Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars II Featuring: Zoids (UK)

1. Introduction

In the mid-1980s, Secret Wars was surely the comicbook series that Marvel UK were born to reprint.

In fact, there were two such series awaiting republication for a British audience - Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, and the casually named sequel Secret Wars II.

While they may sound like similar properties, they were in fact quite distinct from each other.

The original US series Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars was 12 issues long, told a complete story with a beginning, middle and end, was set far off in deep space, and featured more or less the same clearly-defined group of super heroes throughout. They were battling an equally clearly-defined group of established super villains, at the behest of a remote god-like light in the sky called the Beyonder, who only very rarely said anything.

Secret Wars II on the other hand, despite being written by the same guy (Jim Shooter), was only nine issues long, set on Earth, and featured a dice-roll of different Marvel characters every month. The Beyonder now had a body, and was struggling to reconcile his omnipotence and omniscience with the imperfections of his new-found humanity. Consequently, he talked a heck of a lot more. Hey - he was now the only main character.

The real curve-ball though, was that Secret Wars II came with 33 additional chapters, thanks to crossovers into 22 other pre-existing Marvel series.

While this was a genius way of cross-marketing the whole Marvel range in America, collecting the entire sprawling story into one continuous British reprint serial was always going to be a challenge, for so many reasons.

The official reading order had been set-out in the backs of the US issues, but this was plainly wrong. Also, by appearing in these other series, the Beyonder would necessarily drift in and out of much longer ongoing storylines that didn't involve him, so how much of those bigger contexts would it be necessary to also present? Then of course there would be the constantly varying writing-style, artwork and page-count.

Not to mention Marvel UK's love of changing things anyway.

In the event, the British reprint of both Secret Wars sagas lasted for an impressive 80 issues, and actually made it all the way through to the end! Well, mostly. If it had all seen print, then it just wouldn't have been Marvel UK. We love them for the weird and wonderful mutations that would emerge in strips that we had long since believed finished.

Those riffs are what this post is celebrating.

2. Issue Guide / Mutation Highlights

#1

Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #1
Right from the very first fortnightly issue, Marvel UK stamp their own spin on proceedings, which I think was a good idea, up to a point.


To introduce some of the huge cast of characters, the lead strip is preceded by a double-page spread of a Daily Bugle cover (dated February 5, 1984), an editorial, and the first of an intermittent self-parodying two-page UK-originated strip entitled "Marvel's Secret Artist".

However, when the Secret Wars strip finally does get started, it's inexplicably broken-up into two chapters of 14 and 9 pages apiece, separated by "Superhero Secrets" and an advert for next week's issue. Then "chapter two" begins, with a UK-originated recap of how we left events a mere two pages earlier. Huh?


Also, free transfers, background and a separate toy competition form too!

#2-9
Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #2-5
Alpha Flight #1-3
The regular features settle-down to include an Alpha Flight back-up strip, full-page fact-files on the many characters, and almost constant hero/villain-related free gifts, which would frequently damage the cover if you attempted to remove them. This is a real shame, because some of the specially-commissioned British artwork that adorns this series is nothing short of stunning…


#10
Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #6
Alpha Flight #4
Settling down, the comic's title is abbreviated to just Secret Wars, it becomes a weekly, and this issue features a free Kellogg's Corn Flakes model airliner! They're running a bit short on those character stickers, aren't they?

#11-18
Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #6-9
Alpha Flight #4-8
Iceman #1-3
Indeed, the free gifts do kind of dry up. Despite a Spider-Man sticker in (well, on) issue #11, issue #12 tries to get away with a "free" pull-out comic of Zoids by Steve Parkhouse! Ooh, let's hope they don't try to pull that fast one again.

#19


Uh-oh.

Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #9
Alpha Flight #8
The comic pivotally goes full-colour, features a free fold-out poster (advert?) for Zoids toys, and also launches a regular four-page Zoids strip, which until it's penultimate episode will remain in the centre staples. This positioning is on the one hand irritating because it interrupts the Secret Wars strip, but on the other hand ingenious because it can be easily removed and discarded. As they say, no need to ruin your comic!

#20-24
Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #9-11
Iceman #3-4
Publication worryingly changes its name to Secret Wars Featuring: Zoids

#25

Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #11
Features an unprecedented eleven pages of UK-originated strip material, composed of the four-page Zoids strip, a double-bill return / end for the Marvel's Secret Artist strip, and… a brand-new three page Spider-Man story written by US Secret Wars author Jim Shooter, which the Americans never got? Yes, really. Reviewed in more detail here.

