Closing Metzen & Dille's early war trilogy Primacy is something of a return to form for the thread, a little more worn than Autocracy but a step up from Monstrosity. Part of this may be due to the storyline being restructured as four 22-page issues rather than a dozen 8-pagers.
There's not a lot for non-converts here but Primacy accepts its' status as knowing action-adventure and revels in it. Really in the present climate of IDW's output it's nice to have a series where Megatron basically fill Trypticon all the famous Decepticons he can find and simply sets out to kill Optimus Prime and all the famous Autobots he's hanging around with.
Again the series fumbles cute references by making them leaden retreads but there's some nice character interaction here, including one of the least irritating takes on Grimlock since the Generation 2 days. Things get a little pat at the end but overall it's an entertaining if somewhat predictable read.
3/5
The second of the Metzen/Dille trilogy, Monstrosity is something of a disappointment after the pleasant diversion of Autocracy. It loosely covers Optimus Prime's attempts to persuade the general population of Cybertron that he's not a tyrant like predecessor Zeta Prime while trying to deal with the insurgent Decepticons. The latter spend a portion of the story under the command of Scorponok while Megatron is in exile.
Overall Monstrosity's big problem is that it's about lots of things and it lacks the tight coherence of its' predecessor. The biggest fault is Megatron's exhile to the planet Junkion, here a nightmarish Hell filled with cannibalistic robots. It's not a bad story idea and the pock-marked cloak-clad Megatron wading in Junkion oil around the planet with his pet Quintesson chained up is actually a great visual. The problem is such an epic idea is dealt with in too short a period of time, especially considering the format forces such rapid pacing.
The final act revolves around the resurrection of Trypticon and the attempts to tame the savage Dynobots so they can integrate into the Autobot army. Really it feels quite tacked on and adds to the feeling of a desperate jumble of ideas. Most of the actual dialogue and action is passable, though old references - predominantly to the '86 movie - grow in number as the series goes on and become quite jarring. Livio Ramondelli continues to provide beautiful art, however, and the story's not bad, merely flawed and rough.
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Autocracy was IDW's first attempt at a digital series, being made up of a dozen 8-page chapters. To avoid queering the pitch of the main physical books the decision was taken to set the series in the early days of the war, a period which overall is getting some nice fleshing out from IDW.
This series starts its' storyline not long after the conclusion of Megatron Origin; the Decepticons are beginning to consolidate and the general populace of Cybertron is caught between these revolutionaries and the corrupt senate. Caught between are the Autobots, notably valiant, principled cop Orion Pax (i.e. Optimus Prime when he was Op Rod).
As ever the feeling of everything being a foregone conclusion does inevitably take a little drama out of proceedings but generally the writers - new-to-Transformers Chris Mentzen and prehistoric Sunbow hack Flint Dille - seem aware of this and side with telling the story straight rather than getting bogged down with cheap empty jeopardy.
There are some nice character interactions between some of the big names in the early days of both factions, even if some again play merry Hell with IDW's equivalent of continuity. Pax/Prime and Megatron both come out of it well and are largely the focus of the script; Zeta Prime is a bit of a non-event, making you wonder why he was slotted in after Sentinel Prime when the latter could quite believably have developed in this fashion. Most of the rest are given an odd line or two here or there but sound authentic enough, though it's perhaps a bit jarring that Hot Rod would a) make the mature choice to sacrifice Nyon while b) still being an immature hot-head many years in the future.
The script gets a bit repetitive towards the end, complete with a telegraphed and overlong Transformers the Movie homage that just sucks anyone reading right out of the thing, but the format actually works and it's one of the faster IDW efforts. However, it's more solid entertainment than a crucial installment.
2/5
Written by Shane "Drift" McCarthy - presumably as part of a plan to bring the character of Blurr into the mix before the writer was superseded by Mike Costa - this single issue suffers from a slight storyline against an interesting backdrop. Set in the lull between the initial rise of the Decepticons and the fall of the old-style establishment (headed here by Zeta Prime), there are some interesting looks at pre-war Cybertron and the script is one of the few to give much of a look at what Cybertronians did for entertainment while also highlighting that it wasn't necessarily a Golden Age for everyone (such as Blurr's mechanics, a clear underclass).
