Jurassic Shark

Jurassic World the movie has a lot in common with its own primary antagonist. Like the Indominus Rex, it’s one movie with the DNA of other movies stitched in: I could have sworn they used elements of the Marine ambush (including the use of helmet cams and life support readings sent to a control room) from Aliens at least twice, the Predator camouflage gimmick, bits of Jaws and Jaws 3D, the Birds, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

Oh yeah, and there were one or two nods to Jurassic Park.

Truthfully though, I don't see a close relation between Jurassic World and Jurassic Park.

Instead, Jurassic World most closely resembles Deep Blue Sea.

Ridiculous, you say. Deep Blue Sea featured genetically-modified super-sharks. Jurassic World's antagonist was a genetically modified super-dinosaur.

See? Totally different.

There are still a lot of similarities. There's the  animal wrangler/hard-headed boss lady dynamic between the male and female leads. The rich guy dies in a fashion dies in underwhelming fashion while trying to be inspiring and heroic. Even the composition of some of the actual shots in Jurassic World (mostly involving the mosasaurus but also one where the female lead steps vulnerably into the Tyrannosaurus paddock) seemed to call back to Renny Harlin’s schlock non-classic.

Perhaps most importantly, both Deep Blue Sea and Jurassic World submitted entries to the Most Incompetent Helicopter Crew Hall Of Fame. 

Deep Blue Sea is different from Jurassic World in one respect--Deep Blue Sea knows exactly what it is. I’m not so sure the same can be said for Jurassic Shark.

Watching Jurassic World left me thinking a line in the movie Joyride where Steve Zahn’s character, while looking for pornography on a motel television,  asks Paul Walker: “Are you in the mood for a story or more of a collection of scenes?”

Jurassic World‘s dinosaur pornography mostly falls into the ‘collection of scenes‘ category. There are the disconnected bits cribbed from other movies. Characters are inconsistent. The story has a beginning, middle, and end, I suppose, but for the most part feels like something my four year old nephew would tell: This happens and then This and then This, with each moment having only the flimsiest connection to the next.

It isn’t just the story and character that is inconsistent. The ideas behind the movie are inconsistent, which makes for interesting watching. Because the movie isn’t mindless--it DOES put forth some ideas. The trouble is, it can’t seem to decide what those ideas are.

Consider the treatment of gender.

Some critics accuseed Jurassic World of misogyny. The most violent death is reserved for a woman. The kids in the movie prefer the male lead to the female lead, and on one level it seems to be criticizing her choice to be more committed to her work than to family and mawwiage.

At the same time,  the film subverts as many gender tropes as it reinforces

While fleeing from the Indominus, in a moment of benevolent sexism we’ve seen in countless movies, Chris Pratt as Owen reaches back to take Bryce Dallas-Howard's hand…and she blows right by him, high heels and all.

In terms of beats of physical action, it's Bryce Dallas Howard's character Claire that is the most effective--she saves Pratt from a a dinosaur's air attack (My four-year old nephew‘s note--pternadon isn‘t a dinosaur. It‘s a flying reptile). She drives the van in the only car chase in the movie and does a hell of a job, escaping the dinosaurs and saving the children (immediately followed by the inexplicable moment where the kids express that they want to stay with Pratt). She is the one who comes up with and executes the plan that frees the Tyrannosaurus.

By way of contrast, Pratt is pretty much treated like the token female love interest in shows from less enlightened times. His crowning physical moment is hiding under a truck. We're told he’s a badass navy SEAL and he gets some token moments such as  taking down a couple pterodactyl redshirts, but at the end of the day, he’s cowering in a pipe with the kids waiting to be rescued.

The scene where he kisses Claire is a similar reversal. Some said it was an unearned moment where the male grabbed the heroine and planted one on her in a moment of sexist, unearned, tone-deaf entitlement. Yet from my end, I  thought Pratt kissed her because she'd just saved his life from the dinos----sort of a gender-swapped "my hero moment." The scene works both ways. It simultaneously subverts and reinforces.

Let’s also not forget that what he lacks in action beats, Pratt gets in emotional beats, a role typically played by women. He’s the pretty, plucky animal trainer who is the only who can get through to the raptors with the power of his FEELINGS.

He’s Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side. He’s Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.

