Carlos Ezquerra

Some very sad news to wake to this morning: Carlos Ezquerra has died, after a ten year battle with cancer.

This is a huge blow for UK comics fans, and in particular fans of 2000AD and Judge Dredd. The affectionately-named 'King' CarlosEzquerra can be fairly described as one of the fathers of Dredd, providing the first designs of the future lawman, a mix of Death Race's Frankenstein and Conquistador - fitting for a Spaniard, perhaps. And to me, somehow, Carlos' work evoked a Mediterranean sensibility more than any other artist in Tharg's stable.

Carlos draws himself as one of Tharg's art droids

Ezquerra's work is there from Prog 1, and continued through to 2018, with very few breaks. He was a warhorse, from the likes of Battle (Easy Company) and Starlord (gifting the world of comics the brilliant space western Strontium Dog and its mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha), and even ventured to other IPC/Fleetway titles - a brief stint for Eagle, plus Crisis and inevitably the Judge Dredd Megazine. As the ubiquitous Dredd and Strontium Dog artist Ezquerra surely occupies the highest triumvirate alongside Bolland and McMahon. Speedy, prolific, and still eminently collectible, we'll see his work for some time to come.

The phrase 'making it your own' is a cliche, but so applicable to Ezquerra's adaptations. Dredd is such a robust character that he's endured countless interpretations, but despite occasional flirtations with other considerable talents, there's really only been one Strontium Dog artist, and even in prose I can't picture anybody in the role of Harry Harrison's 'Slippery' Jim DiGriz than Carlos' James Coburn lookalike in the Stainless Steel Rat series.


For me, though Ezquerra's  style barely changed, that was its greatest strength. Instantly recognisable, effortlessly consistent, but with a worldly, carnal appeal. His dredd and Alpha are virtually the same cloth - burly and tall, but not ridculously muscly, while his women (vampire bounty hunter Durham Red, femme fatale Angelina DiGriz) are pultritudinous, leggy and unapologetically curvy. Like many of the Dredd artists he delights in grotesques - besides Strontium Dog's colourful cast of mutants, Carlos drew a mean brace of Fatties for Mega City One. Even the robotic Blackblood on a rare outing in ABC Warriors is given an idle killer's pot belly. All with a knowing wink, each consistent and so meaty you could slice them like salami.

I still can't quite get my head around the Dredd mega epics entirely to his name: Apocalypse War, Necropolis, Inferno, Wilderlands - not to mention all those epic Johnny Alpha tales - Portrait of a Mutant, Wanted, The Killing. Phew.

My early collecting of 2000AD can be summed in Ezquerra covers: my earliest 2000AD cover by Carlos: Prog 181 (Johnny Alpha "It's taken my best shot - and it still won't die!), my earliest Dredd cover by Carlos: Prog 245 ("Let the Apocalypse Begin!"), and many more followed, of course. There'll likely be a huge tribute in the pages of 2000AD to come, and in the mean-time heartfelt tributes from the likes of Pat Mills, Karl Urban, and a good number of Thargs and Megazine editors past and present.

The King is dead, but his legacy will live forever.

Scar Man, Car Man... Corman.

So, apparently this is a thing: Roger Corman is prducing a sequel/equal to one of his greatest and most influential movies, Death Race 2000.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Statham remake. DVD, et cetera. But still - this is Corman; the last thing we could accuse the man of is an unfaithful, cynical big-budget remake. It'll have NO budget!

The other thing that needs to be said is that I have a TERRIBLE track record advance-endorsing doomed movies.

So I'm not endorsing this one at all.

Fear of a Chicken Duck Woman Thing

Last week found me casting my mind back twenty years or so to the temporary musical career of the younger Simian, and how, aided by a nifty cassette Walkman since lost in a freak library incident, a friend managed to play one of my compositions (fittingly titled 'Rewind Mind') backwards. Taping the resulting sounds, we picked out weird semi-words and phrases, putting together a new version of the song which my friend (rather uncharitably, I thought) dubbed 'I am a Dwarf' from its most-repeated alleged utterance. In the end we failed to find the Devil in my music, but as an experiment in backwards masking we were lucky to find anything at all. I wonder where that tape got to in the end...

Anyway, I love serendipity, and the moment where something accidental and organic gives birth to a new and exciting creation. Sadly, most of my best artwork arose out of slips of the pen or brush, and many a waking dream has provided inspiration of some kind. My hat is off, then, to this month's ear worm, borne of a line from Bad Lip Reading's treatment of A New Hope. If I'd thought that their earlier Redneck Avengers was a work of quiet genius, then this raises the bar again. Funny, surreal, and oddly moving.


