Review of The Avengers #4, featuring The War of the Worlds

If anyone can explain in 500 words or less what is going on in this comic, you’re a better person than me. Even the normally reliable Wikipedia made my head spin, but to summarise as best I can, this issue of The Avengers occupies a place in a story arc known as The Heroic Age. The Heroic Age is set in the aftermath of a prior story arc known as The Siege, which itself followed on from a story arc called The Secret Invasion, and that’s how we end up here in Avengers issue 4, with the bizarre sight of Thor, the Norse God of thunder, knocking over Martian Tripods with his hammer. It’s certainly one of the weirdest crossovers you could ever hope to see, but unfortunately, it’s not very good.

I’ve read a lot of American comic books, thousands in fact, most from the 1970s and 1980s, and while I’m occasionally drawn into a comic shop to try and rekindle the love, I increasingly find the modern style of comic book story telling incredibly off-putting. What I am about to say may seem like an odd complaint about a comic book, a medium that is after all visual, but as a fairly average example of a modern day comic book, The Avengers feels as if the art is leading the story, rather than the story leading the art. It’s all presented in a very linear and undemanding manner, and crucially there just doesn’t seem to be much of substance going on in the meat of the story.

Where I remember taking ages to read a comic book, savouring the dialogue, noticing the way pages were artfully composed with panels bleeding into each other, overlapping and just generally presenting the reader with a challenge, here I just seemed to rocket through the mundanely panelled story and big soulless splash pages, so a $4 cover price comic is done in 5 minutes! That can’t be right can it? Am I just not getting it any more, am I too old to appreciate this stuff? Have I lost my comic reading Mojo? I don’t think so, I still dip into old comic books and it takes me right back. I read them exactly as I did the first time, so it can’t be that I am looking through rose tinted spectacles. Something has changed and I don’t like it.

Of course I’m reading this comic because of the War of the Worlds connection, and as mentioned at the beginning of this review, I am dropping myself in the deep end. I had a similar issue getting to grips with the story arc of the recently reviewed Guardians of the Galaxy, but returning to my beef above, and taking the opportunity to re-examine Guardians of the Galaxy, I find the same problem. It’s unimaginative in composition and you don’t feel any need to invest any kind of effort into reading the story. Guardians of the Galaxy was better for sure, but I’m struggling to put my finger on the basic problem. I guess it all feels very corporate, perhaps not helped by the adverts. There do seem to be more of them compared to earlier decades, but these are charmless compared to the kind you used to get, no Charles Atlas or X-Ray specs here, just remorseless corporate exultations to buy Marvel branded bed sheets and sneakers.

Anyway, I’ve not done much to review this comic in terms of story or its connection to The War of the Worlds, but frankly there’s not much you can say in that regard. Killraven pops up, as do the Martian Tripods, which do look great, but that’s about it. The aforementioned scene with Thor taking on the Martian War machines is fantastic, but really, for all they contribute to the story, they could just as easily have been the giant Sentinel robots from the Marvel universe or for that matter the Pillsbury Doughboy. I think if I had to sum up this comic and my feelings in a single word, that word would be indifferent.

Are we all a twitter about nothing, or should we be worrying?

The most remarkable thing to be learnt from the Mexican Twitter panic (presently attracting comparisons with the Orson Welles War of the Worlds broadcast) is the apparent readiness of Twitter users to believe what they were reading. Prevailing wisdom is that most people should have a sufficiently well attuned bullshit filter that they would attempt some form of verification before leaping into their cars and causing mayhem, but it seems that’s simply not the case.

To briefly summarise what happened, a school teacher (Gilberto Martinez Vera) and a radio presenter (Maria de Jesus Bravo Pagola) stand accused of spreading false reports that gunmen were attacking schools in Veracruz. Gerardo Buganza, the interior secretary for Veracruz state, likened the trouble caused to Welles’s 1938 broadcast. Not quite, but apparently cars were crashed in the mad stampede by parents to reach the schools.