(Which doesn’t, by the way, mean I’m comparing the raptors the kids from the bad side of the tracks or accusing Hollywood executives of being unable to tell the difference between inner-city youth and dinosaurs. Clearly they can: One is a cunning, hyper aggressive, pack-hunting super-predator and the other is less scary covered with feathers. I’m just saying according to Hollywood, the only thing a genetically engineered Mesozoic theropod problem needs to thrive is also the only thing poverty-stricken minority teens in areas blighted with crumbling infrastructure and rampant economic equality are lacking--an empathetic white woman to care and believe and get to know them as people and whatnot.)

In Jurassic World, Chris Pratt is that empathetic white woman. His kindness, and goodness even leads to the tragic end of one of the raptors in a sequence that calls back to Muldoon’s death in the original Jurassic Park. The dinosaur hesitates when it sees him and is consequently outflanked and killed by a soldier with a rocket launcher.

Chris Pratt is Raptor Muldoon‘s “clever girl.” Twas beauty killed the beast.

The movie sends mixed messages on other themes. It uses the park as a metaphor for blockbuster sequels, and then sends contradictory messages about the value of them. Its multiple references to the original Jurassic Park seem to alternately deify and devalue it.

The movie’s final battle is a case in point. The new Indominus creature is beaten and the T-Rex from the original Jurassic Park and one of the raptors stand tall, as if to say that nothing compares to the original. Except that the T-rex and raptor actually LOST the fight. The Indominus was foiled by the intervention of the Mosasaurus, a dinosaur introduced in this movie.

Symbolically it feels like the movie first says that the Original will fight the Sequel (T-Rex and Raptor challenge the Indominus) but they cannot hope to defeat it (Indominus wins the fight) until the sequel eventually defeats itself (Mosasarus eats Indominus) and returns to the pool from whence it came, leaving on the originals (the final shot of the T-rex).

Actually, you know what? Written out like that, it kind of works as a thematic statement, albeit a complicated one. Unfortunately, if a movie’s theme has to be worked through and written out after the fact to be understandable, it‘s not really a theme. It‘s one thing to allow a viewer to connect the dots; but you need to give them enough dots to connect.

Finally, the movie seems to want to make a statement about the martial mind through the character of Hoskins. He is framed as a bad character wanting to do bad things by militarizing the dinosaurs  When he proposes using the velociraptors to hunt the Indominus, the other characters are incredulous and appalled.

And with good reason. Hoskins' plan is ludicrous. I have the solution to our escaped dangerous animal public safety problem. We’ll release other dangerous wild animals to hunt the first one. The polar bear is loose! Quickly, unleash the jackals! Lives are at stake!

 A woman I dated worked at a zoo. There were a number of protocols in place for dealing with, say, an escaped tiger, and exactly zero of them involved throwing open the wolf cages and strapping cameras to their heads.

If you were looking to make a critical or satirical statement about our tendency to think we can resolve a conflict by escalating it, Hoskins and his plan would be a great way to do it.

To me it seemed like that’s what Jurassic World was doing. Except for a few niggling points.

A) None of the primary protagonists offers a reasonable alternative. Or an effective alternative. Or ANY alternative for that matter.

B) Our heroes eventually go along with Hoskins’ plan. Willingly. They just sort of roll over. Which makes them, well…not the heroes.

C) Hoskins’ plan eventually works. Not without a few hiccups along the way, granted, but still…Hoskins was right and the protagonists were wrong. We thought Hoskins was the bad guy. This whole time Hoskins was Sheriff Brody and Claire and Owen were city council. In fact, not only does Hoskins plan works, it works when…

D) Claire doubles-down on Hoskins original plan. The problem wasn’t that releasing deadly, uncontrollable dinosaurs to hunt other deadly, uncontrollable, dinosaurs is a bad idea. The problem is the deadly and uncontrollable dinosaurs he released weren’t big ENOUGH.

A villain needs to be more than a jerk. He needs to provide some form of opposition to the heroes--physically, morally, or philosophically. But other than lip service, the heroes have no opposition to Hoskins. The security team deployment and the helicopter sortie are Hoskins’ plan--find it and kick it’s ass--without dinosaurs. Claire’s plan is Hoskins’ plan with different dinosaurs. There is no difference in approach; there is only a difference in degree.

So what are we left with?

