dimfuture.net

A quasi-human construct made of herbs and blood – for America’s libraries

Your reviewer doesn’t spend much time on message boards; most are, of course, havens for the sort of behavior that aspires dreamily, but vainly, to the dizzying heights of “obnoxiously childish.” And those few that feature people treating one another like human beings are usually damnably insular; fun to read, perhaps, but impossible to get replies to one’s own contributions. One exception to this rule was the Mezco Toyz message boards, where, after the release of Hellboy series one, fans of the line from all over the world came together to discuss its merits and its flaws, and generally have a good old time. Then…then, Mezco announced that series two wouldn’t be out for another year. And some of the regular posters went completely, twenty-speed apeshit. To call their protestations “vocal” would be to call the Star Wars Holiday Special “not very good.” One could not use a word with the letter H in it without their howling, “H stands for Hellboy, and Mezco delayed series two by a year, and this is worse than Dachau! It will destroy the Hellboy line, and the entire Mezco corporation!” Okay, the first line there is an exaggeration; they didn’t say that – but they sure did say the second line, over and over again. They didn’t get around to snowballing it further, to this delay spelling the end of western civilization and macrobiotic life. But then, your reviewer bolted after a few weeks of this behavior, so maybe they eventually did. A great pity. Anyway, all of this has little to do with today’s subject – poor, dead Roger, the homonculous.

Will you quit doing that?!?

Articulation: Not phenomenal, but not too bad, either. The joints tend to be a bit tight, which makes them hard to move, or at least hard to move without worrying about tearing them arms and legs right off. On the other hand, the little porthole in his chest opens, and that’s quality.

Sculpt: As with Johann, a truly remarkable job has been done with recreating Mike Mignola’s artistic style. And the ring on his codpiece is real metal! One could perhaps do without his left hand being permanently fisty, and his right being held open in such a way as to make it impossible for him to carry his main accessory, but so it goes. Also, his facial expression is perhaps a bit much; Roger is certainly a somber sort, but this Roger seems luridly depressed. Still, these are quibbles.

Roger does the robot (dedicated to Mr. Dan Swensen)

Paint: For a guy who is brown, this is a mighty fine paint job. The shading is excellent, there’s no bleed, and the old-metal quality to his chest-port is particularly impressive.

Durability: Well, there’s that smell again, but that could be just his flexible vest. And there were a number of complaints about series one’s breakability, back on the message boards, though a lot of these were along the lines of “I put my Hellboy figure in the heart of an atomic explosion, and it broke!” So we’ll just give this one the benefit of the doubt.

Don’t sweat it, kid. I been dead hundreds of times.

There Comes A Time In Every Man’s Life When He Must Ask Himself, “Does This Action Figure Stand Up Well?”: Stands up fine. He can even do the robot, as we have seen. Ability to do the robot is really a benchmark of action-figure stability.

Accessories: His vest is removable, and that’s aces. He comes with a book, presumably occulty, and that’s an excellent Hellboy prop in general; too bad he can’t really hold it, though. And there’s a new Mignola picture of Roger on the packaging, which, as we mentioned in Johann’s episode, constitutes a depressingly high percentage of Mignola’s published output for 2006.

Overall:

aaaAAACHOO!

In 2005, the news came: Mezco Toyz, the makers of the very, very good figures for the Hellboy movie, had acquired the license to make figures based on the Hellboy comic books! And they would do so later that same year! Fans of both Hellboy and action figures rioted in the streets! But they were riots of pure joy! And then the lineup for series one was announced, and it was an extremely great lineup – Hellboy, Liz Sherman, Lobster Johnson, and a Kriegaffe, with Von Klempt – and all of the Hellboy/figure fanboys’ heads just blew right up! It was horrible! Only your reviewer survived, thanks to his naturally phlegmatic personality. And so only he lived to see the second wave of Hellboy figures, released (sorta; we’ll discuss that later) in late 2006. We shall now take a look at that second wave, or rather, 75% of it – your reviewer didn’t pick up the Hellboy from this wave, as he has enough goddamned Hellboys. First up: Johann Kraus, a German medium turned mass-of-ectoplasm-in contaiment-suit.

Awesome faceless pseudo-undead Hellboy German FACEOFF!

Articulation: Typical of the Hellboy line, the articulation is really very good, though not at all up to Marvel Legends standards. Particularly impressive here is the ball-joint upon which the head is mounted. Your reviewer always sorta figured that Johann couldn’t turn his head, due to the construction of his suit, but he’ll gladly put that aside in service of the holy articulation.

Sculpt: This is where this line really stands out: The sculptor really made these things look like the art of Hellboy’s creator, Mike Mignola. Every proportion is right, every angular and rough-hewn surface; it’s a wonder to behold.

I’m not touching you! Does this bother you? I’m not touching you!

Paint: Well, most of it is pretty good; no bleed, and excellent shading in the clothing. But the ectoplasm, including his head, is a kind of dull yellow color, which is not comic-accurate – he’s more of a blue – and, well, there’s no way to put this pleasantly: He looks like he’s a bag full of urine.