#26

US original on the left, UK reprint on the right - guess what month it is?
Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #11
Alpha Flight #9
Contains the final episode of Zoids, which for the only time in its run is one page out-of-sync with the centre-staples, making it impossible to remove. The strip could be finishing for any one of a number of reasons. Maybe because it's the final issue of 1985. Or perhaps it was always planned to last for eight weeks. Or maybe the editors needed the space, foreseeing the approaching expansion of the lead strip to fill the whole of each issue.

Zoids was not about to die though and would shortly merge with The Spider-Man Comic to become Spider-Man And Zoids. The Zoids strip therein was initially still written by Ian Rimmer, then later Richard Alan, James Hill, Simon Furman, Steve Alan... and ultimately Grant Morrison!

#27-31

Reprints: Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars #12
Alpha Flight #5-10
Secret Wars I concludes, as does Alpha Flight for the moment.

Issue #29 promises that the Secret Artist will be "back soon". Well, all I can say is that that's one very secretive secret artist they have there.

#32
Reprints: Secret Wars II #1

Secret Wars II begins... with no back-up strip!

Faced with squeezing a 25 page strip into a 24 page publication, including cover and editorial, Marvel UK sharpen up their scissors in readiness for what must surely rate as the greatest era of re-editing in their careers. Right from page one, the very first two panels get cut, prompting the rewriting of the story's opening narration in a different hand…


Original US opening narration:

"Beyond time, space, and the myriad dimensions lies another universe, to which our own is as a droplet of water to the ocean. The One Who Is All in that other universe has learned of our universe, and of us… and he is coming here. Now.

Stan Lee presents: Secret Wars II.

He enters our space at a random point, for time and distance have no meaning to him. At unimaginable velocity, he travels through the void…

… seeking one particular galaxy…

… and therein…

… a certain planet…"

UK opening narration:

"Stan Lee presents: Secret Wars II.

He seeks…

He finds…

It begins…"

Now, admittedly, it can be tough cramming a 25-page strip into just 22, however an alternative solution might have been to have just given the comic another four pages. Why sure, of course that would have cost more money to produce, however this issue also somehow invested in an extra eight full-colour glossy A4 sides for the "free" fold-out poster of the cover in the centre.

While this is indeed an awesome poster (roughly 83cm x 52cm on thicker paper), I doubt that many readers would have chosen it over the remaining three pages of the story that they had actually bought the comic for. Even at half that size we could have had those missing pages.

Or maybe it was just a clever ruse to entice readers who'd already got the US original into paying for it a second time. Hey - I did.

However that can't explain the more entertaining mutation that occurs when Owen and Marsha are watching teevee. See if you can spot the well-intentioned, but apparently misinformed, Anglicisation…


What, did they think that Laverne And Shirley had never aired in the UK or something? I'm just glad that Marsha's bag of "CHIPS" wasn't changed into a bag of "HILL STREET BLUES".

#33
Reprints: Iron Man #197
And so it begins.

Of all the "crossover" issues to reprint, Iron Man #197 is surely the most superfluous. It doesn't contain the Beyonder anywhere, doesn't resolve anything left hanging in the main issue (rather elongating it), and its events are never referred to again. The preceding chapter had even finished with the Beyonder tailing Captain America, surely making those events more logical ones to follow next.

Most unfortunately of all, having reprinted this instalment, Marvel UK were left with so many Iron Man plot-threads hanging that they then invested issues #46, #49, #52 and #53 in wrapping them up. Alternatively, maybe the British Secret Wars was selling so well that they were deliberately trying to stretch it out for as long as possible.

#34
Reprints: Captain America #308

#35
Reprints: The Thing #22
Not an official crossover, but the lone final instalment of the Thing's 14-part adventures on the Secret Wars planet. While the back-story is recapped pretty well, Tarianna's sudden introduction and death sit less comfortably.

#36
Reprints: Fantastic Four #276-278
The Uncanny X-Men #183
Fantastic Four #266
(just the five, mind)
The beginning of what I like to call the first half of the series' "jigsaw period", as Marvel UK cut up existing strips and pasted bits of them back together to make new ones.

In principle, this was absolutely the way to go. In execution, well maybe they got a little too creative. This issue is a good example.


New cover - that little girl is actually the Thing's ex-girlfriend Alicia Masters.


Splash page: Background removed, narration-box resized, repositioned and recoloured, title imported in three pieces from the following issue, credits tweaked to Anglicise 'colors' to 'colour' and add British inker Mark Farmer, British Secret Wars II banner added at the top, and the image has been zoomed-in a bit. Oh yes, and I almost didn't notice, but it's UP-SIDE DOWN!

Other than that, pages 1-3 are pretty well pages 1-3 of Fantastic Four #276.

Pages 4-8 are composed of the top halves of pages 1-10 of Fantastic Four #277. Well, mostly. Right up until the cross-over with Rom #65 when this alteration happens:



Aww, now that has been done rather well, poor Thing.

