MONDOmagazine

By Miles Baker and Owen K. Craig

Posted October 30th, 2007

Each week we use random.org’s random integer generator to create two random numbers. They then count down on the release list until they find out their RANDOM COMIC OF THE WEEK! No matter what the publisher, what the issue, what the arc, we will be there reviewing things with little or no context.

Miles’ Book

She-Hulk #22
Written by Peter David
Penciled by Shawn Moll
Inked by Victor Olazaba
Marvel Comics, 2007.

People don’t believe you when you say that She-Hulk is a cool character. I didn’t believe my friends when they told me that Dan Slott’s relaunch of She She-Hulk was one of the best comics they had ever read. But I rolled my eyes, sighed a deep sigh, set aside my belief that the name was dorky, and decided to give the benefit of the doubt: and it was magical. Slott molded Jennifer Walters, a.k.a. She-Hulk, into a funny but vulnerable character who had wonderfully absurd adventures grounded in an interesting supporting cast. And now, after Slott pan-fried She-Hulk in a heaping cup of Marvel continuity, Peter David is taking a whirl at the character.

He’s doing a good job here letting people get comfortable with the character. Jennifer’s life has been pretty complicated from what I’ve picked up around the water cooler (reading blogs and trolling message boards), but David embraces the past, giving curt nods to it, while establishing a new status quo. Only in the comics would it make sense for a lawyer to change careers and become a bounty hunter, but does. It does make sense. She’s trying to be a super hero while trying to work in the law system: it’s what she’s always done, it’s perfect for Jennifer.

David captures her voice nicely, with a nice mix of humour and competence. The art chores are well handled, but don’t live up to some of the previous artists that have been on the book. I don’t want to give away any major plot points, but I will say that there are some neat twists that make me want to come back for more adventures of the Jade Giantess

Yeah, the name still sounds dorky.

Owen’s Book

Blue Beetle #20
Written by John Rogers
Art by Rafael Albuquerque
DC Comics, 2007

All comics fans have books like this one: the book we really like, but for some reason don’t pick up every month. Blue Beetle is my favourite book that I’m not buying. Here and there I pick up an issue and quite enjoy it, but for some reason I don’t end up adding it to my pull list. So when this issue was picked as my “Random Book of the Week” I was excited. A book I love crossing over with an event I love? I was ready for awesomeness. Then something went wrong.

I was confused, why wasn’t I loving this? I’ve thought about it, and the best I can figure out is that the book isn’t remotely accessible, which is a tremendous shame. Here we have an excellent, but under read, comic crossing over with a popular event. This (in theory) provides Blue Beetle with a lot of new readers, so to make the book as complicated and reliant on previous plot points and characters seems like a missed opportunity to me. If the most I — a reader of at least a few issues of the series — can only get “some guy (that the Blue Beetle knew?) is consumed by a Sinestro Corps ring and a scarab (there’s more than one?) and goes crazy and somehow is defeated,” I can’t imagine that people who don’t know anything about the series were doing much better. And if this wasn’t enough to make me, a somewhat casual fan of the series, start picking up the book on a regular basis, I can’t imagine it would be cause for a newcomer to do so.

It’s a shame.

Darkwave for your parents.

Interviewed by Todd Aalgaard
Photos by Tavishe Coulson

Two missed streetcars and a last-minute cab ride from hell left me loitering in front of the Opera House, drawing a complete blank.

The MuchMusic-happy use of the word “darkwave” left me loaded with assumptions about She Wants Revenge. I expected to be dredging up question after question in a desperate attempt to keep these aloof darkwavers on my level. Preconceptions of goth-y indifference and gloomy reticence had me trawling my brain for something — anything — interesting to ask. I had, after all, listened to SWR for the first time about four nights earlier.

Though by talking to Adam 12 I learned that not only are these guys more club-land than casket, but that you can ask three or four really, really simple questions and an interview will damned near write itself.

MONDO: This is your second time coming through Toronto, right?

Adam 12: That was two thousand and… one? Two? I was working with a girl named Esthero. I met her in Los Angeles and we became friends and then she invited me to come here to finish our songs that we had started in Los Angeles and, uh, I came and lived with her for about two and a half months.

MONDO: Was this while She Wants Revenge was coming together?

A12: Way before. I’d say, like, almost two years before me and Justin hooked up.

MONDO: So how did this whole thing take off?

A12: We have known each other since we were kids, although we never really kicked it, we weren’t really friends, we just knew the same people. … So I’d seen him out at clubs and stuff where I was spinning and I became a producer, and we just kept hearing about, like, what each other was doing and our one mutual friend kept on trying to hook us up but the timing was always bad. We finally hooked up through that mutual friend who kind of told us one day when she knew we were both free, she said, “You guys need to go and hook up right now and go work.” So we did.

We both come from hip-hop backgrounds, so we thought what better way to get started than to go into the studio and make hip-hop beats? … After about four of five months of making hip-hop beats together — like I said, we come from hip-hop backgrounds, and around that time it was kind of, like, hip-hop to us just was not the same. We come from maybe the early 90’s…

MONDO: … sort of the Run DMC scene?

