Nick Bryan

Reviews

Nick returns from the digital wilderness to find… – Hobson & Choi update! Sandman! Spectre! Comics on eBay! OTHER!

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As threatened in my last blog post with that podcast appended, it’s been a very quiet month in Content terms, as I have been moving house from Walthamstow to Lewisham, into a charming fourth floor flat where myself and my self-publishing empire will hopefully be very happy together.

As traditionally happens whenever anyone moves house in the modern world, this was accompanied by an annoying gap in internet access. We only got online yesterday, and I must admit, I’d forgotten how amazing the world wide web can be.

So, here are a few things I have seen, experienced and planned during my month away. Some have already been mentioned on Twitter, but most I couldn’t be bothered to tweet because my only Twitter access was my four-year old phone and loading the app is a chore.

H&C3 – Read aloud in only 1.5 days! Record!

H&C3 is coming! Time to read H&C2!

Hobson & Choi III continues to crawl its way towards the outside world, like a mole with motivation issues. I’ve got a draft I’m happy with, it’s just going through final proofreading. Meanwhile, I’ve booked a slot with the always-excellent Design For Writers to work their cover-makin’ magic once more.

Projected release date: probably October. Plenty more to come on that in the next couple of months.

Pale Riders of the Post-Marvel Apocalypse

Huge blood-bloated Spectre. Now that’s horror.

I haven’t read any Marvel superhero comics for a month, which is new. I basically rely on Marvel Unlimited for them, and that, unfortunately, relies on the internet. So for whatever reason, I’ve opted to fill my comics reading time mostly with pale-faced DC characters, specifically:

  • The Sandman! Yes, the Neil Gaiman-written many-artist-drawn legend of the medium. I last read it as a teenager and a lot of it went over my head. Reading it again now and it’s very whimsical, magical stuff, the sort of thing Gaiman’s long done best. I’m about 40 issues in. Great comic. Be sorry when it’s over. Might go and read that Lucifer spin-off series by Mike Carey/Peter Gross that everyone talks about.
  • The Spectre! The incarnate wrath of God, wearing a Grim Reaper cloak and green swimming trunks. Specifically, the 90s run by John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake. I don’t know exactly why this sprang to mind as a thing to read, but it’s a strange comic. Zips between horror (Tom Mandrake does a good extreme grotesque image, see nearby example), magic-bolts-zappy mystic superhero action and sudden diversions into genuine questions of theology. Interesting counterpoint to the metaphorical approach of Sandman, in that it’s like being smashed in the theological brain with a brick. In tiny green pants.
  • Not a DC comic but they do have quite pale faces – Transformers! I bought a huge chunk of the two current ongoings – Robots In Disguise and More Than Meets The Eye – in a Humble Bundle at the recommendation of writer friend Chris Brosnahan, not to mention I’d seen rave reviews for More Than Meets The Eye online. Aaand… it’s a very odd read for me as I’m not a Transformers person at all. I vaguely knew Optimus Prime was the main goodie.
    All of which leaves me enjoying the vibe – MTMTE in particular is a really well-paced, exciting, funny comic – but kinda struggling to get into the mythology. My specific problem: they all look so similar. I kept expecting to develop the ability to tell them apart, but with a few glaring exceptions, I am struggling. I don’t think the art is bad – in fact, it’s very clean and attractive – but I still keep needing reminders in the dialogue to tell me which one this is. Still, I’ll persist. Once I’ve caught up on the last month of Marvel Unlimited updates.

Ultimate Spider-Man lives, physical comics die

Nick Bryan once touched these comics!

The news about the upcoming Marvel relaunch came out, and to no-one’s surprise, my eulogy for Ultimate Spider-Man did turn out to be pre-emptive – Miles Morales lives on in the regular Marvel universe, in a new book simply called Spider-Man. I’ll still miss the series taking place in the Ultimate universe though. Elsewhere in the Marvel relaunch, there’s disappointingly few interesting new books that aren’t just continuations of existing ones. Well, except Warren Ellis doing a Karnak series, that sounds amazingly weird.

And while I’m talking comics – you can now buy some late-90s/early 2000s Daredevil and Captain America comics from me on eBay if you want. Mostly these are pretty good stuff, but I really have lost interest in the single-issue physical comic as a thing to store or read. I’ve held on to the teenage collection for a while in case my interest regrew, but no sign yet. And yes, I’m choosing those starting prices pretty optimistically. I’ll relist them cheaper if they don’t sell.

Literary Fiction and Other Plantlife (featuring Scarlett Thomas)

So new, the receipt is still tucked inside.

Went to see Scarlett Thomas read from and speak about her new book The Seed Collectors at the always-excellent Big Green Bookshop. She spoke very entertainingly about her process, the struggles of both writing and teaching and why likable characters are over-rated. (She is very right, they are.)

Thomas has always been one of my favourite novelists who isn’t generally seen as genre, even though there is some pretty extreme weirdness in many of her books. The Seed Collectors plays down the odd concepts a bit, but the fragmented structure, witty narration and, yes, the fact almost everyone is a fun bastard very much appeals to me. Enjoying it a lot, only 70 pages to go.