Pages 9-13 are taken from the opening of The Uncanny X-Men #183, with the addition of the prefix "Interlude:", and the X-Men's return "from Japan" altered to "from the Secret Wars".


Page 14 is the splash page from Fantastic Four #266 from about a year earlier (thanks Herschel) doctored-up with a new thought-balloon containing words from Fantastic Four #277 page 20 panel 2. This transformed the subject of She-Hulk's contemplation from her recent acceptance into the FF, to her imminent departure. Had the next page been printed too, then three panels later Walter Langowski from Alpha Flight would have snuck back in.

Page 15 is made up of the tops of the next two pages from that issue, after a fashion.

Finally, pages 16-18 are, with a few alterations, pages 13-15 of Fantastic Four #278. A few pieces of narration have been adapted or removed, but most shocking is what doesn't get softened from the anti-racism storyline:


#37
Reprints: The Uncanny X-Men #196
With free Transformers sticker album!

#38-44
Reprints: Fantastic Four #279-284
Secret Wars II #2
Alpha Flight #11

Well, they've done something about the N word this time:


These six issues pick up and complete the Fantastic Four's Psycho-Man story, while chronologically weaving in the Beyonder's encounters with Spider-Man, Power Man and Iron Fist. Most connections are made pretty well, although not all.

For example, in issue #38 we get the impressive opening splash page from Secret Wars II #2, with credits, followed literally three pages later by the splash page from Fantastic Four #280, with completely different credits.

Alternatively issue #39 has no such qualms about accurate crediting, happily swapping back into material from Secret Wars II #2 half way through, as though it had all been masterminded by John Byrne et al.

Issue #41 features a UK-originated splash page from Mike Collins, expertly inspired by and almost word-for-word consistent with the much smaller US panels that it replaces.



It's also this issue that exposes quite how unnecessary this seven-issue detour for the Fantastic Four's Psycho-Man storyline is. The Beyonder interacts with the FF for less than two-and-a-half pages of that. This makes the Hate Monger, and his unseen murderer, appear to be just generic baddies, whose only purpose in the strip is to show how routinely complex life in the Marvel universe can be.

Beyonder: "The multiplicity and disunity of this universe is confusing!"

Reed: "The human condition doesn't often fall into neat, orderly patterns! Tonight for example--! So much happened… so many forces were operating at once--! Frankly, I'm at a loss to account for that mysterious vigilante who destroyed the Hate Monger!"

The following week, issue #42 reprints Fantastic Four #282, which had in the US featured the Beyonder in just one panel, which Marvel UK cut.

Issue #42 also sees the launch of Lew Stringer's half-page super hero parody Macho Man, which will pop up until #79. In the circumstances, I must conclude that Macho Man is, secretly, the secret artist.

Web Of Spider-Man #6 and Amazing Spider-Man #268 were reprinted in Secret Wars II Special #1.

Issues #39 and #41 are filled-out by the final two-part Alpha Flight origin. Now that every member of Alpha Flight has at last been fully introduced to us, it feels as though we can finally get really stuck-in to their present adventures. (this was the final issue to feature Alpha Flight)

#45
Reprints: Secret Wars II #3
Oops, I'm wrong. Five pages get cut to squeeze it in, but a crowd scene that includes the disembodied mute head of Puck from Alpha Flight in monochrome actually survives. Finally a crossover with the back-up strip!

In other black-and-white news, well adverts really, a four-part half-page Biggles serial begins, to be concluded "at your local cinema"! (though inconsistently in Technicolor)

#46-53
Reprints: The Avengers #255-260
Iron Man #198-201
The Uncanny X-Men #199
Daredevil - The Man Without Fear #223


The second-half of Secret Wars II's "jigsaw period" really concerns itself with four things:

1. Extensively conveying the six issues of The Avengers that surround the Beyonder's three-and-a-half page appearance therein. (conversely, the corresponding two pages of Secret Wars II #3 had both been cut)

2. Extensively tying-up Iron Man's ongoing storylines from the episode reprinted in #33 that didn't even feature the Beyonder. Maybe someone thought that his new costume needed explaining? (after its earlier brief appearance with Puck in #45)


3. Rachel taking on the power of Phoenix, to foreshadow her later material.

4. Daredevil #223. (which like The Avengers #259 & 260 and Iron Man #199 & #200 actually gets an issue to itself)

From this point on, barring double issues, Secret Wars II limits itself to representing just one US issue at a time.

#54
Reprints: Fantastic Four #285
Reviewed in more detail here.

