Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #0
Story: Marguerite Bennett, Christina Trujillo
Art: Moritat
Colors: Andre Szymanowicz.
Letters: Thomas Napolitano
Covers: Emanuela Lupacchino, Fabio Mantovani, J. Scott Campbell, Sabine Rich, Moritat, Andre Szymanowicz, Ryan Sook

Sheena, Queen of the Jungle #1
Story: Marguerite Bennett, Christina Trujillo
Art: Moritat, Dimi Maheras
Colors: Moritat, Casey Silver
Letters: Thomas Napolitano
Covers: J. Scott Campbell, Sabine Rich, Ryan Sook, Moritat, Andre Szymanowicz, Carli Ihde, Michael Atiyeh, Cosplay Photo

Sheena created by Will Eisner and Jerry Iger.

Despite being one of the more popular characters from comics Golden Age, Sheena has fallen into partial obscurity as the jungle queen archetype declined in popularity. I should note that I don’t really follow the character, which makes it difficult to trace her history. Sheena has bounced from one publisher to the next, with her continuity being adjusted along the way. Sheena was transplanted from Africa to South America during the 1980s, distancing her from her original but regressive “Darkest Africa” setting. Her last comics appearance was published by Moonstone Books. That series took its cue from a reboot written a decade earlier by Hollywood writer Steven E. de Souza for Devil’s Due Publishing. As was his habit, de Souza located Sheena in the banana republic of Val Verde (the same settings of the movies Commando and Predator). Her biological parents were changed to be an American man and a local woman. I presume this was done to avoid the equally regressive convention of a displaced white saviour living with the natives and becoming their leader/greatest warrior. This latest incarnation from Dynamite Entertainment follows in the steps of the de Souza reboot.

Sheena held one advantage over other jungle queens which has kept her from completely vanishing from our collective memory - her iconic appearance. Jungle queens have always catered to adolescent males. But Sheena popularized the fashionable leggy blonde who wore an impractical leopard-skin swimsuit, a choice which allowed for both the display of ample cleavage and maximum freedom of movement. It’s a  look that’s been shamelessly copied many times, with diminishing returns. And none of her imitators could claim to be the first female character to headline her own title, making Sheena a pioneering figure for the statuesque “Amazon” beauty as heroic lead. The prevalence of this body type in comics has since come under considerable criticism for promoting a pretty narrow view of women in general, and rightfully so. Not that the Dynamite comic makes any apologies for this piece of the character's legacy.


Hiring Moritat to be the series regular artist certainly doubles down on these qualities. But he’s still a bit of an unconventional choice. His anime-influenced aesthetic is a departure from the more familiar good girl art of past cartoonists. Moritat’s beautiful women are not what is often referred to as classically proportioned. They’re all voluptuous torsos and limbs that go on forever. His figures are elongated in a way that the anatomy doesn’t always seem to properly hold together. Sheena is drawn with juvenile facial features which imbue her with an unexpected and strangely elf-like bearing. This is further enhanced by the digital coloring which gives her darker skin tones than past versions. Moritat’s Sheena seems like a deliberate move away from the more traditional caucasian-looking portrayal of the character. But she also doesn’t resemble anyone hailing from any country in the real world.

This hazy exoticism extends to the rest of the story. The plot requires Sheena to enter an ancient ruin already covered up by jungle overgrowth. Despite its state of advanced decay, the structure’s various boobytraps are still in working condition because off course the are. Now I realize that Val Verde is a fictional nation, but seeing as how it’s also supposed to be located in South America, I found it odd that the ruin’s architectural details more closely resembled ancient South Asian art than anything found in pre-Columbian cultures. Later on, Sheena defends the tribal inhabitants of the jungle from the armed goons of a greedy multinational corporation bent on strip mining the place. The portrait of the natives are fairly generic: diminutive brown-skinned people who wear loincloths, carry primitive spears, and live in thatched houses. The attempt simply feels lazy. I could also point out the dissonance of seeing lemurs, which are native to Madagascar, included in the cover.