Nine Worlds, one request for presents

Next weekend, I am at the Nine Worlds convention. If you think that’s likely to be the topic of an upcoming blog post on this website, you’d be correct. I had a great time last year, and hopefully this will be a worthy sequel. The books and creative writing events in particular look great. May even try and take more than one photo this time.

No sign of any friends holding weddings on any of the days yet, so I shall be ambling around the entire event. I should have a few copies of The Girl Who Tweeted Wolf on me, which I could be persuaded to offload at a reduced price, or in exchange for… I don’t know, booze or comics or your own book or something. Make me an offer. Or if there’s a take-one-leave-one bookswap table again, go and see if I’ve left one there.

NO VERONICA MARS PARAGRAPH FOR YOU

Yeah, that’s it. Was gonna do a chunk on the fact I’ve finally finished Veronica Mars season 1 thanks to having no streaming TV to distract me, but that would push this post to a ludicrous length. Will probably get its own post in the coming month.

For now, though, I’m off to watch backlogged Last Week Tonight episodes on my new Now TV subscription on my newly working internet. Farewell!

I finally read Age of Apocalypse – Was it like a smaller Secret Wars?

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Just recently, I crossed another item off my list of stories to read on Marvel Unlimited – I rattled through the X-Men: Age of Apocalypse mini-epic. I don’t know what spurred me to go for that precise one, but after the fact, it seems topical – after all, Marvel are about to pull an Age of Apocalypse on their entire universe with the mega-massive Secret Wars event.

That’s before we get to next year’s X-Men: Apocalypse movie, which probably won’t adapt this storyline but might, and recent DC event Convergence, also an AoA-style move, albeit shorter.

So it seemed a good time to talk about it, maybe discuss how these new events are using (or abusing) the legacy of Age of Apocalypse. Spoilers follow for twenty-year-old X-Men comics!

The Age of A-WHAT-alypse?

Style icons of the Age of Apocalypse

It turns out, Xavier was crucial to everything and the causation ripples from his non-existance caused the Marvel Universe to whip from a standard modern-day setting to a hellish dystopia ruled by longstanding Survival Of The Fittest X-Tyrant Apocalypse.

I’m going to try and keep the outline brief: Age of Apocalypse began after someone went back in time and killed X-Men mentor, inspiration and Patrick Stewart lookalike Charles Xavier, long before he became a living legend.

In real-world publishing terms, this meant the seven or eight monthly X-Men comics were replaced for four months with retitled series following the AoA equivalent of their regular characters. So Wolverine became Weapon X, Generation X became Generation Next, X Factor became Factor X, Excaliber became X-Calibre (???), and, best of all, X-Force became Gambit and the X-Ternals. Because they’re external to the mainstream, or something?

Some characters investigated signs that all wasn’t right with this reality, others fought in escalating conflicts that threatened to destroy the world before the first lot could save it. And that, basically, is the premise of Age of Apocalypse.

The Knightfall of Jack Batlin

More like DARKDevil!!11!*

This is far from the only superhero comics story in the nineties where a popular property was replaced with a different (often DARKER) version. There was Batman: Knightfall, the Death of Superman, Spider-Man’s Clone Saga, new Green Lantern Kyle Rayner and, of course, the time Daredevil faked his own death, wore black armour and started calling himself Jack Batlin.

Not got time to discuss all those in depth, but the point is: many of these stories are not well-remembered. Age of Apocalypse, however, gets quite a good rap. Like: people talk about it as if it’s good and worth reading, rather than a “guilty pleasure” or a fascinating study of nineties excess.

So, what did I think when experiencing these comics?

Honestly, if I take one thing away from Age of Apocalypse, it’s a certain respect for the editorial planning and world-building. The comics consistently take place within the same world, there’s a steady rumbling story through everything despite the dozen or so writers and artists involved. There aren’t that many moments of memorable writing voice – even an early-in-career Warren Ellis on X-Calibre doesn’t impose his style on the finished product much – but everyone is clearly on the same page.

It has a lot of momentum, the characters are consistent, it’s paced at just the right length to get everything in, do its thing and end the story with a bang. The art is always strong, clear and getting the desired effect, finding time for memorable showings from Joe Madueira, Steve Skroce, Adam & Andy Kubert and Chris Bachalo, among others.

Obviously, I wasn’t involved in running the Age of Apocalypse story, for all I know it was utter bloody chaos behind the scenes. But if I had to compare it to other nineties comics events, I would say this is the USP: it feels like a story at its natural length with a pre-planned beginning and middle, then an end which brings back the status quo without feeling like a depressing reset.

Infinite Leather Jackets and the Apocalypse

90s Cyclops is 90s

Of course, I can’t pretend that Age of Apocalypse is some formal comics masterwork on a par with Watchmen. It is an event story from the nineties and comes with all the try-hard “kewl” moments you’d expect, along with over-muscled men, over-endowed women, awful haircuts, too many guns, too many pockets and infinite leather jackets. If you’ve tried nineties comics before and found all the above too much to deal with, I can’t say Age of Apocalypse will necessarily change your mind.

