The Legacy of Jean Girard (aka Gir aka Moebius)

I couldn’t let the March 10 passing of French cartoonist/artist Jean Girard—who also drew under the pen names of Gir and Moebius—go by without commenting on his legacy.

While it’s easy to overuse the word “visionary” when speaking about even the greatest of artists, it’s a very deserving description of Girard’s work. His science fiction/fantasy work offered windows into universes and realities that seemed complete in the artist’s mind and, more importantly, infused with the artist’s soul and personal sensibilities. He successfully presaged New Age styles and sensibilities and merged them with an earthy punk rock and, at times, Mad Magazine rock-and-roll sense of humor.

Without exaggeration, he is perhaps one of the most visionary, versatile and technically gifted artists to work in comics. For those not familiar with his range of work, he began as a cartoonist of Westerns—for which he created the epic Lt. Blueberry series—and under his other pen name, Moebius, drew and wrote sf/fantasy comics and art illustrations, virtually polar opposite genres.

Like many of the most admired cartoonists, he was an “artist’s artist.” However, Girard differed, I think, from other “artist’s artists”—although other artists certainly admired and were inspired by him, few emulated him because he worked at a level and plane of talent few could dream to reach. He was a real one of a kind.

Like a lot of European artists, he first became familiar to U.S. audiences through the pages of Heavy Metal, the American spin-off of the French anthology comics magazine, Metal Hurlant. It was there I discovered Girard when he first began making inroads in the U.S.

Shortly after being “discovered” in North America, he became more visible in the U.S., most famously through Marvel Comics’ alternative comics imprint, Epic Comics, which published much of his Lt. Blueberry work in a 9-volume collection and his science fiction/fantasy work in 10 Moebius volumes. To Marvel’s credit, they are beautiful, full-color editions in album format and high-end glossy paper—to date, they remain rare, definitive collections of his work and fetch high prices in the collector’s market. (I personally own the whole collection.)

 I sometimes found his SF work a bit surreal and inscrutable (they could often be stream-of-consciousness), but being the action-and-adventure fan that I am, was blown away by the maturity and authenticity of his western work in Blueberry. The stories that Girard and his writer/co-creator, scriptwriter Jean-Michel Charlier, did on that series easily compare in quality with iconic film western classics like Unforgiven and the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

While Moebius did not do American work on a regular basis, he nevertheless was fairly visible back in the day, most notably doing a two-issue limited series of the Silver Surfer.

His contributions and influence can also be seen in the conceptual work he’s done for Hollywood like Alien, Tron and the Fifth Element.

In the last decade or so, Girard became less prolific, partly due to health issues. But his art remains timeless and represent a unique and visionary outlook.

Must See TV (Part I): Downton Abbey

Upstairs

A recent newspaper article noted that the majority of content streamed by Netflix are no longer movies but productions that originated on television. My own recent Netflix viewing experiences bear this out, with many of my new favorite programs resulting from my ability to sample shows on Netflix. First up: Downton Abbey. The second series is currently airing on PBS through February 19, though the review below is primarily for the first season which I watched on Netflix.

The international hit PBS show, Downton Abbey, was barely on my radar when I first encountered it on Netflix. Vaguely recalling  articles about it, I decided to check it out and was immediately hooked.

Essentially an update of the classic series Upstairs, Downstairs and set at the turn of the 20th century, this period drama portrays the intertwined lives of the fictional aristocratic Crawley family, headed by the Earl of Grantham and his rich American wife Cora (played by Elizabeth McGovern), and their downstairs staff. The show, which originally was produced and aired in the U.K., has been a huge success internationally and one of PBS’s biggest hits ever.

Downstairs

The period costumes and the insider’s view of the English class system at the turn of the 20th century from the view of both the privileged and those in service no doubt has played a big role in the show’s success. But it is the writing, characters and drama that have captivated a devoted and obsessed audience.

My favorite storyline includes the star-crossed romance between the eldest daughter Mary and her distant cousin Matthew, whose story kicks off the series when the original male heirs to the family fortune are lost on the Titanic, throwing the future of the estate into uncertainty.

The headstrong Mary at first resists her family’s suggestion that she pursue Matthew to ensure her financial security and social standing. Like any normal daughter, Mary resists the suggestion, viewing Matthew as an undeserving interloper who is beneath her and unworthy of her consideration. For his part, Matthew initially assumes Mary to be a spoiled snob. Over time, however, the two find themselves attracted to each other—the cold and steely Mary, in particular, must first come to terms with truly falling in love (perhaps for the first time), with a man her parents actually approve of when all  such romantic considerations were perviously driven by self-interest and mercenary factors. The affection and unrequited love between the two—filtered, of course, by classic British reserve—particularly roped me into the series. In classic cliffhanger fashion, their love affair was left unresolved at the end of season 1, which no doubt partly led to the announcement of the second series, which just concluded airing on PBS.

