My lovely wife and I went to see Star Trek Into Darkness today. I would like to talk about it if I may. Also, beware. There be spoilers here.

Seriously, SPOILERS.

Okay, now I will proceed with no guilt. I found out a while ago that Benedict Cumberbatch’s “John Harrison” is actually Star Trek’s most notorious villain, Khan Noonien Singh. I was a little perturbed that they were remaking The Wrath of Khan, especially given the fact that the very notion made no sense. But this wasn’t a remake of The Wrath of Khan. It was the Abrams-Verse’s version of “Space Seed,” the episode of TOS wherein Khan is first introduced.

First of all, there were some really good things in this movie, things that give me more hope for the next installment. There were repeated references to the Five Year Mission, which as of this film has not yet begun. Kirk is hopeful that the Enterprise will be chosen as the first vessel to undertake a five-year mission of exploration, even as he opens the film by shrugging off the Prime Directive. I thought that all of that was cool, and that right there helped to mitigate my feeling in the last film that Kirk had been given a captaincy far too easily. I got even more satisfied when Kirk was demoted to first officer of the Enterprise for this violations of the Prime Directive. (If this were a television series, there would be some better and more substantial repercussions, but I’ll take what I can get.)

I enjoyed the performances in the film a lot. Chris Pine was good, as were Zoe Saldana and John Cho. I love Karl Urban. Cumberbatch, Zachary Quinto, and Simon Pegg were GREAT. Seriously, Benedict Cumberbatch now has what I consider to be the best “villain’s voice” in film. (It’s a shame that we can so casually cast him as someone who’s supposed to be a subcontinental Indian. As much as I liked him, there wasn’t even the barest effort to have a brown person in this role; at least Ricardo Montalban had both ethnicity [if the wrong one] and bronzer in his first appearance as Khan.) If there was a performance that I didn’t enjoy, it was that of Peter Weller, who underwhelmed me as the villainous head of Starfleet seeking war with the Klingons on his terms. He never filled me with dread the way Cumberbatch did, and he seemed pathetic, where Khan’s madness, and his threat, seemed much more dangerous.

Lastly, this film makes a token effort at fulfilling some of the thematic elements that were always present in Gene Roddenberry and Rick Berman’s versions of Star Trek. Much is made in this film about Kirk’s lack of fitness to command, and he has to better himself in order to deserve it. Becoming good enough to be worthy of the gifts of society is a strong theme in Star Trek, especially in The Next Generation. Also, the allusions to the Five Year Mission, both at the film’s beginning and at the end, make a strong reference to what Star Trek is really about.

The mistakes this film makes are really basic mistakes, the kinds that are very difficult to overcome. Only the charismatic crew, and the unbridled fun of the filmmaking save it.

First off, what was at stake? War with the Klingons was the big threat for the first half of the film, and WAR IS BAD, we all know. But we’re never given much reason to fear the Klingons. By the time they make an appearance onscreen, it’s just in time for three squads to get beaten down singlehandedly by Khan. It’s hard to take a war with them as much of a threat, because it’s clear that Abrams is expecting their reputation to do his dirty work. Trekkies see the Klingons as allies and noobs don’t see them as anything, so I think that was a real error.

In the film’s second half, the threat is, I guess, “What happens if Khan gets loose?” We are given a cursory snippet of exposition about the Eugenics Wars and how Khan was once a despotic ruler who wanted to kill everyone who was inferior. He describes himself as “savage,” a superhuman soldier who was tagged by the shadowy elements of Starfleet to optimize the fleet for war with the Klingons. But he never does anything REALLY evil. Even his acts of terrorism are explained away as an effort on his part to get out from under the yoke of Admiral Marcus, who holds him in sway by threatening the lives of his cryogenically frozen comrades.

Heck, once they get away from Klingon space, the only thing at stake is the crew of the Enterprise itself. That doesn’t quite work in a film like this. In the first film, the Earth was at stake, and we knew it was so because the Romulans had already taken out Vulcan. At that point, I believed that anything was possible for these filmmakers who seemed to respect the sanctity of nothing. In …Into Darkness, the stakes are highest when Captain Kirk loses the Enterprise…but then he gets it back ten minutes later. Crisis averted.

But the thing that bothered me most, the thing that was the most poorly handled, was the obvious homage to The Wrath of Khan. In this film, it is Kirk was saves the day in the engine room, and Kirk who pays with his life. However, we’d already seen, in a pair of very heavy-handed foreshadowing scenes, that Kirk was to be revived by the blood of Khan. Khan’s healing blood is used in the film’s opening, and then again on a dead Tribble. (Why Khan’s blood was so vital when there were 72 sleeping genetically superior beings, like Khan himself, aboard the ship, is beyond me. Once they put Kirk into cryogen to preserve his brain function, they had the time to figure it out.) I fear that Spock is going to have an emotional meltdown in all of these films. Sigh.

Basically, this was a movie where a ton of cool stuff happens for no good reason. (Why was the Enterprise underwater in the opening scene? Because having it come out of the water looked cool. They could have done what they did from orbit.) Sometimes, the cool stuff managed to outweigh the lack of reason. Sometimes it didn’t.