The problem is the lead story is just the same old one of a self-interested neutral eventually finding himself a better person for joining in with a good cause and helping out. The actual turning is perfunctory and would have felt like just as much of a foregone conclusion even if Blurr was an unknown character, and I'm not entirely sure why McCarthy chose to tell this story about this character apart from to indulge his street-racing fetish. Still, this is probably about the first time Blurr's been written as something other than a joke character and some of his abundant potential is at least hinted at.
2/5
The earliest-set complete series from IDW, Megatron Origin has a simple but fascinating premise - show how Megatron become Megatron and where exactly the Decepticons came from. Sadly, it's botched on just about every level. Eric Holmes' script was originally written for previous licensee Dreamwave and it shows.
It took me a while to warm to Paul Cornell's interpretation of Pete Wisdom in the character's rocky solo series but here, as the kingpin of MI13 and master tactician of British superheroes, he's on top form so fair play. Indeed, Cornell writes strong for everyone here from Brian (whose relationship with Meggan, one of the most charming, warm and real of the whole Marvel Universe, is captured perfectly), Blade and Dane Whitman right down to a significant cameo from Doctor Doom.
As a reader of superhero comics for decades now it's been quite sad
to see the way the idea has largely been treated by cinema, be it Disney
serving up generic Silver Age CGI shit or a series of increasingly
awful Alan Moore butcherings. Superheroes can be great, it doesn't all
have to be Avengers crap.
Quite what made Rebellion put this thing out in TPB form I don't know, as Mean Team has long been something of a joke among British comic fans in general and older 2000AD readers in particular. Initially it's about a team of hardcase future gladiators in one of those super-violent extreme sport things that infected the industry after Rollerball came out. The 'characters' are straight off the shelf, typified by no-nonsense bastard 'Bad' Jack Keller, whose name really is 'Bad' Jack Keller so we know what a bloody nutter he is. 'Bad' Jack looks like every 2000AD anti-hero ever - bald, scars, perma-snarl.
Midway through the first arc one of the team - psychic Henry Moon - gets blown up and his brain gets put in a panther. Then it gets really silly. The writers realise no-one wants another retread of Death Game 1999 and promptly reset the series by exiling the titular Team to a post-apocalyptic fantasy Earth where they fight all kinds of crap monsters on a half-arsed quest. Then when that collapses in on itself a bunch of spaceships turn up and just execute the main cast in a moment that's so clearly a self-loathing attempt to stop the strip in the most brutal, callous and careless way ever it's actually kind-of audacious.
Sadly there's still a chunk of the undeservedly thick book to go, which is filled by a solo story for Henry Moon, who apparently escaped destruction and heads back to the colonies, so it's basically about a panther sneaking around a space station. Exciting.
So this is an outright bad series; it's largely too long-winded and repetitive to be the hilarious kind of bad (though if you spot this in a store leaf through to the three-quarter mark to see the team getting killed; you will never, ever see a comic's lead characters genuinely killed off in such an offhand manner). It's a mystery as to why Rebellion have released Mean Team but then it's equally mysterious as to why 2000AD ran it for so long in the first place considering they seem to have no idea what the strip's about.
In a curious one-off revival 'classic' Machine Robo gashapon figures were released in 2001 by Bandai. For those who don't know, gashapon are basically vending machine toys; the ones made in Japan are particularly collectible and are of relatively high quality and complexity compared to their Western equivalent. It's often said they're more expensive but compared to the ones seen in UK Toys R Us stores (usually selling Disney figurines and the like rather than generic licence-free stuff) the price doesn't seem too bad - these retailed at ¥200, which is about £1.50. Of course, it could get more expensive as in shops you'd be getting a random one each time.