Better than anything George came up with, I reckon.

Red Pique

So then, we have a contender for a new flag for New Zealand, though many of us did not ask for one, and many of us who would like a new one did not pick this particular choice. Still, that's STV voting for you, and as Cardinal Borusa said, there is only truth in numbers (and Jamas breaks down the whole fatal exercise with statistological swagger here!)


NZ Herald's Rod Emmerson provides his take on the process.

For what it was worth, I was a Red Peak man. Aaron Dustin's Red Peak, or 'First To the Light' to give it its formal title, completely passed me by in the top forty line-up, and like a few others I'd say, it completely won me over during its social media campaign to at first get on the ballet at the eleventh hour, then into the running for the final vote. Ah, but we Peakers lost and the tea towel / clip art / T20 cricket uniform one of Kyle Lockwood's two submissions (TWO! Two colour options of the same flag account for fifty per cent of the final four? I'm still astounded at this) was the winner on the day.

Boo.

A popular image, flipped for continuity's sake. 

The final vote, it seemed, was always going to be about the fern - that problematic emblem that the Prime Minister repeatedly said he preferred, featured on all of the original four finalists, apparently immediately identifies us and makes other countries think we like feathers. Oh, honestly, don't get me started. I had a favourite for the first time, and it lost. I may take some time to get over it.

But when Red Peak emerged via a concerted social media campaign, it seemed at the time that the closest thing to a public nomination from the forty finalists as opposed to the Panel's four picks) had materialised - and when I read its story, I pretty much fell in love with the whole thing. But one mans treasure is another man's 'Lefty anti-Key rag' or similar, and it seemed that amidst the criticism of the final four, even a new pretender couldn't get a break. The lesson here, as a sage on Twitter remarked, is that social media is no replacement for mass engagement.

Essentially I liked Red Peak for many of the same reasons other did. It didn't opt for lazy Kiwiana symbols, it didn't kowtow to cringing concerns about identity or history, and it actually is a great design that sufficiently fulfils the criteria set by the Flag Review Panel: it was simple, versatile, timeless, had elements of symmetry, reduced well, looked great at rest and flying, and unlike the Lockwood flags, it didn't look like a make-do collision between the past and the future. I short, it looked like it had actually been thought through and designed afresh (Lockwood's is ten years old in its three iterations), and - yes, it tells a story. The creation story woven into (but not intrinsic to) Red Peak evokes Rangi and Papa, and may not be to everyone's tastes, but I like it. Maybe now we can have the flag for Paparangi?

Moving on, the final vote, between Lockwood's fern flag and the existing ensign takes place in March. I'm dreading it as a believer in public engagement, someone who is at best ambivalent about the existing design, a fan of a losing flag, and a detractor of the new alternative. I think I'll hold my nose either way, and fear I'll vote for the existing standard out of equal parts spite and good design.

Let's try this again in 25 years, for the bicentennial, shall we?

Fourthought

(I wasn’t intending to post another missive about movies, but two follow-ups within 24 hours of the last post tells me otherwise)

I knew we shouldn’t have crossed the streams…

For whatever reasons, call it fate, call it luck, call it karma – no sooner did Al, Jamas and El Guano and I synch our Ghostbusters posts, but Sony Pictures went and as good as announced their new, all-woman Ghostbusters. It’s like they knew!

Or was it because Fox on the same day finally released their first (hopefully there will be more?) trailer for Fantastic Four (Or Fant4stic if you will, though I won’t), suddenly we have eight interesting people to discuss.

Ghostbusters first:

Photomontage courtesy Radio Times

Well, as suspected for a long time, it’s definitely an all-female group, and Melissa McCarthy, a long-time favourite, is a member (a lot of negative noise about this casting, unfortunately.) I can dig it. There’s a part of me that would rather have a new crew than see the remains of the old Ghostbusters shambling around. I quite enjoyed bridesmaids, like Kristen Wiig in it (and McCarthy too, actually) – the rest of the cast I need to acquaint myself with more, although I do recall Kate McKinnon from the rare viewings of SNL I’ve had. We’ll see – I think this will rise or fall as much on its script as its performances anyway. Fingers crossed.  Don’t hate. Hate on the internet is stupid…

…And so to the new, younger, spooked-looking Fantastic Four:

