1. Very not bad. Lots to like.
2. Not perfect. Lots of stuff to make you go "huh?"
3. Well paced, doesn't let up.
4. Nice mix of character and action beats.
5. For the most part, the cast works well.
6. Zoe Saldana is gorgeous.
7. I was eventually won over by Christopher Pine, but did enjoy watching him get punched in the face. Over. And over. And over.
8. Karl Urban essays McCoy flawlessly.
9. Zoe Saldana is gorgeous. Really. Not kidding.
10. Simon Pegg doesn't work as Scotty, but doesn't ruin it.
11. Eric Bana is game, but doesn't get a lot of space to breathe as villain.
12. Uh, black holes don't do that.
13. Pike is awesome.
14. Zoe Saldana is gorgeous. Seriously.
15. Syler/Spock is doubleplus excellent.
16. This movie is NOT for Trekkies/Trekkers -- though it makes it palatable enough for us. It's for people who aren't diehard fans, and it delivers a compelling experience for them, that those of us who think that tiny little scoutship years before the construction of Enterprise wouldn't be carrying 800 people won't mind. Yes, I AM that nerd, thank you.
17. Definitely worth a watch, and certainly not an insult to intelligence and assault on goodwill (like Wolverine, or worse offenders like the Star Wars prequels, Spider-Man 3, or the Matrix sequels).

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

I've been very lax about posting lately (though, courtesy of installing Tweetdeck, I've been more active on my Twitter account of late).

(Be warned, if you decide to "follow" me on Twitter--I do occasionally go on music jags via Blip.FM, which crosspost to Twitter.)

Things have been very, very busy. I just finished a short script, a sort of six-page Free Comic Book Day "teaser" or prologue for Wide Awake, the soon-to-be-launched webcomic I'm doing with Brandon Jerwa, Mirco Pierfederici (who's name I have consistently butchered; sorry Mirco!) and David Messina. I'm pretty happy with it, and I've spent some time lately whipping up some suitably weird monster designs. Can't wait to see what the art folk do with 'em.

Work proceeds apace on Mystery Video Game Projekt™; it is an intensely frustrating project, one I'm quite ambivalent about if truth be told, though I'm apparently adding value to the game. As an exercise in story development, it has been a decent experience, and -- on the plus side -- I'm not dealing with complete jerks (which has all too frequently been the case in the past). But overall, it seems to be going well, and they seem to like me (and more importantly, they seem to think I know what I'm talking about and don't automatically assume I'm an incompetent ass), so that's nice.

JSA VS. KOBRA is still cranking along. Hope to be done with the issue #3 script in the next few days, and then back onto the VERTIGO book (where I am rather significantly behind where I want to be for Act 2 rewrites; Act 3 is due soon as well, and I am circling it warily). Just saw the cover to JSA VS KOBRA #2; Gene Ha is, as is well documented elsewhere, a golden god and I wish to have his babies. Holy. Cow.

Freelance writing: Feast or Famine. Coming off more than a year of famine, the sudden feast is rather overwhelming at times.

Haven't had much time to spend with friends for the last several, uh, months. I am an awful friend. Haven't talked to Rucka in ages, nor to Tim (both of whom have also been insanely busy of late). I do get "quality time" with Jerwa, though lately that consists largely of him insulting me and/or my mother on Twitter.

Hopefully after Emerald City Comic Con (you're going, right?), I'll have a little downtime and can have some face-to-face time with friends.

---

Haven't managed any significant movie or TV viewing of late, though on the train to Vancouver, B.C. I read most of Peter Guralnick's Searching for Robert Johnson, which is surprisingly meaty for such a thin tome. I commend it to your attention if you like music bios or blues. Especially you, Wes.

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

Over on CBR, Hannibal Tabu's "Buy Pile" column lists Black Lightning: Year One #5 as a book you should go out and purchase.

Couldn't agree more.

Scripted by the insanely talented Jen Van Meter, Black Lightning: Year One has been a reverential, tactful handling of an often mistreated character. Add to that the lovely, clean linework of Cully Hamner and you've got a hell of a good book.

So, yeah: go out and buy it.

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

Any of you lucky bastards with your shiny iPods: have you used the >iVerse comic-reader app? If so, what are your thoughts? What works? What doesn't?

Genuinely curious.

Thanks!

-E



----------------
Currently listening to: Pearl Django - Belleville
http://foxytunes.com/artist/pearl+django/track/belleville

My frequent collaborator (on projects that haven't come out yet), Brandon Jerwa, was the subject of a very thorough interview over on Comics Spotlight.

