I watched the film Constantine last night despite having avoided it for three years. It was three quid at Madame Zaza’s or whatever the Virgin Megastore is called these days, and I was at a loose end.

For those who don’t know, Constantine is based on the DC/Vertigo comic Hellblazer although the main character first appeared during Alan Moore’s iconic run on Swamp Thing. I’ve only recently started reading it again (I gave up when it was written by Americans and they used Manga-esque artists to draw it; I intended to pick it up when Mike Carey started scripting chores but never got around to it), but doggedly collected all the Jamie Delano and Garth Ennis scripted issues.

The important thing to know about him is that he is an occult grifter; a chancer and a gambler who is always a couple of steps away from damnation and who invariably ends up getting his mates killed. The tone is not so much Gothic as grungy. He survives pretty much by his wits alone and certainly doesn’t have any Batman or James Bond style gadgets. Superficial characteristics? John Constantine is blond and English (Liverpudlian technically); Alan Moore’s description of him was that he looks like Sting (this was in the early 80s when that was meant as a compliment). It is mostly set in London and he has a dimwit mate who is a cabbie called Chaz.

The film version? Constantine is the ultimate Californian, played as he is by the black haired Keanu Reeves. It is set in LA. His “assistant”, called Chas, is a cab driver but a sharp witted kid played by that bloke off the Transformers film. Oh, and eschewing the no gadgets rule, Constantine has a pair of ‘holy’ knuckle dusters, a ‘holy’ gun and a dragon flame flamethrower. It borrows liberally from both the Delano and Ennis runs of the comics (Papa Midnight, Gabriel, the lung cancer…) but twists each and every one of these features into something more generic and less fundamentally interesting compared with what can be found in the original. Far from the solo operator found in the comics, Constantine is recast as some kind of quasi-official exorcist who “deports” “half-breeds” on behalf of the Catholic church.

It is usual for film adaptations of comics to play fast and loose with the source material, yet the most successful (critically if not commercially) have been the ones which, if not in keeping with the details of the strip on which they are based, at least stick to the essence. Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman Begins and Ghostworld are all examples of this. There does seem to be something about Alan Moore creations which inspire filmmakers to simply take the piss out of the original fanbase. Constantine isn’t actually, in my opinion, the worst offender in this respect. From Hell was utterly horrendous, taking as it did a book which explored the subject of Jack the Ripper in a poetic, meta-fictional way and shoehorned it into a bog standard Hollywood thriller with Johnny Depp doing sub-Jack Sparrow impersonations.

At least there are no pretensions about Constantine. It’s trash and it knows it is. I found myself liking it a lot more than most of the other popcorn sub-horror trash I’ve put myself through in recent years. Both Tilda Swinton and Peter Stormare are fabulous.

But why does Hollywood gorge itself on this hamburger when if it stuck more closely to the source material it could be feasting on steak? Yeesh. Watchmen is going to be so painful, isn’t it?

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There are few crossovers between this blog’s twin main obsessions (2000AD and Libby Dem politics). A few years ago there was some dig at the Lib Dems in a strip called Thirteen but that’s pretty much your lot.

So you takes your references where you can get them, as the accompanying panel taken from this week’s Ten-Seconders strip demonstrates. Who could they be referring to I wonder?

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This was published in the Evening Standard on Thursday, slightly edited:

The Harry Potter series is one of the most derivative works of fiction ever devised, from its boarding school setting (The Four Marys, Billy Bunter), magical theme (too many to mention) and even its plot (drawing from the same well as Star Wars and even The Matrix). He isn’t even the first fictional English boy wizard with spectacles and a pet owl, as fans of Neil Gaiman’s Books of Magic will testify.

None of this is to deride J.K. Rowling’s genius for taking hoary cliché and making something new out of it, but perhaps one would have thought it would have given her a more enlightened view regarding intellectual property law. The Harry Potter Lexicon is clearly a blatant cash in but one which will only promote her original books. If she wants to produce her own, more authoritative encyclopedia, no one is stopping her.