This is quite disturbing. Much the same thing did happen in 1938, when people heard only a few minutes of the show, but then rushed off to tell friends, neighbours and outright strangers that the end of the world was coming. Of course in 1938 there were fewer means of double checking a news report, though even then you could have twiddled the dials to check if other stations were also in apocalyptic mode. You would think perhaps that in this day and age, people would have so many additional conduits of information that it would become apparent very quickly that they were subject to a joke, but it looks like you just have to hit the right buttons with people and common sense doesn’t so much as go out the window, as dive headlong from the 30th floor.

Clearly intimating that your children are in imminent danger is a particularly cruel and effective way of doing this, but it seems to me that we need to be thinking of some way of applying the breaks to dangerous twitter trends. I don’t actually like to suggest this, as with anything like this, those breaks can just as easily be applied to information unfavourable to governments and organisations. There’s a valid argument that any attempt at censorship is to be frowned upon, and better to have a few Orson Welles moments than risk the freedoms of the internet, but perhaps we can find some way to crowd source the censorship, self censorship if you like that would naturally resist attempts by governments and vested interests from halting the spread of unwelcome news.

How about hash tags #true and #false? Twitter could monitor these in conjunction with trending topics, and if a topic begins to trend, Twitter could provide statistics showing how many people believed it true and how many false. My assumption is that enough people would be sufficiently detached from events to be able to go off and do independent research and retweet with the #true or #false tags, hence tipping the balance in favour of sanity and thus helping to take the edge off dangerously out of control trends. Equally of course, if it appears the event is being reported accurately, people could react as matters dictate. My worry is that some idiot will do something like start a Tsunami warning which will go viral, and then god knows how many people will be hurt or worse in the panic. What do you think, is there a way of controlling this, or am I all in a twitter?

Of course, it could be the story from Mexico is #false, in which case there'll be egg on my face.

Review of The War of the Worlds graphic novel by Stone Arch books

This is a fast paced retelling of The War of the Worlds aimed squarely at the younger reader, though I’m not sure that entirely excuses the somewhat odd tinkering with the story by husband and wife team Davis Worth Miller and Katherine McLean Brevar. As a case in point, and quite unusually for this medium, they retain some of the story pertaining to the narrator’s brother, so the clash at sea between the Thunderchild and Martian Tripods survives onto the page, which would be great, if not for the rather strange decision to omit the sinking of the Thunderchild! What you say, the Thunderchild survives? But that’s just what happens, and indeed, the encounter is reframed into a rather one sided encounter, with the Martians well and truly seen off by the warship.

I’m not sure what Miller and Brevar were thinking here. There certainly seems to be a degree of sanitisation at work which might go so way toward explaining it. The blood drinking of the Martians is cropped from the story for instance, and the narrator (here renamed George) is not shown bashing the curate over the head with a meat cleaver, but equally people are shown bursting into flame as they are struck by the heat ray, so there doesn’t seem to be any great consistency there. A journalist character is also introduced who seems a little superfluous and is gone after a few pages (I think zapped but his fate is not entirely clear.)

Artist Jose Alfonso Ocampo Ruiz is based in Mexico, but his work has a pleasing Manga style look to it, imbuing his characters with very expressive faces and gestures and saturating the page with rich bold colours. Having read a lot of comic book versions of The War of the Worlds, I’m certainly impressed with his work, though there’s a real problem of scale with his Martian Cylinders. Given they are meant to pack in several Martians and their War Machines, they look far too small for the purpose. His Tripods are also not the best I have seen, lacking any great distinguishing features, but this aside, there’s little to fault with his work, and as previously mentioned, his figure work is very dynamic and positively leaps off the page.

It’s a shame the artist were not so restrained by the junior audience, as I suspect he could really take things up a gear on the story if given the chance, so in conclusion, it’s a frustrating little book that takes some curious liberties and in a fairly crowded field, does not alas particularly stand out.

Review of La Guerre des Mondes (The War of the Worlds) adapted by Philippe Chanoinat & Alain Zibel. (Adonis, 2007)

As a long time fan of French comic book art I was thrilled to discover that the publisher Adonis had produced a graphic novel version of The War of the Worlds. Comic book art is perfectly respectable in France, with vast numbers of titles produced to extremely high standards, and this beautifully printed hardback is no exception, boasting 45 pages of well executed and colourful art in a very sturdy feeling A4 format. I should make clear at this stage that my French extends not much further than Bonjour and Au Revoir, so in terms of the script, I have relied for this review on my knowledge of the story and a very handy app called Google Goggles, which appears to do a reasonably good job of translation.