Numerous other stories, both large and small, play out through the series, set against the larger backdrop of a class system that was on the verge of extinction, though not just yet. The start of World War I in 1914, which closes the first series, was one of the first major sea changes that brought an end to the system—a system that continued to decline until around the start of the next world war.

To be sure, there is nothing especially groundbreaking or innovative in Downton Abbey—indeed, its creator and writer, Julian Fellowes, who also wrote the Oscar winning screenplay for Gosford Park, acknowledges that the show reflects a personal nostalgia for this earlier time. Some have dismissed the show as nothing more than melodrama or, worse, soap opera—personally, I have felt this to be especially the case in the second series, which seems to have really amped up the melodrama. Indeed, in its second season, the show has felt downright Dickensian in its twists and turns (a tone which is not entirely inappropriate for this show). But my investment in the characters and storylines of the first series easily carried me through the second, which ended strongly.

A third season is now in the works, with Shirley MacLaine recently announced as a new addition, as Elizabeth McGovern's character's mother. She is a brilliant compliment to Dame Maggie Smith, who has stolen nearly all the scenes she has appeared in, as the Earl of Grantham's mother, Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham.

Melodrama or not, Downton Abbey shows that when done with skill and high production values—matched by solid storytelling and engaging characters played by strong actors—audiences will respond.

REVIEWS: Steve Jobs

A review of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson

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If there’s a common thread to the biographies of high achieving individuals like Steve Jobs, it’s that they’re ambitious, driven people who exhibited their gifts and independence at an early age. Whether it’s the biography of an artist, entertainer or business executive, it’s clear many of these people would have found success in some way.

And like a lot of bigger-than-life figures, Jobs was a mass of contradictions. He considered himself a humanist/Buddhist, but could be incredibly insensitive, cruel and manipulative. And like many people operating on such a different plane, he had his share of quirks, bordering on obsessive-compulsive. Throughout his life, for example, he followed extreme diets that included extensive fasting and eating only specific kinds of foods—like apples—for weeks on end. For a Buddhist, he held a surprisingly black and white view of the world, often passing judgment on products as “crap” or the best ever, with no middle ground—opinions that he sometimes reversed shortly after.

Nevertheless, it can’t be denied Jobs was a man of vision. The biography of Jobs, of course, parallels the rise of the personal computer industry, which makes Isaacson’s book particularly fascinating. Jobs was among the first to see the personal computer as a consumer product for the masses. However, unlike his peers, he also saw the computer as a means of personal expression both for himself and the end user. He sought to fulfill this through a personal devotion (some would say obsession) to design, simplicity and elegance. This began with the introduction of the WYSIWYG/mouse interface, which was adapted from technology developed by Xerox, an innovation that few people—including the executives at Xerox—saw no value in until Jobs showed them through the first Mac.

Jobs focus on completely controlling the user experience, however, led to Apple losing the first round of the computer wars—his refusal to license out Apple’s operating system opened the door to the rise and predominance of PCs, Windows and open source. Jobs stubbornness, along with his lack of maturity and diplomacy, eventually led to his ouster at Apple. In the wilderness, he developed NeXT computer (which would later be partly absorbed by Apple) and Pixar, purchasing the latter from George Lucas.

Along with NeXT, his experience at Pixar formed the second act of his career. Pixar was initially a company that sold animation hardware and software. Its creative staff, led by John Lassiter (now the chief imagineer at the Walt Disney Company), was initially charged with creating work that showcased Pixar’s capabilities. Soon, however, thanks to Lassiter’s genius, which Jobs quickly recognized, and Jobs’ foresight, animation production became its main focus. It’s a tribute to Jobs’ respect for Lassiter and Pixar staff that for the most part he did not interfere with the animators and creative staff and focused instead on protecting them (particularly from Disney) so that they could focus on animating, even as Jobs continued to hemorrhage immense amounts of money in the early years. After some difficult years with Disney—particularly with executives Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg—the success at Pixar eventually led to not only being purchased by the company, but to both Jobs and Lassiter becoming high-ranking members of the Disney Company.