A12: Run DMC, Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and then like Tribe and Jungle Brothers… we consider ourselves coming from the “golden age” of what we consider hip-hop. When we were making beats, we were finding that it wasn’t really about being creative as far as the beats were concerned, it was more, like, what else is out there? We didn’t want do what everyone else was doing. As far as people wanting to buy beats, the marketplace at that time for hip-hop was like, you know, “This song is a hit and this song is a hit, so give us a beat that sounds like that,” instead of where hip-hop comes from and that is just being creative, doing whatever you want to do.

So we were feeling really frustrated with the way hip-hop was going and, at the same time, I had met Kenna who’s on tour with us through Esthero. … So I did a beat for Kenna and I played it for him over the phone and he freaked out. He was, like, “Dude, you have to e-mail that to me as soon as possible.” And as I was finishing it up, Justin came over to work on some hip-hop and whatever and he heard it, and he said, “Dude, what is that?” I said, “This beat I made for Kenna.” He was, like, “hold him off for a couple days — don’t send it yet, let me take it home and let me try and write with it for a bit. Maybe play bass or guitar.” So he took it home and he brought it back and that would be our first song. It was indirectly thanks to Kenna that we came up with that first song and we were like, “Wow, there’s something there….” The feelings we were getting from this first song really were kind of reminding us about how we felt about a lot of the music that we grew up with — Depeche Mode, The Cure, The Smiths. … We just kept on going through it and going, “Wow, now we’ve got two songs that make us feel that way. Let’s do another one, let’s experiment, let’s research what keyboards and equipment they used when they made those albums that we loved so much, and let’s go buy that gear.”

We have a friend in Los Angeles that owned a shop that basically sells all that vintage shit so we asked. We were like, “What did they use on that?” And he said, “I’ve got a couple of these things in the back; I don’t normally like to tell people about them, but you’re my friends so I’m going to hook you up.” So we’ve got like a couple of secret things in there that people don’t really know about, that come from like the late ’70s/early ’80s. We just got into, like, that part of it, finding really cool vintage keyboards and letting the sound of those keyboards and drum machines kind of dictate where each song would go, and we were just, like, having a ball. Sooner or later we had eight or nine songs and we were like, “We have something here. Let’s give it a name.”

MONDO: So do you figure your appeal has to do with the way you came together, being from a hip-hop background with such diverse influences?

A12: I think it’s a lot of different things, really…. You take my experience as a DJ, you add in the fact that we both come from a hip-hop background — and there a lot more hip-hop elements in what we do than people actually realize or search to discover. Take that, and the fact that we were influenced by a lot of ’80s bands like Depeche Mode and The Cure and that (Justin) writes a lot of catchy things…

But then you get the people our age and older, you see them out there at the shows that grew up listening to the same shit. We get young kids at shows coming up like, “I didn’t know about you guys until my dad played this for me.” Then we’ll meet the father and he’ll be like, “Yeah, you know, I grew up listening to the same shit you guys do and this really reminds me of it and makes me feel…” You know, one thing we hear is “it makes me feel” a lot from people that really, really dig it. That’s something they say more than “it sounds like.” “It sounds like” is more like a journalist’s kind of thing to say. Add all those things up and it kind of describes why those people on the dance floor are there.

Band of Horses
Cease To Begin
Sub Pop, 2007

Reviewed by Allana Mayer

New Band of Horses? Why did no one tell me? How did I miss this? Way to go, “friends.”

So why Cease To Begin? Why not Failure to Launch, False Start, Arrested Development, Stalled Engine, Too Lazy To Get Off The Couch, Only Interested in Flirting? Cease To Begin isn’t disappointing, as the title would connote; rather, it’s incredibly similar to their debut (which I listed as the best album of 2006, FYI). The voices have the same timbres and echoes, the guitars are still smooth and warm, and the song structures continue to vary from power-pop to acoustic humalongs to moody reflections. Plus, all that self-indulgent, crawl-into-bed-and-go-fetal appeal.

“No One’s Gonna Love You” is the new “Funeral” — the instantly catchy single that becomes irritating after ten listens because you realize how whiny it really is. “Detlef Schrempf” (he’s a basketball player) would, I suppose, be the new “St. Augustine,” because neither song has relevance to its namesake, but both are the slow and pensive lows to their respective albums. (“My eyes can’t look at you any other way” can’t really be referring to an NBA forward…can it?) No quirky complement to “Monsters” here, which is a shame, and probably a foreshadowing of increased boringness, major-labelness, and radio-friendly ubiquity to come.

“The General Specific” verges on an anthemic energy, but suffers from lacklustre piano and a shortage of, I guess, actual enthusiasm. And Ben Bridwell’s voice gets a bit grating during the half-octave jumps of “Window Blues.” Cease To Begin’s not a standout achievement, like so many innovative albums that have excited me about current music (Panda Bear, anyone?). But it’s sturdy and reliable, and has its place, just like its predecessor, for tired evenings doing the dishes and singing along, and all those moments where you just need a familiar soundtrack to the everyday.

Then again, I already have their debut for that…

By Kerry Freek

Last week I spoke with Jeff Maus: comic artist, painter, filmmaker, and almost-librarian extraordinaire. Read on to find out Jeff’s approach to conveying movement and how jazz inspires him.

MONDO: Hey Jeff! What are you working on these days?