So let’s start with the art by Alain Zibel, which without fear of error, I can say is amongst the best I have ever seen in service of the subject.  Zibel really seems to get the story, evoking the sense of calm before the storm that so strongly figures in the original H.G. Wells novel, and keeping things clean and simple, most notably in his depiction of the Martian cylinders. Faced with Wells’ description of the Martian spacecraft as “cylinders”, artists in this situation often can’t resist some embellishment;  pods and engines and other such paraphernalia, but Zibel has held his nerve and his cylinder is exactly that, plain and unadorned, and all the more effective for it. He gets the sense of scale right as well, so in our first view of the cylinder crashed to earth and in a panel depicting the sightseeing crowds thronging Horshell Common, the sheer size and raw power of the object is clear to behold.

You may recall that I recently reviewed another War of the Worlds graphic novel, that time from the Indian publisher Campfire, and took issue with the apparent lack of accuracy in the depiction of uniforms and period clothing in general. Clearly I have made a rod for my back, because prior to starting this review, I found myself once again researching British Army uniforms, but here at least I believe I can state that the artist has acquitted himself well. I won’t swear to it, but this looks and feels like an authentic late 19th century English world. In my review of the Campfire version of the story, I struggled to find a word to describe my misgivings, but I think it’s ambience, and in this case Zibel has delivered it with aplomb. The only thing I’m not entirely keen about are the Tripods, which are perhaps a little too plain and whose legs look oddly articulated.

So what can I say about the script. It seems, bearing in mind the limitations admitted above, that Philippe Chanoinat deserves credit for a job well done. The story appears to have been followed reasonably faithfully.  There is, as is often the case with these adaptations, the usual irritating erasure of the narrator’s brother and the Thunderchild sequence, (understandable I must concede for space and pacing considerations) though we are also missing the narrator’s second encounter with the artillery man, which is a shame.  Chanoinat does however give substantive prominence to the portion of the story detailing the burial of the narrator and a clergyman beneath a Martian cylinder, which appears here to work well.

What is also impressive about this volume is the quantity and apparent quality of the supplemental material. The book boasts more than a dozen pages of biographical and historical context to the story, which (language deficiencies again acknowledged) look to be far better than equivalent efforts in other publications. There are extracts from the original novel, in both French and English, plus a glossary in French and a translation table of commonly used words in 6 different languages!  Add to this a CD with the entire novel in English and French, and an audio book of The War of the Worlds in French, and it all adds up to a very useful looking package of material. Alas my daughter has just dropped French in favour of German at school, but I would certainly highly recommend this book to any parent whose children are studying French. On that note, you should also bear in mind that this book is one of a great many from the same publisher, adapting any number of famous novels, all of which I assume fit the same excellent general template.

So in summary, this is a very handsome volume, certainly scoring highly when compared to other graphic adaptations of The War of the Worlds, and even if like me, your French is an embarrassment, I would not necessarily say you should discount it as a purchase. The art alone is worth the cover price and for aficionados of The War of the Worlds, I have no hesitation in saying this would make a very worthwhile addition to your collection.

Review of The Japanese Devil Fish Girl & Other Unnatural Atttactions by Robert Rankin

The year is 1895 and Britain has emerged resurgent and resplendent in the wake of the Martian invasion recounted by H. G Wells in his most excellent history of The War of the Worlds. An expeditionary force of the Kings own Electric Fusiliers has subjugated Mars and the red planet is now the newest jewel of the Empire. Peaceful contact has been established with Jupiter and Venus, trade and relations established and for those at the very apex of society, life has never been better. But all that glitters is not gold, for the opulence and splendour of Empire is (as has ever been the case) carried aloft on the shoulders of a great mass of struggling lower classes.

Near the bottom of this heap, but ever yearning to climb higher is young George Fox, a runaway who has fallen in with the self styled Professor Cagliostro Coffin. When first we meet, they are earning a precarious living exhibiting the stinking and rapidly disintegrating cadaver of a Martian invader. Unlike many of the “attractions” touted by their fellow fairground showmen the Martian is genuine, but as George is about to discover, little else connected with his employer is as it seems, and he is soon to be propelled into a terrifying adventure in search of the mysterious Japanese Devil Fish Girl.