So at this point, there’s not a whole lot to recommend the comic if you’re not already a fan of Moritat’s brand of cheesecake. Or the alternative covers drawn by other artists. The most intriguing part of the story right now is that Sheena has experienced at least two separate encounters with flying drones being operated by an unidentified male university student or professor searching for something lost in the jungle. It’s kinda creepy that someone has the ability to spy on Sheena from the air, even though those encounters are purely accidental.

But for me, the most baffling sequence involves a camera. While prancing around the ancient ruins, Sheena finds an abandoned 35mm SLR camera which still contains a canister of exposed film. Despite her unfamiliarity with the device, Sheena instinctively pockets the canister. After she escapes and reaches the open air, Sheena unspools the film from inside the canister and examines a single frame of what is now a magically processed roll of color negatives. WTF! Just because virtually everyone takes pictures with digital equipment these days shouldn't be an excuse for this kind of slapdash storytelling.

by Fumio Obata

In the debut graphic novel of Fumio Obata Just So Happens, Japanese transplant Yumiko has made the city of London her home for the last several years while working at a design firm. As she walks to work, she monologues about preferring the “noise, chaos, busyness, energy, and openness…” , and in being immersed in a place crammed with different lives “with different roots and cultures.” To emphasize her point, Obata (he is also a Japanese transplant living in Great Britain) pulls back to reveal a bird’s eye view of Yumiko surrounded by London’s varied denizens. Yumiko exultantly proclaims “And somehow I managed to create my own little space too.” This is the familiar claim of any immigrant who has done good. But there’s a price to pay for her successful assimilation. Whenever she spots her compatriots on those crowded streets, Yumiko subconsciously recoils from their presence. It takes her boyfriend innocently pointing this out for Yumiko to notice, and she becomes flustered at her own behavior. Soon enough, Yumiko is forced to confront her discomfort when a sudden death in the family forces her to return to her home country in this elegant and understated story about how hybrid cultural identity functions within a globalized framework.

These themes have been tackled before by Adrian Tomine and Gene Luen Yang. But there’s less interest in how racial discrimination divides mainstream society from immigrant communities which looms large with Obata’s American counterparts. Neither does he explore the politics of escaping from the repression of the old world found in Marjane Satrapi. Obata eschews those stark binaries. What is going on in his story is much more mundane and personal. At first glance, Yumiko has very little in the way of defining characteristics. Her ability to blend into her environment has made her fairly unremarkable. But as she performs her duties during the funeral service, her experience of reverse culture shock leads to some very subtle changes over the course of the book. She looks on with dismay at the many petty details of the ceremony she has to deal with, initially rejects the customs of a culture now alien to her, only to later reassess how her relationship with her separated parents contributed to her decision to study, then later work abroad. In the end, there are no overt changes or melodramatic conflicts. Just a quiet rapprochement with the country and family Yumiko had long believed she had long outgrown. In its interiority, JSH possesses a meditative autobiographical quality.


If the story sounds a little too thin, much of its emotional impact comes from the wonderful art which combines European-style illustration with Japanese aesthetics and subject matter. Obata’s meticulous ink lines are overlaid with luminous watercolor washes to produce an impressionistic effect. Once the story moves to Japan, the results are almost magical. The setting is rendered with a quiet dreamlike quality, particularly the abstract-looking mountainous landscapes. As much as Yumiko feels disconnected from her surroundings, it’s virtually impossible not to feel a little captivated by the country’s natural and architectural beauty. Obata does like to regularly pull away from his characters and view them from overhead. This transforms the ordinary urban settings they inhabit into a strange floating world.

Given that much of the story takes place inside Yumiko’s head, the most important character after her, not to mention its most prominent visual motif, is a masked Noh theater performer whose act she once witnessed during a summer festival. Drawn to the performer’s ability to balance stillness and dynamism, fierceness and control, Yumiko is haunted by its ghost when she returns to Japan. Her own detached sorrow during the funeral becomes mirrored by the anonymity of the performer’s mask, as well the slow, mournful and ambiguous gestures. The theater's restrained beauty and codified movements exquisitely captured by Obata are an expression of a search for a transcendental realm which subsumes the individual ego. As she struggles to separate her own desires from the conflicting advice offered by her mother and father on how to live her life, the performer invades her space, and she intermittently enters into the spiritual plane where she comes face-to-face with not just the performer, but her own previously unacknowledged emotional turmoil. These are the most intense scenes within the book, and Obata’s otherwise cool palette becomes warmer, harsher and more vivid.