#55-56
Reprints: Fantastic Four Annual #19
Seemlessly broken into two parts, this nonetheless seems an odd choice for the lead strip. Having in recent months built-up the Avengers' Battle To End All Skrulls storyline, when the big finale happens, it's the Fantastic Four's alternative, more remote, perspective on events that gets printed instead, in which the Avengers only appear at the end. The actual Avengers episode that belongs here (The Avengers Annual #14) was printed separately in Secret Wars II Special #2. Surely the FF's stand-alone annual should have gone in there instead?

Reviewed in more detail here.

From this point on, every issue contains Secret Wars material, as opposed to related stories, barring #68.

#57
Reprints: Secret Wars II #4
In the squeeze to fit 26 pages into 21, Marvel UK make the most of it, cutting out Cindy Adams, a Dire Wraith, Brandy Clark, Rom, the Thing, the Silver Surfer, Captain America… and President Ronald Reagan!

Most tragic though is the loss of three pages that featured the Beyonder meeting former back-up strip stars Alpha Flight, robbing them of any relevance to the title they supported for so long. Consequently their crossover issue doesn't get reprinted either, although after the jigsaw period we can perhaps be grateful.

#58
Reprints: Dazzler #40.
Reviewed in more detail here.

#59
Reprints: The Avengers #261.

#60
Reprints: Secret Wars II #5


With a wraparound cover by Gammill and Morgan to celebrate Marvel's 25th anniversary! Even Alpha Flight make it in. Captain Britain and Heroes For Hire don't.

#61
Reprints: The Thing #30


Borrows its cover from the concurrent Fantastic Four #296, but with Captain Britain and Meggan cribbed from Captain Britain #13 to replace Puck from Alpha Flight peeking out from under the barcode-box bottom-left.

#62
Reprints Doctor Strange #74
Doctor Strange forgets having met the Beyonder in issue #60. The Beyonder forgets the method he used to teach the Human Torch in issue #54.

Reviewed in more detail here.

#63
Reprints: Cloak And Dagger volume 2 #4
Reviewed in more detail here.

#64
Reprints: Secret Wars II #6
Joyously edited down from 25 pages to 21, the chief victims here are the heroes. I mean call me old-fashioned, but I thought that their appearances were one of this comic's biggest selling points. Like in these two panels from the original US printing:



And now, here's that moment again in the subtly abridged UK version:


That's almost two pages gone there, including the crowd of superheroes that this issue's cover comes from.

Perhaps even more regrettably, see if you can spot the difference between the following two versions of a panel from the penultimate page:



What happened there? Did they cross it out, change their minds, realise they'd run out of Tipp-Ex, and stick a photocopy of it back over the top again hoping that no-one would notice? I mean they didn't even correct "it's" to "its"!

Ah well, we did get a free sticker-badge of Spider-Man!

#65
Reprints: Power Pack #18
Already reprinted in Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi #129-132, but now with a free Enchantress sticker-badge!

Reviewed in more detail here.

#66
Reprints: The Mighty Thor #363
With free Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars sticker album!

Reviewed in more detail here.

#67
Reprints: Power Man And Iron Fist #121
More free stickers. What is this - some sort of seasonal holiday upon which gifts are exchanged?

Reviewed in more detail here.

#68-69
Reprints: Fantastic Four #287-288
Apparently taking Power Man and SHIELD's betrayal of him last issue rather hard, the Beyonder is suddenly in a really bad mood and about to destroy the multiverse.

#70
Reprints: Secret Wars II #7
The Beyonder sits down and has a very long think, presumably about his vulnerability to the power of history last issue, before mellowing and deciding to help everyone by teaching them what their purpose in life is. Whew!

#71
Reprints: The All New, All Daring Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man #111
Runs on from the reprint of The Amazing Spider-Man #273 in Spider-Man And Zoids #33-36.

#72
Reprints: The Uncanny X-Men #202


Continuing an occasional trend, this issue conserves space by recycling the splash page as the cover.

#73
Reprints: Secret Wars II #8
Having now fully recovered from his earlier rash decision to destroy the entire multiverse, the Beyonder decides to destroy the entire multiverse.

There is a certain sense that Marvel UK are giving up here. Not just because of the obvious misordering of chapters, but because of the changes that they don't make.

For example, the final page of the US version of this issue had been clearly stated as set following its three crossover issues, so one might have expected the old Marvel UK to happily cut these panels out and re-insert them where they come. Instead they now go down the much easier route of simply relettering that footnote to read "Following our next three issues!"

What a shame that these would not even turn out to be the same three issues.

#74-75
Reprints: The New Mutants #36-37
Not that these two issues really run on into each other or anything.

Again forgetting his resolve to destroy the entire multiverse, the Beyonder wordlessly returns to his earlier mellow, altruistic self. Then the following issue, for a third time, he decides to destroy the entire multiverse. Oh, fer goodness sake, Beyonder, just make up yer mind!

