Kaiju never meant anything to me

I recently made a public admission that I've never said out loud before, and I did feel really bad about it because the person I told was enthusiastically raving about the latest movie and I had to be a little bitch about it and finally admit the truth - I just don't give a shit about Godzilla, or any goddamn kaiju movies.

I never gave much of a damn about any of the big G's movies - I've seen seen several of the weak sauce US reboots on the big screen, and plenty of the true Japanese films, and won't deny that they can be full of startling imagery, but they're just not my thing.

Mothra meant more to me as an amateur film festival in Dunedin than any creature soaring through Tokyo skies, and those Pacific Rim films just left me cold as ice.

If I indulge in some blatant self-analysis - and what is the point of having a blog like this if I can't - it might date back to when I tried to watch the original Godzilla film on TV when I was seven years old. I'd seen it in the newspaper and knew it looked amazingly exciting, but was on at 10pm, so there was no chance I could stay up that late because I was seven, but I went to bed as normal, dozed a bit and got back up when everybody else went to bed, but it turned out to be 6am and I'd missed the movie by about eight hours, and I just never got the feeling that I ever properly caught up.

Man, we didn't even have video players for another couple of years, so maybe there was a sweet spot in 1982 when I could have fallen hard for the Godzilla, but it sailed on by on a cloud of atomic breath. It was years until I saw my first real kaiju, and by then I'd already fallen hard for the Aliens, and the Predator, and the Robocop. Gamera ain't got nothing on Murphy.

The one big monster film I always roll for is the original King Kong, which is just a perfect piece of cinema. But the most recent Kong movies, where everything is smushed together into a big monster universe, did nothing for me.

(And holy shit, that one shot of Kong and Godzilla and the end of the trailer for the latest movie , where they're bounding off to battle together, is one of the most embarrassing things I've ever seen in anything anywhere. How the fuck is this directed by the same guy who made the absolute perfect You're Next and The Guest?)

I don't begrudge anybody who loves it, it's easy to see the stomping appeal of all the monster mayhem. If anything, I feel bereft that I'm missing out, and I'm still kicking myself for sleeping so long and so deep back in 1982.

Sayōnara, big fellas. You have legions of fans, but I was never really one of them.

Best of Best of 2000ad Monthly (part 2 of 2)

 

Art by Glenn Fabry

Art by Cam Kennedy

Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Art by Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy

Art by Steve Dillon

Art by David Roach and John Kent

Art by Colin MacNeil

Art by Brett Ewins

Of course The Biz blew my mind with The Horned God, just like he did for everybody else, but I do stil have a sneaky feeling that the only true Slaine is Glenn Fabry Slaine.

A Good Time, ending in death

Like most people in modern society, I've seen literally billions of people die on screen, (mostly when entire planets are wiped out in some sci-fi epic,) but sometimes there are cinematic deaths that stick in the mind for how horrifically mundane they are.

Like the death of a character at the end of the Safdie brothers' Good Time. It's a very stressful movie, filmed with style and intensity, and then it ends with a death seen at a distance, which is all the more terrible for it. 

It's just so so sudden and so ordinary, the most awful degree of realism I think I've ever seen, and I've only ever seen this movie once, without ever forgetting the power of that moment.

Also, there is the dude who is fed a shitload of LSD while unconscious, and he is going to wake up into the worst fucking nightmare you could imagine, and I think about that way too much too.   

We're with you

- Excerpt from This is Information (2001) by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie.

All the X: The dilution was real

As well as really finding out how much Kitty Pryde was an insufferable brat, a recent read through of all the X-Men comics written by Chris Claremont up to 1989 also showed how tight - both thematically and storytelling-wise - the series could be, and how this loosened with the addition of spin-off comics, before snapping completely in the 1990s.