And afterwards, Obata offers no grand theories or sweeping statements addressing the turmoil experienced by many transplants arising from their liminal status. Only simple observations perhaps drawn from his own life. These are lessons he finds best explored through the eclectic language of a visual artist.

Of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most human.
 - Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

In an era when nerd heroes were still in short supply, Mr. Spock was already there. Bon voyage Leonard Nimoy. You lived and prospered.

The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics

Leading of is the death of pioneering historian and archivist Bill Blackbeard. Tom Spurgeon has links to the best tributes on the web. But for a useful intro to the man's life and career, there's Kristy Valenti's article from a few years back. Blackbeard's death reminds me how much the komiks industry could benefit from even more individuals working to preserve its own cultural heritage. And I'm sure that the same could be said of the comics and cartooning communities of many other countries.

Update: Margalit Fox writes Blackbeard's obituary at the New York Times.

Sean Michael Robinson looks at the creator's rights situation at TOKYOPOP. What a mess.

Jason Thompson writes about the seminal work Akira.

JK Parkin and Rich Johnston round up online reactions to Action Comics #900, where Superman apparently renounced his U.S. citizenship (I haven't read it myself). Huh? I get the allegorical value of the character as the embodiment of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way". But I don't get how he could even be properly identified as an American citizen within the comic book universe. Sure, Clark Kent's documented as an American. But how does any government establish Supes' citizenship when he prefers to operate under a secret identity? Presumably, he doesn't pay taxes or have a registered U.S. mailing address under the name "Superman". He doesn't carry a driver's license. He's already a self-identified Kryptonian, which would make him a prime target for Birther-style attacks if this were real life. Was he naturalized or given honorary citizenship at some point? Heck, given who he is, it wouldn't surprise me if he was already declared an honorary citizen by every democratic government. If true, that would make him more than just a U.S. citizen. And there's an even bigger problem: What government could even legitimately claim responsibility to control or limit his activities? He's Superman! If he wants to join an organized protest, what government's going to prevent him?

But the bottom line is I don't see how Supes can renounce his citizenship without revealing its legal basis in his dual identity. Otherwise, it's just a ruse if he continues to secretly enjoy the rights of a U.S. citizen as Clark. And it seems unlikely for the government to just accept the word of a costumed mystery man that he's American (let alone an agent who would take orders from them), especially one who's already confessed to being an alien.

I realize that within most comic books, the law has a way of either not applying to superheroes, or applying to them in very arbitrary ways. There has to be a suspension of the normal laws to make the genre work. And this looks like another example of that. Illogical as it is, Superman is accepted as American despite the lack of proper documentation. That's how the law in the DC universe works, at least for the purposes of this story. And the purpose could be nothing more than to push reader's buttons, stir up enough controversy to get into prime-time news programs, and get people to buy more comic books.

Update: Rich Johnston reminds us that the Pre-Crisis Superman was an honorary citizen of every UN member nation.

Then there's the UN General Assembly scene from Superman IV (1987) in which Superman announces his intention to save the world from Nuclear annihilation. Action Comics #900 isn't really that original after all.

Nadim Damluji on the Arabic print version of Superman. He's Clark Kent and Nabil Fawzi? The man gets around.

Chris Sims gives some classic Action Comics cover art some love. Great choices.

Michel Martin, Mike Luckovich, and Stephen Hess discuss the racial politics of the Birther Movement "cartoon" on VPR. Here's a portion of the transcript:

Mr. LUCKOVICH: I just want to make one point, that image that that woman, Marilyn, whatever her name is, with Obama as the small monkey, first of all, that's not a cartoon. That was something she Photoshopped. And it was crude and it was racist. And cartoonists are always sensitive. We want to make people think - we even want to tick people off occasionally, but we don't want our symbolism to overwhelm our message.

