Heavy Metal Summer 2011 War of the Worlds Special

If you have read my review of the July 2011 issue of Heavy Metal magazine, you’ll know that based on that particular comic book strip, I was developing some pretty serious misgivings about the likely direction of the forthcoming movie it promoted. War of the Worlds Goliath is an ambitious attempt to continue the story begun by H G Wells in a post invasion world awash with reverse engineered Martian technology, and as a major backer of the project Heavy Metal are using their flagship magazine to promote the film. Fair enough, but the previous story seemed heavily burdened with a need to pander to what I surmise are two of the magazine’s core principles: violence and profanity, and at first glance, the cover of the Summer Special looks to have the third covered pretty well; plenty of improbable cleavage. But, get past the pneumatic cover and you find it’s actually completely unrepresentative of the contents. It’s not perfect by any means, but this is a much more sophisticated read than I expected. Shows you should never trust a book by its cover, no matter how buxom.

Things get off to a very promising start with the opening story, St Petersburg. This is a simply beautiful looking piece of work by the enigmatically named Puppeteer Lee, who has crafted a chilling (in more ways than one) vision of an icy hell. Russian forces prepare to repel Martian Tripods, but thought they are outgunned and surely doomed, they ride into battle undaunted and determined to expel the invaders from their winter shrouded motherland. Each panel of this strip is a work of art in its own right and as such it is difficult to pick out a particular favourite, however one two page spread of Russian soldiers riding toward a phalanx of Martian Tripods is particularly fine. All the artists in this issue stick to the same basic design for the Tripods, but in the hands of Lee, they seem particularly organic and demonic. I was also particularly heartened to note that St Petersburg is written by David Abramowitz, who is also writing the movie. If this issue achieves nothing else, it at least suggests that the movie is in the hands of someone with a true feel for the material.

Legacy is a completely different work, both in terms of script and especially art, which in the hands of Wankok Leong, opts for a bold cartoony approach. It’s not at all ineffective, and focusing more on the visceral Martians themselves, lends itself well to the material. The narration of the story takes an interesting approach, and can at times be read as if spoken by a human or a Martian, with an intriguing interchangeable viewpoint. It’s good, but inconsistent. As the story opens I was pretty certain I was watching preparations for the invasion by the Martians while reading the words of a British soldier, perhaps implying a kindred spirit of sorts, but that fascinating idea doesn’t seem to take root, and writer Chi-Ren Choong can’t quite hold it together strongly enough to bring the story to a fully satisfying conclusion.

Devine Wind by Leon Tab with art by a certain Kromosomlab (yes, one word) is another striking shift of style and alongside St Petersburg, boasts the strongest art in the issue. The opening page is incredibly powerful and one I have returned to again and again. This I’d like to own the original of, it’s that arresting, as a grim faced freefalling Japanese suicide pilot plummets from the sky straight toward the reader. This is where I love the whole concept of a wider War of the Worlds. The idea of Japanese suicide parachutists landing on the backs of Martian Tripods is giddily insane, and carried off here with considerable skill and pathos.

Back to a more cartoon style for the next tale, though it’s very different to Legacy, not only in terms of art, which has a smart Manga look, but story too, for The Oath is a love story first and foremost, and not a bad one. It’s the longest strip in the issue and as such has time to develop the characters very satisfactorily. Joe Pearson crafts an interesting tale of a young man orphaned in the first Martian Invasion, who grows up to join the forces readying to combat an expected 2nd attack. I liked this story a lot, and it’s certainly the one tale in the strip that has the legs to carry on, and in fact I wonder if we might see the lead character in the movie.

The penultimate strip is The Patient, a dark piece of fiction from Gavin Yap and artist Remy “Eisu” Mokhtar. The art again has a Manga sensibility which suits this unpleasant (in a good way) tale of a mental hospital patient released in the confusion of a Martian attack. Wandering the war ravaged streets, he comes to look upon the Martians as Gods, and goes out of his way to aid them in attacking the defending forces. The art for the final story in this issue by Slaium reminded me a lot of the work of Bryan Talbot, who I have always admired. It’s a nice enough little homage to The Thunder Child from Wells’ original novel, though it’s all a little obvious where it’s all going.