Part of me wants to say that the conflicting messages in Jurassic World are deliberate. After all, the movie doesn’t seem to be saying nothing or sending unintentional or unintended messages. The messages seem deliberate--they just seem contradictory.

I enjoyed Jurassic World so I’d like to believe its incoherence is the point. In some ways, it has a certain resonance with what I see in my own life. It’s possible for me to be both progressive and sexist, sometimes in the course of a single interaction. I find meaning in the events of my life and sometimes those meanings completely  contradict each other. I judge people more for being unlikable assholes and less on whether they actually oppose me in any meaningful way.

Also, like Jurassic Park, in my life, the characters in my life are inconsistent and the protagonist never accomplishes as much through his own efforts as he’d like.

Also, the pacing is horrible.

There’s more: Sometimes kids like the adult that seems the coolest and talks the biggest game instead of the one that is competent and actually has their best interest at heart. Sometimes when the new thing clashes with the old, instead of a clear winner, everything comes out muddled and confused. Sometimes, in a dinosaur movie, for no reason at all, you get scooped up and dropped into a tank and suffer an ignominious, pointless extended death sequence torn between the jaws and claws of two creatures, neither of which is technically a dinosaur. Now that’s rain on your wedding day.

Maybe Jurassic World’s thesis, it’s thematic eye in the hurricane of self-contradictions is in Wu’s speech. He’s describing the Indominus Rex, but he’s also describing the movie….and maybe describing how the more short-sighted of us go through life, grasping at what we want in the moment without thought towards a bigger picture, focusing on pieces without considering the whole. You wanted this, so I gave you this. You wanted that, so I gave you that. You criticized, complained, demanded more…so long as you didn’t have to do any of the work yourself. You ordered fundamentally incompatible things stitched together without sparing the slightest thought as to how these things came about or what the result of trying to stitch them together would be. You wanted the cool parts without the downside. Reality never entered into your plans. And then you come crying to me when all I did was give you exactly what said you wanted.

Much of Jurassic World comes to us directly from other movies. Maybe it’s only fitting that its thematic statement does as well.

Remember, you asked for this.

Made Of Stories

I am made of stories.

Most of them are my own stories, in the form of memories, ideas about the world and how it should be navigated, or my beliefs about who I am.

I’m not going to talk about those right now.

But I am also built from other people’s stories or at least the way those stories shape me and my perceptions.

I’m talking about comic books. I’m talking about video games. I’m talking about movies and sports columns and television shows.

I’m don’t mean this symbolically. I have the Decepticon logo from Transformers tattooed on the inside of my right forearm. I am wearing a fake concert t-shirt featuring the Max Rebo Band from Return of the Jedi. These stories are a literal, physical part of the self I present to the world.

A t-shirt and a tattoo. Something I can put on and take off and something that’s a part of me. Shirts and skins.

My stories are like that too.

Let’s talk about shirts first.

*  *  *

I’ve never known a world without the original Star Wars trilogy.

It was so much a part of my life growing up, I have no idea if it’s I actually like it. I know the characters, the lines, but I don’t have an OPINION on it per se. That would be like having an opinion on gravity or weather.

Then again, whether Star Wars is good or not or how much I like it is beside the point.

To me, Star Wars is a community story, which is to say the story itself isn’t as important as its role as a marker of my cultural identity.

The interesting thing about stories in this role is not only is liking them or not beside the point, but also that stories don’t even need to be seen or experienced to engage with them on this level.

For example, a few weeks ago, an episode of the TV show Game of Thrones, one that ends with one of the show‘s major characters being sexually assaulted, is dominating the internet conversation.

The conversation is about the use of rape as a plot device.

I feel like I have to have a public opinion on this Game of Thrones episode even though I haven’t actually seen it (*), and I also feel this opinion says something about the kind of person I am.

In other words, we aren’t talking about the stories. We are using them as jumping off point to publicly identify where we stand on social issues, our cultural identity, or our belief systems.

It‘s a way of saying who you are and which tribe you belong to. The stories themselves are beside the point. My opinion tells other people what kind of person I am.

Star Wars shirts are like that. Over the last few years, I have watched much MUCH more UFC than I have Star Wars. But I would never wear a UFC t-shirt. It’s not because I’m ashamed of watching UFC, but because mixed martial arts does not feel like part of my public identity. It’s not the first thing I want people to know about me.

