Chatter Of The Squirrel

Cartoon: Superman Doomsday

September 24, 2007 on 4:13 pm | In Movies | No Comments

There’s a new straight-to-DVD animated movie on the death of Superman.

It’s done in the same style as the new Superman animated series. ie Supe with a very VERY square jaw.

A cartoonist I know told me about it. And the next day that I was at Moses’, he was just finishing the download.

Watched it last night, and it was alright. The story arc is rewritten, and very much attenuated.

I still remember when DC Comics made headlines in 1993 with issue #75 that led to Superman’s death. That created an incredible media sensation, for a comic book. It was the crux of comic book history. The one chance DC had to let comic books be taken seriously.

But then they tried to cash in. By creating 4 new Supermen, and left it to fans to speculate which of them were impostors. That story arc ended with the ORIGINAL Superman coming back to life, and all 4 new ones were impostors.

That killed all credibility that spandex superheroes have. Batman got his back broken, and recovered. Spiderman had his identity put in doubt, and life went on. Interest in superheroes slumped for a decade.

Anyways, in the animated movie Doomsday kills Supe in a brutal and graphic battle. But the 4 Supermen didn’t pop up. Instead, Lex clones Superman from a fleck of blood that he bled during the fight.

What I really enjoyed most about it though, was the scene where Superman fought a spider. This was an obvious reference to an earlier script of the Superman sequel, where Jon Peters (Warner Bros producer, former hairdresser of Barbara Streisand) wanted Superman to beat up a giant alien spider. This is my favourite anecdote from Kevin Smith’s talk tour, An Evening With Kevin Smith.

“They’re the fiercest killers in the insect kingdom!”

Jon got his giant spider in Wild Wild West in the end. But I’ve made this joke too many times already.

In Superman Doomsday, Kevin Smith made an appearance and had a line!

“Like we really needed him to bust up a mechanical spider, right? Lame!”

Hearing Kevin is the highlight of the cartoon. Just as seeing him was the highlight of Die Hard 4.0.

Still, this is a well executed cartoon. And I can say I enjoyed it more than Superman Returns. No offence intended to Kevin Spacey.

R.I.P. - Robert Jordan

September 20, 2007 on 10:58 pm | In Books | No Comments

Taking time out from my Puzzle Pirates addiction. Because this is important enough…

Robert Jordan passed away on the 16th Sept 2007, from complications of amyloidosis.

Robert Jordan is the author of the Wheel Of Time series, a 12 book fantasy epic that he’s been writing since before 1990. Book 12 is now left unfinished.

The Dragonmount blog details his fight against his disease. And the wikipedia will tell you most of what you want to know about the man.

I’ll merely relate the ways RJ had touched my life.

I started reading The Wheel of Time in 1996. The books were on my to-read list long before that. At the time, his 6 novels put together was as thick as the length of my forearm. Couldn’t afford to squander that kind of time during my A-Levels year.

But the moment exams were over, I picked up his books from the Singapore National Library, and started devouring them.

The books are thick, and the there seemed no end to the series. [Sadly, this is now true.] This was what turned off a number of even the most avid fantasy fans. Thus, amongst the few who actually keep up with the books, one might even feel a special kind of bond.

And the few I know who reads the Wheel of Time ?

Wee Wei Hsiung, NJC classmate.
Ning, my sister. But in recent books, I suspect she’s just skimming the book for story-arcs that still interest her.
Mun Hoo, hostel-mate and fellow ASEAN Scholar. Hasn’t bothered with the books published this side of the millenium.
Ben, room-mate and ASEAN Scholar again. I think he started with The Dragon Reborn. I doubt that he’s still continuing the story.
Thomas Ho, UM classmate. We had some great times discussing the series, LOUDLY, at dinner. Completely flummoxing everyone else with our conversation. We do so when we’re especially dissed cos the rest of the table were discussing soccer. This was a world only the two of us shared. Even Alvin shied away from the WoT.