And so when I'm drawing a cartoon, I will try and get my point across, but I still want people to understand my point and not lose it on the symbolism. I would never show Obama or an African-American as a monkey. That's just racist. And we know the history of that.

MARTIN: Because why?

Mr. LUCKOVICH: Because throughout history that has been a way of dehumanizing African-Americans. Now, the fact that Obama's African-American, I think it has been good for cartoonists in that he sort of has transcended race and we are able to show in ways that we're not so cautious now. And I think that's a good thing for white people and black people, that we're able to look at him as just a human being now. And I think that's been a good thing...

I think she knew it was racist. I mean, you have to be pretty stupid not to know that wasn't racist. I think she was just - I think she's got some racist tendencies and it came out in that - in what she did.

Tom Spurgeon reacts.

Andrew Wheeler spells it out clearly.

...through art.

Haruhi Suzumiya prays for the victims of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami, by Noizi Ito

Son Goku and Arale Norimaki, by Akira Toriyama

From the "Smile" series, by Takehiko Inoue

Billy Bat characters, by Naoki Urasawa

Dr. Tenma by Faith Erin Hicks

Some linkblogging about that country's increasingly ubiquituous pop culture, manga, and random other stuff. Let's get to it then.

Patrick W. Galbraith examines the sexual politics and socio-economic aspects of maid cafés in Japan.

Erica Friedman surveys the Japanese manga magazines that are harder to pigeonhole. It's nice to know that Garo and Ax aren't the only perodicals bucking convention.

Tony Yao compares the runaway success of One Piece in Japan with its more modest sales in the United States.

Dale North drools over Haagen-Dazs Dolce and Dean & Deluca Ice Cream from Japan.

Oh, and the cherry blossoms are already in bloom. Sakura....

And if that doesn't satisfy one's curiosity about the country, there's Christopher Butcher's ongoing travelogue, accompanied by many personal photos.

Other:

Faith Erin Hicks draws Monster fan art and talks about her formative manga influences.

Speaking of influences, while I've been less than satisfied with Jason Thompson's 365 Days of Manga project, his ongoing House of 1000 Manga is more along the lines of what I hoped for in his online reviews. Individual posts are lengthy and entertaining, detailing the content of each manga and its cultural impact within Japan and the U.S. His review of the seminal series Sailor Moon makes me even more annoyed about its absence from bookstores.

Tokyopop's dramatic fall from grace under Stuart Levy's stewardship truly rankles Brigid Alverson.

Michael Arthur and Melinda Beasi on the shortcomings of BL manga and the appeal of "intimacy porn".

R.C. Harvey uses the comic strip Zits to showcase what comics can only do.

Rich Johnston on the extensive recoloring of the recent reprint edition of Tales of Asgard. To answer the question posed at the end: I myself tend to look at these things on a case-by-case basis. While there's no doubt that modern printing methods can produce superior reproductions with better coloring, that's separate from the issue of whether a totally new coloring style adds or detracts from the art. Sure, some artists might benefit from it. But does the more rounded, shaded, "sculpted" color rendering suit the flatter, dynamic, graphic, geometric figures of a Jack Kirby? It's not as if the comic can't be reprinted with better colors, but in a more complementary style.

Harvey and Toby on "Revenge of the Nerds" from American Splendor, by Harvey Pekar and Bill Knapp

Noah Berlatsky's social critique of The Big Bang Theory instantly reminded me of the late Harvey Pekar's takedown of Revenge of the Nerds (not the film adaptation, but the original comic story). But at least he ends his piece with a backhanded compliment that recognizes its particular brand of humor.

Sean T. Collins posts the first truly critical commentary on Dirk Deppey's long running Journalista. I don't disagree with a lot of what he wrote, especially with his own distaste for Dirk's later style of industry analysis, which could be grating at times for being relentlessly contrarian just for its own sake. But as much as I like Tom Spurgeon as a news source, I'm still a big fan of Dirk's digest-format approach to link-blogging. The TCJ site looks all the more poorer without his daily postings. What does TCJ do these days?

Roland Kelts reports on the fallout over the passing of Bill 156 in Japan. So much for practicing wa. The otaku are rebelling.