As a pre-2000s comic, there’s also a narration-heavy, tell-don’t-show approach to storytelling that seems clunky compared to the streamlined dialogue-driven cinematic stylings of nowadays. With a whole universe to introduce, it can’t avoid a huge amount of info-dumping in captions, not to mention characters turning up and delivering huge monologues which just happen to explain their entire motivation and history in a single text-filled page.

Of course, even if it doesn’t read silky-smoothly, it’s possible this TAKE THIS EXPOSITION AND EAT IT! approach is one reason Age of Apocalypse works. Fully dramatising all of this background material could take twice as long, and even if it would be functionally better, stretching out the story would damage momentum. Let’s face it, fun though this alternate reality replacement game is, we all know the status is gonna quo in the end. Better focus on the key moments.

Secret Wars – Secret Marvel Unlimited promotional tool?

The Many Thors of Secret Wars

Which brings us on to the happening-right-now Secret Wars, in which a Massive Cosmic Event destroys the Marvel Comics universe and all its alternates, leaving only a patchwork reality made of bits from all of them. It’s very AoA in many ways, and not just because one of the themed regions on the new “Battleworld” is Age of Apocalypse-based. In fact, this is a bit like a theme park isn’t it?

But the main thrust is that the whole of the Marvel line of comics is on hold, bar a few exceptions, leaving only comics set on the various new worlds. Some of them are ‘continuations’, others are ‘preparing to die’ stories set back in the pre-destruction universe, others just writers having fun in the weird new setting without much concern for what it all means. Those might be the ones I’m most excited by, although as a Marvel Unlimited subscriber, I get to read any I fancy without needing to make “purchasing” decision.

Which, actually, might be the best way of experiencing the event.

I don’t know whether Secret Wars will work or not – I can see how it might be annoying to followers of ongoing series which are now being heavily disrupted due to a story which doesn’t relate to them. Age of Apocalypse, at least, was shorter, more self-contained and confined to a smaller group of books which were heavily interrelated anyway, so tight continuity wasn’t a hard pill to swallow. Will Secret Wars lack the tight focus and plotting that made Age of Apocalypse work? I’ll find out in about a year when the whole thing is on Unlimited.

But even if it turns out comics companies learnt the wrong lessons from Age of Apocalypse about what they need to do to sell, the original remains a fun read. A testament to how obvious gimmickery and a bombastic nineties aesthetic don’t have to be bad if there’s a compelling story in there. Worth a look.

FOOTNOTE *: Yes, I’m aware Darkdevil is an actual character from the alternate-future MC2 continuity. He’s the son of a Spider-Man clone possessed by the spirits of both Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) and the demon Zarathos. In many ways, this innocuous pun was a homage to him.

Avengers: Age Of Ultron and the serialisation value of superhero movies

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Avengers: Age of Ultron is out now all over the place, and I saw it on the opening Friday. The many solo film stars of the Marvel movies re-unite to take on an evil robot, ruptures form among the team and I’ll refrain from over-describing the film as some people might still be avoiding spoilers.

It was good, though – not as no-reservations excellent as the first Avengers movie, due to Ultron not being quite as memorable as Loki and the sheer volume of characters taking away from focus. Sill, among the upper echelons of Marvel movies and successfully kept me invested in the whole Marvel monolith.

Anyway, this isn’t going to be a straight review of the movie as there are plenty of those on the internet. The release of Avengers II served as a kinda peak point of a few months where I’ve been consuming a load of superhero media. Between DC’s FlArrow shows, Gotham, Agents of SHIELD, Daredevil and Agent Carter, that’s a whole lotta tights and tights-related material.

And that’s without even counting Walking Dead and Constantine.

Point being: I love serialised fiction across all mediums, but it kinda started with comics. So I’ve been thinking a lot about how this stuff translates because… much as I’ve liked many superhero movies, I feel like TV might be the ultimate medium for them.

“It matters that I matter,” said Batman, as he wept.

“I hate being a lizard! I must turn everyone else into one!”

Superhero comics, of course, are serialised within an inch of their lives. A lot of stories exist only to set up other stories, Some are massive huge important parts of the narrative, others just feature the characters going on a little fun outing or having development – point being, some issues do not feature top-level tension or mega-disasters. It’s fun seeing the characters just hanging out or taking on a slightly-less-A-list bad guy, but we rarely get that in the films.

Because movies, especially big expensive action movies, really fucking want to matter. Scale is their heroin and they demand every story seem like the most important thing in the world.

Sometimes this works – in Avengers: Age of Ultron for example. This is the climactic movie of the whole second Marvel phase and the threat is genuinely world-ending, so we are willing to grant the film the importance that it craves and needs.

This need for scale and importance, however, isn’t always so well-suited to the material – particularly pronounced in a lot of the earlier attempts at superhero movies, before sequels became inevitable. In a bid for drama and importance, a lot of those movies needed to have the villain assemble some kind of doomsday device and/or threaten mass destruction, often for little reason other than “Gosh darn it, this is a damned action movie picture and we gotta give the folk their destructo-spectacle!”