#76
Reprints: The Amazing Spider-Man #274
Well, most of it. Instead of editing this long issue down, this reprint spills over into Spider-Man And Zoids #41.

#77
Reprints: The Avengers #265
With only four editions left, despite the lack of green on some pages, this issue astounds by actually making some improvements upon the original material.

A pointless flashback of Hercules slaying Antaeus on page 12 is cut. Good call.

A footnote box on page 10 that has no asterisk in the dialogue to refer to it is slickly removed too.

But the coup de grace has got to be the subtle correction that they've made to the final panel…



One, two, three, four, fi... WOW, he's right!

#78
Reprints: The Uncanny X-Men #203
Sadly, we lose the beautiful double-page spread of pages 14-15.

#79-80
Reprints: Secret Wars II #9


Mephisto tortures the Beyonder by boiling him in brine and letting green razorvines grow slowly through his flesh, before vomiting maggots over his face and watching them furiously eat his body away in agonising pain. But not in the UK. Sorry kids.

And so we reach the final issue of Britain's version of the Secret Wars saga.

The series is an incredible achievement. It lasted the entire course of both series, included a heck of a lot of (often irrelevant) backstory, and the editorial carries a tone of sincere enjoyment throughout.

Allowing for a few hiccups (particularly at the end), the order was obviously thought about, and being a subjective thing was never going to exactly match any one reader's opinion. That's part of what makes it fun.

Sure it's a shame that we missed out on some stuff for so many understandable reasons. Some of the biggest losses would have to be those issues that never got reprinted at all: The New Mutants #30, The Incredible Hulk #312, Rom #72, Alpha Flight #28, The Micronauts - The New Voyages #16 and The New Defenders #152.

In case you were wondering, back-up strip stars Alpha Flight do make it back into the lead strip for the last two issues but, amazingly, still never get a word of dialogue. What was the point of introducing them all to us?

This appears to be one title that Marvel UK really didn't want to cancel, it being ultimately forced upon them by running out of material. If that's true, it is perhaps a shame that they didn't manage to produce a few original chapters of their own for these pages, perhaps being told in half issues with cheaper reprint backup-strips to keep costs down.

Captain Britain was the UK superhero of the day, so eleven pages of his and Meggan meeting the Beyonder could have been quite valid. Surely if Rom and the Micronauts could liaise with the one from beyond in the States, then the Transformers, whose UK comic was routinely printing as much British material as American anyway, would have fitted in nicely. Even, hm, yes, I'll say it, even Zoids.

Not Doctor Who though. That would have just been silly.

Alas, although the Beyonder was obviously popular on these shores, he never quite got a new lease of life here, although he did make it into the final panel of Macho Man in #79.


(panel thanks to Lew Stringer)

Above I've noted various amusing shortcomings in the translation, which I'm afraid at age 14 were just the sort of thing that incensed me. This was a bit of a shame, as I think that 14-year-old comic readers were just the sort of consumers who they were trying to appeal to. I collected the series in spite of itself, basically.

However, today at 39 I consider the British Secret Wars to have been an extremely good reprint series. I don't know if any issue actually made it through completely intact, and have not the inclination to go through checking them all, but on some level, I actually hope they didn't. I now enjoy all the changes.

The first episode of Secret Wars II began with its opening panels getting cut, obviously starting as it would go on.

So, having eclipsed the US series by seven issues, what of Secret Wars II's final page?

Oh, it's really subtle. In order to squeeze in a plug for the epilogue (The Avengers #266) which was about to be reprinted in Spider-Man And Zoids (which would itself be cancelled just six issues later), the bottoms of panels 3-6 were quietly trimmed.


Ironic really. For 80 issues Marvel UK had been fighting their own little secret war, with the strip itself.

3. Individual issue reviews:

Secret Wars Featuring: Zoids #25
Secret Wars II #54
Secret Wars II #55-56
Secret Wars II #58
Secret Wars II #62
Secret Wars II #63
Secret Wars II #65-66
Secret Wars II #67

(Marvel's images in this post are copyright Marvel, and were used according to 'fair use' laws)

My Name Is Bruce

This film has absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.

(oh, like they're going to quote me on the box)

Crikey - look at those effects from yesteryear. And that throwaway storyline. And as for the plot-holes, well, I'm afraid they jut out almost as much as that leading actor's chin.

However there are a few people on the planet about whom I can never speak any ill, and Mr Bruce Campbell is one of them.

In this film, which he directs, co-produces and stars in as himself, the man who literally makes a career out of being a B movie actor celebrates everything mediocre about the low-budget genre.

The plot - in which he plays a thoroughly mean-spirited version of himself fighting a real-life supervillain - is entirely secondary to the style. The supervillain in question is just a guy in a costume. Car journeys feature back-projection at a different frame-rate. One actor (Ted Raimi, brother of Sam) plays three different roles.

