I love comics. I used to read Marvel comics as a kid (early 90’s), I liked Wolverine, Cable, others.
I’d say the end of my comic reading was the Onslaught plot line; Charles Xavier becomes a really awesome villain. (Internal monologue: “I think there’s an Onslaught trade paperback, I should buy that.”) My most prized possession is a bound version of Frank Miller’s Batman that my dear grandmother bought for me in the early 90’s. What an amazing book.
I rediscovered my love of comics through a combination of events: Tricia brought home “Black Hole” by Charles Burns, I started reading “Powers” (ugh, the best!). I really love “Hellboy”, “Preacher”, “Criminal”, “Scene of the Crime”, “Sleeper”, “Path of the Assassin”, and on and on.
I love to see cool comic writers collaborate, getting to know author’s tones, seeing new interpretations of characters through different art work like in Hellblazer or Sandman. I had a great experience reading Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing from the early 80’s; written almost thirty years ago and it’s still so cool! I read vol 3 of Frank Miller’s Daredevil: Visionaries from the early 80’s too, and it was also so awesome.
So, I feel protective of comics because of this new comic-to-movie adaptation craze that has taken hold. Mostly because I think they all suck. V for Vendetta should have been called S for Shit Sandwich. Iron Man was Jon Favreau stroking off Robert Downey Jr. Sin City was Robert Rodriguez stroking off Frank Miller. X-Men was Hugh Jackman stroking himself off. So much ego, so full of themselves. These movies aren’t about my old friends the characters, they’re about these wank-off actors taking themselves too seriously. Christian Bale? So, I say to most comic movie adaptations: Fuck you, you suck. This isn’t a picture of Wolverine, it’s Hugh Jackman looking like a dick wad with a really gay belt buckle.
So, most of them are shit but A History of Violence was very good. I appreciated it as a film and not a comic; it stands alone as good. For some reason, I hate Viggo Mortensen. The violence was real and grotesque. It was a good film but lacked the grittiness of that little black and white comic.
NOW, I just watched the movie Punisher: War Zone and it was, in my opinion, the best comic adaptation to film that I’ve ever seen. It didn’t take away from the comic like the other stroke-fest’s did. It read like a comic. There were still shots with very little movement from the actors that lasted more than fourteen milliseconds. I mean does it get any better than the Punisher crashing into a villain’s gorge-fest, standing on top of a huge dinner table, lighting a flare in the dark, bathing the room red, armed to the teeth about to fuck shit up! It’s low brow, stupid and violent but it so precisely encapsulates the Punisher, finally!
The Punisher is ultraviolence, cool weapons, despicable villains, retribution for a murdered family, reckless vigilantism, corrupt cops and the movie nailed it. You can say that the bar was not high and that’s true but the bar isn’t high for Iron Man either. Iron Man is brilliant Tony Stark, cool inventions, chicks, adding cool shit to his suit, being an Avenger, being sort of lame because he doesn’t have super powers. It’s not about Favreau telling Tony Stark how he kept up with him in their cars, Robert Downey Jr.’s intelligent little quips, Gwyneth Paltrow not doing anything cool, some fucking lame political commentary, not using any part of the Sabbath song with any lyrics, that’s fucking unforgiveable. And then using Audioslave! Come on, fucking Audioslave!? My regard for both Iron Man and Audioslave were lessened… but I digress.
Anyway, Punisher was a crazy bloody opening sequence, friendly fire, McGinty, JigSaw, who the fuck is Looney Bin Jim?, all leading up to a final stage of battle, which was introduced, as the troops filed in, to Psychosocial by Slipknot (fucking metaaaal!). The Punisher shot his automatic rifles in short bursts like the way real Marines do, or so they told me in video games.
There were some funny errors in the movie: the accents and most of the voice editing were really bad, at one point, Jig Saw mouths “Fuck” but we hear “Shit!” (fucking hilarious), the acting was bad, I would say, even the casting was bad (come on – Newman?), the woman character tearfully asking Castle “Who punishes you?” but all of this stuff is important only if we expect to gain some new insight into ourselves or humanity. It’s OK that we don’t really care about the Punisher. Rather, we care just enough to stay interested as he fucks up some villains. The movie was not high art, but neither are comics. For once in my fucking life, I can say about one medium being translated into another, both of which I truly love: Ah, it’s my old friend the Punisher.