Which leads us to such odd denouements as Doctor Octopus and the Lizard building doomsday machines in Spider-Man movies despite just being a bit sad before that. Or the Scarecrow deciding to create a fear-bomb in Batman Begins, despite it feeling really at odds with the rest of the movie. Hell, even Magneto pulling a mutant-making machine out of his caped arse in X-Men seemed sudden to me.

Because in a TV show, you see, they could justify a finale where the hero just whacked the villain in the cock – ideally with complication or greater stakes, but still, a fight. But for many movies, that’s never quite enough and it has to be World In Danger.

This is particularly pronounced with characters like Batman and Spider-Man who generally work at smaller scales, so tone skews weirdly when the apocalypse is wanged in there.

“Steve, are people… invested in the Avengers?” said Iron Man, as he wept.

Plus, let’s be honest, too expensive for TV.

The other problem with forcing serialised narratives into movies, of course, is that it changes the nature of cinema to try and make it work, and not always in comfortable ways. TV shows are expected to leave a few loose ends hanging for the next episode/series/season, and even they eventually reach a grand finale where all threads are tied up.

A lot of this might be a psychological expectation – a TV show, as part of its make-up, is there to pull you through episodes. Films, because they’re sold as a singular experience, are expected to be more self-contained, and if all you get out of a cinema visit is that the studio would quite like you to see their other similar films, it’s understandable you’d be pissed off. This is one reason Guardians of the Galaxy was so good – it bent over backwards to be a standalone movie-style adventure romp, rather than an up-budget TV pilot.

If you flipped the psychology, I suppose, you could take this as incentive to be amazing – there’s no space for a filler episode here, guys – every installment has to brilliant in terms of quality as well as franchise maintenance, otherwise the whole house of cards might fall.

But, as hinted in the previous section, sometimes a quieter episode can build character and make the bigger ones work – honestly, one major problem with Age of Ultron for me? It felt like we were meant to invest in the Avengers as this big substantial organisation that had carved out a role and a dynamic. This would mean Ultron coming along to ruin it was a grand tragedy, striking at the heart of something precious.

Unfortunately, with only one previous Avengers film, it felt like the institution barely existed before it fell. The only chance the movieverse got to show us “a normal day” for the Avengers was the opening scene of the second film. It felt like a story where the main selling point was Smashing The Status Quo, except because we only get one film every three years, the Avengers don’t feel like the reassuring constant required for that to really kick us in the face.

Anyway, that’s just something I’ve been feeling about superheroes for a while, and with all this Ultronitude going down, seemed a good time to talk about this. I will, however, close out positive by saying this: Arrow, Flash, Daredevil, Agent Carter and, yes, even Agents of SHIELD lately, are doing good-to-great jobs of nailing all the stuff I’m talking about. If you like superheroes or serialised adventure in general but have been resisting the TV versions, I recommend giving one or two a chance. They won’t all be everyone’s cup of tea, but they’re all good serialised adventures in their own way.

Ultimate Spider-Man – A Potentially Pre-Emptive Eulogy

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Last week, the Ultimate Spider-Man comic seemed to come to an end. It’s hard to be certain, as Marvel Comics are being very cagey about the future of their publishing line, but based on some heartfelt words from series writer Brian Michael Bendis on his Tumblr, it looks like we’ve reached the end of that book in its current form.

The character may carry on, but sounds like either he’ll no longer be written by Bendis or the set-up will be radically changed. Either way, I was inspired to produce some words, as this was a comic that meant a lot to me over the years.

Peter The Animal-Themed Villain Slayer?

The Ultimate line from Marvel began in the early 2000s (originally under the title Ground Zero Comics, thankfully changed before 9/11), re-imagining their main characters as debuting in the present day, rather than the mid-20th century. It revised origins, streamlined continuity, tweaked premises to suit modern audiences, and was wildly successful for a while. Many Ultimate changes were adapted into the recent mega-hit Marvel movies.

However, eventually, the Ultimate line grew its own complex continuity, the regular Marvel line offered a more competitive alternative and many of the books struggled. The big exception: Ultimate Spider-Man, initially by indie crime comics writer Brian Michael Bendis and experienced superhero artist Mark Bagley.

It’s just not a great haircut.

At the heart of Ultimate Spidey, and perhaps the reason it lasted such a long time when the others lost their way, was the idea of Spider-Man as a teenage character. Peter Parker re-envisaged as a modern angry, moping nerd, cursed with a terrible floppy haircut and left forever young like Bart Simpson.

If this series had a firm influence outside old Spider-Man comics, it was teen adventure dramas like Buffy The Vampire Slayer, as Spider-Man struggled with his moral obligations, supervillain battles and web of complex teenage feelings. He swung neatly from soap to action to genuinely funny comedy sequences. There was Gwen and Mary Jane, Norman and Harry Osborn, a terrifying Doctor Octopus and even a non-alien Venom. Good times.