Reports of my saying nice things about him in the interview are possibly unreliable. That is my story and I'm sticking to it.

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

If I might blather for a moment...

Letter columns.

I want my letter columns back, dammit. One of the things The Walking Dead gets right is the very, very long-form lettercol; I miss the days when "Uncle Elvis" managed to comment on, as near as I can tell, every book published.

(And whatever happened to Uncle Elvis? Or T.M. Maple?)

Seeing the letter columns replaced with advertising and the general shift of the letter column to online forums and message boards -- which generally have an awful signal-to-noise ratio -- has fairly melancholy undertones to me.

For a while, the Vertigo books -- notably Transmetropolitan and Preacher -- has amazing lettercols; lots of humor (albeit rude and bleak, given the books they were appearing in) and lots of fan outreach. Garth Ennis regularly asked some tough movie trivia and gave away autographed scripts (and possibly artwork); Ellis used the too-brief Transmet lettercol as a sort of prototype for his current blogging style, it seems.

It was all very involving and energizing, and something about the effort necessary to write the words down and mail them in seemed to make folks really try to be clever and engaging. It also really helped Ellis and Ennis establish very clear authorial personas, for lack of a better term; you got a sense of who these guys were and are, and it helped forge a kinship with them that probably carried over into sales of subsequent titles they worked on.

I do really miss it.

(I remember a good friend of mine, Josh, being so pleased that an excerpt from a submission to The Maxx lettercol made the cut -- and it was damn funny, too. You just can't get that same sense of accomplishment and validation from posting to a forum. Or rather, if you can, you should summon medical attention, immediately.)

If I ever wind up doing a creator owned book, I am totally doing a letter column. I think one fewer ad for Axe body spray or the next awful EA video game is a fair price to pay for one measley page of fan outreach, one that confers a certain amount of "fan ownership and involvement" than an online forum post ever will.

Corrollary: there's no excuse for all-ages books like the excellent Marvel Adventures titles and Johnny DC fare like Shazam! and Supergirl! don't have kid-friendly letter columns or, sigh, a really well-done online space. Birthday announcements, kid-drawn fan art gallerys, do-it-yourself fan club kits. Why, Big Two? Why don't you do this?

(I also miss Hostess Fruit Pie ads featuring the Hulk or Batman. But that's a screed for another day.)

 

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

 

Taking a quick break from my absolutely appalling writing backlog to look up some distributor/wholesaler info for the store. Specifically, I'm intrigued by a new-ish 1:6th-scale action figure manufacturer, Enterbay, which will be releasing some really excellent figures of Jack Bauer/Kiefer Sutherland and President Palmer/Dennis Haysbert from the TV show "24."

Turns out, Enterbay also makes a series of really high-end Bruce Lee 1:6th-scale. It's top-shelf pricing, too, but dear god. The eyes are poseable.

I mean, look at them.

LOOK.

Wow.

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

My good friend, Greg Rucka, has been hard at work for some time on a series featuring Batwoman -- a long abandoned DC character reintroduced a while back in the excellent weekly series 52.

In the wake of Batman: R.I.P., the powers-that-be apparently decided to move Batwoman out of a planned solo book into the crown jewel title, Detective Comics.

I've been lucky enough to see bits and pieces of the story as it developed, and I'm pleased to see the series finally coming out -- and in 'Tec, no less! -- but I'm doubly pleased that it's also getting Greg some great ink. Congrats to both Greg and his collaborator, illustrator J.H. Williams III.

Like, BBC NEWS.

Wow.

[x-post from eric-trautmann.com]

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

A while back, I got kind of über-geeked out by the Sideshow Indiana Jones (Raiders version) 1:6th-scale action figure.

Today, Indy has a new accessory: a DID 1:6th-scale horse.

DID released a line of horses in varying colors, poses and harness types a while back; they don't seem to have any kind of structure to the assortment, at least based on what ended up on our store shelves. Some are "trotting"; others are reared up. Some have bases. Others don't. A few have no harnesses of any kind; one has a saddle and harness of typical of Feudal Japan.

For Indy, I chose one that was rearing up, reasoning that the figure's wide base and super-magnet connector would be sufficient to support the figure. The harness is of a Wild West style, and is surprisingly well detailed. Lots of pouches, and loops (for storing a scattergun, or a knife) are included.

The horse itself has a really effective simulated horse-hair -- it looks pretty authentic.

The horse body is hollow, and is very, very light; this posed a significant problem; the angle of the single hoof that is held -- by supermagnet -- to the base when compared to the angle of the leg itself means that significant weight (say, from a RIDER!) places a lot of stress on that single joint.