This is my first encounter with author Robert Rankin, and I must confess that on the evidence of this novel, it seems I have been sorely deprived. Rankin writes in a charmingly irreverent nod and wink style, such that you shouldn’t go into this book expecting him to adhere to the style of H. G Wells or in any way provide a rational sequel. Rankin wants you to embrace the silliness, and to this end throws in sundry characters and events with little care for their historical accuracy, (history records the date of The War of the Worlds differently for one) and so quite happily supplies footnotes blowing raspberries at anyone who might dare to complain that people who are dead (and hence should know better), are alive and well. Hence Charles Babbage, inventor of the tragically unrealised Difference Engine here gets to build his fabulous computer and a certain Herr Hitler is to be found much out of his time, sullenly serving drinks on the airship Empress of Mars.

Much of the humour in the book is built on the implausibility of these random collisions in space and time, but (and don’t please construe this as criticism) it’s not a laugh out loud experience, rather it’s a comfortable warm blanket kind of humour, not particularly subtle, occasionally childishly scatological (I make no apologies that a dung throwing monkey is one of my favourite characters), yet written with such cheerful careless abandon that seldom are you without a wry half smile on your face. It’s fair to argue (and here comes a criticism) that Rankin flings, like his simian character Darwin, a lot of dung at the wall hoping it will stick, and occasionally the sheer quantity elicits a groan rather than a chuckle, but that’s like complaining the restaurant has piled on too many chocolate sprinkles on your desert, you may feel a tad queasy by the end, but the journey getting there was worth the occasional discomfort.

And what a journey it is for our hero George. Shipwrecked when the Empress of Mars does a Titanic, faced on one hand with cannibals and on the other with bureaucratic Martians, he finds love along the way and much against his will is prophesised to be the saviour of mankind, a long shot indeed when London becomes the focus of a three pronged assault by Martians, Jovians and Venusians. Done so well, I don’t think H. G Wells would be at all perturbed by this reverential rifling of his imagination, so it seems reasonable then to conclude this review in the style of Mr Rankin. A phantasmagorical cornucopia of Wellsian whimsy, dizzying intergalactical intrigue and daring doings that seldom fails to divert, delight and amuse.

Hardback

Kindle

Review of The War of the Worlds graphic novel, by Campfire

Let me voice one irritation right at the beginning of this review. If you’re going to draw a period piece set in circa 1900, then you should pay attention to the historical details. This book boasts a stunning and dramatic wrap-around cover, (it really is an attention grabber) but the people fleeing the Martians do not look as if they belong in the closing years of the Victorian era. I can be even more precise with one of the interior illustrations, since I’m pretty certain that British Soldiers did not start wearing berets as a matter of course until the early 1940s, and the first were only worn in 1924. (Thanks Google.) I’m also not entirely convinced by the accuracy of the curate’s costume, though I’m going to leave that as a nagging doubt as I draw the line at spending my evening researching the intricacies of religious habits.

OK, so what’s good? Well, script writer Ryan Foley has stuck close to the original spirit of the novel, which might sound an obvious approach, but if you’re going to adapt a novel rather than go down the equally valid reboot route, it requires consideration and respect for the source, especially as the temptation will always be there to tinker. To his credit, Foley ticks all the boxes for a successful adaptation, while artist Bhupendra Ahluwlia turns in a little under 70 pages of consistently vivid art. His figure-work can be a little stiff at times, but the action scenes are generally impressive and the story flows well from panel to panel.

Those 70 pages allow Foley and Ahluwlia to get to grips with the story in gratifyingly expansive detail, though as has understandably happened before in comic book adaptations of The War of the Worlds, the account of the narrator’s brother has been excised, which means we lose the iconic battle between the dreadnaught Thunderchild and the Martian Tripods. That disappointment aside, the Tripods are nicely done, if derivative of others that have gone before, especially those from the Spielberg War of the Worlds movie. Though that’s probably a bit uncharitable, as there’s only so many ways you can draw 3 legged Martian war machines.

