Schlock Mercenary

On Saturday I watched Rise of the Planet of the Apes and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes back-to-back. I enjoyed both of those movies quite a bit more now than I did when I first saw them, and the refresher course made War for the Planet of the Apes much more enjoyable. I hadn’t realized just how much character continuity we have among the community of apes before. That alone helps the story along a lot. This film is best considered as part III of a trilogy, and that entire trilogy functions as a prequel to 1968’s Oscar-nominated Planet of the Apes. Or rather, as a prequel to a potential remake, which we don’t actually need but will almost certainly get (I’m giving the 2001 film a wide miss. It doesn’t seem to fit here.) I’m amazed at how Caesar, Luca, Rocket, Maurice and the other apes have crossed the Uncanny Valley and become real-world people to my eyes. The actors behind the motion-capture did fine work, and the animators are obviously sorcerers who have made some sort of dark pact with an eldritch god of cinema. War for the Planet of the Apes doesn’t quite clear my Threshold of Awesome, but it’s a very near miss.

I am quite glad to have a Spider-Man movie that doesn’t tell us the Uncle Ben story. Spider-Man: Homecoming clears my Threshold of Awesome, and comes in at #5 for me for the year. This film does what the best YA books do—it gives us a story in which young people are the focus (right down to the various tropes whereby grown-ups can’t or won’t help out) without depending on that focus for appeal. Young people and old people alike will enjoy the movie not because of the young cast, but because of how the characters drive a great story. Is it the best Spider-Man movie we’ve ever had? I don’t know. The first two Spidey films of this century are still close to my heart, and Captain America: Civil War remains my favorite concentrated dose of Spidey, probably because of the wide variety of opponents and the delightful back-and-forth banter. I’m absolutely not dissing Spider-Man: Homecoming, however. Like I said, it clears my Threshold of Awesome.

If you backed the Planet Mercenary role playing game on Kickstarter, your rewards (books, cards, dice, tokens, etc) are on their way. Many of you have already gotten packages, but many more of you are waiting on things that are still stacked at the Hypernode Media shipping center awaiting their turn in the “shipping and handling” portion of this process. It’s a complex process, and Sandra is running it brilliantly. A decade ago we ran things like this with the help of an ad-hoc team of volunteers. Not pictured: 75% of the team, and 95% of the contents of the warehouse…These days we have a warehouse¹ and a press-ganged team of minors². The biggest limiting factor is that we’re shipping in the summer, and the warehouse is not air-conditioned. Shipping days begin at 8am, and end by noon, just before the team begins dripping sweat onto the merchandise. My role in this is pretty simple: stay out of the way, and make comics. I’m leaving for four weeks of travel on July 26th, and must fill the buffer with at least five weeks of comics by that time, so while Sandra and her crew endure the heat and heavy lifting, I’m enjoying the A/C and my collection of art supplies³. It is not fair, and I do feel a bit guilty about it, but it’s the only way through. On that note, today is Friday, and I need to create an entire week of comics between now and late Saturday night, so it’s time for me to go to work… ¹ The warehouse costs almost twice as much per month as our first house did. Running a business is expensive.

Transformers: The Last Knight was a waste of some pretty cool robot fight choreography, and an absolute squandering of Anthony Hopkins and Isabela Moner. This doesn’t surprise me, given the track record of this less-than-meets-the-eye cinematic franchise, but I was still disappointed. The plot is far too convoluted for a straightforward McGuffin match-up¹. There were three times more speaking-role characters than the average audience member (myself included) is likely to have emotional space to care about. Making the film longer (2 hours 28 minutes) doesn’t solve the problem. It means we’ll all be tired, exhaustedly awaiting the end of the movie about 38 minutes before it shows up. “Leave them wanting more” does not mean “leave them wanting more of their day back when they leave the theater.” Fortunately, the actors all turned in solid performances, especially Isabela Moner, who was one of the very best things about the film. Sadly, she’s completely absent for Act II, but when she does return in Act III she masterfully acts far above the hackneyed plotonium the writers deployed to work her into the climactic battle. My biggest complaint lies with the mythos. Tying the Transformers into Arthurian legend may have seemed cool and clever at some point, but it fell completely flat for me². Stanley Tucci played Merlin quite well in the prologue, doing an outstanding job with “drunken charlatan thrust into the wrong movie” but the humor said to me “this is going to be bleak, so let’s loosen you up with some laughs. Here, have an inebriated wizard!” I said earlier that the robot fight choreography was good. It was! Bumblebee’s entrance was pretty epic, and although I couldn’t always keep track of which Transformer was which, I was able to see what they were doing, and on several occasions they did cool things. Somebody told Michael Bay to hold the camera steady, I suppose. Transformers: The Last Knight is the first film this year to cross my Threshold of Disappointment. I feel bad for the many people responsible for the good parts of this movie, because they deserve to have those parts show up in a less disappointing film³. ¹ “McGuffin match-up” is what I call it when the characters have to find multiple important plot-thingies (‘McGuffins’) and put them into the hands of the right people in time to save the day.