The lightness of the body also means that the weight of a rider makes it VERY unstable.

The supermagnet in the hoof (and the one on the base) are strong enough that it pulled the metal horseshoe off the connecting leg, as well.

As a temporary fix until I can rig an appropriate stand to bear the full weight of horse and rider figs, I used the existing clamp stand from the Indiana Jones figure, affixing it to Indy's right leg, so it supports the weight of the figure, not the horse and the horse's stand. It means I can't put Indy's right foot in the stirrup, but that's largely hidden by the body of the horse in the figure's current display configuration.

Overall, for the whopping $110.00 (US) DID charges for the horses, some kind of cradle stand to make sure the figure can actually support a rider seems like an obvious move, and I'm really disappointed they didn't.

So, overall: the horse is really, really convincing, and has a lot of cool accessories, and a dramatic pose, but the design flaws evident when actually trying to use the horse with a comparable figure make the price seem overly steep.

That said, though, it looks magnificent.

Originally posted on erictrautmann.vox.com

Sitting down today to start finalizing an outline for DC, AND (knock wood) to continue on yet another Jerwa/Trautmann concept doc.

While I'm busy sitting here absolutely freezing, you can listen to me blather about Final Crisis: Resist over on Comic Geek Speak. And once again, I am briefly failed by my cell phone.

Thanks for having me on, guys.

Surfing the net for a moment, in between helping Mom with various whatnots, I perused today's Penny Arcade, which reminded me that the new Tomb Raider installment, Tomb Raider: Underworld is on the cusp of release (releasal?).

This, on top of the release of Fallout 3 poses a significant conundrum for me.

On the one hand, I loved Tomb Raider: Legend. Rucka urged me to play the game -- which I had fully intended to ignore, as the prior installments of the series led me to the inescapable conclusion that Legend would be a giant pile of garbage.

By the end? Totally sold. I actually found myself -- courtesy of some surprisingly good ambient dialogue and above average voice acting -- emotionally engaged in the storyline, something I never could have predicted.

Plus, it was a cliffhanger, and a damned good one, at that.

So, the siren call of Underworld is undeniable. I'm all for the raiding of good, old fashioned tomb.

On the other hand, Fallout 3 just looks freaking amazing.

I mean, seriously.

The blend of post-apocalypse mutant combat hijinks and 1950s commercial/advertising illustration in the setting speak to me on an almost genetic level.

So, the conundrum: limited budget and limited time to actually play videogames, at least until this draft of the Vertigo book is done.

(I expect Dauntless Editrix would somehow fail to accept, "But, um, I needed to unlock a costume for Lara Croft..." as a valid excuse for not doing my job.)

Gah.

Yeah, I'm enough of a geek that I can say I must own a set of these.

So great.

My awesome wife pre-ordered a set for me. EPIC WIN.

I've been heads-down on the Vertigo project for the last couple weeks, trying to get a lot of pages in the can before I depart for the frozen Northern wastes I hail from (think Cimmeria, but with more French-Canadian accents).

Work is progressing slower than I'd like, but I'm reasonably happy with the work I've been turning out. The opening scene is fairly complex, despite a seemingly simple set-up, and a lot has to be communicated by ambient background dialogue and character "acting," stuff that generally makes my fearless editor absolutely nuts.

(I fully expect to get the initial note from her that I got on damn near every complex scene I wrote in Checkmate: "I'm not sure that's going to work." Moo hoo ha ha.)

---

Also, I'm an IDIOT. I mentioned last week that I'd gotten a new iPod. What I forget to mention, because, as I said, I am an idiot what's got no brains, is that my wife arranged for the purchase of said device. So, yes, BEST. WIFE. EVER. Despite being slammed with work -- and the normal grind of dealing with taxes and bills and whatnot that goes into maintaining both the store and our "civilian" lives -- she took the time out to treat me to the iPod Classic I've been lusting over since it came out.

Week Two with the new device, and I have to say I am quite pleased with how it's working. Every scrap of music I own, plus 100 or so podcasted old radio dramas, a season of BSG, a handful of videos, and a bunch of other crap and it's only half-full.

I'm still re-ripping a bunch of old CDs; when my external drive at home had a massive failure a while back -- thus decimating my complete archive of work from Microsoft -- I also lost my .mp3 library.

Most of it had been backed up elsewhere, but coordinating between two remote computers, one of which is about 8 years old, and completely unconnected to the internet has been, um, challenging.