And that’s the very short list…

My journey with the WoT began more than a decade ago…

The Eye of the World started simple enough. There’s your farm boy who’s destined for greatness. There’s a magic guide. There’s a wizened old man. There’s a fighter. There’s a journey. A quest for an artifact. A dark one with a dozen lieutenants. But in the first book alone, 2 of the lieutenants were killed, and a third one grievously injured.

The second book continued to impress me, as the taint of evil seems to permeate into every crevice of society. Malignant magics at every turn. Soulless hunters chasing from behind. Betrayals greeting them ahead. Even the forces of light are misguided as the Spanish Inquisition. Then the wizened old man bit the dust. Setting a precedence of how easily the author will throw away important and loveable characters. That most basic of compacts between author and readers, was broken.

After all, he’s created three children of ‘destiny’. Everyone’s mortal. The evil is just too pervasive and overwhelming. And the good are always tripping each other up. The wounded lieutenant reappears, and is vanquished again.

My third book came from Ben. The simple farm boy drew a sword of power. Thus completing the Arthurian template… The wounded one is finally defeated. And another was thrown into another dimension. I think…

And I think I’ve got two copies of the fourth book. I started to collect the series from 2nd hand bookshops. And I couldn’t quite remember whether I was missing book 4 or book 5… And I think in this book Rand al Thor banged his first girl.

Lord of Chaos, the sixth book, I found at a rather unusual bookstore near the Courts Mammoth next to PJ Hilton. The store has like 50 copies of this book. But hardly anything else. No other works of fantasy. Hardly any other books. But there’s 50 copies of Lord of Chaos… For very cheap.

Many readers waited a long time for Crown of Swords. I got mine at Times, One Utama. Just as I was starting my bleak Uni life, I had this one small sparkle of joy… The book was a little scuffed when the bag hit the motorbike’s rear tire on the way back to the U. Major cliffhanger in the book, as a pile of rocks came crashing down on one of the 3 children. The most likeable one.

Waited too long for book 8. Frustratingly thin. None of the plot made any progress. And no mention completely about the boy under the avalanche of stone. And again, I’ve got two copies of Path of Daggers. How this happened, I lent the book to Ben. And at some point he returned it to me. Some time later, I visited him again, and he had another copy of the book. An identical large paperback. He thought it was my book. And I can’t be sure if it was mine. Only when I brought the book back to Brunei, did I find my own copy. Since Ben can’t remember who he borrowed that 2nd copy from… Now I’ve got two.

Another long wait for book 9. Got this book from Boon Kee, as a Christmas present. The four year cliffhanger finally resolves. Boy has bandages on his head. But very much alive. Somewhere around here, Rand banged his second girl. Or maybe that’s in an earlier book.

But he banged that girl before finally banging the queen in waiting.

Books 10 and 11, I never bought. I read the ebooks. I know… I’m shameless.

But after a while, it’s like watching Lost. The writer is just going to pile on more and more plot threads without tying anything up. I had hoped that by book 11, he would have tried to get a few things sorted out.

Remember the 12 lieutenants that the Dark One started with? I can’t tell how many of them are still alive at this point. Some got killed. Some got captured. And then killed. Some got pushed into another dimension, never to return… But then many of them got resurrected. The Dark One’s sense of humor even brought some of them men back in women’s forms.

Any WoT discussion I’ve had with fellow fans, is never complete without a string of laments of how complicated the plot threads are weaved, and we often complained that at the rate RJ was going, he would die with the book uncompleted.

We never thought those idle complaints would prove prophetic.

But despite the many gripes about the series, about the unholy length, about the tiresome wait between sequels, there were still many, many fond hours spent reading the book.

It is an epic work of fantasy, with no equals.

You know who’s trying to emulate this? Terry Goodkind is coming out with his 11th Sword of Truth series at the end of the year. And he started 4yrs later than RJ. But then again, he doesn’t have any health problems. But I’ve given Goodkind one try… And the only impression I still have of the book, is the clumsy way some of the dialogue was done, and the author’s fondness for writing about S&M.

The protagonists get hurt. A lot. Often beaten within inches of their lives. Repeatedly.

But this is off topic…

After WoT, no other works of fantasy can lay claim to the title “Epic”.

Thank you RJ, for those many, many hours.