The trailers for The Mummy suggested that it was going to be a supernatural horror film retreading ground that Universal Studios has already covered several times. There was no hint that the movie would have any joy in it. To my delight, there was a lot of joy¹. While not as outright campy as 1999’s The Mummy², it definitely leaned in that direction. Yes, there are jump-scares and spooky bits, but there’s also lots of witty banter, and a healthy dose of dark comedy. I had a pretty good time. My 16yo daughter really liked it too. Fans of the 1999 film may be pleased to note that a prop from that film³ has a featured cameo in this one, suggesting that perhaps Rick, Evelyn, and Alex O’Connell share this universe with Jenny Halsey, Nick Morton, and Dr. Henry Jekyll (along with the rest of Universal’s DARK UNIVERSE stable of monsters and mortals.) It’s not explicitly declared, but there’s nothing explicitly ruling it out. The Mummy (2017) doesn’t clear my Threshold of Awesome, but it was a lot of fun. It entered my list at #6 for the year, which is not too shabby for June. ¹Recent experiences with misleading trailers invite comparison: Suicide Squad‘s trailer promised campy fun, but the movie was bleak. The Mummy’s trailer promised horror, and the movie was horror plus dark comedy. I prefer having my expectations set low. ² I’m sitting down to watch 1999’s The Mummy right now, while I ink. It’s like an old friend. A really old friend, who tracks sand everywhere, and doesn’t like my cat. ³ If you must know, it was the big gold book with the fancy star-shaped key. You’d think I’d know the name of my friend’s favorite book, but no, I do not.

On Monday, June 12th of the year 2000 the very first Schlock Mercenary strip appeared on the web. Yesterday, Monday, June 12th of the year 2017 marked the seventeenth anniversary of that start date—seventeen years of uninterrupted¹ daily² updates here at schlockmercenary.com. That I am now in my eighteenth year of doing this stands as evidence of ongoing good fortune. I’ve enjoyed seventeen full years without any sort of debilitating injury or crisis preventing me from working for more than a couple of weeks at a time. I’ve gotten sick and been injured, of course, but I keep getting better with sufficient time to spare. At some point this streak will end. That point lies in the mists of a hopefully-distant future, and is not today. Today I am making comics. (Just as soon as I finish this blog post.) If you would like to celebrate the beginning of Schlock Mercenary’s eighteenth year, you might consider sharing the strip with a friend. But whatever you do, don’t send them back to the very beginning. That would be cruel. Start here, with Book 12. Which, by serendipitous convenience³, is the most recent of the Schlock Mercenary stories to appear in print. How long will Schlock Mercenary continue to run? The over-arching story is in its final act, and will draw to a close soon, probably in Book 19. But on the day following that big finish there will be another update, and another one the day after that. Those will launch a new story, featuring some characters you know, and a universe you think you know, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is a satisfactory conclusion coming up, and you can enjoy it secure in the knowledge that it won’t end the delivery of daily strips here at schlockmercenary.com. ¹ There have been service interruptions, of course. Like that time the data center’s UPS failed, and a fire destroyed part of the facility. But Schlock Mercenary has updated every day, and with a bit of back-up hosting has never been unavailable for more than a few hours at a time. ² That’s 6,210 strips. Yes, the image files are backed up in more than one place. ³ A friend who also happens to be flush with the good fortune of a spot of discretionary income, might purchase that book as a gift. Shared links are lovely, but a thing made out of colorful paper is a thing that will be remembered.