I don’t wear Star Wars t-shirts because I feel a connection with Han Solo. I wear it so other people know I know Star Wars and we can quote Han Solo line at one another.

But Star Wars is not a part of me. Like the shirt, it’s something I can take off.

Not every story is like that.

*  *  *

There’s another way I engage with stories. It’s more primal, more direct, and harder to explain because as soon as I try to put it into words, I feel as though I’ve put something between me and my experience.

No explanation is required. It hits you or it doesn’t.

In some ways, music is a great example of this. I can write about Queensryche or Vinnie Vincent Invasion all I like. None of those words will ever be able to make you feel what I feel when I listen to them. I can write about how these songs mattered to me, but can never make you feel what I felt when they first touched my life.

Sometimes the personal becomes part of our identity. Skid Row was a big part of my life during the late eighties early nineties. It was personal to me. Now…not so much.  So I consider myself a Skid Row fan even though years pass without me listening to their music and when I do my only connection with the music is sentimental--hey, I remember that song. And these lyrics coming up are ones I used to really like (**).

Sometimes the community prevents me from wanting to make a personal connection with the material. I remember the hype around The Phantom Menace when it came out. I distinctly recall walking into a department store and seeing row and row of Phantom Menace projects--coloring books, action figures, puzzles, posters as far as the eye could see.

And I thought, Nope. I don’t need to see this movie.

I still haven’t.

Sometimes, the fact that there is no community or cultural narrative built up around a show leaves me more space to engage with the material. I can quietly watch it and process it in my own way and not feel any need to Have an Opinion on it.

The Americans is great for this. The show is well-acted, well-written, and non-judgemental, and far from the public consciousness. It shows me the choices the characters make, the consequences of those choices, and how they feel about it all, but it rarely asks me to feel any particular way about it or invite me to draw any conclusions about What it All Means.

In some ways The Americans goes beyond shirts OR skins. It’s neither a part of my community, nor a part of my identity, and thus it manages to transcend both. I relate to it on its terms instead of trying to fit it into my own.

I might be made of stories, but there are other stories out their besides my own.

It’s a joy to be able to see them.

(*) Oddly, in some cases not seeing the source material HELPS. For example, I learned a lot from the Game of Thrones debate. I got a clearer picture about what the people who objected to the scene found objectionable and understood better what the scene‘s defenders were defending.  And I found it significantly easier to see to what others were saying about the show when I wasn’t blinded by my own opinions on the scene.

(**) Who am I kidding? I still enjoy Skid Row’s lyrics, especially the ones off the Slave to the Grind album. Check them out--they’re more evocative than you might think.

Fury Road

Mad Max Fury Road has been praised on a number of levels. Much of the conversation has been centered around it’s use practical special effects and its treatment of gender. Those are worthy elements, but I want to talk about other things.

First of all, there’s the movies unique rhythm. Many action movies--even well-made ones like Guardians of the Galaxy or Captain America: The Winter Soldier suffer from a samey-ness, not because the characters or stories are anything alike, but because the movies themselves are structured similarly. There are no wasted moments . Everything important is there and everything unimportant is left out. But rhythmically, this strength can become a weakness. Because they are paced similarly It means the movies FEEL the same on a physical level even if the stories themselves are very different.

Fury Road is different.

Fury Road opens with a flurry of character introduction, plot, and world-building that would take up the first third- to one-half of most movies. Max is chased, captured, escapes, and is recaptured again with such whiplash speed, I wondered what was the point of having him escape at all.

After this initial whirlwind tour, the movie hits us with a car chase through the desert that stttreeettttches on and on. Furiosa escapes the Citadel is a single-beat of action on par with “Nick Fury is attacked“ in Winter Soldier or the prison break scene in Guardians of the Galaxy. Yet where these beats last only moments in the latter to movies, in Fury Road, Furiosa’s escape provide the spine of the film.  In Fury Road the character moments don’t  happen around the action scenes, they happen inside of them.

Later it does the opposite, taking a sequence that other movies would build into a set piece--the night fight with the Bullet Farmer--and has the majority of the sequence happen completely off screen.

Bizarre.

And then there’s the climax. Theoretically, this should be the moment where things get bigger and better, where we build to the ultimate moment--is just a repetition of what we’ve seen before…a car chase through the same desert they just passed through back the way they came.

Structurally and literally, the movie is going backwards.

