Galactica 1980 #1

First off, kudos to Dynamite Comics for having the cajones to actually risk putting out a Galactica 1980 comic.

Secondly... it's good. REAL good.

I bought it because I just had to see what they were going to do with it. Would it be farcical? Serious? The promotional blurb said only this:

One of the most controversial series in Sci Fi's history is back! Some fans love it, some fans hate it, but one thing's for certain, writer Marc Guggenheim is going to do Galactica 1980 the right way! Lives will be lost as the re-imagining of 1980 begins here and unlike anything you've seen before in a Galactica comic book! Featuring artist Cezar (Zorro) Razek along with a fully painted cover from Lucio Parillo.

(Now, I have a lot things I want to say about this blurb itself, but I'll save that later.)

The word "re-imagining" had me willing to try it and the "lives will be lost" had me thinking it was probably going to be much grittier. Marc Guggenheim also writes the post-alien-invasion comic Resurrection, which I enjoy, and it can be very dark at times. However Steve & Rich have told me that Guggenheim's great when he writes his own material, but lousy when he writes super heroes. So how would he handle this already established property?

"Well," I told Steve, "It's Galactica 1980. It would be pretty hard to make it worse."

I have to say, based on this first issue, he's handling it great. The cast is the same as the TV series-- there's no Starbuck, Apollo, or Tigh, Adama has his beard, Boomer is the new Colonel, and the main characters are Troy and Dillon. And yes, even Dr. Zee is here. There are plenty of scenes that run parallel the original first episode, but with much more depth to them. Guggenheim has taken this show from an ABC 7 PM Sunday night kids show to a serious, 10 PM adult drama.

I also found this comment by him at Total Sci-Fi Online while I was searching for the cover to post here:

"It's the finest example I can think of how wide the chasm can be between concept and execution," Guggenheim told Comic Book Resources.

"The concept is amazing. The Galactica discovers Earth! What's not cool about that? But the execution… There are a million stories to tell there and you decide to do the one about super-powered kids who play baseball? Wow."

I mean, really, can the Galactica 1980 TV show be summed up any better than that? Luckily, the story Guggenheim has picked for the comic has me itching to see what's going to happen next.

Now, on to those things I wanted to say about the promotional blurb...

One of the most controversial series in Sci Fi's history is back!
Just wondering about the capital letters here... the anal-retentive smart-ass in me wants to ask, do they mean the channel that's become SyFy? 'Cause they did run it too...

Some fans love it, some fans hate it, ...
REALLY? There's a fan out there who loves it?!? PLEASE point them out to me, and I mean this in 100% seriousness! See, I've always had this belief that everything, no matter how terrible the world at large may think it is, is someone's favorite. And I went searching for a fan who loves Galactica 1980 to prove my point.

I couldn't find one. Not one. The best I could find was people who said "Well yeah, it's a terrible show, but it's not the show's fault, it's because of this and that and the other thing that was going on that ruined it." They often point to the last episode ("The Return of Starbuck," universally hailed as the only good episode of Galactica 1980) as a sign that Glen Larson was trying to fix the show and get it back on track. But even they admit they don't like it.

So in all seriousness, if there is ANYONE out there who loves Galactica 1980, PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT HERE SAYING SO!!! I still believe in my "everything is someone's favorite" theory and I want to prove it as true.

...but one thing's for certain, writer Marc Guggenheim is going to do Galactica 1980 the right way!
Sorry, but the expression "done the right way!" sends fear through me. I've seen too many "done the right way!" stories backfire. Every fan has their own idea of how a story should be done, so "the right way" is completely subjective.

Look at the Star Wars prequels. Does anyone honestly think George Lucas set out to do them "wrong"? Does anyone really believe that he sat up at night plotting to himself, "I could do this the right way, but I think I'll destroy some fanboys' childhoods instead!" No, of course not. He felt he was telling Darth Vader's backstory the right way. But lots of fans already had in their heads how it should have been, and when it didn't match up they got upset.