So not a bad issue all told, with some outstanding art and interesting writing, though I did find a certain repetitive sameness about the stories. With the exception of The Oath, none of the stories really go anywhere. It’s almost as if the writers were all given the same brief and mostly stuck to it, hence the template seems to be: Martians attack, protagonist provides gloomy introspective narration, everyone dies. The story in the July issue had the same problem. If we’re going to see more of these comic strips in Heavy Metal, we could do with some stories that have better defined characters and plots with a proper beginning, middle and end. The Oath almost does it, so come on Heavy Metal, I can only give you silver for this, let’s see you aim for gold next time.

Review of War of the Worlds Goliath: Outpost, in Heavy Metal Magazine

For those not in the know, (and it’s an easy mistake to make) Heavy Metal magazine is a monthly publication featuring comic strips for a mature audience, and not a certain brand of music. If I had said adult audience, you’d almost certainly have made another assumption, though if truth be told, there is a high proportion of female flesh on show, nothing particularly offensive it must be said, but I feel it fair to give the warning should anyone feel inspired by this review to go out and buy it. I’ve not actually bought a copy before though I am aware of the French magazine that inspired this American version and own several anthologies of material published there. I have to say, that on that admittedly incomplete comparison I was less impressed by the American publication as a whole. The French edition (based it must be said again on the anthologies I own) certainly did not shy away from “mature” content, but it seems far more sophisticated in nature. Heavy Metal USA seems to be pandering very determinably to a very specific demographic.

But presumably that’s not why you are reading this review. You want to know about the War of the Worlds comic strip contained within, called War of the Worlds Goliath: Outpost. The story is set in a post Martian invasion world, where abandoned Martian tech has been reverse engineered by the human race. You should also know (if you didn’t already) that the story is a preamble to a forthcoming animated War of the Worlds movie that Heavy Metal is helping to finance. On that basis I worry considerably for the movie, because this is a not terribly successful introduction.

Make no mistake; there are things to like here. The art by Popia is pleasing to the eye and the gory fight scenes certainly have a raw visceral power. If I were to make a comparison, if the original War of the Worlds was the film Alien, this would be its sequel Aliens.  It’s basically a massive gung ho battle, with a group of rag tag marines trapped in an Antarctic base (there’s a bit of The Thing mixed in here) going toe to toe with the Martians. Judged entirely as an “action movie” type story it ticks all the required (what few there are) boxes of the genre. There’s surely potential to be had from the idea of bigging up The War of the Worlds in this manner, but rather than bringing two different genres together in a careful melding of ideas into something new and exciting, this feels like they were raced toward each other at break neck speed and rammed together. In other words, it’s a bit of a wreck.

Now, if you’ve looked at what I write, you’ll know that I’m pretty keen on the idea of stretching the original novel in new directions. It’s a story ripe for re-imagination and collecting and cataloguing anything related to The War of the Worlds is a passion of mine. But there are certain things I would prefer were left well alone. Hence I’m really not happy for writer Chi-Ren Choong to have transformed the aloof and enigmatic Martians into wise cracking smart arses. I literally cringed to read dialogue like, “You know how it is with eating humans. Half an hour later you’re hungry again.” What! The other big problem is that nothing really significant happens in the story. For sure there’s some attempt to inject token characterisation into the marines, so all have their little back story/sob story that got them dumped in the snowy wastes, but we’ve seen this sort of thing so many times now that the novelty has worn off and little in the way of sympathy is generated.