Yeah, this is okay! I don’t have much of a dog in this fight – if there is a fight at all. I’ve seen both Tim Story versions (though one was on a plane, so who knows how much was cut out?) and while the self-aware goofiness of them was jarring at the time I’m still not sure that’s the route the franchise should be taking now, either – for all of the reception Guardians of the Galaxy got last year, it really was a sleeper hit and a gamble by Marvel that really paid off. This incarnation of the Fantastic Four is clearly not bred from the same stock, and its mixture of trepidation and emphasis on science and exploration seem specifically-chosen to separate the heroes from a lot of their screen contemporaries. I haven’t read any of the Ultimate FF comics (which the series is now purported to be based on), so this will be almost new territory for me. And I’d like to see more trailers – not to the extent of the overkill Amazing Spider-Man 2 presented, but perhaps some other POV trailers, given that this one only has one dialogue scene and clearly more reveals up its sleeve. It certainly doesn’t look cheap, though, and in this guise at least I can see a cross-over between Fantastic Four and X-Men easier than, say Spider-Man (as done right now) and Marvel’s superhero roster.

Sadly, like the Ghostbusters news, there was nerd rage. Oh yes, there’s a LOT of over-entitled anger about this from what I suspect to be tribal Marvel fans. Many are, predictably, swearing they won’t go and see it (fine, I don’t care – why are you telling me?) and demanding Fox “give” back the rights Marvel sold them years ago blah blah blah. I hope these guys are a minority, because with Marvel pulling the comic and any chance of merchandising, this franchise will be relying on the buzz its own promotion will generate. Meanwhile, its producer and director want to keep as much of the movie secret as possible. It’s another risky move, and I hope it pays off.

Spider-Man, Hackers and Haters

Yes, just because it's Christmas I'm going to talk about the Sony Studios hacking. Why? Well, anyone who follows me on Twitter will know that it's been on my mind for a while now.

Sony got hacked by 'someone', 'someone' with very specific interest in shutting down a movie that makes fun of another country and their leader. This is unprecedented, unless I missed something happening after the release of, say, King Ralph, and it's serious stuff. In short, it's deliberate corporate sabotage, and it well may cost a lot of 'little people' some formerly-secure jobs in the near future, beyond the other high-profile casualties in the upper echelon of Sony management. I just can't see this as a 'fun' story for anyone at all.

It's not been helped by so-called 'fan sites', who have gleefully piled on with their specific hobby horses, and used that as the pretext to spread the hacked email content and, in my opinion, made a bad situation much worse by giving it oxygen. As interested as I might be in the future of the Spider-Man movie franchise, or the James Bond franchise, or even those of other studios (also apparently discussed in those emails), I have no right to know them, and for me one of the least pleasant aspects of this whole thing is just how easily it is to read this stuff, mostly in the form of 'gossip' and speculation (and the MSM are by no means above all of this.) In short, Comic Book Movie have it horrendously wrong with their approach to the hacked emails, and Den of Geek have it right.

Of course, last week Sony capitulated, and have pulled the offending movie in question, The Interview for the time being. Have they set a dangerous precedent? I don't know. Should they abide by the rule of not doing deals with terrorists, given the seriousness with which they took 'someone's threat to endanger lives in theatres showing the movie? I don't think so - that's for governments to decide, and everything else done here I'd simply call corporate responsibility - something you don't see a lot of in this day and age.

And now this is where I turn hypocrite, because I'm going to also discuss the future of the Spider-Man franchise, having read a little of what's been revealed through the same sites above. To be frank, it looks like it's in a terrible way. Sony almost made nothing on the last movie, while Marvel (who still own the character and merchandising rights) made a ton just by not making any Spider-Man movies at all. If you think Spider-Man not being with Marvel is an egregious crime, don't think the blame lies entirely with Sony. The studio may have lost their leading man to studio politics, may be planning a soft reboot, and may still meet with Marvel to talk tie-ins and cameos to bolster what must be a really problematic property they have now (but - see point one again.) Were unlikely to see a stand-alone Spidey movie for a number of years now, even if the mouth-breathers get their way and Duh Rights Revurt to Maarvuul. The brand may be cursed for a while yet. Shame. But bad things happen to good properties all the time, sadly.

So my two cents? Stick to the script, Sony. This has nothing to do with The Interview, so don't blink. Keep Spider-Man, but move forward with a Spiderverse - either Sinister Six (using Black Cat as a potential spin-off option) or Morbius. Spidey can cameo, but DON'T REMOVE HIS MASK! Let the identity behind the NEXT Sony Spider-Man be the story inside the film and out.