(And for the record, I like the prequels. And even if I hadn't, I always said it was impossible for them to "destroy my childhood" because I was no longer a child. Galactica 1980, I always countered, destroyed my childhood, because I really was a child at the time. See? It all comes full circle.)

However, having read the issue... I have to say that yes, for me this is definitely Galactica 1980 done right. I hope it holds up in later issues.

Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years

I DID IT!! I've finally completed something I've always wanted to do since 1986. I've finally watched all 65 episodes of Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years!

Well okay, I've actually only watched 63 episodes... it turns out I'm missing episodes 50 & 51. But hey, this is as close as I'm ever gonna get, so I feel happy.

Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years was a project by Carl Macek and Harmony Gold, the folks who brought me Robotech, the show that changed my life.

I saw in an issue of Starlog that Harmony Gold had released another anime series, Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years. The show was in limited release but was expected to have a wider push in 1987.

At the 1986 Creation Robotech Convention I got to see Carl Macek, and he explained the show's backstory something like this: After the success of Robotech, a Harmony Gold employee "who as a result of this is no longer with the company" asked him what other anime was cool. Macek shrugged and said, "I like Captain Harlock." So this employee then got on the phone and proceeded to sell 65 episodes of Captain Harlock to TV stations around the country.

HG was now stuck with honoring these sales, so they were forced to aquire the rights to the Japanese show Space Pirate Captain Harlock. The only problem is, that show only ran 42 episodes. To fill it out, they needed another show like they did with Robotech. Macek said at the con that he wanted to use the follow-up series Harlock SSX and the My Youth in Arcadia Harlock movie, but the rights owners were demanding too much money for it. Being between a rock and a hard place, Harmony Gold went with Queen Millenia, an unrelated show that used the same character designer, Leiji Matsumoto.

Macek said he hated the project, and just dreaded going in to work every day to deal with it.

Well, the show's "wider push" never came. (Just like the other HG products I was waiting on at the time: Robotech: The Movie and Robotech II: The Sentinels. I think people really don't appreciate how lucky we are that Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles actually got released.) But a friend of mine got a hold of the first 8 episodes from someone in Texas. I ate them up and eagerly wanted to see more.

I wasn't able to actually get any more episodes until over ten years later. Joy and I were in Chicago running our booth for Joy's Japanimation at AnimeCentral. I had a fansub trade list I carried around with me, and I was lucky enough to run into a fan who said he had all 65 episodes! We quickly arranged the trades, and good to his word, he provided me with the rest of the series.

(Well, except for those two missing episodes that is, but I suspect that the Chicago station skipped them so it wasn't his fault. His last tape repeats the first two episodes, and the voice over on the end credits talks about their new line-up starting on Monday. So I don't think it was his fault.)

I wanted to get back into watching them, but by that point I was too busy working with anime to actually watch any of it. Then I had to leave the store and I was so sour on anime I didn't want to have anything to do with it.

But that was years ago now, and shows like the aforementioned Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles, Macross Frontier and Cosmo Warrior Zero have helped me lose my resentment towards anime. So when I started copying all my VHS tapes to DVD and I reached the Captain Harlock and the Queen of a Thousand Years tapes, I decided I was going to actually sit down and watch them as I copied them.

So, as to the show itself: Is it any good?

For me, the answer is a resounding yes. Oh sure, it's an unfaithful translation. But you know what? I don't care. It's still got some good storytelling to it, especially when compared with what else was airing in 1986. Like Robotech, the show doesn't pull its punches-- a lot of violent death scenes are left in, main characters are killed, there's live childbirth scenes (not once, but twice). And the story can get very complex as they try to weave the two worlds of Harlock and Queen Millennia together.

That weaving is where the show tends to fall apart. A lot of the connections work well (Harlock's enemies the Mazone are working for Millenia, etc.) but other times they're inconsistant. A band of refugees are first called captured humans from Earth, then in the next episode they're now called refugees from Millennia. Things like that-- a lot of inconsistancies that could have been ironed out with closer script editing.

