KOKOMO-CON: The Cosplay

On October 14, 2017October 14, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, Photography1 Comment

I will be back at this con next year. I had a blast, sold an entire box of books, and the cosplay was magnificent. I’ll be annotating some of these tomorrow (a few of them won’t make a ton of sense out of context) but for now here’s the cosplayer pictures I took:

WELL OKAY ONE STORY: I use free Oreos at my booth as a way to catch people’s attention, right? Toward the end of the con, the guy dressed as Negan waltzed over to me, looked me straight in the eye, and said “You have Oreos. I’m taking half.”

And then he actually did it.

I laughed my ass off. This may be my single favorite con moment so far.

Anyway, the pictures:

On movies I want: I saw THE LEGO BATMAN MOVIE

On February 19, 2017February 19, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews3 Comments

Last night I reviewed a movie that I consider sort of unreviewable because the act of discussing it will make it impossible to properly enjoy it. Tonight my wife and son and I went to a movie that doesn’t need a review: the Lego Batman movie. You already know what you’ll think of the Lego Batman movie. You already know whether you’re going to see it. Chances are you know what I thought of the Lego Batman movie, and could write this review for me. And chances are you’re right about all those things.

After leaving the movie, I was thinking about what I’m always thinking about when I leave a Batman movie, which is that I will never get the Batman movie that I want. Batman has been the star of a comic book called Detective Comics since nineteen thirty goddamn nine. That was a really long time ago. There have been approximately three hundred Hollywood films with the word “Batman” or some variant thereof in the title since then, and some of them actually had Batman in them.

Can we get a damn mystery Batman movie, please? One where he has to actually solve a crime and act like a detective? I mean, hell, they’re basically making one of these things every two or three years and seem likely to be planning to continue that until I die. Can I get one of those to be a detective movie? Bonus points (this will never ever happen) if it’s a noirish piece and actually set in the 1930s or 1940s. You can still end the movie with a slam-bang action sequence, just make all the stuff before that be quieter and give me a Batman who uses his brains and not his gadgets and ninja skills. Yes, Batman Begins, the movie about black-wearing-ninja-sword-fighting-not-Batman-angry-guy, I’m looking at you.

Don’t take this as a criticism of Lego Batman, by the way. There’s nothing wrong with it; as I said, it’s exactly the movie I thought it would be (perhaps a bit more clever) and is probably exactly the movie you think it’ll be. But gimme just one dark, shadowy, film-noir Batman crime movie where he has to slink around and detect some shit and doesn’t do a lot of punching. I promise it’ll still make money. Please?

In which 2016 is an asshole yet again: RIP, Steve Dillon

On October 22, 2016October 22, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek1 Comment

Goddamn, this one sucks. If you’re not a comic book person you’re unlikely to have heard of Steve Dillon, who passed away today (of as yet unannounced causes; if he was sick, his family kept it quiet, and he was working up to the end) at the disgustingly young age of 54. Dillon did a ton of work in a long career in comics but was known primarily for his work with writer Garth Ennis on titles like Punisher and Preacher. He also had a run on Hellblazer that I’m less familiar with.

Dillon was one of my favorite artists, despite having caught a fair amount of shit from me over the years. His greatest strength as an artist was tied in tightly with his greatest weakness: Steve Dillon could really only draw one face, when it came down to it, and most of his characters ended up being that same face with differences in hair, headgear, eyepatches, things like that. But the man could capture a range of expressions on that face that was flatly unparalleled among any artist I’m aware of. Absolutely goddamn nobody can capture shades of emotion in a comic book character’s look like Dillon could. He had a grounded, realistic style that made him perfect for the books he had long runs on and occasionally (and I say this with love, believe me) hilariously inappropriate for others:

That is, believe it or not, supposed to be the Hulk.

He’s also responsible for this moment, which will live forever:

If you have led the type of life that resulted in getting paid real money to draw the Punisher punching a polar bear in the face, you have won as a human being. Steve will be greatly, greatly missed. He was one of the good guys.

#Review: SUICIDE SQUAD

On August 13, 2016August 12, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews3 Comments

The short and sweet version of this review I’ve already put on Twitter: SUICIDE SQUAD is basically exactly the movie I thought it was (and it’s probably the movie you think it is, too) except maybe 20% better than I thought it was going to be. Maybe 15; it’s hard to say.

I’m hard on DC movies. Basically I’ve hated every film DC has done since, oh, the very first Michael Keaton BATMAN movie, and even that one hasn’t held up terribly well. I absolutely hated BAT-THEMED NINJA KILLER, and didn’t see either of the sequels, including the one that Heath Ledger was supposedly so good in. I missed ANGRY ALIEN MURDER DEITY on its opening weekend, decided not to see it based on that opening weekend, and then left the room halfway through when we decided to rent it months later. If I ever see BAT-THEMED NINJA KILLER VS. ANGRY ALIEN MURDER DEITY, it will be to liveblog how much I hate it. I would like for DC to make good movies. I like their characters. I just wish they’d put their characters in their movies.

Oh, and I’ll probably see WONDER WOMAN.

But anyway.