I Was A Late-Teen Spider-Fan

I was a late-teenage Spider-Man fan while this started coming out, so I suppose there’s an obvious appeal there. But as someone who loved the sci-fi/soap opera/jokes combo of Spider-Man more than any other superhero, I thought this really captured the spirit of the character for me, distilling it into a pure form without many distractions. After all, Spidey is the forerunner of all teen relatable superheroes, and it was weird that there hadn’t really been many comics where he lived in that genre – sneaking out of school to fight the Rhino and trying to make it back in time for his date.

I also felt the length of the run did a lot for it. Obviously, not every comic book run should go on forever. Still, the feeling of a world developing, characters coming and going, all with Bendis as a unifying creative voice even after the original artist left, gave the series a feeling of authorial ownership and consistency you don’t get from many superhero comics.

I don’t want to ignore the artists – Mark Bagley cemented himself as not just a definitive Spidey artist here, but one who can convey lengthy conversations just as well as superhero action.

The subsequent artists – primarily Stuart Immonen, David Lafuente, Sara Pichelli and David Marquez – were all top-notch too, continuing in the tradition of exciting, dynamic art that flowed through the action. They made the superhero action look like it had real weight rather than abstract gesturing, while still selling all the emotional beats.

And I haven’t even talked yet about the other major thing Ultimate Peter Parker got that the regular one probably never will: an ending.

Even-Ultimater Spider-Man

Lovely Miles Morales costume.

I cried when Ultimate Peter Parker died, I’m not ashamed to admit it. Series original artist Mark Bagley came back to draw that last storyline and gave him exactly the sacrifice you’d want. Seriously, if you’d been reading all along, it was a brutal, sad pay-off. Even though he might now be back from the dead, it doesn’t deaden the impact of that issue for me.

Plus it meant Ultimate Spider-Man could innovate yet again by giving us the all-new version: Miles Morales. An young biracial teenager inspired by Peter Parker’s death and just happening to acquire similar-but-not-identical spidery powers, Miles donned a redesigned Spider-Man costume and picked up where Parker left off.

Paving the way for many more diverse superhero replacements in recent years, Miles kept up the bold Spidey tradition of likability and humour in the face of horrible suffering. With Bendis still on-board as writer, he’s kept the tone consistent, continuing the Ultimate Spidey tradition of making old tropes seem new and exciting. The inspired part, I think, was yanking away the Parker-era safety net of recognising characters/stories from the original universe, but keeping the tone intact.

Sales of the Ultimate initiative trailed off in recent years, and we’ve finally reached the point of winding it down. Bendis and Bagley are re-teaming for a finale story called Ultimate End, which should be heartwrenching. Still, they’ve all but confirmed that Miles Morales will stay around in some form – based on some news stories, he may even join the Avengers.

Nonetheless, part of me feels an overhanging sadness. As I’ve mentioned, the glorious tapestry of the Ultimate Spider-Man universe is a big selling point. Bendis built a world populated by likable and memorable characters, all the better to make us suffer when he starts swinging the hammer into them.

If we lose that, even if Miles Morales himself survives, I will feel something has been lost. What about his friendship with Ganke, dammit?

Yes, the character and what he represents are important, but the Ultimate Spider-Man series, supporting cast and style meant something to me too, and if this is the end, I’m sorry to see them go. But I got to read over 200 issues of this thing I like, with pretty much uniformly great art, so I suppose my suffering isn’t quite the worst in the world.

Since I’ve Found Serenity – Thoughts on first watching Firefly in 2015

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You can’t take the sky from me… *sob*

As mentioned on my Twitter, I’ve recently watched popular Joss Whedon-helmed TV show Firefly and movie follow-up Serenity for the first time ever. I have no real excuse for this – I believe I have lived with copies of the DVD for at least six years now.

For the unacquainted, Firefly is often described as a “space western”. It revolves around the ramshackle spaceship Serenity, whose crew are living under the radar for various reasons, surviving on snatched jobs from various employers. Thanks to this off-the-grid ethos, their missions mostly end up unsavoury – theft, smuggling or worse.

Firefly is perhaps even more famous as a great One That Got Away of the modern TV age – despite massive critical and fan love, it lasted one 14-episode season. Whedon had the movie follow-up Serenity to wrap up at least some major plot threads, but for the most part, it died young, its potential unfulfilled, everyone is very sad.

Anyway, despite its massive popularity, I’ve only just sat down and watched it. I don’t think it’s that significant whether I think Firefly is good (BRIEF REVIEW: it is very good – unless you hate the sci-fi genre or Whedon’s quips-and-sadness writing style, you will probably like it), but I am kinda interested how it looks to a modern TV viewer. Has it informed the landscape? Would it do better nowadays? Other talking points, probably?

And yes, I may mention a few spoilers, but now I’ve finally watched the thing, there’s officially no-one else left to care.

Shiny Shiny Arc Reactors

“22 episodes, we’ve been standing here…”

I watch a lot of genre TV at the moment, and they all have very long storylines. It used to just be the prestigious cable shows like The Wire but right now, I’d say almost every US drama show I follow is mostly focused on a long game, pushing a larger arc forward a few units each week. The case-of-the-week procedural stuff seems fairly out of fashion. Even Once Upon A Time, which ain’t mega-pretentious, definitely focuses on the long game.