Patton Oswalt mourns the death of classic geek culture as he sees it. Weren't we supposed to outgrow those things anyway? Oh yeah, we didn't.

Christopher Butcher and Kevin Melrose comment on the nominations for this year's GLAAD Media Awards, one of the more superhero-friendly (read biased) comic awards.

1) Hollywood's movie studios have become so good at hyping their own media franchises that audiences often act genuinely surprised and disappointed (or have learned to go through the proper motions of acting surprised and disappointed) when their sequels and adaptations fail to live up to the quality of the original creations. For The Last Airbender, the hype began more than three years ago when Paramount announced the signing of M. Night Shyamalan to write, direct and produce a trilogy of live-action films based on the popular TV series of the same name. The studio's promotion and marketing machine went through the usual motions: teaser trailers, a Super-Bowl ad, a toy line, fast food cross-promotions, a comic book tie-in. But how does someone go about condensing the show's entire first season into an hour and half feature film? Not very well as might be expected. This is one uninspired and indifferent adaptation: The storytelling is lazy, the pacing is choppy, the cinematography is incompetent, and the dialogue is incredibly stilted. So much of the movie is devoted to exposition that there's little left for more audience-pleasing elements like romantic complications or extended action sequences. All this info-dump makes the story so confusing that I doubt anyone who isn't already a fan will completely comprehend what's going on. Many characters appear so briefly before scene shifts, they barely register.


2) Shyamalan's past success with child actors is not replicated here. The lead Noah Ringer puts up a valiant effort to convey the director's habitual gravitas, but lacks the charisma to pull it off. It doesn't help that he has to deliver some very atrocious dialogue. Most of the other cast members sleepwalk through their lines, barely expressing any emotion other than furrowing their collective brows. Dev Patel comes off the best as the conflicted antagonist Prince Zuko. But none of the cast has really been given that much to work with.

3) Given that the original series main draw was its mystically enhanced hand-to-hand combat, this happens to be the movie's biggest let-down for this fighting arts geek. The bending fails at pretty much every level. Hollywood directors are usually unable to mimic the balletic wire-fu of Hong Kong cinema, and Shyamalan is no exception: His staging of the fight sequences is pedestrian at best, and the fight choreography in itself is brief and perfunctory. There's not a single memorable duel between any two characters in this movie when there should have been at least half a dozen. As for the cast themselves: I'm used to untrained actors moving stiffly when trying to perform martial arts moves, but it looks even more egregious here. I understand that the twelve year old Noah Ringer is trained in taekwondo, which imbues him with a lot of physical dexterity. However, his tai chi chuan imitation is mediocre, and not significantly better than the efforts of co-star Nicola Peltz. Most of the supporting cast could have benefited with some more formal training, if only to learn how to maintain a proper stance. As for the special effects used to depict the elemental bending, they're generally disconnected from the actors physical movements. It often looks as if they're waving their arms and feet frantically for a few seconds before an element shoots out from behind them. It's terribly unconvincing, and lacks the clever variety found in the TV series.

4) Regarding the racebending controversy that has taken up a lot of public attention - Changing the cast to satisfy the critics would not have fixed the structural flaws of the story. However, there were two instances were I was more conscious of the racial makeup of the cast: Early, when I couldn't help noticing how everyone in the Southern Water Tribe was of Asian extraction except for Katara's and Sokka's family. And later during the climatic battle between the relatively light-skinned citizens of the Northern Water Tribe, and the swarthier Fire Nation soldiers. This is counterbalanced to some degree by the fact that the two most interesting characters are Fire Nation citizens Zuko and his uncle Iroh, played by Shaun Toub, who is underutilized in his role. The casting may not be the worst thing about this movie. But it's a terrible distraction that compounds the movie's many faults.

5) The TV series was not historically accurate in the conventional sense. But in its world-building, it cohered around certain details. The stylistic breakdown of the varieties of quan-fa was one. Or the way its architecture and fashions formed a close analog to real world Asian cultures. The movie deviates from the original in small ways that would be irritating to the series fans. For example, Chinese characters are replaced with an invented script that looks like someone's bad imitation of Chinese. Or Shyamalan's changing the pronunciation of certain words to make them sound more Indian, which only pushes the film further away from the imaginary milieu of the series just to satisfy his personal vanity.