JEFF MAUS: Hi Kerry, great to see you, it’s been too long. Well, I am finishing up my masters degree, and I am working on some short comics, maybe someday I’ll compile them. I have about 8 new ones done, I guess when I get to 20 they’ll be ready to publish. They are typically 2 pages, some will be 5–20 pages though. I am also hoping to make a new short film sometime soon, and always working on ideas for longer ones. One I am excited about in particular is a low-budget musical. I think it could be real cool if I can get it all together.

MONDO: By now, you’re a seasoned filmmaker. You wrote a half-hour show called “Moose Factory” and created fantastic puppets and sets. Subsequently, the script was translated into Cree and aired on APTN. And you just completed a documentary on Southern Ontario rock legends Transylvania 500. Tell us about your next film project!

JM: The show was based on my thesis film called “Well Being.” They saw the short and hired me to make a kids’ show based on the main character after graduation. They needed some content to represent the Cree speaking region in Northern Ontario, so they hired me to do it for them. So it was new material translated into Cree. My next film project will be interesting I hope. Trying to combine Eraserhead and John Cassevettes’s work. Sort of fantastic, but utterly, bitterly real at the same time, something I tried to do in my comic too (reality + fantasy, comedy + drama). I think it will work real well. But, you never know, these things can sometimes end up taking forever to pull together so it might not be for awhile it’s ready to go. Then after that there’s a musical, it will be good if I can pull it off. Got $10,000 you wanna invest? I hope I can pull it off… Got $5,000? $20?

MONDO: A year or two ago, you self-published a graphic novel called Escape From Planet Crazy. What was your experience with doing everything independently? Do you prefer to work this way?

JM: It was okay. I am pretty shy, so it was a bit tough selling my work like that, trying to promote it. People can tend to confuse the work with the artist, so when I am saying “look at my work, I think you’ll like it” people may sometimes think of it as saying “look at me, and like me.” Plus, ambition tends to turn people off, so having to sell it myself, people (cynical hipsters especially) probably didn’t respect what I was doing that way. Was it on the Simpsons where some character made the criticism of another, “The whole thing smacks of effort”? That’s maybe mostly my imagination, I dunno. What do you think?

In terms of independence, I would rather have a partner, or a representative to do stuff like promoting. Plus people inspire me, most artists, too, I would think… an audience, so true independence is uncreative. There have been times where I am a member of a group of artists or musicians, that’s the most fun and creative. A critical mass. Ideas bouncing off of each other, and a source of encouragement and competition. Film school was like that, one of the greatest creative times of my life. Ottawa is a place like that too, a scene with good people.

MONDO: Hey, while you’re at it, tell us about Escape From Planet Crazy. What’s it about? Where’d the idea come from? And what draws you to the medium of comics?

JM: Like Scorsese says, “Paper is cheaper than film.” I wanted to make a film of it but didn’t have $30 million, and I thought as a comic it could find an audience a script couldn’t. EFPC is about a movie actor, Todd Masterson, adopted and raised by a casting director and children’s theatrical agent. He was whored out to a Little Rascals-type series as a kid, and then as an adult finds himself in a successful sci-fi film franchise where he is totally identified as his character — Dirk Stanley. (As if Sean Connery had made nothing but Bond movies, or like William Shatner or Adam West but for 20 years straight.) Todd is rich and famous, he is a drug addict and prone to head injuries, so eventually he snaps and thinks he is Dirk Stanley and the world is full of robots and monsters like one of his films. He ends up in a mental hospital, which he thinks is an intergalactic fortress. Tragedy and comedy married together, fantasy and reality, back and forth.

MONDO: Let’s change gears a bit. A lot of your past paintings convey the ideas of jazz and movement. What’s your attraction to jazz? How do you make movement work in a still image?

JM: Jazz is a good metaphor for creativity. I grew up reading about and studying stand-up comics and musicians. Something about putting it all on the line, live in front of a crowd. Creating, and performing live like that. You can’t really paint a comedian, and it isn’t as universal a subject, nor is it as meaningful to me as music is. Anyway, jazz is a metaphor for creating and the spiritual aspects of that. Where do the [musical, film, painting] ideas come from? A prof once told me that my talents aren’t really mine to take pride in, that I was born lucky to have them. That changed my thinking in a big way. I do work hard, but that in itself (a curiosity, a work ethic) is something I am fortunate to have naturally. So the idea of shining the light, exploring what it means to have this drive and these abilities is my attraction to jazz.

As far as movement in painting, Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase blew my mind, and I never recovered.

MONDO: Speaking of jazz, you’ve got a wicked story about Sonny Rollins and your piece Saxophone Colossus, featuring and named after the man himself. Would you share that one with MONDO readers?

JM: Sure, that painting’s coming from the same thing. Sonny Rollins has a book, Open Sky, and… it isn’t a unique idea to him, John Coltrane’s poem/prayer for “A Love Supreme” was about the same thing, I think most artists (ones with humility anyway) think the same thing, Picasso wouldn’t ever have: “There is only one Picasso!” Anyway, “God” gave them the ability, so they feel a duty to do it justice, and not to waste it. In the painting of Sonny Rollins, or many of my musicians, the stage lights fill in for God (whatever God means) and the music is from him through Sonny as a conduit. We are made in his image, so we are speaking his voice, so when we perfect that voice (Coltrane would practice for 24 hours straight and pass out with his horn in his hand) we are getting closer and closer to doing him justice. In the Rollins picture, the lights and keys on the horn blend like atoms, the idea that on that level everything/everyone is the same… I tend to wonder more about some kind of collective unconscious or something than I do a specific deity.