For me, this show was like coming home. Hearing all those old Harmony Gold / Intersound voice actors again, the music (some of which was reused in The Sentinels, and one of Robotech's "dramatic stings" was used a lot in this show), coming back to watch a new episode every day all summer long... this show reminded me of why I fell in love with anime in the first place.

Okay, anime. Welcome back. All is forgiven.

District 9

Finally saw District 9 with Dave today! I was afraid I was going to miss this one. I'm glad I didn't.

The initial trailer (and websites) gave me the impression this was going to be heavy on social commentary. Then the TV ads were heavy on action, so I started wondering, is this a "thought" movie that they're selling as an action movie?

Well, no. It really is an action movie. But it's a very, very good action movie with some strong social commentary overtones.

And cool spaceship shots. I love spaceship shots.

The movie gives us the basic set-up of how an alien spaceship arrived in the 1980's, and how the aliens were not treated well once they were settled into District 9. But that's about as far as it goes. Personally, I would have loved for the first 5 minutes of the film to be expanded into a good half hour, so we saw more of how the aliens interacted with humans and were trying to be treated with basic civil liberties. But it doesn't really go there; it's more of simply a set-up to have an "us and them," although it does do a good job on asking what it would take for someone who only ever saw the aliens as "them" to learn to see them as one of "us."

Another interesting thing I noticed is that while the aliens never speak English, a lot of their dialogue probably didn't need to be subtitled, yet it all is. There's a lot of human replies that explain what they just said. ("Gllblblbllblllbb?" "Yeah, sure, lunch sounds good." Not an actual line, but that kid of thing. Like when Han would talk to Chewbacca.) I'm wondering if the director originally intended to not subtitle the aliens and changed his mind?

All in all, I enjoyed this movie, even though it wasn't all I thought it could be. Since the trend now is to cut out story for the sake of action and then put the story back in on DVD, I'm hoping the DVD release will give me more of that "humans living with aliens in their backyard" that I was hoping for. IMDB reports that they filmed six different endings, so at the very least I'll be watching the DVD to see some of those!

Farscape: D'Argo's Lament

BOOM! Studios continues their excellent Farscape comics with Farscape: D'Argo's Lament. Once again, it's based on a story by Farscape creator Rockne S. O'Bannon and scripted by the excellent Keith R. A. DeCandido, although this time it takes place during the show's third season.

It's a great a story. KRAD shows how well he can capture the tone of D'Argo and Jool, who aren't in the regular Farscape comic. D'Argo is one of the characters I'd miss when I'd go a while without watching the show... I'd just find myself thinking, "I wonder what D'Argo's been up to?" like he was a real person or something, and then I'd start watching episodes again. So it felt good to revisit D'Argo here.

It really feels like a lost episode, right down to the fact that you never see Crichton, Aeryn, or any of the other characters even when D'Argo and Jool are on Moya-- because, obviously they're busy filming the other comic at the same time. ;)

The artwork is by Tommy Patterson and Neil Edwards, and it's also excellent. There are two other Luxons in the story, and you never wonder who's who.

So I really feel bad that I'm going to have to stop reading the D'Argo comics.

BOOM's approach seems to be that there's always two Farscape comics being published a month, one of the further adventures of John Crichton, and one of flashback tales of D'Argo. I almost passed on D'Argo's Lament when it was solicited, because I'm trying very hard to keep my comic book budget down to $50 a month. But I decided to get it anyway because, (1) I figured what happens to D'Argo in the flashback comic might end up becoming important in the "main" comic, and (2) as I mentioned above, I always liked D'Argo.

But my comic book orders keep coming in a t $61.60, so something's gotta go. And unfortunately, this comic was so well written that I realized I didn't need to know what happened in it to enjoy the main comic. D'Argo's Lament references a TV episode that I couldn't remember, but it did such a good job of giving me the information I needed to know that it didn't matter. Since KRAD writes both comics, I trust that if the events of any of the D'Argo comics come into play in the regular comic, he'll give me the info I need to know. Which in a way, I feel is very unfair to KRAD-- he shouldn't be punished because he's a great writer.

