Off the Cuff – Edition 21
By Eric Barrett
Comics, Cartoons, and all things related

*Joss Whedon – who some of you might know as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer – has been tapped to write and direct the upcoming Wonder Woman movie. Now I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure this was the best choice for a Wonder Woman movie. At the heart of Buffy is a campy, somewhat non-serious, goofy set of characters. It’s not a show I consider to focus a lot on “realism.” On the other hand, Wonder Woman IS a serious character. She’s noble, tough, determined, and honor-driven. To me it doesn’t seem like a good match between director and content.

Now I wrote all of that before I read this, “…but unlike her counterparts Batman and Superman, this ground breaking heroine has yet to be reinvented for the feature file arena.” I don’t know about you, but the word “reinvent” always scares me. It usually means they are planning on changing the fundamental nature of the character.

This quote might also reveal why they chose Whedon – if they are planning on “reinventing” Wonder Woman for the big screen, they might want to take a slightly less serious look at the character. After all, the Wonder Woman character in Justice League Unlimited is pretty angry, and they might want more of a Linda Carter Wonder Woman instead. Just something to think about.

I guess the bottom line is that I think Whedon is a talented writer, I’m just not sure his “style” fits with the Wonder Woman character.

*Oh the irony. The Flash is one of my least favorite characters and yet his movie is probably the one I’m most looking forward to (right after the new Batman movie). If you’ve been reading this column for any length of time you’ve probably noticed that I talk a lot about comic book movies. Well that’s simply because there are so many movies being released right now that are based on comic books. For a while it was exciting. I was looking forward to Spider-Man, I thought Hellboy was a fun movie, I thought Constantine was pretty good. But I avoided Catwoman like the plague. And apparently only one guy, named Earl, saw Elektra. And I live in a constant state of dread regarding the upcoming Fantastic Four movie. (See here and here).

So when I initially heard about the Flash movie I was not enthused. In fact, it was a movie I had every intention of avoiding. However, as I’ve read more about it, I think I’m actually looking forward to this movie. Recent comic book based movies have done either a horrible job with casting, a horrible job with the character, or a horrible job with the story (or in some cases,**cough**Catwoman**cough** all three). My hope is that The Flash will avoid this. In terms of casting, they are talking with Ryan Reynolds, who I can just see as a wise-talking Flash. They’ve also chosen David Goyer to direct the movie (he previously wrote and directed Blade II and Blade: Trinity), which I think has potential to be a good pick. Now we’ll just have to wait and see about the story itself.

So going from no interest, to mild enthusiasm isn’t too bad of a deal.

*Okay, one last comic book movie thought before I move on. Have you also thought that they’ve really been pushing Sin City? It seems everywhere I go there’s a Sin City poster, Sin City ad, Sin City toy, Sin City whatever. That makes me fear for this movie. How many movies have truly survived an over abundance of advertising? The other thing that makes me fear for this movie is the fact that it’s black and white. Hasn’t evolution proven that we have color vision for a reason?

*A few things about anime? If not, maybe you should skip the next few bullet points!

One of the most common themes in anime is the student-teacher conflict. But anime seems to take this to an extreme. They often show a conflict that’s not only combative in nature, but almost hate-filled. In these cartoons, at least some of the teachers are portrayed as consciously working to fail students – and thus get them expelled. It makes me wonder if this is just pandering to the feelings of children who watch the cartoons or if the adversarial relationship is really this bad. After all, who didn’t feel that teachers were “out to get you” when you were in school – even up through college?

We don’t see that type of relationship in American shows. Why is that? Can it really be that much worse in Japan? I sort of think it has to do with the amount of pressure Japanese society places on children in school. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I’d like to find out more.

It is also interesting to note that almost all of these cartoons have at least one teacher/administrator who is firmly on the side of the children.

*I’m saddened that Cartoon Network took both YuYu Hakusho and Ruroni Kenshin off the air. They’ve replaced them with Zatch Bell (jury’s still out) and a second episode of Dragon Ball GT (disappointing). So much for my Saturday Night cartoon lineup…

*Only one more issue for Space Ghost. I love minis because, well, they are short stories. Essentially guaranteeing that I don’t get stuck buying 100 books a month. But at the same time, it’s always sad to see a good title end. And in this case, Space Ghost has been fantastic. It’s been both revolutionary in the way it depicts the character, but also traditional in it’s representation. This mini really reminds me of the cartoon character I grew up watching. That’s why I really hope we get to see an ongoing book featuring Space Ghost’s early career. I haven’t heard anything about this, but there’s always hope I suppose.

*Between Majestic and Space Ghost I feel like I’m reading a lot about big guys in white spandex and capes who fly.

*Top 3 books for March
1. Majestic
2. Space Ghost
3. Green Lantern Rebirth

Again no Marvel titles. Although I’ll have to say, I did enjoy the conclusion to She-Hulk as well as Strange. But not as much as the other three books.

*Well thanks for stopping in here once more. Next week we should have the new Game Column up with it’s official name. So get cracking if you have a submission to make.

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!