In any case, existing copyright laws mean that while the strikingly original and iconic Alice in Wonderland books became public property 50 years after Lewis Carroll’s death aged 65, Harry Potter will be owned by Rowling’s estate for 70 years after her death. The state of modern medicine and her millions mean that she is likely to survive well into her 90s. I don’t begrudge her money, but I do have an issue with her great grandchildren continuing to rake it in during the 2120s.

James Graham

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At the start of last year I wrote a post entitled The Trouble with Torchwood detailing everything I thought was so terribly wrong headed about that show’s first season. The second season finished last night so I thought I’d give my review of how I thought it went. In summary: much, much better.

The second series was less a continuation of the last series as it was a reboot. Pretty much all my criticisms were dealt with. The unremittingly dark tone - ditched. The ugly sex - bye bye Guppy’s bum! Stupid characterisation was replaced with emotional intelligence. And not just one but a whole series of metaplots wove throughout the series, giving each of the characters their day in the sun. One recommendation - to ditch Chris Chibnell - was not taken up but given that he is responsible for all of the other improvements, I don’t think we can really begrudge him that. Well done, Chris.

Not everything was perfect. Reframing Ianto as the bimbo love interest got a bit tiresome after a while, although whether I would have been half as irritated if it had been a female character is a moot point. John Barrowman’s scenery chewing seems to have got worse and he seems to be turning into Jon Culshaw’s caricature of him. Freema Agyeman/Martha Jones guest appearance was largely squandered by having her moping about in the background of two of the three episodes she appeared in, both of which largely focussed on Owen. The second episode Sleeper was well acted but plotwise was utterly derivative (has a single science fiction series ever avoided this stock plotline about sleeper agents being “out there”?). Dead Man Walking seemed to ramble in a way that made little sense to me, focusing on a “myth” which seemed to hinge on us believing that medieval plagues were the result of alien beings rather than viruses. From Out of the Rain was the standout worst episode for me, making very little sense (again with the fairy stories) and it was too dependent on the creepiness of the villains who were frankly not all that.

But overall these are minor gripes which were eclipsed by the high points. With the exception of From Out of the Rain even the weaker episodes were misfires which had several strong points. No longer cyphers, the characters were allowed to grow. At the same time, some of the subplots from the last series that were going nowhere (I’m thinking specifically of Owen and Gwen’s relationship) was allowed to die - to be replaced with a triangle between Jack, Rhys and Gwen and a focus on Tosh’s unrequited feelings for Owen. The latter was particularly strongly handled and ended up underpinning the whole series (for reasons that become clear in the final episode).

The scope of the series has been extended. No longer terrified of touching on Jack’s past for fear of treading on the Doctor Who team’s toes, we got to explore 100 years of Torchwood and his own 51st century childhood. In Fragments, we got to see everyone else’s backstory as well - it’s a shame this episode didn’t come earlier in my view. In Adrift, we some idea both of how the rift affects ordinary lives in Cardiff and about the worlds that lie on the other side.

So where does the series go from here (assuming there is to be a series three)? Well, they’ll need to find two new cast members for one thing. Will Martha Jones get to return as a full time cast member rather than attractive guest cypher? With the Doctor having to juggle three assistants by the end of his new series it seems unlikely he’ll carry on with all of them. There are hints of more guest appearances of “Captain John” and the door has been left partway open for a return of the already undead “King of the Weevils” (but not Tosh). Nobody seems to stay in the Torchwood freezer permanently so expect to see more of Gray.

For me though, I’d like to see the third series spend a little bit more time outside of Cardiff and even Wales. Torchwood Three, in Scotland, was mentioned in the pilot episode and it’s high time we got to see it. It would be nice to see some of these other worlds as well, rather than just hearing about them from mad people. More explanation about the Weevils, and just why they are so polite to dead people, would be nice too.