So as the Martians penetrate the base in exoskeleton tripod devices (nice designs but haven’t we seen that in Independence Day?) we’re treated to various gory decapitations and dismemberments. As mentioned previously, Popia turns in some stylishly grisly scenes and certainly seems to know his anatomy, but it’s a by the numbers story of attrition. The problem is, as the marines are bumped off one by one, I just couldn’t bring myself to care, there’s just not enough time in the short story to develop feelings for these characters. Perhaps 16 year olds will find all the gore and profanity amusing, but nothing about this story felt compelling or deep enough to draw me in. In fact the language (and not just the incredible level of crass profanity) seemed horribly out of place. I’m sure that behind closed doors your average Victorian could and did swear like a trooper, but the dialogue here feels far too modern for the 1914 setting. There is of course a propensity at the moment for making period pieces with modern slang and cadence, but it’s getting old, and my fear is that this is the approach taken by the movie. There’s a Heavy Metal summer special due out any day now that will contain a number of other War of the Worlds strips, so I’ll reserve judgement for now, but sorry to say this is not an auspicious start.

War of the Worlds Goliath strip in latest Heavy Metal

We're still waiting for the new animated War of the Worlds movie, Goliath, but Heavy Metal Magazine is starting to push out the publicity with a new comic strip in their July 2011 issue. If the strip is anything to go by, and given that Heavy Metal is an "Adult" comic book magazine, this is going to be a radically new take on the story, with a second invasion kicking off in 1914. I'm not yet sure if the characters in the comic strip (subtitled Outpost) will feature in the movie, or indeed what narrative connection there will be, but hopefully I will be able to snag a copy soon and present a full review. In the meantime, you can see some sample pages at http://www.heavymetal.com/pdf/july_2011.pdf.

Paramount secures The Martian Chronicles

Ray Bradbury hated the American television Mini Series of The Martian Chronicles, though I have always had a soft spot for it, but there have been any number of attempts to get a big screen movie off the ground, only this particular rocket has just never wanted to fly. Now it appears that Paramount have secured the rights to what is unquestionably the finest collection of short stories every written about Mars. However, the producer is a certain John Davis, who most recently produced the awe inspiringly dire Gulliver’s Travels, a film I wish I could erase from my memory. Flicking through Mr Davis' IMDB credits, I see little else to be enthusiastic about. He did produce the rather wonderful Predator, but also Waterworld and Daddy Day Care. Is Mr Bradbury aware of this fine body of work? OK, I'm being harsh, everyone has to earn a living, and I'm sure Daddy Day Care has brightened at least as many lives as it has blighted, but this is a work that needs to be treated with upmost respect and dignity. The thought that Eddie Murphy might be in with a shot at a role (Davies and Murphy worked together on the Doctor Dolittle films as well as Daddy Day Care) is enough to make any fan of Ray Bradbury want to book a one way ticket to Mars.

Sinbad: Rogue of Mars heading for big screen

Until a few moments ago I'd not seen anything of the comic book property this proposed movie is based on, but if all goes well in 2012, we'll have 2 major movies set on Mars, the Pixar John Carter production (now well under way) and now a trip to Mars for Sinbad. The comic looks pretty cool, with the art reminding me quite a bit of the recent animated Sinbad movie. Very little information is available about the movie, and so far it looks like all we've really got to go on is a nice teaser poster, so of course this could all blow away in the wind before anything concrete happens such as casting and pre-production, but here's hoping 2012 is shaping up as the year of Mars.

We're all doomed, doomed I tell you!

We're facing an absolute glut of alien invasion movies at the moment, with the latest to arrive showing a full on assault on the world. Invasion: Los Angeles looks like good fun, but it does raise the question, what would our chances really be if aliens invaded. John Alexander, a retired Army colonel who has written a book about UFO's  thinks we've had it, though I strongly agree with his stance that man on alien hand to hand combat is pretty unlikely. We are much more likely to be wiped out by an alien manufactured virus (assuming they want to claim a pristine uninhabited world for themselves) or they'll just sit up in orbit and pound us into submission without risk to themselves. There's a right up on the likely battle plans of alien invaders on AOL News.