Anyway, long story long, I sent a copy of the painting to Sonny Rollins telling him some of this, and what an inspiration he had been to me (the first jazz show I saw was him, it killed me hearing this amazing theatre-filling improvised music being created right in front of me, I still get a charge thinking of that show). So I sent it to him, and he wrote me back a lovely thank-you note. Really touching. I was happy enough thinking he might actually see my picture some day, the same neurons that made “On Impulse!” or “Way Out West” spending a second or two considering my picture was exciting, and then to get that letter from him, inspiring on even another level. An artistic colossus for sure.

Anyway, thanks for asking, that’s a nice story for me to think about. I hope that stuff doesn’t sound too flaky. Probably it is inevitable, when you’re talking about art or yourself.

Jeff’s documentary on Transylania 500 premieres at The Ford Plant in Brantford, ON this October 28th. For more of Jeff’s artwork, visit www.maus.ca.

Michael Clayton
Directed by Tony Gilroy
Warner Bros. 2007

By Jessie Skinner

Michael Clayton is a good film for many reasons, but a great film for only one: Tom Wilkinson. His performance as Arthur Edens — not the plot’s protagonist but certainly its catalyst — is the best thing here. The character’s position is somewhere between euphoria and dementia; having worked for 6 years as an attorney defending a company on accusations of releasing toxic chemicals, he stops taking his medication and decides that he is doing the business of evil. He strips naked and chases after a witness, damaging in no small way the appearance of the people who pay him. Wilkinson doesn’t just spout like a lunatic, he shows us an individual who believes he has emerged from nothing less than hell, completely energized and riotous. George Clooney’s name comes first, but his time on screen as the title figure comes a close second in interest to this brief but fascinating character study.

Michael Clayton’s job is to clean up the messes people leave behind; not just at the office but in life as well. He gambles away his prospects, has to deal with an alcoholic brother, and other dramatically taut situations. He is an incredibly smart character, sometimes even working ahead of the audience it would seem, in terms of figuring things out. When the U-North company’s lawsuit for negligently poisoning people comes to a head, they begin working their way into the lives of their lawyers, spying and eventually worse. However, Clayton’s opposition to them is not aggressive; it is calculating and precise. Writer /director Tony Gilroy has a history in action, writing the scripts for the Bourne trilogy, but here he displays great restraint. Michael Clayton is a movie in which cause and effect is promoted through dialogue, not violence; although violence is there, it accentuates rather than defines what is going on.

The film is often concerned with life-altering moments, both anticipated and shocking. The reason it works is because it pays attention to the time around these moments: riding in a taxi, internally shaken, the feeling of sweat overtaking you. It is through use of these moments that Michael Clayton shows itself as a unique and exciting work. The drama and suspense are never forced upon the audience, at times making the pace slightly stagnant. But this is a good thing.

But through all this, it’s still Wilkinson’s movie. His words shook me quite a bit, and left a lasting impression. He doesn’t really walk away with the movie as he does kick it chaotically out of the way, echoing Network’s Peter Finch (“I’m mad as hell…”), but projecting a much deeper pain of conscience. Looking at Michael Clayton from Arthur Edens’ perspective reveals a lesson: it is frightening for the corrupt to one day wake up and find themselves morally corrected.

This month we honour Runaways and Green Lantern

By Miles Baker and Owen K. Criag

We here at MONDO have opinions; lots of them. But rather than overload you with our opinions of things we didn’t like (our Random Book of the Week column covers that more often than not) we wanted to share our warm, fuzzy feelings about the comics that we loved this month.

Miles’s Book of the Month

Runaways #28
Written by Joss Whedon
Art by Michael Ryan
Marvel Comics, 2007

When I heard Joss Whedon was talking over Runaways I — like many others — did a happy dance. Perhaps even the Dance of Joy, for you major Whedon nerds (me, Owen). But what I got wasn’t the total homerun I was hoping for. The first three issues were good, just not the printed orgasm I was hoping I had planned. Well, baby, here’s the money shot.

We finally got to see why having our young heroes trapped in a Star Trek: The Next Generationesque time travel plot is cool. The confrontation between Chase and his murderous ex-girlfriend’s time-displaced parents was cathartic and shocking; Nico meeting her grandmother blew my mind — who saw that one coming?

Ryan’s art is also shaping up nicely. He’s not as subtle as Adrian Alphona was — that man’s fucking awesome — but he’s still expressive and makes our kids look like kids. The only real problem with this book is that it’s not shipping anywhere near on time. But this was worth the wait.

Owen’s Book of the Month

Green Lantern #24
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ivan Reis
DC Comics, 2007I was never a big Green Lantern fan. Oh sure, I thought he was cool and all, I had even tried out the first issue of his new series, but it was never enough for me to pick up a monthly Green Lantern book. However, after all the nice things said about the Green Lantern: Sinsetro Corps one-shot a few months back, I knew I had to check it out for myself. It turned out everyone was right and I was hooked. I’ve been reading, nay, devouring the Sinestro Corps storyline since then. The catch, though, is that I hadn’t been sure if I was going to remain a monthly Green Lantern reader after the storyline was over. All that changed with this issue. Not only am I convinced that I am going to keep reading this issue, but I actually hit up back-issue bins to track down all the issues I’ve missed. that’s how much I loved this issue.