This has been the case since around the age of Heroes/24/Lost, I’d say – pace sped up since then, as almost all those shows ended up being somewhat hamstrung by the slowness of their own plot, especially when they have 20+ episode seasons. And when modern genre TV does the Case O’The Week stuff, it generally does it kinda badly. I’ve started watching Arrow, Agents of SHIELD and Person Of Interest lately and all three start off with somewhat stilted attempts to do Case Of The Week.

Firefly arrived before long arcs became quite so standard, especially among 22-episode network shows. Watching in 2015, I was surprised how old-school the plotting was. I kinda expected something aggressively arc driven and ahead of its time, but no, it did a different caper every week and fully committed to it, allowing the subplots to advance in fractional chunks around the side.

Of course, this means when the show got cancelled painfully early, most of the subplots were barely even warmed up, but the individual missions were all fully developed and tense. Even though many episodes didn’t advance the mega-plot much/at all, we felt fully invested in what was happening because the weekly stories revealed new things about the characters.

Individual episodes took place in a connected universe, with characters recurring and stories having ramifications down the line (well, the ones they got the chance to show), but never at the cost of each episode feeling like a complete unit.

Which, in turn, just reminds you the problem with modern shows attempting Case Of The Week: they’ve clearly decided the audience only really cares about the ongoing plots. As a result, the Cases Of The Week are half-arsed and uninteresting, as disposable to the characters as they are to me, the poor viewer.

Choke On The Gorram Comic Timing

Funnier than they look.

It was never established as a plot point that gaseous Comic Timing was regularly pumped through the vents of the spaceship Serenity, but I think we all know the truth. Joss Whedon was a major practitioner of using heavy comedy in your dramatic show to get the people to like your cast (even the evil ones). After his success in both Firefly and Buffy/Angel, along with Aaron Sorkin’s on West Wing, it’s become fairly common.

Still, much like the Case Of The Week plots, there’s a way of doing this stuff well. Yes, everyone on Serenity was suspiciously good at delivering and selling a joke, but all in their own way. Mal’s world-weary captain jokes were never the same as Zoe’s dead-dryness as Jayne’s unaware buffoonery as Wash’s genuinely upbeat quips as… etc.

Thanks to the wide influence, I can’t deny some of the Firefly dialogue felt a little overfamiliar, possibly not through much fault of its own. Between characters like Felicity on Arrow, Whedon’s own work elsewhere and, yes, the way his syntax has influenced the offhand writing style of a whole geek generation, it feels obvious and standard when it probably shouldn’t.

Still, it’s genuinely funny for the most part, and (this is crucial when doing banter) conveys the character relationships, rather than making everyone look like the same brand of chattering arsehole.

The Fireflying Dead

“If I come back on telly, will the season 8 comics stay canon?”

With the modern TV trend of reviving shows from the 90s or early 2000s, part of me wonders how long before someone considers digging Firefly up and inflating its liquefying body. It clearly has some kind of audience, people still talk about it with wild love and passion.

That Con Man fundraiser starring two of the main actors has made more money than most people will earn in a decade. 24, X Files and Heroes are on their way back, clearly executive nostalgia for that era of TV exists. Could it happen?

I suspect the answer is probably no, mainly because all the shows I just mentioned were genuine cultural phenomena on a bigger scale. Making new Firefly would probably be expensive due to the large cast and fancy spaceship set/CGI and without anywhere near as a good a return guarantee. Doesn’t help that the one follow-up they already did (the Serenity movie) apparently didn’t perform that well.

Although if we’re talking Whedon exhumations, in the current climate, wouldn’t be surprised to discover someone is trying to arrange a Buffy revival. Like, an actual return with original cast/writers rather than the rumoured and baffling Buffy-without-Whedon project. I’m sure some kind of conversation may have happened, wouldn’t necessarily stake my family farm on it ever materalising though.

Breaking Mal

Did Firefly influence this maniac?

One last thing Firefly might have been ahead of its time at – the crew of Serenity weren’t necessarily the heroes of the wider story. It sugarcoated that pill for sure, by making them mega-likable (see previous re: humour) and Serenity kinda homely in a tumbledown way, but they were often doing ‘bad’ things and making morally dubious decisions. They may not have been villains, but they were often anti-heroes.

Nowadays, of course, cult TV has been a nest of dickbags for a while. We’ve been all about likeable, sympathetic criminals in Breaking Bad, Dexter and Weeds. Rick of The Walking Dead is only ever one inconvenient testicle itch from decapitating everyone. Even Arrow (of Arrow fame) spent his entire first season slaughtering people in huge numbers before settling into a more gentle Batman-esque position.

It’s reached the extent that the new Flash show seems like it’s doing something weirdly new and groundbreaking just by starring an untortured nice bloke who wants to help people out.

Still, Firefly’s cult status hasn’t brought back spaceship sci-fi or the Westerns onto TV in any meaningful way. One quickly-cancelled show can only do so much.