On paper, pacing-wise, this story is an abomination.

On screen, it works beautifully because the rhythms are so different from what we’re used to seeing, we can’t predict where the next beat will land and thus we remain totally engaged.

Great stuff.

Secondly, I like how quietly examined the different ways we use religious ritual in our lives. Immmortan Joe, the War Boys, the Vulvalini, and the Wives all used ritual movements or gesture. In other words, those rituals weren’t just things they believed with their minds or said with their lips, it was something they enacted with their bodies.

I think many times, when it comes to religion, we want to equate it with the mind, with what we believe. Something that we can support or disprove with reasons and rationality.

But religion and religious rituals operate on a level more primal level. Sometimes they control us, sometimes they inspire us, sometimes they are part of our community--helping us celebrate or as a way of telling insiders from outsiders…and sometimes they bring us comfort even if we don’t completely understand, remember, or believe in them.

A third  thing, I liked about the movie was its approach to death. The film might make a statement about gender and politics, but the violence is apolitical--hero and villain alike are stabbed, shot, or thrown under wheels.

And while certainly some deaths are bigger, sadder, or more satisfying than others because of our connection with the characters, no life is treated as inherently more important or valuable than another. It’s  a rare thing in action movies

In Guardians of the Galaxy, for example, Groot’s death is treated as heroic and tragic and valorous; the death of the dozen or so faceless goons he skewered several minutes earlier is treated as a fuck yeah/comedy moment.

Yes, Nux sacrifices himself to save his friends in Fury Road just as Groot does in Guardians of the Galaxy, the deaths feel different. Nux’s death is about Nux--in a sense it is a victory for him as a good death is something he has been working towards the whole movie. Whereas Groot’s death doesn’t seem to be about Groot or even about death. It seems to be about getting an emotional reaction from the audience.

Fury Road treats death with respect, neither glamorizing nor trivializing it. In Fury Road, death is simply death. What matters is our attitudes towards it or our reactions in the fact of it.

The last thing that struck me about Mad Max Fury Road is the thing that struck me the hardest, even though it’s also the thing about which I have the least to say.

It’s the moment where the villainous henchman shouts with a mixture of pride and grief: “I had a little baby brother! And he was perfect! Perfect In Every Way!”

It’s not because of what the line reveals about Rictus Erectus’ character. It’s not because of how the scene speaks to the objectification of mothers as breeders and children as success objects or the role of body perfection and gender and their relationship to power in Immortan Joe’s--and by extension our own--society. It’s not because Rictus was played by Nathan Jones and I like seeing ex-pro wrestlers--even obscure and unsuccessful ones--in movies.

It’s because I once had a little brother too.

Transformers: The Budiansky Years (Part 3)

“I find it hard to believe you’re as cold and heartless as your race thinks we Autobots are.”

-Skids to Donny Finkleberg, Transformers #22

I used to resent Optimus Prime.

He was too perfect. Mighty warrior. Wise philosopher. Skilled diplomat. All-around goody-two shoes.

How could anyone live up to that? And if they could, how could that kind of person even be interesting?

I was a cynical kid.

Modern Transformers comics play up the war between the Autobots and Decepticons. They also go deeper into the politics of the war--the influences that shaped it, the characters that ignited it, the way it came to be.

What they don’t do, at least not to the same extent as Budiansky did, is emphasize the practical difference between the two sides.

Autobots believe in preserving and defending life. Decepticons believe in conquering it.

Autobots will even stop in mid-battle to protect human and other lives. Avoiding human casualties proves to be the undoing of Skids in #19 (Command Performances!"). In issue #16 ("Plight of the Bumblebee!"), Bumblebee even prioritized helping humans over saving fellow Autobot Jetfire--a sharp contrast to modern Transfomers comics where Bumblebee describes the risks to three humans who are exploring the Decepticon base below as “acceptable losses” (Transformers: Infiltration, #4).

In Issue #24 ("Afterdeath!") of the 80s comic book, while conducting a battle in a video game world, Optimus Prime would rather be destroyed than put even virtual lives at risk. It’s a decision that seemed idealistic, stupid, and nonsensical at the time, especially since his suicidal adherence to his own code of conduct endangers REAL lives since he was essentially taking himself out of the picture and thus giving the Decepticons an enormous advantage.

