comic / cartoon: watchmen motion comics

Wow. Really. 

I have a geek-fession to make: I never read the comic. People kept telling me I should, and it was on my reading list, but I just hadn't gotten to it. So when they started making these motion comics and H started making me watch them, I didn't try too hard to avoid them. And I'm glad. This is amazing. Dark, weird, frequently disturbing, shot through with bits of amazing clarity and wonder, detailed with these beautiful bits of stark humanity, both for the good and the bad... Just mind blowing. 

I admit it: I should have read it when all of you told me to.

I think my favorite are the Doctor Manhattan bits-- he makes no sense in a human scale and humans don't really make any sense to him, and I'm just in love with his atemporality: everythign is now. The whole story is now. His chapter where he tells his own story is just amazing to me, and the one, later, where he and Laurie are on Mars is almost as amazing-- he knows what's going on in all timeframes, but he still has to react to them in the way he also knows he will. 

But there's also Rorschack, who's seriously messed up-- but at least half of that messed-up-itude is a lifting of the veil: he sees what things are really like, and he doesn't feel a need to play along with society's lies to get things done. That's almost admirable. And he doesn't compromise through the whole thing, even when he admits that he isn't easy to get along with, even when he should, for the betterment of mankind. He likes his friends as much as he can in his limited way, and he lives for his job, and that's all he needs.

I'm kinda meh about Ozymandias, but at least he had a purpose-- somewhere in the middle, it looked like he wouldn't. 

Nite Owl and Silk Specter... also sort of meh, but mostly because of all the victimyness; once they step up and start doing something about the world, it's easier to like them and to root for them.

It's a pessimistic view of the world, but even as that, things turn out the best they can, and everyone stays true to who they are. 

I like that.

cartoon: wolverine and the x-men

We watched the first three episodes, what would be a movie if they put it on DVD, and I must say I'm kind of impressed. I've watched all the many variations of the X-Men cartoons, even the bad ones (I'm looking at you, early nineties), and this is not a bad one. So far, something inexplicable happened to the Professor and Jean, which seems to have wiped them out and destroyed the mansion, and in the wake of this, Wolvie went walkabout, Beast moved into the basement, Angel and Iceman went back to their parents, and Scott went all scruffy and reclusive. Senator Kelly is all up in the whitehouse, and the Sentinels have just been unveiled. Mutants are having to be registered, and the dangerous ones are being locked away. Genosha is open to the public and Magneto wants all the mutants to join him there, and Kitty Pryde is on the way to do just that.

A year after it all falls apart, Wolvie tries to get the team back together to do something about the missing team mates and the messed up world that needs them, and then it's a rollicking game of Name That X-Man while mutants are being attacked and jailed, and then break out and help or run off. Meanwhile, Rogue, who was all emo in the highschool version of the show, is still all emo, and has gone over to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants (which has Domino instead of the more expected Mystique, which is fun), and Emma Frost has closed down her own school (which should have been the soon-to-die Hellions) because her students keep getting kidnapped and locked away, and she wants to help them. In her frosty, bitchy, can't quite trust her way.

Like I said, I'm pretty impressed. There's an interracial couple right at the beginning, and their kid is not a stereotype, which is great. The characters are complex and seem to actually have emotions without being overly melodramatic (I'm looking at you again, early nineties). And best of all, the plot line is complex and variable, even when you know the storylines they're basing all this on, and it's pretty fresh-seeming without feeling like it's too updated, which is almost my biggest problem with the highschool version.

I like. Let's see if it holds up to weekly storylines after the three-part first ep.