This version of War of the Worlds is just one of the newer entries in a long list of classic adaptations from publisher Campfire, including Wells’ The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. Judging from The War of the Worlds, their production values are commendably high and the company promotes a clear sense of mission to broaden the appeal of classic stories. There’s nothing to criticise there either, and going by their back catalogue, you could build a pretty impressive library from their output.

Rather unusually, Campfire is based in India, and I must say this gave me grounds to anticipate receipt of something with an unusual visual perspective, but Campfire is clearly in the business of producing work with a worldwide English language appeal. Hence the Indian origin of the work is well camouflaged. Fair enough, you can hardly begrudge Campfire going for the widest possible demographic, and of course, if you think a about it, a straight up adaptation of The War of the Worlds can hardly have the metaphorical equivalent of the Taj Mahal dropped into the middle of Woking.

However, as regards the overall success of their version of The War of the Worlds, it does seem that being separated from the script writer by many thousands of miles and from the original source material by over 100 years was a wide cultural gulf for the artist to satisfactorily bridge, though in this day and age of Internet research, there’s little excuse for getting the uniforms wrong or indeed geography. I am reasonably sure that Putney Hill in 1900 did not consist of a hill with one house on it! Yet based on the script, this is how Ahluwlia has chosen, rather too literally I fear, to portray it. Of course this will largely bypass juvenile readers to whom this is pitched, but if you’re going to promote your books as educational, you are letting your readers down if you skimp on your research.

I fully concede that if I were to go back over some of the other War of the Worlds comic books I have reviewed on this site, I could likely find any number of similar problems, but in this instance the inconsistencies seem somehow harder to ignore. At bottom line, you get a sense that the artist is not really in his comfort zone and has worked too closely from a muddled set of reference materials. Hence things that you would normally happily dismiss as artistic license here prove far more jarring. It’s a shame as Ahluwlia clearly has talent. It makes me think that a War of the Worlds set during the British Raj, written and illustrated from an unrestricted Indian perspective could be fantastic and open up all sorts of interesting lines of investigation as to how Indian culture at the time would have reacted to a Martian attack, but as far as this adaptation is concerned, I am going to conclude that it’s a respectable piece of work, fun to read, technically well drawn and adapted by Foley with care, but that it feels somewhat hobbled in execution, as if something has indeed been lost in translation.

The Flintstones' Invasion from Space

Before there were The Simpsons, there were The Flintstones, and just as The Simpsons have produced an episode lampooning the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast, so too did the Flintstones. The episode was called The Masquerade Party, and was the 11th episode of the 1965 sixth season.

By then the series was undoubtedly showing signs of fatigue, but some of the old magic was still there, in particular the well honed bickering relationship between neighbours Fred and Barney. This as so often before forms the bedrock (no pun intended) of this episode.

It's time for Fred's lodge, The Water Buffalos, to hold their annual Masquerade Party, and Fred is determined to win best costume award, as he does every year. But things go horribly awry when he and Barney inadvertently pick an identical "devil" costume, which inevitably starts a big fight.  After a night cooling his heels in jail, Fred emerges more determined than ever to win the competition, and closets himself in the garage to work on a new costume away from prying eyes. Meanwhile across town at the local record company, the studio boss is giving the marching orders to a band called The Beasties, who are told in no uncertain terms that they are yesterdays sound, and a new band is about to hit the big time.

That band is The Wayouts, and their gimmick really is out of this world; they are dressed as aliens! It's an opportunity too good to be true for the record company publicity man, who persuades the local radio station to start transmitting news flashes that The Wayouts are taking over Bedrock.  Panic naturally ensues, but for Fred, fate is about to deal him an even worse hand; his new costume is also a space alien! Setting out for the party, Fred is completely oblivious to the chaos erupting all around him, though perplexed that people keep running away from him in terror. Along the way, Fred runs into The Wayouts and persuades them that it would be a great idea to come and perform at the lodge party, but the lodge members are getting ready to come to the defence of Bedrock, assuring Fred and The Wayouts a less than hospitable welcome.

This is certainly not a classic episode of The Flintstones, but the debt to the 1938 broadcast is obvious and serves to elevate it beyond the merely routine. The Wayouts are fun guest characters and the scenes in which the radio broadcast triggers panic in Bedrock are particularly well done.