Anyway, this has gone from a few quick thoughts to something approximately the length of my Philosophy dissertation. If there’s anything to be gained from this, it’s that Firefly is still a fascinating, unique and thought-provoking experience and if you haven’t watched it, it’s worth a go.

Now, maybe time for me to finally give Veronica Mars a shot.

BEST OF 2014 – Top Ten TV

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I used to be an Internet TV Reviewer, you know. Writing blog-length reviews of TV show episodes, expressing my critical thoughts, trying to be funny without tipping into bitchy snark. I eventually burnt out on sheer volume of critiquing, not to mention it wasn’t justifying the time spent neglecting fiction, but still, I never reviewed purely for attention. I did it because I love the work.

So, I haven’t reviewed a TV series weekly since Game of Thrones season 4 finished in April, but I have run down my top ten TV shows every year since 2012 on The Digital Fix and here in 2013, so I see no reason to stop now. Let’s see this year’s list, which includes The First Ever Non-Fictional Shows To Chart.

#10 – The Fall

Relegated to honourable mentions last year, The Fall jumps to the proper chart for series 2. Gillian Anderson’s Stella Gibson closes the net around misogynist serial killer Paul Spector (Jamie Dornan), desperate to stop him before too many innocent women die.

And if that sounds like a lot of other shows, fair enough. The appeal of The Fall is mostly in the execution – the acting (Anderson especially is magnificent, Dornan very strong too), direction and writing are all at a high level, digging into the motivations of everyone involved and making the investigation challenging without the police looking like idiots.

It gives in to a slightly cheap semi-cliffhanger at the end, but The Fall was still amazingly good viewing. And it lets me imagine a final season of Dexter that wasn’t terrible!

#9 – Homeland

At long last, a year or two later than they probably should’ve, Homeland sloughs off Damian Lewis’ Nick Brody and reinvents itself as a spy thriller revolving around Claire Danes as Carrie Matheson. She’s in Islamabad, a new and wholly un-American backdrop, to make her latest morally ambiguous battle with terrorism seem fresher.

Much like the previous season, it starts off slow, but was completely compelling by about halfway through. Claire Danes is still great, but Mandy Patinkin as Saul is what really sold this season for me. His performance during his kidnap plot is gutwrenching, scenestealing work. To be honest, I feel bad not placing this run of Homeland a little higher, but alas, ’twas a competitive year and the final episode was a tad disappointing.

#8 – True Detective

As you may note if you’ve read a lot of these year-end list, most people had True Detective a little higher than I’ve ended up placing it. I’m not saying it wasn’t a fantastic work of technical TV, with Woody Harrelson and the much-praised Matthew McConaughey delivering well-written dialogue pitch-perfectly. Not to mention a considered, atmospheric look and, yes, that astounding unbroken long shot.

But still, this chart is a list of what I enjoyed the most, and although it was well done, there were long stretches when I felt I was admiring True Detective rather than enjoying it. Not to mention, yes, I am one of those people who found the ending a bit of an anti-climax. Still nicely done, but after all the slow, slow build, I was hoping for more actual incident. So here it lies at #8, falling just short of…

#7 – Doctor Who

It’s only climbed one place since last year, but that doesn’t convey the extent to which I feel Doctor Who has improved in its eighth series. It mostly just represents the scale of the competition. So yeah, this was Peter Capaldi’s first series in the part, and I thought probably the best since the first Matt Smith run, restoring a little mystery, fun and drama to the whole affair.

It helped that (perhaps bruised by scathing criticism last year), showrunner Steven Moffat and his writers were clearly determined to retool Jenna Coleman’s Clara into a character with the depth to carry the show. Some said this resulted in a run focused on the assistant to the detriment of the hero, but series seven was more about the Doctor, and it just felt rambling and ungrounded as a result.

This one had some heart, plus a compelling arc around Missy. The Christmas special wasn’t bad either – albeit marred by obvious rewriting at the end after Coleman changed her mind about leaving.

#6 – Brooklyn Nine Nine

Brooklyn Nine Nine coming in here means True Detective isn’t even the highest ranking police-based show on the list. The American mainstream sitcom genre ran a little dry lately, so a new one coming through with the right combination of wacky jokes, character banter and real feelings is always a cause for celebration.

Will we end up hating Brooklyn Nine Nine when it reaches season eleven and we’ve heard all its jokes a thousand times? I’ll be honest, I can’t rule it out, but for now, it’s so nice to have a new, assured, reliably uplifting comedy in town, I’ve given it a generous placing. Captain Holt alone (the amazing Andre Braugher) would probably get this into the list somewhere. Oh, and the first season is just up on UK Netflix.

#5 – Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle

The first ever non-fictional show to appear on this annual list (although not the last one this year) is Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle, a one-man stand-up show featuring the so-called comedian’s comedian talking at extreme length about the topic of the week. After a year or two to get the format right, they’ve found the confidence to just show one man talking for the whole episode, with only a slightly different man to break it up.