Here’s a thing. By the end of the last series I was frankly bored to tears with the whole exercise and slightly surprised a second series had been commissioned. By the end of this series I’m imagining future plotlines. That’s got to represent a success in anyone’s book.

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Just back from my occasional jaunt down to central London to pick up my comics from Gosh!. I have to admit I’m making these trips with ever decreasing levels of enthusiasm these days, for several reasons.

Firstly, there is the fact that I generally feel out of touch with the market these days. This problem started about 18 months ago when the UK’s comics trade paper Comics International vanished, only to reappear a few months later under the guise of a new publisher. The transition has not been a happy one, with the magazine struggling to come out on a monthly basis and when it does appear it is out of date, riddled with too many typos and has an amateurish style that I find a little hard to take. I fear that the editor Mike Conroy isn’t really up to the job. Certainly I thought twice about buying the latest issue and having bought it don’t really feel it was worth my while.

For a semi-detached comics fan such as myself this is disastrous from the point of view of the industry. I don’t have any desire to go back to the days when I used to get Previews on a monthly basis and apart from ignoring the UK scene, the US magazines are similarly hype-driven. So how do I find out what’s going on? I’m finding it increasingly difficult and that is reflective in the stuff I buy.

Secondly, there are the comics themselves. I’ve always been more of a DC reader than a Marvel one. This is for the simple fact that it was DC that largely lead the UK-brain drain that lead to people such as Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons and Grant Morrison working stateside and so it was via them that I got my first real taste of US comics. But for the last four years or more, DC has been vanishing up its own fundament. While Marvel has opted to make itself more accessible, spurred on by its successful film franchises, DC has become increasingly inward-looking.

It began with a 1986 12-part maxi-series called Crisis on Infinite Earths (actually, it began before that with various previous “Crises” but this was the focal point), in which the DC “multiverse” of infinite interlocking parallel universes became just one. It is always a bad idea to set a rule in a sci-fantasy setting like “no parallel universes” - look at how Doctor Who and Torchwood has toyed with the subject - and as a result DC spent the next 20 years bending and even breaking it, coming up with complex ideas like Hypertime to explain it all.

This all eventually lead to the Infinite Crisis - part 20th anniversary celebration of the Crisis of Infinite Earths, part second attempt to sort the whole bloody mess out. This directly lead to 52, a weekly series that ran for a year between May 2006 and May 2007 in which it was revealed that the second crisis had lead to a return of the multiverse - or rather a multiverse of 52 parallel universes. Conveniently this allowed DC to incorporate a number of their other superhero universes into “official” canon. And so, the Wildstorm universe is now part of it (glossing over the fact they have been running crossovers between Wildstorm and DC for over a decade now), the various Elseworlds series each have their own world and even old properties such as the Charlton and Fawcett now have their own worlds back. Even the animated series now gets its own “official” universe.

The problem is, no sooner have they revealed this, but they’ve started on a mission to blow this multi-verse up too. Immediately following 52 was another weekly series called Countdown. Already at least one world has been destroyed, and no doubt more are to follow in the now scheduled Final Crisis which writer Grant Morrison apparently describes as “The Lord of the Rings of the DCU”.

We shall see, and with Morrison at the helm I shall certainly be getting it. But the last four years has required a lot of forbearance. I didn’t bother with Infinite Crisis and by all accounts I was wise not to. 52 was good, Countdown has been distinctly average and the seemingly endless Countdown spin-offs have been worse than that. The whole thing has apparently been a hit but I’m left wondering who with?

There are two types of comics I read: things that I actually like, which tends to include 2000AD and pretty much anything penned by Joss Whedon, and stuff I buy out of habit. I’ve been buying far too much of the latter of late. And while DC have been pretty bad here, Marvel are just as bad offenders with their Civil War and Zombie-everything. I’ve already been sucked in but in what way is this accessible to new readers? They appear to have got caught in the same rut that Doctor Who got caught in in the 80s - fans writing for fans, keeping the community blissfully happy but not catering for anybody new.