Meanwhile, in the 2014 movie  Transformers: Age of Extinction movie, Optimus Prime intends to kill the humans that are hunting Transformers.

You've come a long way, baby.

Part of the change--at least in the comics-- is that the audience for Transformers comics has aged. But I also think our attitude towards civilian casualties has changed in the decades since the Transformers first came on the scene. We view them as a regrettable, but necessary part of modern war, assuming we even think of them at all.

I am so used to the current worldview that I didn’t even notice how my attitude changed until I reread the 80s comics and realized how often Budiansky’s Autobots were putting the protection of life ahead of strategic advantage.

It was…a sobering realization.

Optimus Prime’s credo is “Freedom is the Right of All Sentient Beings”…an odd amalgam of Reagan-era American jingoism (The right to be free) and the Buddhist bodhisattva vows (To liberate all sentient beings).

Red, white (okay, silver), and blue coloring aside, I like to think of Optimus as having at least one giant steel foot the latter camp. Compassion is often described as one of his core traits, which is central to Mahayana Buddhism. Enlightened beings are also credited with discernment and wisdom, which Optimus possessed in abundance (Letting himself getting blown up over a videogame notwithstanding). They are also sometimes describe as having extraordinary powers although our Autobodhisattva would be the first endowed with the ability to remake his body into the form of an eighteen-wheeler.

And of course, there is the core of the Bodhisattva vows, to remain on Earth, forsaking Nirvana for oneself until all beings are liberated from the suffering brought about by the Three Poisons.  Optimus Prime also chooses to take up the mantle of Earth’s suffering, fighting to defend the planet.

If we’re going to go all-in on Transformers and Buddhist iconography, we can even make a case for each of Budiansky’s first three Decepticon leaders embodying one of the Three Poisons--Greed (power-hungry Megatron), Ignorance (Shockwave and his cold indifference), and Fear (the miserly Ratbat).

Move over Pali canon, there’s some new sutras in town. One of them is about a car wash that hypnotizes people.

Its all happening, baby.

There are things to criticize about Bob Budiansky’s Transfomers comics. Some of them were childish (Sky Lynx taking kids to a space carnival). Some of the premises were cheesy (The mind-controlling car wash, although let‘s face it, Stephen King would make hay with something like that.). And the less said about ‘Brick Springstern’ the better.

But his focus on characters’ personal stories, the way human and robot change each other, and a dedication to the natural conflict between those fighting to preserve life and those indifferent to them makes for much richer reading than one might first guess.

They might not be what we think Transformers should be about. But the storytelling is solid. And once you realize what you’re looking at, they‘re far from boring.

(*) There was a monk who got turned into a fox though. So it’s not like there isn’t SOME precedent.

Transformers: The Budiansky Years (Part 2)

“These robots are prone to highly imitative behavior when exposed to humans.”

-Circuit Breaker, Transformers #23 (Decepticon Graffiti)

The first panel of Bob Budiansky’s first Transformers issue (#5) shows us a full page panel of a black and white episode of the Honeymooners. The next page Is another single-page panel that shows the Honeymooners episode is playing on just one of a number of televisions, each tuned to a different channel. In addition to the black and white sitcom, we see news brodcasts, game shows, and sports broadcasts. And standing before the screens watching…the cyclopean Decepticon commander Shockwave.

“Very illuminating,” he says.

In these opening two panels on these opening two pages, Budiansky introduces us to a theme that he will return to again and again--the effect of the humans and Transformers on each other’s worlds and worldviews.

Humans have been part of the Transformers story from the beginning. The Witwickys--staples of both the comics and the cartoon--were introduced before Budiansky began writing and continued to be a part of it after he left.

But Budiansky added many more characters of his own creation. Billionaire energy industrialist GB Blackrock and Josie Beller are introduced in #5 (via one of the televisions Shockwave is watching). Blackrock becomes an ally of the Autobots while Beller turns into the vengeful Circuit-Breaker.

.Selfish and neurotic comic book writer Donny Finkelberg is introduced in Issue #15 and slowly undergoes a change of heart from self-centered, self-loathing and greedy to making a gesture of altruism at personal cost to himself at the end of Issue #23.

