Let’s get the now-obligatory book review out of the way first, shall we?
Three Men Seeking Monsters : Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men by Nick Redfern.
In this entertaining account of intensive paranormal investigation and pub-hopping, Nick Redfern, a bestselling author of ufology-related books, lays out a supernatural map of Great Britain before the reader and takes us on a trip through true strangeness. Redfern and his buddies, Richard Freeman and Jonathon Downes, spend six weeks in the summer of 2001 touring the British countryside in an RV looking for the titular monsters, as they attempt to track down some common thread that ties together British paranormal activity.
Always interesting and often hilarious, Three Men Seeking Monsters explores some areas of the paranormal that are generally overlooked here in the States. Perhaps most interesting is the theory that Redfern learns from a British witch: beings known as Cormons are basically responsible for all paranormal encounters, as they enter our world from another world, often known as Faerie, and manipulate human emotions as a source of nourishment. With a government conspiracy to rival the X-Files, Arthurian legends, partially-abandoned underground military installations, creepy patches of haunted forest and old, secret-passage-riddled mansions combined with copious amounts of imbibed alcohol, Three Men Seeking Monsters
I got my start in the media arm of the RISFC with fanboy-like droolings over a then-new PC game called Freedom Force, the game which broke the so-called “superhero curse” for computer games. Three years later, the sequel is out, and it has been worth the wait! Freedom Force vs. the Third Reich
The folks at Irrational Games did a superb job on this sequel, tweaking the weak points of the original and leaving everything else the hell alone, a point which often escapes other developers when making sequels. At the risk of returning to the level of gibbering fanboy (at least this time I won’t coopt time on Sci Fi Journal to yammer on about it!), this is an awesome PC game which should be a must-have for any computer gamer.
As I’m on the subject of PC games, I thought I’d mention that April 28th was the official 1-year anniversary of City of Heroes, a game which still consumes a substantial amount of my free time. The past year has seen 3 in-game upgrades, called “issues” (as in comic book issues), which have greatly increased the game content at the cost of exactly $0 to the subscribers, and Issue #4 is due out in early-to-mid May. Issue 4 will give all players access to player-versus-player arenas; we’ve been trying it out on the test server for several weeks now and the pvp system is pretty sweet, if you’re inclined towards that sort of thing. The first comic book series is coming to an end, too, with the next series being produced by Top Cow and written by Mark Waid, a Very Big Name in modern comics. In summary, CoH is still awesome!
TV time! And more cartoons! Apparently, I’m still about 11 years old and it’s a perpetual Saturday morning, because I’ve been watching more animation in the last couple of years than I ever did as a kid. True, much of it is stuff the Big Three would have never aired in place of Smurfs and Care Bears - things airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim block, like Harvey Birdman and Sealab 2021 and The Venture Brothers. Another cartoon that has caught my fancy recently is last year’s Megas XLR, a fun piece of animation that will appeal to the heart of anyone who has a weakness for giant robots.
Megas XLR started off as an 11-minute singleton called Lowbrow, and got picked up as a series shortly afterwards. The concept is this: about a thousand years from now, Earth is in a losing battle with aliens known as the Glorft. Terran agents steal an advanced Glorft battle robot, heavily modify it, and send it back in time to the start of the Earth-Glorft war to turn the tide of battle. However, they severely overshoot their mark, and the robot ends up in a New Jersey junkyard in the 1930’s. There, it is left to rot, until it’s found in modern times by motorhead, wrestling fan and video game player Coop, who severely modifies it and gives it a cool paint job, and replaces the head of the robot with his car.
