Off the Cuff – Edition 10
By Eric Barrett

Comics, Cartoons, and all things related

*Have you ever wondered where the Justice League headquarters is located? Its location seems to move about every three minutes or so. Sometimes it’s on Earth. Sometimes it’s in orbit. And sometimes it’s on the moon. But if I were a betting man, I’d say that right now it’s probably at some Starbucks along with everything and everyone else.

*This March Image is launching a title called The Pact. The book is a four-part mini that features several of Images heroes, essentially it’s a team-up book. Phil Hester (Firebreather) says about the team-up:

Well isn’t the whole reason these match-ups are exciting is because of their continuity and history. It’s the history of the characters that makes them exciting. I don’t want to see two fast people race; I want to see Superman take on the Flash to see which titan has bragging rights. *A little Batman story? A few episodes ago in The Batman, Bats tried to prevent an abduction of a chess player by a bishop piece (don’t ask). Batman swoops in and says, “Knight takes Bishop” while kicking over the bad guy. What a great line.*I mentioned this in a previous column, but let me say it again; I am now a fan of Justice League Unlimited. This week’s episode was fantastic. And it totally rocked my world. They had everything, action, humor, suspense, mystery, evil villains, noble acts, and conspiracy. It’s episodes like that one that make writing this column so much fun.

*Yuyu Hakusho is really coming into its own. I seem to say this every few weeks, but it’s true each time. There are several major problems with the general anime formula. One is exponential growth. I’ve covered that fairly extensively in OTC. Another problem is the style of the stories. Most American shows are one 30-minute episode. Occasionally they will have a 3 to 4-episode arc. But anime almost universally involves complicated and drawn-out stories, which naturally take place over many episodes.

This is both a blessing and a burden. It’s great because complicated stores are usually more interesting. The longer you have to tell a story the more depth and breadth you can create. But it is often harder to keep consistency across these stories. All writing has its ups and downs. And the more you focus on only one story, the more likely you are to have obvious ups and downs.

So the reason Yuyu Hakusho is so brilliant is that it excels at answering both of these dilemmas. By changing the problems Yusuke Urameshi must overcome, the story stays fresh and interesting.

*If you don’t mind, allow me to brag a bit. I wrote a column about whether or not society could allow the existence of superheroes. In this column I suggested that society, in its present form, could not tolerate superheroes. I went on to suggest that the government would need to completely control any heroes if they were to exist. Well, the above episode of Justice League Unlimited dealt a lot with this idea. The government created a set of cloned superheroes that only listened to them. Not only that, but they are highly suspicious of superheroes not in their control, including Superman.

I also wrote a column about superheroes getting into advertising. It was suggested that Superman start selling some “Superman Underoos”. Well turns out this was a pretty good idea. If you pick up a copy of Fantastic Four #520, you’ll see an ad for Superman Underoos.

It’s nice to be on the cutting edge.

*It’s been settled. Nick Cassavetes will direct the upcoming Iron Man movie. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. On the one hand Iron Man is one of my favorite characters. On the other, I don’t know how well he translates to the Big Screen.

Almost all of the cool stuff Iron Man does would require extensive computer graphics. And as advanced as CG has become, I’m not sure how well it would translate all of this stuff. Iron Man flies around and shoots lasers a lot. But there are also a lot of close-up shots of Iron Man. So you couldn’t rely solely on CG or costumes in this movie. You’d need a combination of the two. It’s better to not even attempt this movie if you can’t do the special effects right.
*The good news is the script is based on a previous script written by Alfred Gough, Miles Millar, and David Hoyter, of Smallville fame. We should be in for a good story. But I hope that this doesn’t mean Iron Man will be a teen drama.
*That’s it for this week. I’m behind in my comic book reading, so if I get caught up by next week we should have some more interesting things to talk about. Have a good one.

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