It’s your classic “heroes rallying after having had their asses handed to them” issue, but it’s done with style, heart and such fan-boyish glee that it’s impossible to resist. We get awesome one-liners from Superboyman Prime and Guy Gardner and some stunning art from Ivan Reis, especially in the scene of Hal Jordan helping Kyle Rayner from Parallax’s clutches. Yikes.

It’s been many times before, but I’ll echo the statement: the best event in comics is happening right here.

Fatal Frame (Xbox and PS2)
Published and Developed by Tecmo

By Diana Poulsen

Honestly, I’m a scaredy-cat. Paradoxically, I adore scary games because they have unique stories and make me jump out of my skin. Horror games typically have engrossing decayed and dilapidated environments that are so beautifully imagined and detailed that they leave me in awe. Fatal Frame is my favourite series of games and I will complete my Fatal Frame reviews with the game that started it all, and is the only game in the series that I haven’t yet finished.

The original set the precedent for the entire series. It introduces the camera obscura, your weapon in the game, and the re-occurring plot: human sacrifice gone horribly wrong. I mean really, could human sacrifice go any other way?

Primarily, you play as Miku Hinasaki who goes looking for her brother, Mafuyu, since he disappeared nine days ago after entering the Himuro mansion. Mafuyu had gone to the mansion to search for his mentor, Junsei Takamine, and Takamine’s team who have also mysteriously disappeared in the mansion. Miku slowly discovers the nature of rituals that occurred in the mansion through visions, scraps of paper and tape recordings. The series of tape recordings verbally illustrate what happened to Takamine and his team. The recordings are creepy to say the least. Slowly you listen to each member grow more and more terrified, paranoid, and delusional with each tape you find. It is disturbing and profoundly fascinating!

The story itself is pretty freaky and is the most successfully scary story in the entire series. The bizarre thing about Fatal Frame is that on the front of the box it says it is based on a true story, but that sentence is not on the Japanese version. The story is actually based on a very popular Japanese urban legend about haunted houses and how the people who explore them are “spirited away.” Meaning, they disappear. Of course, this only adds to the tension the game produces. It’s put into our minds that this is real, when of course it couldn’t be. Right?

The tension and heart-pumping action is built upon by the ambient music that accompanies the decaying and creaking environment of the maze-like mansion. The music slowly builds throughout the entire game, creating anxiety in the player. You’ll hear a woman playing an instrument, then the string snapping as her ghostly form disappears. On top of that, ghosts — and not ones that attack you — randomly appear from nowhere to scare the crap out of you. You’ll see faint apparitions on wall and floors, scream a little, and then take a picture of the thing that just scared your pants off. Oh, and there’s a ghost with bloody sockets where eyes should be, that chases you and wails with yearning, “My eyes! My eyes!”

There’s also a weird travelling back in time. The game works in chapters; as each chapter goes along, broken stairways will become fixed and nailed shut doors will become open. I constantly thought to myself, “Wait — wasn’t that broken? But it’s fixed now…”

Fatal Frame is the scariest game I have ever played. Not just for the atmosphere but also for the bugs that plague the PS2 version of the game. I would have completed the Xbox version, but my friend wanted their Xbox (which I had borrowed) back. In the PS2 version of the game, you will find yourself caught in invisible boxes that you can’t get out of, or you’ll endlessly loop running down stairways until the ghost chasing you kills you. The viewfinder in the camera is organized in a way that makes it very hard to see how much of a charge you have on the camera. It’s the Xbox version that introduces the circle of symbols that light up, which will be a constant throughout the series.

I thought I was a scaredy-cat, but then I found out that people I know who play games like Siren and Resident Evil won’t play Fatal Frame because they see the ghost following them out of the corner of their eye. Maybe I am braver than I think.

Condemned: Criminal Origins (Xbox 360)
Developed by Monolith Productions
Published by SEGA

By Alexander B. Huls

I don’t frighten easily. I get unnerved, unsettled, creeped out, even disturbed. But I don’t every really get scared. Like, so scared that the only way I can release the pent up fear is to scream out loud, with a few swear words thrown in to help appropriately ebb the fear welling up inside of me. And maybe pee my pants a little.

Condemned: Criminal Origins proved to be the exception to the rule.

The game was the first one I bought after buying my Xbox 360, and having heard of its frightening reputation, I decided to prove how manly was, test the fates, and play it in the dark. I subsequently spent the next thirty minutes with my heart beating in my throat and — despite that obvious obstruction — screams squeezing through and words spewing out that would make my mother blush.

So, what makes it damn scary? Well, in a word, atmosphere. The game is set in a world going to hell around you, F.B.I. Agent Ethan Thomas. Strange things are happening around town, including birds dying and increase in violent behavior amongst addicts, who like to taunt you by calling you “asshole” and hunting you down. Then they ferociously try to club you to death with whatever items they can find lying around. Throw in a serial killer named Match Maker who likes to position his victims in staged scenes involving mannequins (if you didn’t find mannequins frightening already, this game will ensure you do from now on) who frames you for the murder of two other agents and taunts you about it. You’ll feel like you’re wandering through a world-on-the-brink dreamed up by Nietzsche or Clive Barker (minus horrible creatures).