Lee’s grim, knowing, deadpan humour is not  to everyone’s taste, obviously, but again, this is my list, and as far as I was concerned, this was one of the most successful TV exercises of the year. Absolutely nailed all its targets, and having Chris Morris as Lee’s main interrogator was the icing on the cake.

#4 – Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones must surely be one of the most successful TV shows in current Western society. The epic saga of Kings fighting Kings to be King, with some Queens and some incest, and god knows what else. This wasn’t actually their best year to date, there was some slack plotting as characters clearly just killed time waiting to get somewhere, and also a confusing rape scene that just made certain character arcs harder to grasp.

Still, here it is at #4, because even when the characters are rambling along, the dialogue, acting and moment-to-moment storytelling is always great. Not to mention, whenever Game of Thrones hit a big set-piece scene (Joffrey’s wedding, the Viper’s big fight, the invasion of the Wall, Tyrion’s trial, the final few scenes of this season), they utterly nailed it. Great show, still one of the most watchable things currently running. I await season five with interest, as we’ve finally finished book three and now, surely, entirely new things gotta happen?

#3 – Last Week Tonight

Not too long after our first ever non-fictional show, here comes the second. Last Week Tonight is HBO’s vehicle for John Oliver, freshly poached from The Daily Show and ready to show us what he’d do if given a desk, some graphics and the chance to be sarcastic about the news.

Well, after a few weeks to find his feet, Oliver has settled on his offering – long-form investigative journalism that takes dry subjects and somehow makes them intriguing, funny and accessible. For sheer cultural impact this year among leftie internet types, Last Week Tonight may be unparalleled in TV terms.

Not to say it’s a flawless venture – in particular, the fun-video segments thrown in to break up long spells at the desk often fall a little flat or overstay their welcome. But when this show works, it really works. And I’d say that even if I didn’t have a lot of affection for John Oliver from The Bugle.

#2 – Hannibal

When I wrote last year’s Top Ten TV, Hannibal landed at #2 and I was confident, with the mighty Breaking Bad gone, it would ascend to the #1 spot in 2014. As you can see, that hasn’t happened. However, Hannibal remains one of the most uniquely stylised, strange, funny, scary, charismatic dramas on TV. It clearly lives about six feet up itself, but it always has a sense of humour about both that and the horrible things it does to its characters.In short – yes, Nick Bryan likes a bloody dark comedy. Surprising.

Still, Hannibal had another great year developing its universe further, making major changes to the show’s set-up but still remaining fundamentally recognisable. Intelligent, self-referential and with a magnetic central performance from Mads Mikkelsen as the cannibal himself. Oh, and it finished off its second season with the other big thing that makes me like a TV show – an absolutely killer cliffhanger that didn’t feel unearnt or cheap. Bravo. Can’t wait for season three.But it still isn’t at the top, thanks to the arrival of…

#1 – Orange Is The New Black

Every so often, a show arrives that works in every way, has a huge and varied cast yet almost no weak spots, good acting across the board, minor characters that are almost as compelling as the supposed lead.

In 2014, Orange Is The New Black was that show. It was the best, most absorbing and affecting thing I saw this year, bar none. Netflix gets a lot of good press for their original content, but even if the rest of it was garbage, the creation of this series would probably justify the entire initiative.

From the writer of Weeds and starring so many good people that I feel bad singling anyone out, Orange Is The New Black is funny, addictive and brilliant. I watched both seasons this year, which may explain why it’s had such a particular impact upon me, but the 2014 season was excellent. Even the mostly-absence of major character Alex (apparently for schedule/contract reasons rather than a desire to quit) didn’t slow them down much, and it seems she’ll be back in a bigger way next season.

I was particularly impressed with the direction of Piper in season 2 – for much of the first one, I thought she’d end up becoming one of those lead characters who was the worst thing in their own show, but they’ve really made her work, simply by allowing her to grow believably, rather than keeping her as a tedious static anchor. They’ve also introduced a new character who is basically Piper from when she first arrived, to hammer home that contrast.

Amazing show. If you have Netflix and haven’t seen it, I recommend rectifying that. If you don’t have Netflix, consider signing up for the free month just to hammer through Orange Is The New Black.

Honourable Mentions

My prime honourable mention this year is Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, definitely #11 in the list. It improved by leaps and bounds after the dull first two-thirds of season 1, and at this point, midway through season 2, is close to becoming the espionage-with-superpowers show we all hoped it would be. The Walking Dead also had a very good year.

Other nearly-almosts were Orphan Black, Sherlock and House Of Cards – I watched both seasons of House Of Cards this year, liked the first one a fair bit, but it just fell apart in season 2 for me. With the exception of a couple of exciting episodes around the beginning and end, there were no interesting characters left and watching it was a chore. Oh, and The Newsroom might’ve crept in with its final season if the second half were as good as the first.

And that, at last, really is that. Wait, one last shout-out for Arrow, which I didn’t include in the list as I’ve barely seen any 2014 episodes, but season 2 especially is just stellar. If you have any affection for superheroes, or action-driven TV in general, check it out. Looking forwarding to starting The Flash soon too.

Okay, I’m finished now. I swear. That was 2014! Let’s all move on with our lives!