The Green Gables Inn goes to War

One of my very favourite War of the Worlds stories has to be that of the Green Gables Inn, and how a band of plucky regulars set out on the Halloween Eve of 1938 to battle the Martian Invaders. Henry Sears was just a youngster at the time, but listening to his radio that night, he was so worried that he took it downstairs for others to hear, rattling the drinkers so much that they took up their guns and headed off for Grover's Mill to fight the Martians. I'd made some efforts to find the Inn, and knew from one contact that it still existed but in a terrible state of repair, so I was delighted to receive a mail this week telling me that the Inn had been located and photographed. The full story can be found in the Newsletter of the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking.

Astronauts land on Mars

After 8 months in space, 2 astronauts have walked on the surface of Mars. Well, I'd like to be writing that for real, but in fact it's a simulation running in Moscow, but it is true to say that the 2 astronauts and several other colleagues really have spent 8 months cooped up in a series of cramped chambers pretending to fly to Mars. It's all part of the Mars500 project, designed to test long duration missions. Full details and some pictures of the heroic astronauts on the "surface" can be found on the BBC website. Check back here in about the year 2030 and hopefully I can write that headline for real.

Aliens will not spark panic says psychologist. Pull the other one.

Psychologist Dr Albert Harrison of the University of California has suggested that given our widespread acceptance of technology, we are now in a much better position to accept an alien visitation without succumbing to blind unreasoning panic. That's an interesting observation but surely fatally flawed. It doesn't matter how smart our phones are, we're clearly morbidly fascinated with the idea of alien invasion. The longevity of the genre is proof of that, with several big budget alien invasion movies recently released or on their way, it's clear that fear of invasion is becoming a predominant concern for many people. It doesn't have to be aliens in this age of terrorism, but put a mile wide mothership over New York for real, and I can't see the citizens below taking it in their stride.

War of the Worlds talk show this evening.

I'll be guesting on Kate Valentine's Viewpoints show this evening. The show goes out at midnight New York Time on  WYNM am 970 The Apple. Viewpoints is primarily a UFO show, but there's a clear connection with The War of the Worlds, and this will be a good opportunity to discuss how panic radio broadcasts, UFOs and the planet Mars have become interconnected.

A Concrete case of panic

The 1938 War of the Worlds radio panic, the anniversary of which we are about to celebrate, was largely focused on the East Coast of America, but the West Coast can boast at least one celebrated example, when an entire town lost its head. It was 5pm when the broadcast was heard in the little town of Concrete, Skagit County, Washington. It was all down to an unfortunate quirk of fate, when a lightening strike knocked out the power in the town just as the Martians were laying waste to New Jersey. Thinking the worst, that a Martian Tripod was attacking, the residents took fright. Feliks Banel of KUOW radio has the full story, including an amazing interview with a resident who remembers that dark and stormy night. Definitely worth a listen.

Getting beneath the skin of a Martian

The movie site Ain't it Cool News has been running a fascinating series of behind the scenes photographs in recent months, and today they've turned up an amazing image from George Pal's War of the Worlds movie. The Martians in Pal's movie something of a failure. They're seldom seen, not so much to build suspense, but because the suit was so poorly constructed that it fell apart at the drop of a hat, but how cool is it to see this image? A word of warning, the language on Ain't it Cool can get a bit close to the knuckle, so the easily offended should beware.

The Broadcast by Eric Hobbs

I always love it when people shine a new light on the story of the 1938 broadcast, but was particularly delighted to chance upon The Broadcast, a first time work from Eric Hobbs. This graphic novel looks to be a really fine debut with nuanced writing and a particularly interesting style of art, which at first glance looks unfinished and rough, but there’s a subtle sophistication here that creeps up on you page by page until you are totally immersed in the story. I've only had a chance so far to read the first 21 pages online, which Eric has generously provided on his website, but this is going on my Christmas list. I'm still smiling as I write this from the final panel in the preview, which shows Orson Welles crossing out the name of Howard Koch as writer on the script and replacing it with his own. Eric certainly has Orson exactly right there. You can buy The Broadcast on Amazon now.

