Genrelogues: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Episodes 1-4)
Genrelogues Shaun and Jen’s new column about new and old SF/F television, film, and literature. This week, Shaun and Jen tackle the first four episodes of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., airing every Tuesday (8/7c) on ABC. Though we will try not to ruin whatever we’re talking about with a lot of detail, you should be warned that spoilers are inevitable. Read with care. If you have any thoughts about the show or what we’ve got to say below, leave a comment! ———————————————————————— Shaun: Since this is our first Genrelogue, I want to start off by talking about the issue of anticipation in relation to this particular product. There are a couple things I think are worth exploring here. First, the simple fact that this is another attempt on the part of Joss Whedon to successfully capture the genre TV market, which we all know he hasn’t been all that successful at in recent years (the early cancellation of Firefly, by many accounts a classic, and the poor showing of Dollhouse, which got off on a bad foot the second the studios nerfed his original beginning). Since his success with The Avengers, my guess is Marvel expects AoS to be their “in” to the TV market. And since they’re on a major network — ABC — they will have the benefit of a much larger audience than their competitor, DC, whose only major live-action show, Arrow, appears on the CW — which, though successful within that particular network, does not benefit from
Confessions of a Comics Junkie: The Racial Politics of Mutations (or, Mutant Passing)
One of the reasons I have always preferred Marvel over DC is the fact that it’s world, however absurd at times, at least tries to explore what might happen if a bunch of people with extraordinary powers popped up in our neighborhoods. In short, humans have a tendency to freak out. In a weird, unexpected way, the Marvel Universe (Earth 616, not the other versions, which I’m not currently following) is an exploration of evolutionary change, the likes of which we haven’t seen because the last major change in our species “group,” as far as we know, was before written records. I’m talking about the Neanderthals.[1] We’ll never know exactly how humans reacted to those funny-looking humanoids, though we’re pretty sure there was some violence, some sex, and probably some group hugging in certain parts of the world. And in a similar way, we don’t know exactly how humans would react to the rise of mutants; instead, we
Recommended Reads for September 2013
Recommended Reads is a monthly feature in which the Skiffy and Fanty crew tell you about one thing they recently read that they think you might like too. Here goes:
On Genre’s Surrealist Tendencies
I just finished re-watching Groundhog Day (1993) (the Blu-ray 15th Anniversary edition, if you must know). One of the things that makes this film so fascinating, even upon seeing it more than once, is its remarkably bizarre narrative. You might say it is positively surreal in form, dragging us, and the main character, Phil, into repetitious situations without any way to ground ourselves in the real (pun not intended). There are no fancy explanations for Phil’s “curse,” and in the process of watching him struggle with his identity in this new world order, we get a glimpse into a part of the human spirit that perhaps gets lost in the day-to-day hustle of life, just as Phil does at the start. What may seem monotonous can be changed by human action: we can change what we do,
My Superpower: Geoffrey Girard
My Superpower is a regular guest column on the Skiffy and Fanty blog where authors and creators tell us about one weird skill, neat trick, highly specialized cybernetic upgrade, or other superpower they have, and how it helped (or hindered!) their creative process as they built their project. Today we welcome Geoffrey Girard to talk about how his Supreme Strategic Suspicions relate to Cain’s Blood… In Cain’s Blood, the teenaged clones of infamous serial killers (Bundy, Gacy, Berokowitz, Dahmer, etc.) cause all sorts of nasty havoc. I was somewhat puzzled by early reviews that focused on how “dark and violent” the book is. I’d never really thought about that. I just wrote about what might happen next, the most-likely thing in a given situation. When Scott Smith, the author of The Ruins, called the book “very dark,” I didn’t think much of that either, until I watched The Ruins for the first time in years and thought: “THIS guy thinks I’m dark!” It was the first time I stopped to consider what I’d ultimately created. And How.
Confessions of a Comics Junkie: Rooting for the Underdog (or, Characters Marvel Forgot to Love)
Readers of my personal blog will recall that I recently got back into comic books. And by “got back into” I mean “I now have almost three long boxes full of comics.”[1] It’s an obsession. So sue me. One of the things that has been most interesting to me on this journey back into comics is discovering how much has changed since I was a lax reader in the 90s. I don’t mean in terms of the narratives, mind you (though those have changed, too), but rather in terms of the characters who have stuck around, moved to the background, or (supposedly) left us for good.[2] Things have really changed. The most alarming change for me was the realization that some of the characters I loved as a kid have since taken a sideline to more “popular” folks. Oh, hell, let’s face it. The characters I liked as a kid, and the characters I have since started to cling to in the now, will never be as popular as Wolverine or Batman or Captain America or Iron Man or most of the folks gracing our movie screens these days. They are, and probably always have been or will be, the underdogs. But they’re also the characters for which I can’t help rooting.