But the bottom line is I just have to stick to my budget, so I have to get tough. I'm already not buying BOOM's second Muppets comic, Muppet Robin Hood (soon to be followed by Muppet Peter Pan) because I just can't afford both that and The Muppet Show Comic Book. Same thing with Dark Horse's Star Wars: Clone Wars comic. Other titles on the chopping block are the Doctor Who Ongoing comic (because the one-shots coming out at the same time keep sounding more interesting) and Star Trek: Alien Spotlight. And the shame of it is, they're all enjoyable comics, there's just too many comics of the same series each month. If the D'Argo comics and Muppet Robin Hood were the only Farscape and Muppet comics being published that month, I'd definitely be buying them; as it is, since I have multiple comics to choose from for each series, I'm going to have to start getting pickier.

I'm still going to read the next D'Argo series, D'Argo's Trial, because I was already ordering it before I read D'Argo's Lament, and Lament was so good there's no way I'm going to bail on it in the middle of a story. But sadly, after that, I'm just going to have to learn to let D'Argo go.

Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds

Okay, now Rich, I know you haven't had a lot of time to read lately. And Jonathan, I know you read comics but I haven't seen you post a comics blog in a long time and I don't remember if you're reading this one.

So if you guys haven't finished this mini-series, just stop reading this post now. If you have...

Okay, let me see if I have this straight... the Legion I've been reading, the most recent one that started with Mark Waid and ended with Jim Shooter, is actually the Legion of Earth-Prime, right? Which is our Earth. So that's why they always had all the real comic books in the early issues.

The previous take on the Legion (post-Zero Hour?) turns out to be from Earth-247, which Superboy-Prime destroyed. (I'm also pretty hazy on the whole Earth-247 thing. When and where did that one come from?)

And the original (pre-Zero Hour?) Legion is in fact the true Legion of New Earth, and will be the Legion that's co-starring in Adventure Comics. (Which, incidentally, makes it seem that Geoff Johns is on a quest to totally restore the pre-Crisis DCU... bringing back Hal Jordan, Barry Allen, the original Legion...)

Have I got it right?

Beyond the Blue Event Horizon by Frederik Pohl

... I just wanted to prove that I read stuff besides Star Wars.

Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi - Omen by Christie Golden

Thank heavens for my local library! The latest series of Star Wars books, Fate of the Jedi, is a nine-book hardback series, with no paperback reprints scheduled yet at all. So if it weren't for my library, I wouldn't be reading it. (Nine hardbacks?!? Even if I could afford it, which I can't, I wouldn't have the shelf space for it.)

This is a fun and intriguing book. Luke has been exiled from the Jedi for not preventing Jacen's turn into Darth Caedus, and is going on a quest to places Jacen went to try to understand what led him down that path, which is giving him some quality time with his son, Ben Skywalker. In the meantime, Jedi are going crazy. And farther away, a new Sith threat is emerging-- a lost Sith colony, now rediscovering the galaxy, and ready to take it over.

First things first-- the lost Sith colony. They're very cool-- a planet that's been ruled by the Sith for 5000 years, and doesn't seem evil per se so much as living by their own, different code. Up until the whole "Oh, time to go out and take over the galaxy" part, but still. Very intriging, very interesting, and I'm looking forward to seeing more of them.

HOWEVER... what happened to that whole "Balance of the Force" prophecy thing? I mean really, looking at the big picture, did Anakin's story mean anything at all? How did he bring balance to the Force if there was (1) the Sith Tribe sitting around on Kesh during all six movies, and (2)Darth Krayyt sitting around building his One Sith during the last three movies?

I love the bits with Luke and Ben. It's good to see them growing closer and being a real family.

Jaina and Jag made me smile. A lot. =)

Kings (episodes 1-13)

I finally finished watching this series today, and I have to say, I'm glad I tried it out.

Once again, going light on the spoilers: Kings is a story that takes place in a modern world just similar enough to our own to be familiar and understandable, but different enough that it never has to worry about tying itself into real world events.