So much for the superheroes, my other quandary lies in the fact that I find it increasingly difficult to find my way around what is sometimes rather snootily described as the comics “mainstream” - i.e. the stuff out there which isn’t all about lycra-clad musclebound buffoons who periodically blow up planets. A big Sandman fan, I got rather tired of the ever poorer cash-ins that Vertigo devised to milk that particular cash cow. Alienated by all that, I now get the impression that I missed out of some really good stuff. But how do I tell the good from the bad? I got quite into the indie-scene in the mid-nineties and was impressed by the range of good material out there. But the chaotic schedules left me a little lost. I gave up on Strangehaven having completely lost track of when the next issue was due out.

Overall, I’m feeling a little lost. I’m sure there are websites out there which can supply me with news, but it’s tough figuring out even where to start. It seems that the comics industry has found its little niche and is quite content plugging away at it, leaving it to the film industry to occasionally give it a boost. I’m not sure how sustainable all this is in the long term: if a relatively hardcore fan like myself can get alienated, isn’t there a danger this will all collapse on itself in ten or so years time?

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I’ve just finished watching the third episode of Mad Men over on BBC Four. It hasn’t gripped me yet I have to say, but one thing that is starting to bug me is, well, the smokespoitation (a word I thought I’d made up but apparently haven’t). Yes it’s okay, I do get that everyone smoked in the 60s. Even in the office. Even pregnant women. That anti-smoking guy who hangs outside all the party conferences every year shouting at people must be doing his nut.

But it isn’t just the smoking. In general, it is one big fetish fest for everything they did in the 60s that we now consider dangerous. This is all very well, and factually accurate, but do they really have to signal everything with such great big neon signs stating “LOOK PUNY NOUGHTIES-ERA VIEWER! WATCH US TAKE MINIMAL CONCERN FOR OUR HEALTH AND SAFETY AND QUIVER WITH REPULSION AND DESIRE! BWAA-HAH-HAH-HAAAH!” Last week it was children running around with plastic bags over their heads and rolling around in the bag seat of a car with no safety belt during a crash. This week we’ve had extreme drink driving and a kid being slapped across the face. We aren’t talking subtle here.

The problem is, combine that with the rest of the sixties Americana - the cine film camera, the hats, the rampant sexism, et al - and there isn’t much left. This week’s episode in particular just felt like two episodes jammed together. The subplot about the main character’s wife’s unidentified illness (MS?) was all but forgotten. They’ve spent so much time and energy recreating a period (albeit very much from a contemporary perspective) that plot-wise it seems to be little more than a run of the mill soap.

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This morning I thought I might blog a tribute to the late, lamented Gary Gygax. Then when I heard Nick Clegg on the Today Programme, I thought I should write about that.

Now, thanks to the magic of Comment is Free, I have combined the two for your perusal.

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Quote of the Week: “First you say hello to Vulf’s little friend!” Wulf Sternhammer gets up close and personal in Strontium Dog (1574).

Covers: Dylan Teague draws Johnny Alpha versus Groule from Strontium Dog (1573); Richard Elsom draws a chained Gene Hackman from The Kingdom (1574).

Contents: Judge Dredd, The Kingdom, Stickleback and Strontium Dog in both progs. Shakara ends in 1573 to be replaced by a Future Shock in 1574.

Review in less than 10 words: There will be blood (1573), Hell is other mutants (1574).

Spoilers… (more…)

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I can’t believe this piece of shit beat My Lovely Horse!

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Earlier today I did a blog post about Rowan Williams revolving around the metaphor of him erecting giant straw men in order to burn them down, but it was crap so I deleted it. But I was quite pleased with the above photoshop jobbie, so I thought I’d publish it anyway rather than have it all go to waste.

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