With the entire world drenched in a darkness that can hide a coked-out addict ready to lunge at you with a horrifying scream and wrench, and amazingly designed sound that details everything, especially the enemy you can hear nearby, but can’t see (which really messes with your mind), you’re never really at ease in the game. It gets to the point where your anticipation of something popping out at you makes it that much worse when something actually does (hence, screams). Sometimes, that will be the above-mentioned addicts who are actually smart enough to run from you and hide somewhere in order to pop out at you later when you walk by; in other cases, it’ll be the serial killer himself. In one frightening sequence I was chasing the killer into a subway station when he popped out from a door he was hiding in and shoved me down some stairs. I’m pretty sure that shaved a year off my lifespan.

Once your enemies appear and attack you, it doesn’t get much better. The sickening sound of metal meeting bone, grunts of pain, frantic yelling on account of the physical exertion of swinging heavy objects in the heat of battle, and the specific timing required to land a blow in the first-person fighting mode all make it so that your heart doesn’t really have a chance to catch up until your enemy lies dead at your feet.

Now, in case you’re thinking, “That doesn’t sound so bad” and “Well, maybe you’re just a wuss,” let me assure you that that isn’t the case. I had suspected that too. So a while back, I had some friends over and asked them to play — with the lights out — and see how it would go. Their screams in the dark assuaged my concerns, proved how scary the game was, and made me feel a little bit better about the fact that I had peed my pants again.

Efterklang
Under Giant Trees and Parades
Leaf, 2007 and 2007

By Sal Hassanpour

Danish eight-piece Efterklang have been merging glitch with post-rock for about five years now, and the critical consensus surrounding their first two full length albums suggests that the band’s music is incredibly accomplished, but not much more. If that sounds like faint praise, it has to do with the band’s 2004 release Tripper landing at a time when the sentiment, especially in terms the Canadian indie scene, was “No, really, enough with the post-rock already!” Even closer to home, Sigur Rós (whose string section, Amiina, Efterklang has always shared) and múm had and wouldm realready made it to the top of major year-end lists, and who needed a band that, at least musically-speaking, was a merging of those two?

So OK, Efterklang have had to play second-fiddle for a while now, at least as far as us North Americans are concerned, having released but a one-sided vinyl in 2006 in terms of new music (2005’s Springer being a re-release). Doomed to the status of, say, Billy Mahonie, Efterklang chose to fight back with their best material to date.

Under Giant Trees, a five-song EP released in April, fires the opening salvo: Violins, trumpets, trombones, woodwinds, accordions, harps and kora all play their little tinkertoy melodies, often all at once (as in the stunning closer “Jojo”), framed by a gentle percussive clatter of folk drums, pianos, bells and chimes (or wood-creaks, in the epic sea-storm dirge of opener “Falling Horses”). This is all handled with the deft precision and swift inventiveness of, say, Kieran Hebden (Check the processed folk ambience of “Himmelbjerget”). Then come the gentle murmurs of Thomas Sjšberg and Linda Drejer Bond, the longtime female-male vocal duo at the heart of Efterklang, backed in nearly every song by a choir from Greenland. The vocals here are closer to the front of the mix than anything since Springer (which was always the most traditional-song oriented Efterklang work anyways), and that seems to indicate, if more obvious signs have not so far, that the band have accrued a level of confidence in their work that is unwavering, so that on “Hands Playing Butterfly,” everything strips itself down to a simple piano melody and lets the violins slowly hover above it for a couple minutes.

It is safe to say that Efterklang’s accrued musical knowledge has now surpassed that of most of their supposed peers’, so that only evocative descriptors such as “nautical,” “rustic” or “autumnal” carry any real meaning with them. Yet in the end, Under Giant Trees is merely Efterklang refined, none of which prepares for Parades, released in mid-October.

“Polygene” develops slowly like all of Efterklang’s opening songs, and one of the first sustained sounds we hear are voices. This is indicative of what is to come, because with Parades, Efterklang have let what was for them the afterthought — the vocals — take over the often central position digital processing had held up to now. Steam pipes hiss, oboes and saxophones grunt, cymbals clap, and a boy’s choir blends in and out of Thomas and Linda’s suddenly dynamic vocals. This is Bjõrk territory, had she decided to go a bit post-rock.

Buy yourself a good pair of headphones before delving into Parades: “Mirador,” which is the anthemic, heart-on-your-sleeve track, has a huge dynamic range. Sometimes the soaring voices will fill your ears, and at other times the string quartet, only to be replaced at the forefront by the brass quintet. Not including the three choirs, Parades has a guest list of thirty musicians and was recorded in large rooms over a period of a year and a half. So in effect, Under Giant Trees is the B-sides of the Parades sessions. Have said that,”Horseback Tenors” is the full realisation of a certain neo-folk flavour (think Penguin Café Orchestra) that was buried under much of that previous release — that is, until the military snare and voices force the song to get off its feet and march, well, parade-like, only to abandon it to some ambient hums. Later on, the optimistically-titled “Frida Found a Friend” turns out to be clothed in sheets of hissing guitar noise and mournful brass lamentation. “Caravan” is likely to be a single, since it features a dynamic choral chant and a propulsive beat, complemented by layers of brass and guitars, a flute and gamelan: At the same time that Parades is Efterklang’s most musically progressive album, it is also their most pop-oriented., the most obvious example being album closer, “Cutting Ice To Snow”, which actually does captures the joy of early spring and snow-thaw and has, for the first time in Efterklang history, an electric rhythm guitar line!