Hunter Black is not the first project that Will and I have ever undertaken together; it’s just the first that we’ve seen all the way through.

Before this there was Dash Steel, which we entered into one of the monthly competitions that ran on Zuda Comics back in the day. We came in second and thus didn’t get to continue the comic. Honestly, that was Will’s baby. It was something that he’d come up with before we’d ever met. At that point, trying to get him to do comics was exceedingly difficult, so we went with something that I knew he was invested in.

Even before that, there was Cassie Cometstail. I’m not going to say much, other than we came up with a dizzying array of insanity intended for an all-ages comic. I wrote a first issue and Will put together a few sample pages. We got a few nibbles from publishers, but no bites. This was before we realized that getting anything done in comics is much easier if you just DO IT YOURSELF. Frankly, this was also hundreds and hundreds of pages ago. We’re better now than we were then.

We never quite left Cassie Cometstail behind in our minds. It was something at which we’d failed, and a part of that was Will’s enthusiasm for the story…but lack of enthusiasm for drawing it. We eventually decided that it was something we’d do, just with another artist.

Yesterday, we found our artist. I won’t say who yet, because there are contracts to be signed. I WILL say that this is someone with whom I am very excited to work. He’s right around where we are in the business; he’s done enough work that there is a group of people out there who know who he is…but he’s not a NAME yet. I have to say, he should be because he’s AWESOME, and with any luck, Cassie is the gal to make it happen.

So I have a lot of writing and rewriting to do in the next few months, as we prep Cassie for what we hope will be a big debut on Comixology. (They haven’t accepted the book yet, but I feel confident that’s only a formality.) Watch this space, and we’ll post a few teasers here and there.

Huzzah!

Hey gang!

I’m not sure if you Hunter Black readers are familiar with Project Rooftop but, the website posts character redesigns. Its a rather cool little site and it is currently running a contest involving Green Lantern. Justin has been pushing me to do one of these contest to help promote Hunter Black and his icy black man gaze has finally convinced me to do one (in my defense the last one was the Fantastic Four, and they suck).

Anyway, here is the design I came up with.

When I create characters I do my best to build the design with some sort of logic. Why would a fighter pilot fly around in spandex? Why would someone who gets his jollies by flying around in planes not use the ring to create planes? So my version of Hal Jordan uses his ring to fly around the cosmos in any type of fighter jet he wants. His uniform is a modified pilots jumpsuit. I’ve kept the domino mask in the design because he would still need to conceal his identity in cases where he is not wearing his pilots helmet.

I’ve submitted the design in the contest and hopefully I can get it on the site. Any publicity for Hunter Black is a good thing.

-Will

So my wife and I saw Iron Man 3 last night. It was pretty good. I mean, we genuinely liked it, we’re glad we went to see it, but I sincerely doubt that it’s a movie I’ll bother to see again. (Unless it’s on cable when I’m in a channel-changing-coma.) I’m certainly not going to buy it on video. The only Marvel Studios films I’ve purchased are Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, and The Avengers.  I’d say that I enjoyed this film as much as The Incredible Hulk, and more than Thor or Iron Man 2.

That said, the twist involving the Mandarin is BRILLIANT. I almost hipped to it, kind of, early in the movie…but I didn’t. The reveal was great, with an AMAZING performance by Ben Kingsley, who all but stole the film.

The movie is weighed down by the fact that the bad guys are seemingly just being bad. There doesn’t seem to be any motivation for their evil. Mention is made of owning “both sides of the war on terror,” which sounds cool until you think about it. Certainly, the bad guys never seemed motivated by money, which is what that ultimately leads to.

The biggest problem in the film, for me, was that the film never really reestablished the Tony Stark/Pepper Potts relationship in a way that made me think that Tony would get all angsty over a threat to her life…or worse yet, to losing her entirely. Frankly, Tony’s relationship with Happy Hogan is better established in this film, and that doesn’t really pay off. If Happy had been taken out of the film entirely, and Pepper’s story had combined her own with Happy’s, I think the film would have resonated with me a bit better. Their love story played better in Avengers, and Gwyneth Paltrow is in Avengers for less than five minutes. (The Dark Knight admittedly had a similar problem, more to do with recasting the Rachel Dawes character than anything else, but that was somewhat less relevant to the film.)

Still, hard to argue with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. That was fun to watch, even in Iron Man 2, and his scenes with the kid, as Disneyfied as they might have been, were extremely engaging and satisfying.

I’ve also become a big fan of the character Hannibal Lecter and of the new TV show Hannibal. I’ve read all three Thomas Harris novels and seen all of the films…well no, I haven’t, as it turns out. I’ve seen all of the film adaptations of the first three novels, Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. I’ve never seen Manhunter, and I’ve neither seen nor read Hannibal Rising. Red Dragon was by far the best book of the series (I’ve heard that Hannibal Rising is pretty bad) and Silence of the Lambs was by far the best film. NBC’s Hannibal has the potential to be the best version of the character yet.