Other human characters enter the comic and disappear as quickly as they appear. Like many of the Transformers themselves, human characters burst into the story for an issue or two and then vanish from the book--and unlike the Transformers they don’t even get the benefit of the occasional one or two panel cameo appearance in the background of crowd or battle scenes. If G.B. Blackrock is the human equivalent of Grimlock, Blaster, or Bumblebee then characters like Ricky Vasquez (Issue #21, ) are Gears or Huffer (*)

But although their encounters with the Transformers are brief, their lives are changed from their contact with the Cybertronians.

There’s Joey Slick (“Shooting Star!” Issue #13) who goes from loser to losing himself while becoming rich and then finding himself and his own inner courage, thanks to the unwilling…and unwitting…help of Megatron.

There’s hot headed Jake Dalrymple (Issues #19 and 20) who pursues Skids after the Autobot scrapes his car. Dalrymple’s interference ends up in Skids near destruction at the hands of Ravage but in the end (after finally listening to his girlfriend Frannie), Dalrymple courageously rams the Decepticon with his car, saving Skids and Charlene.

Issue #20 also features Small town-girl Charlene  (not to be confused with research assistant Charlie from Issues #29-30 who helps Blaster and Goldbug overcome the Scraplets) who ends up having a star-crossed, if chaste romance with Skids (although the panels where she washes him in his vehicle mode are suggestive --it‘s not a Whitesnake video, but it‘s pretty close for a kids‘ comic book).

And the change goes both ways. The Transformers are also shaped by their encounters with the humans.

From trucker Bomber Bill (Issue #10, “The Next Best Thing To Being There!”) to rock star Brick Springstern (Issue #14, “Rock and Roll-Out!“) to dishonest used car salesman Big Steve (Issue #32, “Used Autobots”),  the Transformers and humans are agents of change in one another’s lives.

We mostly see these two-way relations with the Autobots, but the Decepticons are not immune. Megatron is duly impressed by Joey Slick’s courage in “Shooting Star,” while  in less noble fashion, The Battlechargers Runabout and Runamuck are inspired by the sight of a misbehaving child to abandon their assigned mission in favor of a cross country vandalism spree defacing American national monuments (Issue #23, “Decepticon Graffiti.”)

In Budiansky’s world, Transformers and humans are continuously surprising each other. In each other they find things to admire, things that are disappointing, and things that inspire them. Organic or robot, each of them gains a new perspective on their world from their time spent in the world of the other.

In short, they transform one another.

The comic is about exactly what its title tells us it is. The nature of that transfomation though…well, sometimes that’s about more than meets the eye.

(*) Which still puts them a step above Windcharger or Trailbreaker.

Transformers:The Budiansky Years (Part 1)

Given that that I’ve written a whole slew of fictional counselling sessions with them, it’s probably no surprise I’m a fan of the Transformers. I’ve loved them since I was a kid.

What might be surprising is that in spite of the fact I collected the Marvel comics run from #1 into the early thirties, for the most part, I often found those comics boring.

Too much people. Not enough giant robots fighting.

The writer on most of those comics was a fellow named Bob Budiansky, Budiansky created the backstories and names for most of the Transformers and took over writing duties on the comic starting with Issue #5. Years later, another writer, Simon Furman, took over the book. Furman’s run on the Transformers is considered a high point of the series. Most modern Transformers comics are still built on the foundation laid by Simon Furman: galactic scale warfare, tribal politics, the meaning of leadership, forays into mysticism and religion, and a Cybertronian-centric narrative.

But revisiting those Budiansky issues recently, I have a new appreciation for his stories. They were different from what I wanted at the time, but rereading he first thirty or so issues of his run on Transformers I notice three recurring points of focus: smaller-scale personal stories, the interaction between humans and Transformers, and an emphasis on morality.

Although Transfomers is ostensibly about a multi-million year old, galaxy-spanning robot war, Budiansky tended to use the war as a setting for his stories rather than as the story itself. Most of his best stories featured only one or two protagonists struggling with a specific problem or limitation.

Sometimes he would do this by isolating characters.

For example, from issue #5 to Issue #8 when he rediscovers the Dinobots (*), Ratchet is the ONLY Autobot character in the comic, the rest having been incapacitated since Issue #4. It’s hard to have story about a war between giant robot armies when one of the armies has only ONE member, and a medic, at that.

But the story is not about the galactic war. It is about Ratchet finding a way to rescue his friends in the face of insurmountable odds and his own self-doubt…and defeating Megatron, the mightiest of Decepticons in the process (**).