So, Parades is a genius record, full of vitality and every moment bears the fruit of the intensive, labourious process, and stands as the most convincing way out of a post-rock pigeon-hole and shows a band completely re-energized. The only worry is that they regress into an even more backlash-friendly pigeon-hole, that of the anthemic indie super-group, and never gain the wide audience they’ve deserved for years now.

By Owen K. Craig

Each week our intrepid writers use random.org’s random integer generator to create two random numbers. They then count down on the release list until they find out their RANDOM COMIC OF THE WEEK! No matter what the publisher, what the issue, what the arc, we will be there reviewing things with little or no context.

The Sword #1
Story, Script, Layouts and Letters by Joshua Luna
Story, Illustrations, Book Design by Jonathan Luna

I have not yet read anything the Luna brothers have done. I missed Ultra and was one of the people who passed off Girls as exploitational (seriously, those covers and the title really made it seem like it was all about ogling naked women to me). Now I’m thinking I may have to check them out.

So yeah… I liked the first issue of Sword. I liked it quite a lot, in fact. It accomplished all of the things that I think the first issue of a new series should do: introduce you to the characters, set up a conflict, instill a sense of mystery (where appropriate) and leave you wanting more. The story (plotted by Joshua and Jonathan Luna, scripted by Joshua Luna) itself is still rather unknowable, but the conflict is clear: there is a sword and bad people want it. It’s a nice, simple idea that is easy to grasp onto — but gives me the impression that, underneath the simplicity, there is a complex story in the works.

The art (layouts by Joshua Luna, illustrations by Jonathan Luna) is also deceptively simple. The lines are clean and the figures are not the oversexed types we’re so used to seeing in comics. The characters seem real and not too brightly coloured, which highlights the real-world fantasy air surrounding the book. I’m not entirely sure which direction the book will take from here — whether our heroine will be delving further into the fantasy world or whether it will come to her, but I’m excited to find out.

By Alexander B. Huls

Pushing Daisies

Who knew the most romantic and adorable scenes I’ve seen in ages would involve plastic wrap and a rubber glove? And yes, that might sound like a normal Saturday night-in with your significant other for some people, but in the fair tale wonderland of Pushing Daisies it was something much more innocent. Pushing Daisies has certainly lived up to its pilot, barely missing a beat in the process. Though the centerpiece of this show is obviously the relationship between Ned and Chuck, as well as its gimmicky (I mean that in a good way here) concept, in the last few weeks the show has also proven itself to back those up with quirky humor (with a cynical edge), and some of the most enjoyable dialogue currently on television. What is also a minor miracle is that the cuteness between Ned and Chuck never is too much. If it were handled in any other way, it would be so saccharine you would feel like you were overdosing on sugar, but instead by the end of the episode my face hurts because I’ve been smiling the entire time, and it’s a welcome pain. Admittedly, I’m a romantic sucker who eats stuff like this up, but given the critical love this show is getting, it seems to be getting through to even the most hardened cynics. Then again, it is ultimately a magical fairytale that never pretends to be anything but, which is exactly why it works, even when it deviates from the world we know (in which dandelion run cars don’t exist, nor do morgues that look like there from a Dr. Seuss book).

The one thing that has been on my mind is why this show is faring better than Bryan Fuller’s previous outings, Wonderfalls and Dead Like Me, and last week it came to me. Though the show has the same cynicism of its predecessors — which I think is what kept people away — it is cleverly diluted thanks to the fairytale nature of the story, so that you’re not often aware how cynical and dark it actually is at times. It’s a fairy tale with dark comedy in it. Not just a dark comedy, and somehow that seems to make it more accessible than Fuller’s previous shows. No matter how cynical characters are, no matter how many people are murdered, as long as that is all tucked underneath the infectious fairytale of Ned and Chuck and the show’s gigantic heart, you’ll often forget to notice its amusing and hidden black spots.

Chuck

A few weeks back, after a disappointing second episode, Chuck had me concerned that it was already derailing from its promising start. The last two episodes assuaged my fears. After the slight second week hiccup, the shows seems to have found its groove, the episodic formula that works for it but that allows them to insert variables into it that keep the whole thing from getting stale and repetitious (a notable risk with spy shows that require weekly missions). The missions themselves have been fun, thanks to Chuck being totally in over his head — whether he be tangoing or party mingling — but what is making the show so enjoyable is not only that it’s willing to explore characters emotional personal and interpersonal conflicts and relationships, but it often integrates them successfully into the missions, creating a seamless dramatic/adventure tapestry. For Chuck (the character), and in Chuck (the show), the two worlds may be seemingly different, but the two are constantly bleeding into each other. Despite the exciting grand adventure of the spy missions, Chuck seems aware that at its core, it’s really about its characters, which is why it features some of my favorite relationships currently on television, most notably the adorable one between siblings Chuck and Ellie, as well as the complicated but poignant one between Chuck and Sarah. Now if only they could give us more of Captain Awesome (where the heck was he last week? I demand more tango lessons!), give Casey more and better things to do (because Adam Baldwin deserves better), try harder to not let Morgan get stale (last week’s dating sub-plot for him was a step in the right direction), and give us more great guest characters like last week’s Corrina (and no, she wasn’t great just because she was half-naked for most of the episode. Okay… maybe that was part it).