The Uncanny X-Men were undoubtedly the biggest comic in the English speaking world for the 1980s. It set the pace in sales and storytelling - a high-water mark that the entire American industry is still chasing after. It was kind of astonishing that such a popular comic was also a legitimately great comic, with high level superheroic soap opera action, and characters you actually cared about ( I might not actually like Kitty anymore, but I still care enough to have a strong opinion on the matter )

Even more astonishingly, Marvel didn't saturate the market with X-Men, content to keep it tight, not willing to fuck with the golden goose. There were guest appearances and the occasional limited series, but everything you needed to follow the X-crew was there in one monthly comic.

The editorial staff at the time still insist the call came from the creators for a new title, because they just had too many ideas for one monthly series, and the New Mutants was born. And it was a series that could occasionally be brilliant, especially when the remarkable Bill Sienkiewicz got involved, but it did leech away the strong focus from the main X-title.

You can see it happening in the Uncanny X-Men. While they're still up to thier usual mutant misadventures, there were also a lot of things happening just over there, just out of sight, and while they were possibly inessential, you could feel the story fragmenting.

It fragmented even further with X-Factor, and while the regular X-team were kept away from the originals for the first few years, it all got a bit diluted.

Of course, when the 90s rolled around, there were suddenly dozens of x-titles every month, and trying to follow it all became a fools errand. That mindset of squeezing every last bit of creativity and commodity out of the X-brand had been the standard since then, even as the multitude of titles leave even seasoned readers lost. (I still maintain that the Krakoan era would have been far more palatable - and way more affordable - if it had just been the one X-Men title.)

But that kind of mindset isn't going to change anytime soon, so all you can do is look back, before it was all spread so thin, and marvel at how you didn't need anything more than the core title, until the fucking X-babies came along.

Sorry Steve

- this is me, only just discovering in the year 2023 that Steve Dillon was following me on Twitter, years after we lost the magnificent bastard, and now I can't shake the sinking feeling that he might actually have read the one time I moaned about Marvel stealing his mojo., like a fuckin' prick.

I'm so sorry if you saw that, Steve. You were the absolute fucking best.

Doctor Who: Hello to the Therapy Doctor

Even if it was delivered with the gorgeous bluntness that you would expect from Russell T Davies, the way he figured out how to give the Doctor his groove back was extremely elegant. 

Towards the end of The Giggle, the most recent adventure in time and space for Doctor Who, the Fifteenth Doctor finally makes his appearance, while the Fourteenth is still there. It's an unprecedented development in the 60-year-old series, but one that was arguably essential.

Because all of the Doctor's wacky and crazy adventures out of the universe since he returned in 2005 have been weighed down by guilt and responsibility. All the things he'd done, always trying to help, always trying to save everybody, and never quite succeeding. It all adds up, especially when you don't stop to think about it.

What was the point of David Tennant returning as the Doctor? Because some regenerations serve a specific need - most obviously the War Doctor - and this Doctor really needs to take a break, and that was the face that was going to get it, if any were. 

And when he doesn't get it - three fast-paced adventures and he's lasered through the heart - there is the usual time ravel shenanigans and suddenly the new guy and the old guy are there together. And there is time for one specific doctor - the Therapy Doctor - to rest and heal, and get ready for the next cycle.

Maybe I'm just chuffed that, just this once, the wonderful rebirth of a regeneration episode doesn't come with a side serving of trauma as the old guard is swept away. This time, they hang on, and after a game of catch that saves the universe, the old fella is greeted with love and warmth by the next generation, who gets him started on the road to recovery.

For a TV show - for a story - that has been running continuously for so long, to reinvent itself,and get the Doctor his absolute joy for life back, it's quite remarkable. It can go forward unburdened by the past, because he's learned to deal with it. (The worst grief will never go away, but you do learn how to deal with it, just to get through the day.) 

Ncuti Gatwa is the absolute perfect choice for the next Doctor, and has proved this immediately, with a truly young Doctor (Smith was physically young when he took on the job, but played the part like he was an 80-year-old) who isn't afraid to show all of the emotions in the universe, and isn't there to pick a fight with another incarnation, just to instantly support. 