There are bits of SUICIDE SQUAD that are interesting. The acting, especially, is uniformly good, surprisingly so in fact; I enjoyed all of the performances except for Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje’s Killer Croc and Joel Kinnaman’s Patriotic Hero #3; Akinnouye-Agbaje appears to have been given no direction other than “be a shark, only, like, really black, but a white guy’s idea of really black” and Kinnaman’s character is so white and blond that he’s entirely forgettable. I have no gripes about Jared Leto’s Joker other than that if you’ve seen any ten seconds of his performance you’ve kind of seen the whole thing. Margot Robbie is fine as Harley Quinn, and Will Smith’s Deadshot is pretty good too. Cara Delevigne is the standout as the Enchantress, a deeply weird character whose entire character needs to be embodied in physical movement because she doesn’t talk too much. Oh, and they cast Amanda Waller as Amanda Waller somehow. That was cool.

There’s splody stuff; the splody stuff isn’t bad. The story is a bit too high-stakes for the movie it’s in; it’s one of those “there is no way other heroes aren’t showing up here” stories, and they make sure to let you know that the destruction takes place over a few days so there’s absolutely no excuse for, for example, the Flash to not show up. I feel like a good Suicide Squad movie is something covert and deniable, not “hey, go try and fight this mystical world-ending being with, like, your wood baseball bat and a sharpened boomerang, because that’ll work.”

Oh, and Ben Affleck’s chin is in it, too. Ben Affleck’s chin is the worst thing about Ben Affleck’s Batman. There’s no way anyone would ever call that guy Batman. He’d be Chin Guy. Affleck’s chin looks ridiculous in that costume in a way that no one else’s chin has; I can’t figure out what’s so weird about it.

I dunno. Ultimately, this wasn’t a bad way to spend two hours, and if you’re inclined to see it but haven’t seen it yet, you probably ought to go ahead and go do that, but if you were inclined to not see it don’t trip over your feet running to the theater either. I didn’t hate it, which makes it the best DC movie since I was in high school.

Damning with faint praise, I know. But they can’t all be Iron Man, and they can’t all be Snowpiercer either, y’know?

#REVIEW: DEADPOOL

On February 16, 2016February 16, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn movies, Reviews6 Comments

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It’s pretty much universally agreed that DEADPOOL is the biggest surprise of the year, right? The movie obliterated every box office record it could reach: for R-rated movies, for February, for Presidents’ Day weekend, and for a whole bunch of other things over the weekend, and it deserves every dime it made. I have never been a fan of the character, particularly, and didn’t get hooked on the idea of going until the trailers and the ads made two things clear:

That the people making the movie got the character;
That everyone involved seemed to be having the time of their lives.

Actors enjoying themselves can get a movie or a TV show a long way with me. I can think of three examples on TV right now: it seems clear that the cast on Flash is having the time of their lives. Same with Sleepy Hollow, and while I’ve only caught a few episodes so far, I’m getting the same vibe from Supergirl as well. Deadpool has the same vibe to it. This movie is a whole lot of things– gory, profane, borderline pornographic at times (the sight of Morena Baccarin nailing Ryan Reynolds from behind with a strap-on will not leave my head anytime soon,) hilarious, and– believe it or not– touching, but what it is more than anything else is an insane amount of fun.

I was expecting a lot of those things from this film; what I wasn’t expecting was just how much heart it has. I knew from the trailers that Baccarin’s character was eventually going to be kidnapped by the bad guys and that Deadpool was going to get her back, blah, blah, blah. What I wasn’t expecting was how real and how important they managed to make their relationship despite the fact that they’re probably boning for literally half of their screen time. I may or may not have wiped an involuntary tear away during their reunion at the end of the movie.

(That strap-on scene? Believe it or not, it’s not just a throwaway joke. It tells you things about these characters. It’s important for the story. I’m completely serious.)

Toss in a cast that is solid from top to bottom– even Colossus, who was portrayed by three different people (one face, one voice, and a Frenchman on stilts for mocap) was a great character– and tremendously well-shot action sequences where everything’s well-lit and you can tell where the characters are and what they’re doing at all times and you’ve got yourself a hell of a movie. Shit, the fight between Colossus and Gina Carano’s Angel Dust at the end of the movie is probably the best “two super-strong brutes” fight I’ve ever seen on-screen. Baccarin’s Vanessa holds her own against Reynolds and against the bad guys, the scenes between Deadpool and Brianna Hildebrand’s Negasonic Teenage Warhead are fantastic, and even the relationships between Deadpool and his elderly blind roommate and comic-relief best friend are fully sketched-out. Shit, the taxi driver gets character development. All this in a movie that comes in at comfortably under two hours.

I mean, make no mistake: this is the hardest R movie I’ve seen in a while, although that’s partially a function of the fact that I see virtually nothing but superhero movies nowadays. Do not take little kids to see this, and if you’re not going to like a movie with lots of people being sworded to death and anal sex jokes and “motherfucker” probably being 5% of the dialogue all by itself, you’re not gonna have a good time. But if you’re one of those people I feel like there’s a good chance you stopped reading my blog a long time ago, so maybe you’re not seeing this anyway.

So. Yeah. Go see Deadpool. No shit: I might have liked it more than I liked Force Awakens. I know, call me a heretic. But it’s that good.

Comics!

On November 11, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn GeekLeave a comment

Just for the heck of it, I posted a list of the comics I bought this week over at Sourcerer. Go check it out and let me know if anything else came out today I should buy.