The series is packed full of pop-cultural referents, and not just the giant robot anime stuff either. Junkyard owner Goat was a character in the 1999 MTV series Downtown, which was created by the same guys who did Megas. In apparent retaliation for the cancellation of Downtown, the creators often feature the destruction of “PopTV” real estate during various episodes of Megas. Almost all the shows lack any real degree of seriousness; watch closely and quickly for various throwaway jokes, especially the labels of the various buttons Coop presses during battles. For example, in one episode, Coop mashes a big red button to fire off some weapon or other. Five minutes later, he mashes the button again… and now it’s labelled, “The Exact Same Button Coop Pushed Like 5 Minutes Ago”, and a different attack is launched. The same goes for signs on buildings; in an episode where Coop is trying to return a video before it becomes overdue, a sign on the video store reads, “Clock’s ticking, big guy” as Coop battles a giant Mr. T robot. And neighborhood children cheer when Coop accidentally destroys the “Cough Syrup, Liver and Homework Store”.
There are also numerous guest appearances on the show, most notably Bruce Campbell in two episodes where he appears as giant floating head (with tiny, dangling arms and legs) and intergalactic fight promoter Magnanimous - face drawn to resemble Campbell’s actual phiz and a multitude of verbal and visual takes on his roles as Ash in the Evil Dead movies and his character in Bubba Ho Tep.
Megas XLR is a fun show with a lot to offer both the anime geek and the more casual viewer.
Another interesting cartoon, and a much newer one, is Nickelodeon’s latest entry, Avatar: The Last Airbender. Avatar is styled on Japanese animation, and seems to be particularly modelled after Hiyao Miyazaki’s work (Miyazaki well-known here in the States for Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Laputa/Castle In the Sky and Nausicaa, as well as other movies). While there are clear stylistic differences, one is inevitably reminded of Miyazaki’s work, particularly with the various odd animals that populate the world of Avatar.
The premise of Avatar is straightforward; here, let me quote the extended narrative from the original promos:
“Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
“My grandmother used to tell me stories about the old days. The time of peace. When the Avatar kept balance between Water Tribes, Earth Kingdom, Fire Nation, and Air Nomads. But that all changed when the Fire Nation attacked.
“Only the Avatar mastered all four elements, only he can stop the ruthless Firebenders. But when the world needed him most, he vanished.
“One hundred years have passed, and the Fire Nation is nearing victory in the war. Two years ago, my father and the men of my tribe journeyed to the Earth Kingdom to help fight against the fire nation, leaving me and my brother to look after our tribe.
“Some people believe that the Avatar was never reborn into Air Nomads, and that the circle is broken. But I haven’t lost hope. I still believe that, somehow, the Avatar will return to save the world.”
In the world of Avatar, there are people who can control, or “bend”, one of the four elements. Thus, the benders of the water Tribes can “bend” water, those of the Air Nomads can “bend” air, and so on. Not every member of the four groups are benders. At the start of the show, the missing Avatar is found by a south polar Water Tribe waterbender named Katara and her brother Sokka. The new Avatar, in a state of suspended animation inside an iceberg for a hundred years, is a 10-year-old airbender boy named Aang. Released from the iceberg, Aang and his giant flying bison Appa team up with Katara and Sokka in a quest to stop the advancing Fire Nation. It is not much of a spoiler, given the show’s title, to reveal that Aang is the last of the Air Nomads, or at least the last airbender. No other airbenders have been seen to date.
The show is a real gem to watch, between the anime-influenced artistic style and the Chinese-influenced world of the Avatar. The show’s creators even spent over a year studying Chinese martial arts to impart authenticity to the various bending maneuvers. Given the mythic and epic elements of the storyline and the beautiful artwork, Avatar has everything going for it to be a long-running, quality show. Perhaps the only disturbing element in Avatar - and it is minor at most - is the use of Sokka as a sort of underdog straight man, providing a rather modern-youth foil to the other characters and a mild distraction from the immersive setting. Still, the humor is decent and moves along smartly, and the best moments of humor are those voiced by one of the villains, voice acted by Mako (recently of Samurai Jack fame).
Nickelodeon currently airs Avatar
(Originally published in club newsletter Nov. 2005)