Unlike his Evil Dead shampoo, the whole thing didn't really gel for me, but I think that means it was a success.

Available here.

Today's celebrity Bible-reader is... Magnús Magnússon

"What is your occupation?"

- Genesis 47:3b (NIV)

The Mask (movie)

Q. What if Jim Carrey were a cartoon character?

A. He'd lose something.

Jim Carrey, I hope we can all agree, is one funny performer, which this film demonstrates admirably.

Here the juxtaposition of his downtrodden everyman persona against his insane over-performing kidult is a thing to behold. There is little similarity between the two guises, and the sheer energy with which he flourishes every line as the Mask is a reminder of just what a fantastic comic actor he is.

It's a shame then, that this terrific vehicle for his talents invests so little of his screen time in this personality, and when it does, he's often replaced by an actual cartoon, robbing us of his abilities. This film needs more Jim, not less.

Elsewhere, the everyday scenes that take up so much of the running time offer little originality, and maybe that's the point. I was impressed at the role-reversal of the two women in Stanley Ipkiss' life, but Carrey's real co-star here is Max as Milo the dog. That quizzical pooch could lead a movie on his own.

The storyline is lazy, with the opening diver's death never returned to and the principal character getting away with robbery, but there are plenty of good moments for the patient.

Ultimately though, for a film that excels every time that Carrey is allowed to do his usual manic thing, it is a mystery why this is kept to such a minimum.

Available here.
Review of the sequel Son Of The Mask here.

Media Prayer Day 2010

Today is New Zealand's Media Prayer Day.

Hundreds of churches throughout the country are taking a few minutes of their Sunday service to pray for Christianity within New Zealand's mass media. That's television, radio, film, electronic media and print.

Prayer is encouraged for the following groups of people:

1. Christians who work within NZ's mainstream media - television, radio, print, film, advertising, marketing and electronic media (such as website development). Pray for those with profile and those behind the scenes.

2. Christians producing programming specifically for mainstream media.

3. People of influence within NZ's mass media - presenters, writers and editors, directors, producers and media managers.

4. Media gatekeepers - those who make decisions which give voice to a Christian perspective or prevent an authentic Christian voice from being heard.

5. Christian media - those who work within Christian television, radio, film, electronic media and print.

Source: http://mediaprayerday.org.nz

Spiritual Refreshments

At the end of Monday's PACT meeting at church, I took away a couple of free Fairtrade biscuits.

On Wednesday I dropped into the church seniors' summer party, and got a free blackcurrant drink and a piece of cake.

Today it turned out that I'd won joint first prize in a competition there, so I swung by the church office and picked up a free box of chocolates.

Churches generally offer people the bread of life, but I seem to be going there for junk food.

Both Sides of a PACT

Attended another PACT (Prayer and Action Changes Things) meeting at the local church tonight. Two talks this time, both of which we prayed about afterwards.

The first issue was violence against women, with a speaker from the new Restored charity. As we prayed about the cultural oppression of women around the world, more than anything else I found myself pondering the silent plight of abused men.

The second topic was a couple's recent trip to the Republic of Zambia, complete with video-projector and stills. That actually sounded quite positive, as apparently things there seem to be improving. Although four out of ten adults there still have HIV, they are managing to limit its getting passed down to the next generation. Consequently the HIV rate for the whole population is just one in ten.

Grease (1978)

Question: If "Grease is the word", then how come it's full of numbers?

(flee now, this article doesn't improve any)

When this movie version of the popular 1971 play was released in 1978, my experiences of it, as a seven year old, were quite different to today.

For a start, as it was an AA certificate, the only scenes that I could watch were the ones accompanying the songs that had been released on 7" singles. The clips of Summer Nights and You're The One That I Want seemed to get played endlessly on TV shows, and Greased Lightning seemed to be knocking around a bit too.

At the time, these sequences were something of a curiosity, because the movie-clips contained sound effects that were not included when the songs were played on the radio. For example, the crash of the dustbin that Sandy knocks over. Yes, even at age seven I was already a nerd.

Sandy and Danny's accounts of their summer romance both appeared to be quite consistent with each other then too. Well, at least until Bob Geldoff started his long-awaited number one by ripping up that photo of them on Top Of The Pops.

Still, once the era of the perpetually rotating pig had passed, (those of you who recall the double-LP will know what I mean) it wasn't until my own spell at college in the late 1980s that I actually got to watch the first half of the film.

My tutorial class was running a soup kitchen for charity one lunchtime before Christmas, and while serving toasted sandwiches thought that it would be a good idea to show the movie on one of the college's hi-tech "video recorder"s.