6) When I first heard that Avatar: The Last Airbender was being made into a movie, I suspected that this would be just another poorly executed adaptation that I could afford to skip. The irony is that the casting controversy and calls to boycott the movie piqued enough of my interest that I wanted to see just how big of a train wreck it would turn out to be. Well, the movie isn't just bad. It's so bad, it lacks even the usual technical competence displayed by Shyamalan. It's as if Paramount went out of its way to ruin its very own franchise. So I should have stuck with my initial gut reaction. Another, more familiar, irony is that if the movie earns enough from its international releases, it could make back its costs despite being almost universally eviscerated by the critics.

More on Avatar Racebending

Believe me, as an actor, it’s no easy answer. My first gut feeling is, the best actor should be cast for the job no matter race… But maybe that’s just an ideal that is unreal when it comes to making a movie, and making a big budget movie at that. See, my whole career is based on playing roles that were not written race specific, matter fact, if I had to wait for Hollywood to come along with a script for a Filipino American, I would have no career at all.
- Dante Basco

More on Avatar Racebending

"As a Vietnamese American, I find “The Last Airbender’s” production and casting a great offense to my cultural roots, and believe that Paramount – and especially Shyamalan – should be ashamed of themselves. Frankly, I hope they go down in film anthropology as infamous practioners of self-indulgent, self-delusional ignorance, stupidity and racism"
- Q. Le (Quote added 07/11/10)

Despite its July 1st worldwide release, The Last Airbender has yet to hit my local movie theater. So I'm not going to be able to make any independent assessment of it just yet. But here's what the online critics have to say about it. The movie continues to draw criticism for its decision to cast Caucasian actors in the leading roles. Asian American cartoonists Derek Kirk Kim, Gene Yang, and Tak Toyoshima have repeated their initial objections to Paramount's "racist" casting. At the center of calls to boycott the movie, Racebending.com has organized several public protests and demonstrations in the hope of negatively impacting on the commercial success of the film. But they're also big enough fanboys to put up a handy guide deliniating the differences in the main plot points between the big screen adaptation and its source material.

With the movie having already alienated a significant portion of its existing fanbase months before its release, it would have to make up in box office sales from the general population. Early numbers indicate that the movie has not quite succeeded. It has received a critical drubbing from the mainstream press: As of this writing, aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes has given it a a horrendous 7% general rating, and Metacritic has rated it a "generally unfavorable" 20 based on 32 reviews. So the movie is a flop with the cognoscenti. But what does the public think? Entertainment Weekly reports that the film earned "$16 million on Friday after pulling in $16 million on its opening day for a 5-day holiday weekend gross that could total $70 million." This sounds like a decent box office weekend performance. But according to Patrick Goldstein, the film has received a grade of C from CinemaScore - an organization that tracks the reaction of audiences during a movie's opening night. "the C grade is a pretty reliable indicator that the movie will have a steep dropoff in its grosses in the weeks to come" explained Goldstein. He goes on to opine about director M. Night Shyamalan's future with the franchise:

"In the run-up to the film's opening, Shyamalan has been talking about quickly getting to work on a sequel, but if I were him, I'd be keeping my options open. This movie, to quote one of my father's favorite expressions, looks like a dog that won't hunt."

How much did the casting of white actors to play non-white roles hurt The Last Airbender? Roger Ebert thought it did some damage, or at the very least didn't help:

"His first inexplicable mistake was to change the races of the leading characters; on television Aang was clearly Asian, and so were Katara and Sokka, with perhaps Mongolian and Inuit genes. Here they're all whites. This casting makes no sense because (1) It's a distraction for fans of the hugely popular TV series, and (2) all three actors are pretty bad. I don't say they're untalented, I say they've been poorly served by Shyamalan and the script."

