Off the Cuff – Edition 13
By Eric Barrett
Comics, Cartoons, and all things related

*Dynamite Entertainment is launching a Red Sonja book. It’s described thusly:

“This Sonja won’t be Wonder Woman with red hair,” promised series writer Michael Avon Oeming. “She won’t be perfect, she won’t always be nice and she won’t always do the right thing, especially in our modern terms of what is right or wrong.”

Now I’m not thrilled with the whole, ‘won’t always do the right thing’. I like my good guys to be good and bad guys to be bad. But it does bring up an interesting philosophical question: does morality change over time? I’d say the answer is both yes and no. Some morality is eternal. Murder, rape, and other despicable acts will always be immoral. But some things do, in fact, change over time. Society clearly changes what it considers ‘moral’ behavior. This has been for both good and bad. For instance modern society is much more tolerant than previous societies. But this ‘tolerance’ can lead to truly unacceptable and deviant behaviors.

So all that said, I am curious to see how Oeming is going to handle the character of Red Sonja. I think we have to assume that he is referring to her killing a bunch of people. But I don’t know if we can tell that for sure. I think there is a lot of potential here to explore some deeply philosophical issues, which I hope is the direction this book takes. Or he could just lop a lot of people’s heads off and call it a day.

*On a good note, the first issue (#0) will be on sale for $0.25.

*I want a pair of cloning eyeglasses, just like they have in Birdman and the Galaxy Trio.

*A couple of notes about The Batman cartoon.

1. This has to be one of the funniest versions of Batman ever created. By funny, I mean humorous, not campy like the 60’s TV show.

Before you blow me off as someone who needs to be locked up in Arkham, hear me out. Now, there’s nothing that can truly be called a ‘joke’, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of humor. It’s packed with tons of great one-liners and sarcastic comments. And you have to be paying attention to catch them. But that’s part of the charm. Ultimately it’s one of those shows that you’ll find yourself chuckling, but wondering why. And to me that’s worth the price of admission – which incidentally is free.

2. I think this show has my favorite characterization of Alfred. In most versions of the Batman story, Alfred is at best just a subservient Butler. At worst he is non-existent. (Or should that be the other way around?) But in The Batman, Alfred is both a fundamental character to the show and a fundamental character to Batman.

You can see Alfred’s influence on Batman, and it’s profound. I’ll give you a hint; he’s the one that keeps Batman sane. Alfred makes sure Batman’s obsession doesn’t ruin him. You definitely get the sense, in this show, that without Alfred, Batman never would have made it.

But it doesn’t just stop at Alfred’s usefulness in relation to both Batman and Bruce Wayne. In this version, he is a legitimate character in his own right. He has a personality, fears, hopes, goals. It’s nice to see Alfred as a “real” person. It would be nice if more writers picked up on this.

3. Isn’t Mark Hamill the perfect voice for the Joker? He’s so perfect that when he’s in character, I can’t even envision him as Luke Skywalker.

*Has any cartoon character, which tries to be ‘realistic’, fought more monsters and space aliens than Jonny Quest?

He always seems to be fighting some kind of mutated lobster, alligator, or plain old alien.

*The Shadow was on SciFi the other night. I really want to like this movie, but it’s just so bad that I can’t. It’s one of those frustrating movies. You know, the one’s that have a few good scenes, which are immediately followed by a bad scene.

And if that’s not bad enough, they just do some really cheesy things with the special effects. When the Shadow uses his ‘mental powers’ they zoom in and put a bar of light across his eyes. I guess this is supposed to make him look ‘controlling’ or possibly ‘intimidating’. Personally I think it just makes him look ‘constipated’.

But the ultimate downfall of this movie was the fact that they couldn’t decide if they wanted to go campy or serious. All they needed to do was pick a direction and I think the movie would have been a success. Instead they fell somewhere in between and the movie just doesn’t work.

On a side note, it’s the only movie in which I actually like Alec Baldwin.

*Now on the other hand, The Phantom was a good movie. I’ve always been a fan of the daily comic strip. It has a nice balance of action, dialogue, and adventure. And the movie reflects this. I do have one question though: whatever happened to Billy Zane?

*I recently read that Orson Scott Card will be writing the upcoming Ultimate Iron Man. I have become a big fan of Card’s since reading Ender’s Game over the summer. This should be an ideal situation for me, a favorite author with a favorite character.

*Okay, this isn’t really comic book related, but I saw the ad in a comic book and I guess that’s close enough! Crusade, the Babylon 5 spin-off, is going to be in stores (on DVD) by the time you read this. I’m a huge Babylon 5 fan, and while Crusade wasn’t as good as the original it had a lot of potential. So I was disappointed that it got cancelled. I’m still haunted by the fact that the story line was left open.

*Well I hope you enjoyed the non-anime version of Off the Cuff. Just don’t get your hopes up too much. I suspect we’ll have some more anime next time…

The opinions stated in here solely reflect the opinions of the author. If you would like to comment on some of the items in this article, please feel free to post in the forum or send an e-mail. All characters, titles, and etc. are owned and ©; their respective publishers and creators- the author and StillontheShelf.com makes no claim towards them. This column is intended as an opinion piece only. Off the Cuff is ©; Eric Barrett. Please report any broken links!

Post your comments in the Forum!