Coffee and scares at Grover's Mill

The Grover's Mill Coffee Company, whose namesake is of course the Grover's Mill where Orson Welles set his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, is recreating the show on the nights of Friday October 29th and Saturday October 30th.  Actor Michael Jarmus will be hosting what sounds like an excellent evenings entertainment. More details and directions can be found at the Grover's Mill Coffee Company website.

Am I the only one to see the flaw in this?

Zombies are flavour of the moment right now, and The Walking Dead is the latest take on the theme, though for the first time ever, the Zombies are going to be lurching onto our TV Screens. To promote the new series from AMC and Fox, Zombies in full make up will be appearing tomorrow in dozens of cities across the world, including New York and London. I just hope that those behind this stunt are taking precautions to ensure people are aware that this is just publicity for a TV series. It would be dangerous in the extreme to assume that everyone will instantly get the joke. They didn't in 1938 when Orson Welles unleashed his Martian invasion, and they didn't this year in Georgia when a TV station faked a 2nd Russian invasion, nor a month later in Jordan when a newspaper reported on an alien invasion! This could get real ugly, and I'm not just talking about the Zombies.

Tom Bosley (1927-2010)

Sad news that Tom Bosley has passed away at the age of 83. Tom was of course best known as the long suffering father of Howard and Joanie Cunningham in Happy Days, but he also featured in the 1975 TV movie The Night that Panicked America, which told to great effect the story of the 1938 War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Tom played the rather anonymous sounding Norman Smith, a rattled CBS producer trying to deal with the maverick force that was Welles, but it is fairly certain to me that he is actually taking the role of Davidson Taylor, the CBS producer actually present that night.

New H.G Wells material released by BBC

The first episode of a new adaptation of First Men in the Moon will air tonight at 9pm on BBC 4 and to coincide with the broadcast, the BBC have released a number of recordings made by H. G Wells between 1931 and 1943. There are some fascinating pieces here, including a 1943 attack on the state of British newspapers that includes an intriguing suggestion that news be disseminated by telephone as a way of bypassing what he saw as the censorship of newsprint. It's very easy to think of this as the Internet in principle. Were Wells alive today, I think it certain he would be blogging. You can also find some letters written by Wells on the BBC Archive pages. Definitely worth a look. The trailer for First Men in the Moon also looks very good, though isn't that the theme music from the recent Sherlock Holmes movie?

New Jeff Wayne interview

Radio Teesdale in the UK, a radio station run by volunteers, has scored a scoop with a very interesting interview with Mr War of the Worlds himself, Jeff Wayne. Wayne talks for 20 minutes about his life and interest in The War of the Worlds. It's well worth a listen. A short version can be found right now on the radio Teesdale website, but the full show including music from Wayne's seminal musical version of The War of the Worlds goes out Monday 19th at 9pm GMT on http://www.radioteesdale.co.uk/. For those in the UK, the station is on 102.1 and 105.5fm.

Tampa to be invaded

The Stagework Theatre in Tampa is presenting their own version of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast between October 7th and 16th. Sounds like an interesting variation on the theme, with several other panic broadcasts apparently influencing the production. Given the forthcoming anniversary of the 1938 broadcast, you can expect a flood of similar productions across the world. For further information on the Tampa production, visit the Stagework Theatre website. There's also a short interview with the director Karla Hartley at the WUSF website.

NASA Mars Rover rolls out

Despite the confusion that seems to afflict NASA with its plans for a manned mission to Mars, it's encouraging to see that work continues on component elements, none more so important as how to get astronauts around on the surface. So great to see a very interesting video on the BBC website, a guided tour of the interior of a remarkable two man rover. Astronauts would be able to spend up to 2 weeks aboard at a time, in surprisingly comfortable surroundings. Amusing to see that modern touch screens have been abandoned as too difficult to use in bumpy conditions. Bit of a blow there for every science fiction film and TV series that has featured touch screen interfaces. Buttons are the future! See the full video at the BBC website.