In a similar fashion, Bumblebee is isolated (although by choice, feeling he is a liability to the group)  in Issue #16. Skids is the only Autobot in Issue #20 (“Showdown!”) and Ravage the only Decepticon to make a physical appearance (although Megatron shows up in a dream sequence). In issue #13 (“Shooting Star!”), Megatron is the lone Transformer to appear, and he is locked in gun mode for most of the issue--the protagonist of the story is a human, turning the Transformers into side characters in their own comic.

Even when there are numerous characters in the story, the emotional arc often centers around just one or two characters. A number of Autobots are in on the action in issue #10, but the story’s emotional arc(and climactic moment) revolves around Huffer and his homesickness.

Similarly, issues #17 and 18 introduce us to a number of new Autobots and Decepticons who are fighting on Cybertron, but the war is not the story. The war is the setting. The story is the story of Blaster, an Autobot defying orders to first rescue, then avenge his friend Scrounge, an Autobot labelled as useless, but who ends up both discovering crucial information and dying courageously for the Autobot cause.

The Decepticons, as the villains, tend to get less in the way of personal treatment, but Budiansky does attempt to make the Decepticon leaders distinct from one another:

Shockwave, Megatron’s rival for command of the Decepticons, is coldly logical, a strong contrast to the more hot-blooded Megatron. Meanwhile one of the most unique of the Decepticon high command is the (by Transformer standards) diminutive Ratbat, whose leadership style is more in keeping with a penny-pinching bureaucrat than a bloodthirsty conqueror (***).

Even Megatron, whose personality for the most part is indistinguishable from countless other villainous would-be despots, has his moments. Issue #25 is focused around Megatron’s inability to accept the death of Optimus Prime in the previous issue. Whether the denial is brought about by a twisted form of grief at the loss of the foe that has defined his existence for four million years or the blow to Megatron’s ego that it was a human and not the Decepticon leader who killed Prime, the result adds an interesting, if unexpected, layer of depth to a previously one-dimensional character.

I love the way story reveals character now. But back in 1986 I wanted to see more robots, more fighting, and More Than Meets The Eye.

I also wanted to see less of something in my Transformers comics.

That something was humans.

We’ll tackle that in Part 2

(*) Issue #8 also featured the Dinobots being beaten by two different opponents less than fifteen pages apart despite a five-to-one numerical advantage. Their next appearance was for two panels eleven issues later when they quit the Autobots and they didn’t show up again until #27. Grimlock and Co. might be signature characters in Transformers comic book lore, but they got off to an underwhelming start to say the least.

(**) It also established a link between Ratchet and Megatron which would be revisited later in the series by Furman, a link that probably wouldn’t have happened without Budiansky’s story. But it’s a brilliant storytelling juxtaposition. Optimus Prime and Megatron are ideological opposites, but they are both powerful warriors and leaders. Ratchet on the other hand is far lesss-powerful, charismatic, and lower in the command structure not to mention a medical officer and non-combatant. The difference between Autobot and Decepticon philosophies is not best embodied by the difference between Optimus Prime and Megatron. It’s embodied in the difference between Megatron and RATCHET.

(***)When the Decepticons launch a successful surprise assault on the Autobots, Ratbat rejoices at the ambush’s energy efficiency, exclaiming: “What a banner day this will become in the annals of Decepticon fuel accounting!” It’s no “Kneel before Zod,” that‘s for sure.

Books: Christopher Buelhman

I picked up Christopher Buelhman's The Necromancer’s House on Monday. I read through one hundred pages in the bookstore.

By Saturday afternoon I had read all four of his books: The Necromancer's House, Those Across The River, Between Two Fires, and The Lesser Dead.

They're all great and all very different from one another thanks to the variety of settings he uses (The Lesser Dead is set in 1970s New York while Between Two Fires takes place in plague-ridden Darg Ages France) but the thing I wanted to rave about from a technical sense is how well Buelhman understands set-ups and pay-offs.

He is so good at exposition--at giving you exactly as much information as you need for where you are in the story. He doesn’t give you so much that you see where things are going long before they get there.

But he doesn’t hold things back or hide things either so that he can give you a SHOCKING TWIST that has you feeling cheated or flipping back through pages to find something that you missed.

Everything is right there on the page.