Started really monkeying with Smart Playlists -- which have been a feature of iTunes for, like, forever -- and I'm starting to really like them. Any iTunes users, feel free to share your Smart Playlist setups in the comments. I'm interested in seeing 'em.

---

Jerwa and I had a notion (not even an idea, really) for a sci-fi "thing." Plus we've had a sudden windfall in contact from people at various publishers suitable for such a project. So, that's proven distracting, but an interesting distraction.


---

That's about it. Work. Music. Jerwa. Oh, and Greg Rucka is sick, and that makes me sad.

--

That is all.

Ahhhh.

Brand spankin' new 160 gig iPod Classic is currently chugging away. It'll be nice to have something that'll carry ALL of my music on it, allowing me to dump tunes off my laptop.

It's shiny.

Apparently, after the bizarre and inexplicable Jerry Seinfeld/Bill Gates Vista ads have been pulled for being, well, just impenetrably odd, this little tidbit came to light:

The new "I'm a PC" ad campaign for Vista? Created on a Mac.

Heh.

As I continue to beat the piece Jerwa and I did for PopGun like a cheap drum...

Frequent collaborator Brandon Jerwa and I deliver annotations/"directors' commentary" for our short piece, Wide Awake, over on Comics Waiting Room.

(And, as with the Comic Book Resources article, the complete nine-page story is available for your perusal, for the whopping price of "FREE.") Check it out; as always, comments, questions, and so on are welcome.

Enjoy!

I've extolled the virtues of the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society before, notably when they did an absolutely amazing silent film adaptation of HPL's "The Call of Cthulhu."

If you haven't seen it, you should totally check it out, especially if you're a Lovecraft fan, obviously. It is a very faithful adaptation of the story, and produced in a style that is EXTREMELY faithful to aesthetic of the 1920s and 1930s (including a stop-motion-a-la-King Kong Dread Cthulhu rising from the waves, which gives me a tremendous smile every time I think about it).

Here's the trailer. Go watch it. I'll wait.

Anyway...

I downloaded a radio drama from their site yesterday, an adaptation of "The Dunwich Horror," done like a 1930s radio show, and realized I hadn't poked around to see what new stuff they had brewing.

Turns out, I missed the first of their "radio drama" adaptations, "At The Mountains of Madness."

But better than that? They have a TALKIE film in development, a black and white live action adaptation of "The Whisperer in Darkness."

For what appears to be a group of very dedicated fans, the quality bar on their material is really very, very high. I mean, the typography alone is worth the price of admission, as far as I'm concerned. (Oh, and also? They sell fonts. And they are all uniformly excellent.)

Jerwa and I used a lot of Lovecraft material at the outset of "Wide Awake," (our contribution to POPGUN, VOL. 2. and a character and concept we hope to develop further). So, if you liked that, you should check out the HPL Historical Society stuff, and do a good deed and give to them your monies.

I leave you with this, too: within 24 hours of purchasing the "Dunwich" radio drama, I was e-mailed by one of the folks at the Society, Sean Branney, asking me what I thought of the work. Which, apparently, they do with ANYONE who makes a purchase. "Everyone who gives us money for anything hears back from us in person. It’s just the way we do business."

If there's justice in the cold void, people will deliver unto these folks vast sums of money.

I barely use the damn thing; I have no idea what good it is, frankly; the preponderance of posts about how so-and-so ate this-and-that for lunch, or, like, god, I'm so, like, HIGH right now updates are less than enthralling.

LoudTwitter packages here are done, for now. I'm giving the Twhirl app a try right now, which basically seems to treat Twitter like a reaaaaally slow IM client. Once the Vertigo book launches, I may try to do some kind of barnstorming session via Twitter, but after that, I'm probably packing it in.

That is, unless someone can explain to me what the hell good Twitter is.

So, yeah: some online housekeeping is in the offing.

----------------
Now playing: Paul Oakenfold ft Brittany Murphy - Faster Kill Pussycat
http://foxytunes.com/artist/paul+oakenfold+ft+brittany+murphy/track/faster+kill+pussycat

So today is a "research" day -- meaning, I'm spending a lot of time surfing around online looking for project research material (specifically images of the "Mamba" assault vehicle in common use in Iraq, as well as contemporary tac used by personal security contractors, for what that's worth).

Internet spelunking often yields interesting results.

Such as:

This.

That.

This other thing.

Oh, and there's this, too.

Of course, none of this applies to the project. But sometimes, you just gotta click that link, right?

Heh.

Also: Jonathan Coulton's "Millionaire Girlfriend" makes me laugh.