This was great fun, even if I didn't quite get how Sandy could not know what school her summer love was at. Still, the fact that I never got to see the film's conclusion was no big loss, because everyone knows how all romantic comedies have to end.

Fast forward to my early thirties (the early 2000s), and my theatrical buddy Alistair said that he was going to see the stage production in London that evening, and might I be interested in coming along? Cool!

It was only when we actually arrived there that the penny dropped that we were in fact going to see a school's Christmas production.

Sheesh - when did nativity plays get replaced by Grease?

However those kids knew what they were doing. Despite the enormous handicap of the copyright holders having disallowed them permission to use any song that was in the film, they still made the whole evening a big success.

Well, for most people. I have to say, that ending knocked me sideways. Sorry, how do they get together? The only likable character abandons her principles and suddenly becomes a bad girl? What??? Oh, that's gonna last.

This morning, as I finally watched the whole movie from start to finish, a large part of me wondered whether the film version really would end the same way. It did. What a shame.

For all that, the journey through the preceding hundred-odd minutes overcomes its assortment of grotesques with exceptional choreography and literally unforgettable songs.

Stage musicals that get adapted for films can be either disastrous, like the Marx Brothers' early efforts, or spectacular, like Frank Oz's Little Shop Of Horrors. (which I also still need to watch the rest of) However one thing that all the above have in common is a really bizarre style.

I mean we're all used to seeing a character in a movie suddenly break into song, but these guys'n'gals suddenly break into Broadway. When the 1950s garage containing Greased Lightning transforms into a futuristic big white room, this group don't look at the camera, they literally point out across the stalls.

The whole production is charged with an energy that the cast channel brilliantly, and John Travolta turns in a particularly strong performance as a guy tearing under the surface.

Grease may have its inherent faults, but its timeless message of making a relationship work by denying your true self in order to satisfy your peers' expectations of you is surely one that we can all identify with.

Available here.

Be Kind Rewind

"I'm Bill Murray, you're everybody else."


Films with a slow start usually pick-up along the way.

After the drawn-out first half-hour, this one positively rockets.

That first reel, if we can still use such terms, works far too hard to get Mos Def and Jack Black started in their new career parodying popular movies on an even lower budget than Bowfinger.

When they finally begin, these sequences are inventive and funny from the word go, helped by the enthusiasm that the real-life actors seem to have for the concept. Much of their talking over each other has the appearance of improvisation, and Jack Black's verbal diarrhoea while dressed up as Miss Daisy looks like it could go on for a while, and still remain funny.

Be Kind Rewind's big failing though is in the juxtaposition of these insane no-budget productions with Mike and Jerry's real world, which you might expect to by contrast be gritty and believable.

It's not. Jerry is a wild-eyed conspiracy-theorist who becomes super-magnetised and urinates special effects.

If that didn't already sound like the sort of thing that only happens in movies, they then have nowhere near enough time in which to shoot the 18-minute epics that they do.

Next, after their whole Ghostbusters sequence, it turns out that someone on the Be Kind Rewind production team has unwisely gone and hired Sigourney Weaver to play a Hollywood lawyer. I can see how that was perhaps intended to be clever. However when she promptly destroys the pair's entire back-catalogue of productions, all the tragedy for our heroes falls flat, because just by standing there Sigourney Weaver is constantly reminding us that Mike and Jerry are not real anyway.

(kudos to Channel Five for screening Ghostbusters just before this!)

A better-placed in-joke might have been to have given Danny Glover's already established character a few funny lines in a Lethal Weapon parody, as that would have been a much more light-hearted context, and something that we could have really rooted for.

For the last act, Be Kind Rewind develops some real heart, and the final bittersweet movie put together by all their friends looks quite fascinating in its uniqueness. In fact, it'd look quite watchable if only they hadn't added all the flickering and gate-scratches.

Finally, one big advantage that this film has over the aforementioned Bowfinger, is that director Michel Gondry actually had the foresight to record a few of Mike and Jerry's sweded movies during production. As a result, after the film proper was over, I was able to go on the internet and watch these characters again, doing exactly what had made their exploits so appealing in the first place.

Ironically, this ain't so much a film about movie-making on VHS, as it is about movie-making on your phone.

Available here.
With thanks to Channel Five.

Ghostbusters

As a teenager, I thought that Ghostbusters sounded like a fantastic idea for a movie.

Ghosts were eerie. Ghosts were scary. Ghosts were untouchable, so you had to be very clever indeed to fight them.

Then I found out that Ghostbusters didn't really have any ghosts in it.

Monsters, yes, but monsters weren't, and still aren't, ghosts. Comedy cartoon monsters more so.

Hence I decided, right then in 1984, to leave it until I was 39 to actually sit down and watch this film.

And you know what? I was right. These comedy cartoon monsters are neither eerie, nor scary, nor untouchable, and the main characters even fight them with guns.