Intoning Verisimilitude to the Autocratic Hierarchy

No, I don't know what the point of Russell Brand is, a clever and charismatic man with a (largely) strong message and a (personally) irritating public image; but I do know a couple of things: firstly, that in order to truly make its mark speaking truth to power demands the register of the everyday citizen, and secondly, this is still very funny.

Friday Night Local: Doprah, 'Strange People' (2014)

I don't normally do requests, but this was suggested by Jamas this week and, well, it's probably the least apalling thing covered in recent reportage - particularly today of all days.

Doprah's video for 'Strange People' is apparently controversial, as Stuff.co.nz would have you believe or question or something. I dunno. Am I offended? Nope. Do I like the video? I like it the more I see it - and I quite like the music - a little bit Bjork, a little bit Fetus Productions, and that's not a bad thing. Perhaps Jamas will tune in here with his thoughts? (he has an alternative tune for the style depicted here, also a local act with a female singer, but the act's such a good pick I think I'll use something of theirs in a later post!)

Appropriating J Pop doesn't begin and end with this video, and if you're viewing this as appropriating another culture for kicks then I'd at least remind you of Gwen Stefani's Harajuku girls, who seemed to me to verge on novelty ornamentation for her videos. As for 'Strange People', it's eerie, it's discomforting, and it's perplexing - three things I could equally say about my reaction to kawaii - or J Pop. Seems like a pretty good match to me. Like!

'It's the car, right?'

Last week the Simianmobile had a prang. Well, it got sideswiped by a friendly vehicle, and everything else is in the hands of the insurance company, but it was a week for the cars, seemingly.

Because... we have a new Batmobile. Yay! And wouldn't you know it? A new Batman sulking next to it - very good! Here's the photo that silenced a few thousand Battfleck quips:

Yes, very traditional costume-wise - take your pick as to whether it references Frank Millar's The Dark Knight Returns (most likely) or the Adam West TV series (less likely, but fun to pretend!) While I'm ambivalent to a little perturbed to see theories of TDKR being realised on the big screen edging toward confirmation, this is as nothing to the great relief I've felt over an actual change. No more black rubber - praise the Lord! It's a sign, I hope, of a movie franchise comfortable with pushing the traditional big screen depiction of Batman, and so it should. Nice one, Warners.

And that Batmobile in the background. Verry nice. The first image tweeted by Zach Snyder showed the rear of the vehicle and seemed to indicate a tailfin and big rocket booster, which references a lot of iterations of the car, from the TV series again (I do like that model as well), through to my current favourite, the 1989 Tim Burton model. Since that pic and the above more design shots have emerged which seem to show the new Batmobile as something of a hybrid of the Burton model with the Nolan era 'Tumbler' - big tyres, high wheel base, sorta clunky and not that streamlined (I like the streamlining, me). I'm not a fan of the Tumbler, but could see what it was likely intended to reference; every Batman seemingly has his ideal Batmobile, and the armoured, militaristic Tumbler, an urban assault vehicle for a violent Gotham, works. But let's move on. And this picture seems to be an indication of that, in part.

Speaking of the Burton Batmobile and others, we've recently has Eaglemoss' Batmobilia parts magazine debut down in NZ, and the standard cut-price first couple of issues feature lovely die-cast scale reproductions of the two vehicles I'd be happy to start and finish my collection with - the aforementioned 1989 and 1966 Batmobiles. Done and done, to Jet Jr's interest. Here's hoping they stay out of the way of fellow vehicles for a good while yet!

Peter Capaldi is the Twelfth Doctor

Do I like the casting choice for the Twelfth Doctor? I’ve been asked more than a couple of times this past week. Yes, of course I do.

Art by Stephen Byrne

I’m one of the many fans quietly and not-so-quietly just rejoicing in the return to ‘normality’ of having a Doctor older than me piloting the TARDIS once more. I’m also happy that Capaldi is a man with whose work I am familiar – Local Hero was one of my first DVD purchases, and remains in my top five films, and while many might naturally draw a thread between Capaldi’s latest role to his most recent TV one (I’m talking Malcolm Tucker, of course, not Cardinal Richlieu) I know from the other productions I’ve followed him in (The Cloning of Joanna May, Lair of the White Worm, Torchwood: Children of Earth et al) that he’s a man of many faces and abilities. Now time travel is to be added to these.