Durability: Well, it seems pretty good. Your reviewer did have a Hellboy from this line break on him once, though. Plus Johann has that soft-plastic smell – although this could be due to his belt-pouches, which hang on flexible plastic straps (a nice touch, by the way). So it’s hard to say. Sometimes, all an action-figure-collector can do is worry, and hope. Unless that collector is into NECA figures, in which case he’s clearly just given up. (Oooooh!)

It would be the BPRD’s strangest case yet!

Whether It Stands Up Well Or Not: Very impressive, actually; Johann stands right the hell up, in a variety of leg-positions. You can even have his very large ectoplasm-projections reach well out in front of him, with no appreciable compromise of stability. Bravissimo!

Accessories: Johann comes with two left hands and two right hands. One of each is just a plain ol’ hand; the other is in the midst of projecting a mass of ectoplasm. The right hand’s has a sort of hand on the end; the left’s is just a random mass. This, o children, is awesome, and never let anyone tell you different. Plus the hands all fit snugly on the arms, and yet are easily removed. Your reviewer’s hat is off. Also, one could very nearly consider the Mignola-drawn picture of Johann on the packaging to be an accessory. The man is one of the very best artists in the business, but – like many who may be described thus – he publishes maybe three comics’ worth of drawings per year. There are perfectly reasonable people, people of good character, who will buy this figure just for the new Mignola art, and more power to ‘em.

Overall:

At the risk of sounding old and curmudgeonly, I posit that fanboys have it pretty easy these days. The DVD revolution ushered in the brilliant idea of making the viewer pay for television reruns, thereby ensuring that anyone who spent their days and nights pining for The A-Team or the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon never had to go without. In addition, the Internet has proven a valuable resource for fans of every genre, sub-genre, and individual program to complain endlessly about every possible shortcoming of the things they ostensibly love.

Seriously — you kids get off my fucking lawn. Try being a fan of the War of the Worlds television series in 1988, when not only did no one watch it, but there was almost no way to connect with the other people who weren’t watching it. I was a member of the fledgling, snail-mail War of the Worlds Fan Club, run by a woman named Cynthia Schiffhauer, who lived somewhere in California and dispersed photocopied newsletters about the show. We shared letters talking about how crazy Colonel Ironhorse was, and what wacky shenanigans Dr. Clayton Forrester’s son would get up to next. When Frank Mancuso Jr. came in and gutted the show for the second season, there was no hue and cry, no Internet-wide uproar. The show simply went away, and stayed gone until the marketing onslaught of the Tom Cruise movie heralded the release of the show on DVD — which I purchased, watched, and sat in bewilderment of my own stunning lack of taste. But, I digress, a lot.

My point being, a movie like Serenity is not something that would normally come to pass — probably not before the incredible word-of-mouth made possible by the Internet, and certainly not before the somewhat awe-inspiring power of the DVD market. As the Firefly fan base knows all too painfully well, Fox did its level best to murder the show before it had a chance to build any kind of audience, airing some episodes out of order and simply failing to air other episodes altogether. Only the incredible, unprecedented success of the series on DVD saved Firefly from near-complete obscurity, and, in an unheard-of series of events, led to the financing and release of a major motion picture.

Regardless of what you think of Firefly, this is pretty amazing stuff, considering how long it took an infinitely more popular franchise like Superman to get off the ground. For a few glorious moments, it seemed like Serenity might catapult the Firefly universe back into the popular consciousness, maybe even bringing the series back. We fans, unfortunately didn’t get that, and almost certainly never will, but what we did get is pretty much just as good: a spectacular, satisfying ending to a great series that was cut down before its prime.

What Came Before: In 2002, the life of the sci-fi fan was filled with questionable riches. There was plenty of sci-fi out there, but very little that was all that good. Enterprise was still lumbering to its lonely conclusion, and the new Battlestar Galactica was still a year away. Stargate, the lovable, dorky workhorse of the Sci-Fi Channel, was still churning out the same recycled plots, the science-fiction equivalent of a fistful of Chicken McNuggets. Things were slightly better in the theater, with Attack of the Clones pleasing about as many people as it disappointed, and Shyamalan’s Signs doing much the same, only on a smaller scale. Minority Report pretended to give us a proper Philip K. Dick adaptation (it was better than Paycheck, at least — or so I hear), and Hollywood remade Solaris, to no real purpose, unless we were all crying out for more George Clooney, which I don’t recall doing. 2002 was also the year we got Men in Black II and the remake of the Time Machine, and the less said about either of those films, the better.