Pixar’s spectacular success notwithstanding, Jobs’ third act, of course, would prove his greatest—his triumphant return to Apple at a time when it was at the verge of collapse, which eventually led to the development of the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad. With each successive product, Jobs proved that a closed, proprietary system could succeed and that consumers were willing to pay a premium price for it.

Yes, the success of these products was a triumph of design but they were also a triumph of marketing. Jobs designed products that many people not simply saw as useful, functional devices, but an extension of themselves and a reflection of lifestyle.

So while Isaacson’s book is biography, it also provides insight into design, marketing and the cutthroat politics of business, especially in one as competitive as the computer industry. Isaacson’s book does not cover up Jobs’ personal shortcomings, nor does he excuse or justify them. But the book nevertheless is a celebration of Jobs’ significant contributions as a visionary inventor and innovator who found a way to merge science and technology with the arts and entertainment. Along the way, he re-invented and/or up-ended a diverse number of industries and fields, including personal computers, cellular phones, the music industry, and more.

Entertainment Roundup for 2011

Below is my annual round up of books, films, concerts, plays, etc., that I took in during 2011.

Downtown Abbey

This past year, it was television programs—watched mostly online or on DVD, though I did catch a few when they originally aired—that really enthralled me. Especially British ones. These include my belated discovery of my current obsession, the character-driven and heart-breaking Downton Abbey, currently airing its second season on PBS as I write this; Law & Order UK on BBC America, which provides an interesting British spin on the iconic American TV series while remaining addictive and familiar; and the Inbetweeners, another belated discovery, of a series that also originally aired in the U.S. on BBC America but which I watched in its 3-season entirety uncut on YouTube.

Despite its stumbles this past year, Netflix Streaming continued to be a major resource for catching up on television programs and films, providing users like me a conveniently way to quickly check out films and TV shows and mini-series with little risk or effort. That's how I discovered Downton Abbey as well as a few other British TV shows and mini-series like Monday Monday, The Way We Live Now, and Any Human Heart. It also gave me the opportunity to catch foreign language films like the The World, a Chinese film, and French comedies like I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single and Shall We Kiss. Thanks to the streaming service, I also discovered several enjoyable indie gems like Middle Men and Tenure (both coincidentally starring Luke Wilson), Gigantic, and The Extra Man. (The former two starred Luke Wilson while the latter two featured Paul Dano.) Another highlight was Made in Dagenham, a film I wanted to see in 2010, which I finally rented through Netflix and found to be a delight.

Below is a clip from the recent Inbetweeners feature film. Parental discretion advised!


While there were several mainstream films I enjoyed in 2011, none captured my attention quite like Downton Abbey and the Inbetweeners. But among my favorites were, in no particular order, The Artist, Cedar Rapids, Our Idiot Brother, The Adventures of Tintin, and Captain America: First Avenger. The Artist was great fun due to its novelty and the high bar it set for itself, while Captain America ranked so high because it took me by surprise. In its own way, Captain America is a perfect popcorn movie—really fun and smartly done. I usually like to name what I think is the worst movie I saw for the year and, for me, it's no contest: Mars Needs Moms.

For some reason, in 2010 I didn't seem to have read many books, but this year I picked up the pace again. When you look at the list, you'll see I went through a serious Lincoln phase. Highlights were Team of Rivals and the harrowing yet inspiring Unbroken.

And now without any further ado....

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BOOKS:

Hergé: The Man Who Created Tintin by Pierre Assouline (2/3/11)
Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (3/7/11)
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Goodwin Kearns (3/21/11)
Lincoln at Cooper Union by Harold Holzer (4/4/11)
The March by E.L. Doctorow (4/27/11)
Ulysses S. Grant (5/11)
The Hobbit (9/15/11)
Lord of the Rings (10/11)

GRAPHIC NOVELS:

Exit Wounds (1/15/11)
Tintin: The Crab with the Golden Claws (2/4/11)
Scenes from Impending Nuptuals by Adrian Tomine (4/16/11)
Bone (4/27/11)
Smile (8/5/11)

THEATRE:

Dear Edwina, Jr. (6/4/11)
Hairspray

CONCERTS:

Metales 5 - Valley Performing Arts Center (5/5/11)
Vaud and The Villains (9/17/11)
The Taiko Project (9/17/11)
He’s My Brother, She’s My Sister (9/17/11)
4 Lads From Liverpool (12/11/11)

EXHIBITIONS:

TIm Burton @ LACMA (6/19/11)

FILMS/DVDS:

Orson Welles & Me -DVD (1/1/11)
Night Train to Munich - DVD (1/7/11)
Extract - Showtime (1/8/11)
National Lampoon's Van Wilder - Showtime (1/8/11)
Adventureland - Showtime (1/10/11)
The Babysitters - Showtime (1/11/11)
For Your Consideration - Netflix streaming (1/28/11)
Shall We Kiss - Netflix streaming (1/29/11)
Marty -TCM (1/29/11)
Man of the Century (1/29/11)
Seven Years in Tibet (2/8/11)
Cedar Rapids (2/12/11)
I Love You Man - DVD (2/20/11)
Good Night - Netflix (2/23/11)
Last Word - Netflix (2/25/11)
The Extra Man - Netflix (2/26/11)
We Live Again - TCM (3/12/11)
Mars Needs Moms (3/20/11)
The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story - Netflix (3/23/11)
The Auteur - Netflix (3/24/11)
The World - Netflix (3/27/11)
Any Human Heart - Netflix (4/4/11)
The Way We Live Now - Netflix (4/5/11)
The Wild One - TCM (4/17/11)
Under the Greenwood Tree - Netflix (4/28/11)
I Do: How to Get Married and Stay Single - Netflix (5/23/11)
Gigantic - Netflix (5/23/11)
The Special Relationship (5/26/11)
Kung Fu Panda 2 (5/28/11)
Downton Abbey (5/28/11)
The Inbetweeners, Seasons 1-3 (7/3-15/11)
Made in Dagenham - DVD (7/7/11)
Zookeeper (7/25/11)
The Crowd Roars - TCM (8/9/11)
Captain America (8/13/11)
The Narrow Corner - TCM (8/14/11)
It Happened One Night - TCM (9/3/11)
Our Idiot Brother (9/4/11)
Johnny English (10/23/11)
The Middle Men (10/31/11) - Netflix
Lost in America (11/2/11) - TCM
Green Lantern -DVD (11/6/2011)
Moneyball (11/6/2011)
Monday Monday - Netflix
The Muppet Movie (11/24/11)
The Artist (11/27/11)
Take Me Home Tonight - Netflix (12/10/11)
Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows (12/18/11)
The Adventures of Tintin (12/26/11)
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (12/30/11)
Tenure - Netflix (12/30/11)

REVIEWS: Overcoming the Uncanny Valley

When Robert Zemeckis’s Mars Needs Moms fizzled at the box office, many considered it the death knell for motion capture (mo-cap) movies. Zemeckis was a filmmaker who had particularly embraced mo-cap technology with films like the Polar Express, Beowulf, and A Christmas Carol. However, the poor showing of Mars Needs Moms forced Walt Disney Studios to cancel a planned mo-cap adaptation of Yellow Submarine and its longterm relationship with Zemeckis’s mo-cap production company.

With the release of the Adventures of Tintin, however, Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson have taken a big leap forward with mo-cap and appear to have somewhat overcome many of the problems with the technology.

Actors Jamie Bell and Andy Serkis performing as Tintin
and Captain Haddock in their mo-cap suits

The complaints with mo-cap stem from a hypothesis from robotics and 3D animation known as “the uncanny valley.” The hypothesis postulates that “when human replicas look and act almost, but not perfectly, like actual human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among human observers.” In films like the Polar Express, complaints about the creepiness and “dead eyes” of the characters created aversion among many viewers.

While I’m not a particular proponent of mo-cap, I’ve always said that execution plays as important a role as the medium in determining a film’s success or failure. I saw Mars Needs Moms in the theater and the bottom line was that it was an awful movie with unlikable characters and unappealing art design.

For the most part, the Adventures of Tintin has largely avoided these pitfalls by making Tintin as immersive and integrated a universe as possible. More importantly, the characters in the movie—like the characters on which they’re based—are fairly cartoony, creating some distance from the photorealistic look previous mo-cap films tried to capture. Weta Digital–Jackson’s special effects company which provided the mo-cap technology for Tintin–no doubt also made advances in the technology, particularly in capturing the nuances of facial expression and in the eyes. (As I was viewing the film, I could see that the animators had painstakingly given the characters eyelashes—a tiny detail but one that added to breathing life into the characters.) Ironically, Tintin is perhaps the most photo-realistically rendered human.

In contrast to Mars Needs Mom, Tintin is also a triumph of direction. In Mars, I was always conscious of the actors providing the performance capture. In contrast, for the most part, Spielberg and Jackson clearly sought a more stylized, exaggerated movements, which well suited a film based on a comic-book series featuring well-known iconic characters.