For a Doctor who always couldn't help but try and save everybody, that immediate support is instantly the right path. He's still be fine because he's an immortal space wizard, but even immortal space wizards need to stop, and take stock.

I know the legions of creators who make the comics, novels and audio plays probably can't wait to get in a few side adventures for The Doctor Who Lives In Donna's Garden, but I can only hope they leave the poor guy alone. That's the point.

Let someone else save the universe for a while. Somebody who doesn't even need pants.

Peter Jackson's life through a lens

You see it in all the crowds, any time there is something marginally interesting happening in front of you - an ocean of phones, as people film fucking everything that is happening. It doesn't matter if it's a school play or a big rock concert or a very fast car, we've all got our devices out.

I do think it's nice that there is some kind of documentation, even if 99 percent of these videos will be posted to social media and never watched again. But there is some truth in the idea that you're missing the moment by focusing on the footage, and I saw it happen to one of the world's great film directors with my own eyes.

As a New Zealander, there are obviously complicated feelings about Peter Jackson - he's a truly talented filmmaker who has made some incredible cinema, and also a total rich prick who always gets what he wants. I've had loads of friends employed by his companies, which is nice; but also loads of them have faced workplace abuse, which is fucking awful.

The films speak for themselves - I saw Bad Taste when I was 15 and thought the comic timing of the exploding sheep was absolutely exquisite. Even after that, Braindead was a goddamn revelation as things gorily escalated, and Meet the Feebles was genuinely disgusting. Heavenly Creatures is obviously divine (and I saw it in a cinema a few kilometres away from where the murders took place), and I was not surprised that he took on Lord of the Rings, because I knew what he'd done to get his first movie made, and that kind of ingenuity always scaled up well.

Those Rings films still have power, man. They're on Sky TV all the freakin' time, and I'm always getting dragged into it for half an hour. Oh shit, they're about to go into Moria? That's my afternoon fucked.

But as less people felt comfortable saying 'no' to the director, the art suffered. King Kong was baggy as hell (although not everyone can agree where that extra baggage is); The Lovely Bones is grossly earnest; and the Hobbit films are smeary mess with tiny moments of great brilliance.

As a journalist, I've tried to interview the dude for a multiple of publications over the years, and never got past his assistant, who was always an absolute legend in deflection. Not even when talking about a passion outside of the big budget movie world, like his devotion to WW1 aviation

But I did end up standing near him at the local air show, where some of the planes he had restored took to the skies above Marlborough. I wasn't close enough to tell him that 'I kick arse for the lord!' is truly one of the greatest moments in cinema, but close enough to see him as this massive spectacle unfolded, with powerful planes swooping down over the crowd.

And Peter Jackson, at the absolute height of his powers, watched the whole thing with his head down, looking through the view screen of his high-grade camcorder.

I'm sure he got some fantastic shots, but he was really missing all the thrills, including one particular fly-over because he as fucking around with the camera. He'd put a lot of effort and even more hard cash into the spectacle unfolding around him, and it was all reduced to 1080p.

So maybe don't feel bad about whipping out your phone at the next gig you go to, even some of the best people to ever us film cameras miss shit too.

The Best of Best of 2000ad Monthly (part 1 of 2)

Art by Brett Ewins and Jim McCarthy

Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Art by Will Simpson

Art by Steve Yeowell

Art by Mick Austin

Art by Carlos Ezquerra

Art by Kevin O'Neill

Art by Cam Kennedy

Art by Ian Gibson

Art by Mark Harrison

There was a time when The Best of 2000ad Monthly was the ultimate form of thrillpower consumption, but I stopped getting it after a few years, mainly because I had all the stuff they reprinted.

So I never even saw until recently many of the fantastic covers they put on the title in its last few years, and will be doing something about this discrepancy by highlighting my faves over the next few weeks.