Into this fray came Firefly, a show that took the well-worn chestnut of the “space Western” and gleefully stripped away all pretense, churning out stories that were more Western than space. Equal parts comedy and action, Firefly has Joss Whedon’s signature over it, which means, if endless exaggerations on the Internet are any indication, that it’s either love it, or hate it — mere indifference rarely seems to enter the equation. The characters speak in rapid-fire, colorful language, with profane Mandarin and hybrid neologisms sprinkled generously throughout. Firefly‘s characters are at once timeworn (the country doctor, the hooker with a heart of gold, the priest with a dark secret) and fresh (they’re all in space!). There’s even the requisite Joss Whedon Crazy Brunette: River, played by Summer Glau, is the heir to all of Whedon’s previous Crazy Brunettes: Drusilla from Buffy, Fred from Angel, etc. The plots themselves are as simple as any classic Western, up to and including a train robbery (in space!), a daring heist (in space!) and I’m pretty sure at least one episode features a hoedown (not technically in space, but on another planet — which probably makes it a space hoedown, which, in my book, is infinitely preferable to the regular kind).

Firefly‘s TV run was brutally short, measuring a mere 21 episodes, the last episode being a picaresque installment that couldn’t even pretend to be a satisfying end to the series –even if it is perversely fitting, as it features a lone man floating off into the blackness of space to his almost certain doom. The universe of Firefly had tremendous potential, and seemed like it was just getting started when Fox cut its life short. Some fans, lashing out in their pain, have even gone so far as to say the show had already “started to suck,” the final episode’s relative mediocrity somehow being a herald of future quality. In any other day and age, the question of whether or not Firefly may have sucked would have gone forever unanswered — but, thanks to the Diverse Video Disc, fans of the show got a glorious, definitive answer.

Why Nothing in the Verse Can Stop It: The fact that Serenity got made at all is nothing short of miraculous, and Joss Whedon knew it. He came right out and said so in the introduction to the DVD, stammering through his heartfelt monologue like a man who’s honestly baffled by what’s just occurred. Seeing this singular opportunity, Whedon didn’t squander it. Serenity isn’t coy about being a continuation of the series. It doesn’t make many attempts to be accessible to a wider audience, save perhaps for a very brief exposition and a light ramping-down of the Western feel. Most of all, Serenity pretty much assumes you’ve seen the series. While it’s certainly possible to walk into Serenity not having seen the television show that preceded it, I’d hate to be the guy who did. Serenity is a movie for Firefly fans, and doesn’t skirt around the fact.

As such, Serenity has everything that made Firefly appealing: a unique and quirky universe, vivid characters, rapid-fire dialog, and a brief (but glorious) space battle. The hints and foreshadowing set up by the series isn’t merely dealt with, but comes out swinging with both fists, taking hold of the story and hanging on, pit-bull style, until the final moment. Whedon, as usual, isn’t afraid to terminate other storytelling possibilities — by which I mean, of course, his remorseless bumping-off of beloved characters. While the deaths of these characters are profoundly irritating to me on a personal level, I have to respect the pure storytelling chop Whedon sported by doing so. So many movies falsely raise the stakes by ostensibly endangering a character you know, in your heart, they wouldn’t dare kill. Whedon, indulging his usual penchant for defying narrative cliche, kills them off without a second thought — in once case, it happens so brutally and suddenly that I was literally unable to believe it just happened. From that moment on, the storytelling stakes are as high as they can possibly get: no one is safe. And that’s what makes Serenity such a marvelous, white-knuckle ride of a movie the first time around.

Finally, I have to chalk Serenity‘s place of honor in Twelve Days of Dimfuture, in some part, to my theater experience, which was one of the best I’ve ever had. Most theater audiences I encounter these days are either stone-silent or yapping like imbeciles through the entire movie. Eight times out of ten, there’s either a baby or a hyperactive five-year-old who’s running up and down the aisles and apparently assuming everyone’s there to see him perform. For my viewing of Serenity, I was in a theater full of fans, who (including myself) laughed, cheered, and got on their feet and outright applauded during the end credits. Not because they were congratulating anyone — but because they were just so damn happy. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me very often, and I won’t lie — it felt great.

Despite the ultimate failure of the movie to make its rightful fuckton of the money at the box office, I’ll always have a fondness for Serenity, the Little Franchise That Could.

Twelve Days of Dimfuture Trivia Track: On a personal level, Firefly has two things in common with Buffy the Vampire Slayer: both were created by Joss Whedon, and I fought tooth and nail to avoid being exposed to either. It seems almost impossible to me now, as a big fan of both the Buffy and Firefly franchises, that I, at one point, did everything in my power to keep from watching either show. I was so utterly convinced that nothing called Buffy the Vampire Slayer could possibly be the least bit good (I’d also seen the deeply regrettable motion picture) that I deliberately missed all seven years of its run on television — and even after watching (and loving) Buffy on DVD, I found myself deeply unsure about Firefly. Fortunately for me, my girlfriend pushed me to watch both, and here I am, gleefully admitting how wrong I was. So here’s to being wrong!

It’s officially 2007, and that means everything we’ve come to associate with the first heady days of a new year — fresh starts, false promises, and killer hangovers. Although real-life circumstances prevented me from completing Twelve Days of Dimfuture in a timely holiday fashion, first on my list of resolutions is to finish it up in January. The good Reverend will no doubt be continuing to bring you his particular brand of awesome entertainment, and we look forward to dimming your future even more in 2007 than we did in 2006! I hope everyone had a happy holiday, and may this year make last year look like a total piece of crap.