On an entirely unrelated note, what is with all the Chuck’s in new shows this year? There is a Chuck in this show (duh), in Pushing Daisies, and in Gossip Girl. Is Chuck the new Apple/Suri/Shiloh? You decide.

Heroes

Perilously close to being dropped, Heroes earned itself a little more time with this week’s episode thanks to the Alejandro and Maya plotline becoming worthwhile, if only because Sylar is now involved, the intriguing revelation that the man Molly has nightmares about is Matt Parkman’s father, the (proper) return of the Haitian, and the lack of the lackluster Hiro and Peter storylines. Granted, there were still problems (do we really need an introduction of yet another hero with a boring storyline, a.k.a. Mikael’s cousin?), but the above managed to stave off me dropping the show for another week. Also, how could I bail when I know Kirsten Bell is finally making her appearance next week? Let’s hope she’s just not forced to have her talents slummed like they are over on Gossip Girl with the horrible narration they give her. If so, then I fear even Veronica Mars can’t save Heroes.

Bionic Woman

Despite this week being another lackluster episode representative of all the problems mentioned here last week, the straw that finally broke this viewer’s back was the fact that it was mentioned five or more times — almost verbatim — in this week’s episode that Jamie “cost” fifty million dollars to “make.” A funny thing to get tripped up on, I know, but it just sort of reinforced what I said previously about the show having no proper direction, and therefore is running around in circles and constantly repeating itself. So in order to avoid me repeating the same complaints every week, and to repeatedly waste an hour of my time, Bionic Woman is now officially the second new show to be buried in Alex’s TV graveyard.

Ugly Betty

In addition to brief cameos by James Van Der Beek and John Cho, this week’s episode featured a welcome and great appearance by our dear old friend, Victor Garber (Editor: Mr. Garber’s agents have requested that — in the spirit of full disclosure — indicate Alexander B. Huls never has been, nor ever will be, a friend of Mr. Garber’s) as a hilariously cruel Pulitzer Prize winning writer and teacher. Here’s hoping Betty doesn’t fail/pass anytime soon and that we get more of Mr. Garber on the show.

Developed by Bungie Software
Published by Microsoft

By Alexander B. Huls

Writing a review of Halo 3 is a relatively easy affair because in most ways the work has already been done for me, by me. If you’ve read my reviews of Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2 last month then you’re pretty much caught up with my thoughts on the third installment of the series. The campaign mode is still incredibly short, possibly even shorter (or I just played it more in a shorter period of time) than the previous two games. The story still confuses me despite the fact that we’re refocused on the Master Chief (whereas in the previous game we also played the Arbiter). Except for some new locales — deserts, snowy mountains, jungles — the nature of the levels are exactly the same. Again there is a cartographer mission, and track-down-this-guy/ship/object missions, a stop-someone-from-activating-Halo mission, a destroy-Halo mission, and a game-ending get-off-Halo race mission, etc. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” is all fine and dandy, especially when you’ve got such a magnificent, addictive, super-blockbuster action experience (and there are some intense levels in this game), but inevitably one wishes for a series to take the next step up, not give you more of the same.

Where Halo does just that is in the multi-player mode. Now, I’ve always been slightly afraid of playing games online. It breaks down to a mixture of fearing to face my own failings as a gamer when pitted against others, and a fear that my intense dislike of annoying prepubescent teenage boys may overcome me and I’ll swear off ever having children. But when you’re paying $69.99 for a game, you might as well try every part of it. So I did. And I love it. I’m still not very good, but the matchmaker in the game is pretty adept at assigning you opponents and teammates that are roughly in your skill/experience range, keeping things fun but still challenging. A lovely mute function also helps banish the nasal whining and chest-thumping of said teenagers from my eardrums. The game features the usual array of solo and team games, most of which are great, with the inevitable duds (territories, assault, etc.). It also has a neat way of tracking your skill and experience level, making each new military designation a satisfying accomplishment, as are the numerous fun medals you can garner for certain in-game deeds (double kills, grenade kills, etc). Ultimately, it’s just plain fun, and dangerously addictive, and now that I’ve immersed myself in the world of Halo multiplayer, I can honestly say I’m hard pressed to remember it has a single-player campaign mode too.

If the addiction of multiplayer is not enough to keep one coming back, the game also saves full replays of your ten most recent played games. When you go to “Theatre” mode you can then go nuts exploring every second of each game from every conceivable angle. From there you can pause it and take screenshots of yourself in action (for example, all images in this article are actually taken from my games, and are of me), or you can record specific moments and post them as videos on Bungie’s website. On that note, Bungie has done an excellent job with their site, where you can get all sorts of statistics about your online career.

So while Halo 3 may not have the greatest single-player mode in the world, it has made a multi-player convert out of this fair reviewer. In fact, it has made a Sergeant, Grade 2. Yes, you have to salute.