Rocky and Bullwinkle, classic cartoon references War of the Worlds

Rocky and Bullwinkle, the adventures of a Flying Squirrel and his Moose friend is considered a landmark cartoon series that has enthralled generations of children, though it famously slipped in innumerable often obscure cultural references for adults. Indeed the very first episode includes a clever homage to the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast with the brief appearance of a character called Dawson Bells. Ring any bells?

As the episode opens, a gathering of prestigious scientists are preparing to observe the moon through a giant telescope, pronouncing with certainty that they expect to find no evidence of life, but the first thing they spy is Rocky and Bullwinkle, waving at them from the surface! The flabbergasted scientists believe Rocky and Bullwinkle to be moon creatures, and when Bullwinkle semaphores their intention to come to Earth, a panic ensues. Dawson Bells (looking and sounding a lot like Orson Welles) broadcasts a message on radio, assuring his listeners that this is definitely no play and that people are welcome to panic.

Arriving on Earth, Rocky and Bullwinkle are met by a delegation, but quickly put their minds to rest, explaining that they are residents of the Earth, and had visited the moon to retrieve a stove, which Bullwinkle's new cake mixture had accidentally blasted there when it exploded. This is of great interest to the assembled dignitaries, for it sounds like Bullwinkle's cake mixture might be a revolutionary new form of Rocket Fuel. Bullwinkle is promptly put to work developing the formula, but evil enemy agents Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale are keen to steal the secret.

There is no further reference to The War of the Worlds or Orson Welles in this episode, the first of 40 short 7 minute serialised instalments generally referred to as the Jet Fuel Formula story arc. Created by Jay Ward and Alex Anderson, the show is extremely well regarded for the quality of its writing, though the animation is painfully crude by today’s standards. However it does have a certain charm, and the narration by William Conrad (famous for roles such as the detective Cannon) lends a wonderfully incongruous gravitas to the proceedings.

John Carter of Mars Trailer - initial reaction

A John Carter movie has been a long time coming, so for those with a love of the books, there’s an enormous store of expectation and a huge potential for disappointment. Equally, stick too closely to the original and you might make something so esoteric that the general public finds it impossible to connect with. Personally I’d place myself somewhere in the middle of this debate; liking the stories, but not so blinkered that I can’t see the sense of changes to suit cinematic and modern requirements. My problem with the new John Carter trailer is that with my “fan” hat on, I’m not sufficiently convinced this movie is going to do justice to the source material, but equally I fear it might have been sanitised to death for multiplex consumption. In other words, it just doesn’t look very special.

Of course this is 90 seconds or so of brief glimpses and I’m opening myself up to the entirely justifiable charge that I am jumping the gun. As more trailers emerge, we’re likely to see the movie from different perspectives. This is clearly trying hard not to please any one faction at the expense of alienating the larger cinema going public, but a safe and anodyne approach is a risky strategy and this first trailer really typifies this reluctance to be bold by a quite incredible reluctance to tell people a core truth about the story, specifically the elephant in the room, Mars. We’ve already seen a minor storm raging online due to the dropping of Mars from the title, but you might have expected the trailer to at the very least acknowledge the setting, yet it doesn’t, a howling omission made worse by the Utah backdrop which looks like, well… it looks like Utah. Mix in scenes set both on earth and whatever planet it is Carter goes to (because according to this trailer, it’s just standard fantasy planet X), and I think some viewers of this trailer will be hard pressed to figure out what scenes are on Earth, and what on X; ok, the chickens are a bit of a give-away, but you get my point.

The special effects are more than adequate, but there’s a real risk that a property already plundered over the years for ideas is going to look old hat. To that end, I was surprised some reference wasn’t made to the author and the historical significance of the title. Something along the lines of “From the author of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs, comes…” would have set the scene nicely. I’ve watched the trailer a dozen times now, and I’m finding more things to like, but a trailer shouldn’t make you work hard to like it, it should grab you by the eyeballs and squeeze from the off – this just doesn’t do that – it’s disjointed and smells of corporate indecision. I just hope that there’s a much better movie buried beneath the trailer.

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.