There's never really been anything to quite compare to The Comic Strip Presents..., a cross between a TV series and a film franchise. Started off as a vehicle for the titular club's alternative comedy denziens the series rapidly came under the almost-total control of Peter Richardson as the likes of Rik Mayall, Ade Edmondson, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders and Alexei Sayle found fame elsewhere. They would all be back at various points but there was always a sense they were doing their old mate Pete a favour. Richardson himself is the only constant; even the format's all over the place, varying from 25 minute episodes to full-length features.
Gianfranco Parolini had already had one smash hit in the spaghetti western genre with If You Meet Sartana, Pray for Your Death in 1968, introducing Gianni Garko as the titular gunslinger. Two years later he made the Lee Van Cleef vehicle Sabata, with the American actor as a slightly more mysterious version of the Colonel Mortimer character that had effectively restarted his career in For A Few Dollars More.
Entertaining but a little less than the sum of its' parts. Richard
Lester's 1970s output is to my mind very underrated, classic adventure
fair, from the physical comedy and pure adventure of his Musketeer films through to the superb Juggernaut, before he was vilified by nerds for Superman II.
One of the last gasps of Christian Slater's major film career before assaulting his then-girlfriend made him toxic goods, this is one of his best performances and certainly towards the top end of the movies he's appeared in. Peter Berg's comedy is pitch black, of questionable taste and cruel to a degree that makes Lars von Trier look like a sentimental old duffer - i.e. it's a riot.
I was a fan of David Lynch's Twin Peaks TV series before I knew much about his films but when I did get into the movies I was naturally eager to get to grips with this one, even if it was a prequel rather than a follow-up to the show's compound cliffhanger.
Steve McQueen's final film is at least a bit of an improvement after the disappointing An Enemy of the People and Tom Horn. McQueen is a great fit as the Western hero born in the wrong era, giving a fine charismatic performance as Ralph Thorson (a real life modern bounty hunter, mainly bringing in bail jumpers) instead of just going through his action guy motions.
Following the success of The Towering Inferno, Steve McQueen was technically the biggest actor in the world, wanting $6m for a role. Sadly, between his laziness (well, to be fair he was screwing Ali McGraw, which probably made time fly) and various bouts of bad luck he ended up not being in anything and, after four years of inactivity (which included turning down roles in Apocalypse Now and what would become Heaven's Gate), began to lose his standing.
An interesting study of aerial warfare in World War I from Jack Gold, who produced several superficially traditional genre movies with a lot lurking below the surface. The most striking thing about the anti-war Aces High is the repeated theme of the brittle young men forced into such a terrifying idea as aerial combat, barely a couple of decades into heavier-than-air flight becoming successful.
The last of Hammer's period Dracula films before the ill-advised switch to the present day, Scars of Dracula makes some notable attempts to revitalise the series. Christopher Lee has his largest role to date and Dracula has a few 'new' abilities - the ability to scale walls like a spider being the best; this was in Bram Stoker's original novel but then largely ignored until suddenly appearing in two films in the same year - the other being Jesus Franco's straight adaptation of the book, also starring Lee in the title role.
One of the very greatest films ever made, a fantastic, nihilistic suspense thriller. Centering on four expat drifters stuck in a small oil town in the middle of the Mexican desert, all desperate to get home but unable to afford the air fare.
Lindsay Anderson had an unusual career - his filmography as a director is dominated by realist drama This Sporting Life and the acerbic Mick Travis trilogy but his career was more complicated, including a lot of theatre and a day job as a film critic of some repute. Come the eighties he was almost an establishment figure and took a few jobs for cash, notably a small acting role in Chariots of Fire and even directing a concert film for Wham.
The Whales of August was his last cinematic release (little-seen evangelism satire Glory! Glory! would follow for HBO two years later) and it's very much from the part of Anderson that loved cinema. A charming slow-paced piece about the later days of two sisters finding themselves finally growing closer as their lives wind down, the film is mainly interesting for the chance to see cinematic icons Bette Davis and Lillian Gish duel in their old age, ably backed by a similarly aged Ann Sothern, Victor Price and Harry Carey turning in fine performances in the twilight of their careers under the watchful eye of a professional cinephile. It's gentle but never syrupy and while it lacks the anger of much of Anderson's work it has a lovely glow to it.