This show is so good, it seems out of place on NBC; you’d expect to find it on AMC or HBO. The writing is impeccable, the visuals frankly stunning. The last thing I saw that provoked this sort of reaction from me in terms of the visuals was Prometheus, which was one of the most beautiful pieces of filmmaking I’ve ever seen. (Avatar blows. Sorry.) But Prometheus was so shoddily told a story as to defy belief, while Hannibal is rapidly becoming my favorite thing on TV, right up there with Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead.

Quality isn’t the only reason this seems like something other than a network show; Hannibal is extraordinarily gruesome. The Walking Dead is gory, but Hannibal is visceral. We are treated to mutilated corpses mounted in ingenious and terrifying ways, to dream sequences of startling visual effect, and Hannibal Lecter’s particular brand of epicurean craftsmanship. I’ve seen him butcher (as in, “chop up in preparation for cooking”) more than one set of lungs so far this season…and worse, all but one member of the main cast has had Hannibal cook for them. Human flesh is consumed on both shows, but it’s much more real and much more believable on Hannibal, so it’s much more horrific. The Walking Dead is about the monsters we could become under the most insane of circumstances, while Hannibal is about the monsters we are, here and now. I love to see an old favorite franchise given new life and new relevance, so I am thrilled to be watching this.

If you like superhero movies, you should probably spend the $12.50(!) and go see Iron Man 3. If you like good television of any sort, and have a strong stomach, you should definitely be watching Hannibal.

Okay, Hunter Black fans…did John Lee Bailey call you “The Revenge Squad?”…we have a small favor to ask of you. It involves some clicking and reading, some cutting and pasting, and some other avenues of social media.

A new app for the iOS has launched called Comic Chameleon, and it’s essentially a webcomic aggregator for the iPhone. It’s intended to make webcomics easily accessible and easily readable from your iPhone. (An Android version of the the app is in the works.)

The app will generate ad revenue which is distributed among the creators (after a fee to Comic Chameleon) and will feature an ad-free premium (by which I mean PAID) membership.

The criteria for getting on, and the order in which we get chosen, is determined by when we apply (already done), a groundswell of fan support (which we are asking for now), and not sucking (ummm….).

So do us a favor and go to:http://www.comicchameleon.com/request

Copy the relevant text (and change “Comic X” to “Hunter Black”) and post it either on Google+ or on Twitter. Easy-peasy. Our Twitter account is @HunterBlackComx if you need it.

Do this for us, please, because it could help us earn some cash which will help us get to our desired goal of posting THREE times a week instead of TWO. It’ll also expose us to a lot of potential new readers, which’ll raise ad revenue…which will help us get to our desired goal of posting THREE times a week instead of…well, you get the picture.

THANK YOU in advance. We are learning that we have one of the best fan bases in geekdom. We appreciate your readership, your excitement, and any efforts you make on our behalf.

…have any of you people read The Private Eye yet? No?

Well, let me hip you to something worth your time, something that is the next step toward putting the business of comics into the hands of the creators of comics.

The Private Eye is a comic written by Brian K. Vaughn and drawn by Marcos Martin. I’m a big fan of both these guys and if you aren’t, you should be. It’s a digital-only comic, but it isn’t available on ComiXology or iTunes. It’s only available through their site and their company: Panel Syndicate. (As an aside, I love the word, “syndicate.”) Best of all, they have not set a price. You can download the comic for free if you like, or you can pay whatever you think it’s worth to you.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I’ve downloaded both issues that have thus far come out, paying two bucks for each. My reasoning for the price? We’re about to release our own digital-only comics, and we’re charging $.99 per issue. I’d like to think that my work is just about half as good as Brian K. Vaughn’s…)

The Private Eye is good. It’s very original and very much a product of (and a reaction to) the world we’re living in right now. It’s got a real SF-noir feel to it, and you know I love THAT. But the quality of the work is not at all why I’m jealous. I’ve long ago accepted that there are writers out there better than me, and I fight this by trying to get better. Working my way up to BKV’s weight class is a worthy goal, and I’m glad people like him are out there to inspire people like me.

What I AM jealous of is the fact that he can decide to publish his own comics (and I say “his own” not to minimize the role or the ownership of Mr. Martin…I’m a writer, so that’s who I compare myself to) and make them available for free and capitalize on the strength of his name and his reputation to generate enough volunteered sales to keep the thing alive, and  maybe to make a living for himself and his collaborators. (I’m ignoring the fact that he’s the showrunner of a major upcoming TV series, that he’s getting royalties from Y: The Last Man and Lost, and that he writes the hottest comic published by Image.)

Like Mark Waid with Thrillbent, he’s banking on a name built by his immense talent, and trusting readers to help him make another stream of income out of it. Waid and Vaughn have built these names and talents by writing a whole bunch of great comics.

That’s what we’re trying to do. Hunter Black‘s audience keeps getting bigger and bigger, and that is extremely gratifying. We’re just now starting to get enough readers that it justifies having a store page. (And shame on you if you haven’t gone and bought a poster…)

But I want to be able to do what Panel Syndicate is doing. I want to connect directly to my audience with no middle-man of publisher or distributor. I guess I need to keep working at getting better.