As to the film itself, Tintin is a fun romp that captures the innocence of purity of high adventure without the need to wink at the audience. Spielberg has said that he discovered the character after many in Europe compared the first Indiana Jones movie—Raiders of the Lost Ark—to Tintin. It seems fitting that one of the earliest prototypes for globetrotting adventurers like Indiana Jones has been adapted by Spielberg into a timeless, classic film that is as fun, unironic and uncomplicated as one can find in the modern day world.

Happy Holidays from WCG Comics

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Sorry for the long wait since my last post. Life happens. I plan to get back on track in 2012—especially since there is a new issue of Rob Hanes Adventures in the works! So stay tuned for announcements about issue 3.

Meanwhile, I hope everyone will accept my warmest wishes for a wonderful holiday season and new year!

Above is my WCG Comics holiday greetings and below the holiday greetings card from my family.

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REVIEW: DC’s New 52

As someone who works full time, has a family with children, and tries to use the remainder of my time drawing my own comics, the time I have to spend on reading comics over the last decade or so has dwindled a great deal. While I still buy some comics out of habit, most actually go unread. My comics reading habits these days are all over the place, usually determined by whether I like the art. Only a few titles—like Love and Rockets and Optic Nerve—are on my must-buy/must-read lists. Like a lot of people, I’ve gravitated more towards graphic novels and trade paperback collections of limited series, which require less of a commitment in time and energy.

Some of this waning interest, of course, has also been due to the incredible convoluted continuities of many mainstream super-hero comics. In what has been an acknowledged problem for years, many comics often are part of larger story arcs that sometimes go across several series and titles. For the most part, gone are the days when one could pick up a random mainstream comic-book and get a full-length story. (Which is why my own stories in Rob Hanes Adventures are usually self-contained!)

As anyone who follows mainstream comics know, comics have also become “event” driven, meaning that each year the publishers create an all-encompassing story arc that often involves a comic-book company’s entire stable of characters and can take as much as a year to play out. Ironically, while this has goosed sales to some extent, overall, comics have continued to see a decline in the number of people who read comics. Aside from the fact that many people like me have neither the time nor disposable income to devote to such an extended endeavor, such an approach also has little appeal to casual readers.

Partly in recognition of this, DC Comics earlier this year announced its plans to ambitiously relaunch much of its line, including perennial characters like Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman, many of them at the start of the characters’ careers. In some cases, the characters have been tweaked a bit as well, particularly the costume designs.

While there are some fans who decried the idea of change, for the most part the response was favorable, though of course it was hard to judge the success of the changes until the books appeared.

As for myself, I was moderately curious—though I had long ago accepted that I was not the target audience any longer for superhero comics, I nevertheless thought it was a good idea for DC to wipe the slate clean and start fresh. Characters like Superman and Batman, for example—pretty much the first comic-book superheroes—were created in 1939 and 1940. (To be fair, over the years, DC has undertaken a patchwork of approaches to keep the characters up to date and fresh.) Marvel had taken a similar approach in developing its separate “Ultimates” line.

So what’s the verdict? I picked up the first issues of many of the series, including Justice League, Batman, Superman, Detective Comics, Action Comics, and Aquaman. Frankly, none of those first issues made much of an impression on me and I found them a bit stilted.

With the second issues, however, now past the awkward, initial introductory sequences, I found that I enjoyed the stories much more. My favorite to date are Batman, Aquaman and Justice League. The series have not been quite as simplified as one would have liked—for example, Batman and the other characters are obviously new to the scene in Justice League, while in Batman, with the appearance of three of the characters who have donned the Robin costume in the story, it’s clear this is a somewhat more established Batman; and the Robin characters who ranged from the 1940s to the present clearly have now each been Robin for only about a year or two or so before being succeeded by a new Robin. But the bottom line is the stories are entertaining.

I wouldn’t quite say the books recapture the feeling I had when discovering the characters for the first time as an adolescent—we live in an age of media overload and the characters are a too familiar part of the pop culture landscape for that to be possible. But at the same time it’s been a long time since I’ve picked up a mainstream superhero comic-book title and looked forward to the next issue.

How long DC Comics will be actually able to sustain this interest and level of sales is another question. I’m sure that at some point I’ll lose the thread in many if not all of the series and stop reading them altogether again. But it will be interesting to see how long DC can sustain my interest as well as sales, and remain focused on keeping the stories interesting to casual readers. For now, I’ll enjoy the ride.