I'm glad I didn't go see this as a kid. I would have had a real problem with all of those points. These baddies so belong in another genre.

Having finally watched it though, aside from the above observation, I have nothing bad to say about Ghostbusters. It's very popular, fairly inoffensive, and has done a terrific job over the years of fulfilling its purpose to give people a lot of fun.

While admittedly its age does show up the effects, its vintage also champions its style of storytelling. Though the film has a happy ending, the way in which the plot leisurely ambles there makes it feel more like an indie film. Hollywood would never allow this script to get shot today, with its poorly fleshed-out all-male heroes, who can quote the Bible, and who get a similarly shallow fourth member for the second half only.

The music is good too, and it's a surprise to find Bill Murray playing a character who actually seems to be reasonably happy.

So, will I watch Ghostbusters II? Yes.

Available here.

The Prisoner (2009)

Remakes happen when the original is, for whatever reason, no longer good enough.

It therefore follows that if you remake any film or TV series, you have to do it better.

After all, the remake is always going to get compared with the original, which is a fight that, in order to justify its existence, the new show really has to win.

It beggars belief then, that time and again film and TV companies will remake not the shows that are now poorly thought of, but rather the ones that have actually stood the test of time.

The original 1960s run of The Prisoner is considered by many - myself included - to be the finest TV series ever made. To this day, it rejects classification, conveys a tone unlike any other, and defies convention by refusing to explain itself.

The central character of Number Six remains as accessible today as ever, in his single-minded refusal to be controlled by others on any level. Urban myth has it that the show was about his weekly attempts to escape from the oppressive village, but in fact this theme gets dropped after the first two-thirds of the run. I reckon on that score that they partially broke him.

Basically, the last thing that a remake of The Prisoner needs is to be compared with the original.

On one level, I think those saddled with the task of making this folly knew that. They've done everything that they can to create a series that has as little connection to that saga as possible, and stands up on its own two feet perfectly well, thank you very much.

Let me be clear: I liked this new series.

Its underlying concept was a new one to me, its unfolding storylines drew me in, and for the second half of the series I found that I was genuinely looking forward to each episode.

As the title character "Michael / Six", Jim Caviezel portrayed a much less defiant protagonist than Patrick McGoohan's original, but still made him an easy-to-identify-with everyman character.

The rest of the cast are good too. Sir Ian McKellen as "Two" quite wrongly gets top billing each week, and pantomimes the whole thing throughout, although this is arguably appropriate for a man who lives entirely off of his public image.

I think the best reveal came in the last two episodes via Six's ongoing flashbacks to his past life as Michael.

However then there are the show's downsides. Its perpetually shaky camerawork. Its confused editing. Even its opening credits look and sound hideous. All in all though, if you can grit your teeth and squint through four-and-a-half hours of such queasy storytelling, as I say, I think the tale is a good, original one.

Where the series falls-down every single time though, is whenever it suicidally tries to remind us of those 17 episodes of timeless genius from forty years ago.

The first episode begins with an aged character dressed as Number Six declaring that he has finally escaped from the village, before collapsing and dying. Original actor Patrick McGoohan quite rightly refused to play this role, although it left me wondering for the rest of the series whether this had been supposed to flag further tie-ins later on.

The town in which Six is incarcerated is still doggedly referred to throughout as "the village".

Each individual episode title alludes to an episode title of the original, further promoting comparison over creativity.

Every so often there'll be a shot that's been set-up to emulate a shot from the original opening credits, again shaking us out of the narrative. Likewise the odd sound-effect, and of course Rover.

I'd find myself repeatedly wondering things like "Why are they dwelling on this? That's a bit like The Prisoner. Oh that's right, I forgot, this is a remake of The Prisoner."

Most bewildering are the sudden surreal sequences to 1960s pop music. It took me a few seconds to figure out that Two was pouring water over Six in slow-motion, at least in part, to emulate another show.

In summary, the 2009 remake of The Prisoner could have been a fascinating riff on that popular series from the 1960s, if only they hadn't gone and given it the same name. We would probably have hailed it as a terrific homage, that was paying tribute by taking some of the same great ideas and trying something new, and less ambitious, with them.

But instead they went and proudly called it The Prisoner, and the poor series spent its entire six episodes huffing and puffing to catch up.

Sure, the title is also the only reason why I watched it, but had I heard about a fresh new show that contained a few respectful similarities, then I would probably have sought it out, and liked it a lot more. Heck, I'd probably even have been rooting for it.

No doubt the programme makers don't worry too much about what fans of the original series think, believing their product to be aimed at a general public who have never heard of that old series from the sixties called The Prisoner.

If that's the case, then they really do have no excuse at all for calling it that.

Available here.