In this modern world, the country of Gilboa has been united by their new King, Silas Benjamin. However Gilboa is now at war with its neighboring country, Gath. During the war, soldier David Shepherd finds himself brought into the lives of the royal family.

My first reaction was that this show was trying to play off of the success of Battlestar Galactica; in addition to being a world that's close-to-ours-but-not-quite, there's the shaky camera work, the ethereal moody music, the heavy references to God and His plan. And while I still think that's true, from what I've read the show is a modern take on the entire story of King David from the Bible in I Samuel. (The parallel of David standing up to a Goliath tank was pretty obvious, but I have to confess I never was very up on the Old Testament so I didn't recognize the other parts.) But while God is definitely a central character, it never feels heavy-handed. In fact, it even goes as far as to not get too specific about any one religion; there is a reference to Cain and Abel in one episode, but other than that there's nothing overt. I think that's intended to keep the "this is not your world" feel of the show, but it also gives it a wider appeal. God's will in this show is not about religion; it's about doing what's right.

Another interesting part of this show is even in the way the character's speak. The dialogue is written in such a way as to have a slight air of royalty about it; for example, instead of contracting "I will not" into "I won't," it's contracted into "I'll not." It has a lot of flair about it, and the cast, especially Ian McShane as King Silas, really needs to be given a lot of credit for being able to sell it and make it sound so natural. With dialogue like this, it could have easily turned into something stiff (Attack of the Clones, anyone?)

The show's been canceled, and while the last episode doesn't necessarily end all nice and tidy, all the characters are in place for an obvious conclusion, so I felt it was satisfying enough. And if I really want to know what happens next, I can always dig out my Bible!

Moon

Wow, this was a good movie. I'm going to try really, really hard to keep this spoiler-free, since this movie is in limited release and very few people have had a chance to see it. (Oh, who am I kidding? I know Rich hasn't seen it and I don't know if Jonathan has yet, so I'm going to try very hard not to ruin anything for you guys, my two loyal readers!)

Moon is the story of corporate astronaut Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), who's been stationed alone on a moonbase for a three-year contract. And as you'd expect, things start getting weird.

What makes Moon stand out is that not only does it have twists in the storyline, the story is not so much about the twists themselves and more about how Sam then has to deal with those twists. It's a movie where things that seem like nitpicks actually have reasons behind them. It's one of those great movies that gives you something to think about afterwards, as things that seemed to not make sense suddenly click into place.

And lastly, on a personal high note for me, is the special effects. While I love how realistic CGI looks these days, one of the things I don't like about it is it moves too fast, and you no longer get time to look at the small details. But in this movie, the moonbase exterior, the lunar rovers, everything about it has that classic model feel. I don't know how much of the effects were models vs CGI; there's very little model work done these days, so either this one actually used models or the CGI was deliberately treated to harken back to those classic days of 2001, Alien and other classics where the wonder wasn't so much in making things go boom but the feel of actually living in an alien environment.

By all means, if you get a chance to see Moon, don't miss it!

Star Trek: Vanguard - Open Secrets by Dayton Ward

This is Book 4 of a series set at Starbase 47, aka Vanguard. The series takes place during the same time as the original Star Trek's five-year mission. But Stark Trek: Vanguard is much more than a TOS DS9. For starters, the starbase has a number of starships assigned to it at all times, so you have not only the cast of Starfleet officiers and civilians that work and live at Starbase 47, but the crews of the starships as well.

The thing I really love about series like ST:V is that almost none of the characters are bulletproof. The three exceptions in this case are Dr. M'Benga, who hasn't yet transferred to the Enterprise, T'Prynn, who shows up in later Star Trek: The Lost Era books (although after what was happening to her in this book I was starting to wonder if I had my timeline mixed up), and Admiral Nogura.

Admiral Nogura's previous Star Trek history is only as a reference in Star Trek: The Motion Picture; he's obviously Admiral Kirk's superior, and obviously a tough leader, but that's all we know. Here we get to see that legend built as he takes command of Starbase 47.

Vanguard continues to be full of surprises and big changes.