I’m also intrigued that Capaldi has in a way been down this road before, or nearly. Of course he had a supporting role in 2009’s The Fires of Pompeii, but before that and Torchwood he was one of many actors on a list for possible Eighth Doctors before Paul McGann got the nod. I hope Capaldi has more screen success with the role than his junior of two years does, at least. It strikes me that 55 is not a bad age to be associated with a role that some actors have rightly or wrongly viewed as a straitjacket role-wise, and perhaps this role coming after The Thick of It signals the kind of Doctor we might have with Capaldi – outwardly older, but potentially less abrasive than his Tucker character (certainly with less of the colourful language.) The other aspect which might also direct Capaldi’s characterisation is his own lifelong fandom, a confessed adulation which doesn’t appear to have hurt predecessor David Tennant in admitting. Tennant’s Doctor is/was, fittingly, Peter Davison’s Fifth, whereas Capaldi seems to have come of age somewhere around Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor era - a silver-haired younger/older statesman with a quick wit and penchant for results with little hand-wringing.

Sounds like a great place to start, for me!

Odd Space Ditty

Jet Junior is going through a very enthusiastic David Bowie phase right now, singing him, drawing him, remarking on the Thin White Duke's more memorable Seventies incarnations ("Eyes are different!" "Paint on his face!" "He's a singer!"), but is so far unmoved by astronaut Chris Hadfield's cover of Space Oddity. I can't say the same.

Space Oddity and I go a long way back. It might be the earliest Bowie song I know. No, hang on, that might be I Am A DJ. Or is it The Laughing Gnome? Cat People? Thanks to Sunday morning kids radio it's probably Gnome, dammit, but for the sake of the man’s preferred canon, let's say it's something else again - Ashes to Ashes. Freaky video, utterly memorable in song and visuals - that's the one. So, really, I suppose I experienced the story of Bowie's ill-fated astronaut Major Tom backwards, from Heaven's High back to Countdown.

And yet Oddity is the one that stuck with me because in our house it, Starman, and Life on Mars were the only three songs assured easy access to me until I was old enough to work out how to tape Let's Dance off the radio during its local chart peak. The three tunes were all collected on a compilation I actually wanted to feature on Jetsam under a different category. An LP of space tunes simply called, I think, Star Trek, featured paintings of your actual Kirk and Spock on the cover, but inside offering soundalikes of such fare as the Star Wars theme (erring on the side of the Giorgio Moroder interpretation), Close Encounters (again, a regional stab at Gene Page's great disco mix), Telstar (don't even hope for the Tornadoes/Joe Meek version nor even The Shadows), Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft (nope), Night Flight to Venus, and Rocket Man. Alas, no chance of tracking down a picture or full track listing of that LP for the moment - even Google is doing a pretty good job at sweeping what's likely to be another K-Tel cash grab under the carpet. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Eventually making my acquaintance with the original Oddity via a British Pop box set changed little in the end - it was a still a really strange song, lyrically inventive with its countdown and key changes, and it tells a story! Not an easy story to decipher at the end, of course - does the hero lose contact with Ground Control accidentally or does he disconnect himself? It's deliberately vague and unashamedly juvenile space fable, its moral and conclusion left to the listener's interpretation. External interpretations came, of course, including the soundalike I'd heard, plus a rivetingly spartan, twitchy 1979 remake performed by a post-Low Bowie on Kenny Everett's TV show, patently and visually linking the original with the imminent strung-out Scary Monsters sequel (its minimal bass kick-and-snare backing recalling also to my ears Five Years' backing beat). A few years later and there is Peter Schilling's 1983 literal Europop re-telling of the story in Major Tom (Coming Home). After that, the literal grounding in Ashes to Ashes, and later still a posthumous cut-up resurrection in the Pet Shop Boys remix of Hallo Spaceboy in 1996 which, again, excused itself before coming to any form of explanation. As it ought to have by then, of course.


Chris Hadfield’s in-orbit cover does something new, of course, leaps apart from Schilling and Tennant/Lowe’s rather too reverential nods. It’s by no means an attempt at a further chapter to Major Tom, but an endearingly personal sign-off from one of our farthest frontiers, heaven’s high being this time a breathtaking and uplifting window onto our planet home as the ISS glides over oceans an continents, observing pinpoints of light that mark the cities of the world. Hadfield’s voice is for the most part up to the job, and he acquits himself remarkably well with his guitar in a zero-G environment, but it’s the sentiment behind his rewriting that really strikes me “Your Commander comes back down to Earth and grows”, providing a version of Major Tom who completes his mission, returns to Earth changed and equally proud and humbled, and shows us all in our best light – from the anonymous distance of space. It's a profound, humanist and ultimately optimistic piece against Bowie's tripping, existential original.

Blogjam Explained, Exhibit A:

Also why it took me so long to update my Facebook photo.