane get the right fittings for his monstrosity, anyway?)

-- The magnet anyway. Did the comic ever explain why the pieces could never be removed once he was out of the third world?

-- The Iron Man suit is so heavy that it will drop through two reinforced concrete floors from a drop of less than a meter? What's it made out of, neutron star material? It was a funny scene, though.

-- What news service got that totally non-shaky video footage and the crystal-clear photos of the warlord and his new toy? From what we've seen on the news, Taliban insurgents don't really like reporters.

Interesting points:

-- Tony was very un-Batman-like; he killed without emotion. Terry Pratchett once said that if your life is in someone's hands, you should pray it's an evil man. An evil man will talk you to death, a good man will kill you without a word. Hmmm.

-- Tony's joy at the first suit test flight was really nice. No real person would be cool and collected at that moment.

Now, onto The Dark Knight!

Listening to while posting. Nothing. Hey! I should remedy that. Ah, it's 'Moonage Daydream' by David Bowie (duh)

2 comments:

Andre Messier said...

I think the Iron Man comics just said that the shards were too close to his heart and trying to remove them would probably kill him (but something as imprecise as a magnet holding the shards in place was fine!) Definitely a suspension of disbelief thing. I assume at some point they removed it but I was never a big Iron Man fan so I'm not sure about that...

I did really enjoy the movie because it was a really fun movie. The Hulk was good, but it didn't have as many "Wow! That's sooo cool!" moments.

Thomas Fummo said...

I practically mirror all your thoughts on Iron Man, except I thought it was just as good as Incredible Hulk.
I also liked the fact that not all of the suit-shots were CGI. RDJr actually got to walk around in an Iron-Man suit. Too cool for school.

Lately the Marvel Studios is doing a pretty top-notch job.