Kirk Honeycutt agrees saying:

"The Nickelodeon series, created by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, is wholly and inarguably centered on Asian (and Inuit) culture. But Shyamalan, a South Indian, for whatever reason -- you supply the motive -- chose to cast mostly white actors. Two fellow Indians, "Slumdog Millionaire's" Dev Patel and veteran Indian-American Aasif Mandvi, play different kinds of villains, but otherwise this fantasy world is pretty white until you get to the extras.

No one can say whether "Airbender" would have been a better film with a different cast. But as it is, the film loses substantial credibility in regard to its source material."

Others disagree with it's importance. Andrew O'Hehir opines: "Despite the Internet uproar launched by some fans of the animated series "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (which was going to be the title of this movie, until, uh, other forces intervened), I have to say that the racial controversy around this movie is overblown." Angry Asian Man on the casting of Noah Ringer, blamed the script for not giving the actor enough to work with: "To be fair, Noah Ringer, who plays Aang (the titular last airbender), does an okay job. Is he the only kid in the entire world who could play Aang, as Shyamalan has so boldly claimed? Absolutely not. But he does a passable job in an mediocre movie. Could this material have been elevated by casting an Asian actor? Probably not." Joe Morgenstern puts the casting controversy into the larger context of a series of bad decisions:

"The producers have been widely criticized for failing to cast the Asian characters of the original with Asian actors, and the criticism is valid, notwithstanding the presence of Asians in minor roles. Like the hero, Aang, the lead characters of the brave sister and brother, Katara and Sokka, are played by young and conspicuously Caucasian American actors—Nicola Peltz and Jackson Rathbone (who also plays the "Twilight" vampire Jasper Hale). But where does criticism end when a production is botched from start to finish?"

Richard Corliss tried to put a positive spin on it:

"The dearth of racially appropriate casting in the U.S. simply means that fewer Asians were humiliated by appearing in what is surely the worst botch of a fantasy epic since Ralph Bakshi's animated desecration of The Lord of the Rings back in 1978. The actors who didn't get to be in The Last Airbender are like the passengers who arrived too late to catch the final flight of the Hindenburg."

But some of the harshest criticisms were reserved not for the film's casting, but for its cynical implementation of 3-D technology. Ebert attacked it as "Not only is it unexploited, unnecessary and hardly noticeable, but it's a disaster even if you like 3D. M. Night Shyamalan's retrofit produces the drabbest, darkest, dingiest movie of any sort I've seen in years." Sam Adams reported on the industry's squeezing of theater goers: "audiences in upscale areas were having difficulty locating 2-D screenings. A listings search turned up exactly one non-3-D theater on the island of Manhattan; ditto Santa Monica." Keith Phipps sums up the general disgust for these practices: "...a few 3-D elements have been added to satisfy the current 3-D craze, and the higher ticket prices they allow. Worse still, the process makes the already-dark imagery darker, and turns the action blurry. Viewers who see it in this form will pay more for an even shittier experience than the one they would have had in 2-D."

Most of the reviewers I read confirmed my own nagging doubts about Shyamalan's ability to adapt a serialized fantasy epic aimed originally at children. Mr. Beaks commented "Burdened by an never-ending onslaught of expository dialogue awkwardly delivered by actors giving career-worst performances across the board, The Last Airbender is so outrageously bad it's a wonder it ever got before cameras. Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, veteran producers who know better, should've shut down production the minute Shyamalan turned in his first draft and found a writer with a vision for the material. Or just a writer with a vision, period." Charlie Jane Anders eviscerated the director's efforts: "Shyamalan's true achievement in this film is that he takes a thrilling cult TV series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and he systematically leaches all the personality and soul out of it — in order to create something generic enough to serve as a universal spoof of every epic, ever." Peter Debruge thought Shyamalan misses the point of the series: "Here, we expect an epic martial-arts movie and instead get a soul-searching adolescent's decision to spare his enemies -- a character-driven approach that's ill served by the largely amateur cast."

I'll let Angry Asian Man sum it all up:

"M. Night Shyamalan attempts to adapt the entire storyline of season one (Book 1: Water) into this movie (the first of a planned trilogy). Having seen and enjoyed the animated series, I'm aware that this is no small feat. Unfortunately, overall, the plan fails. It's supposed to be epic, but the whole thing feels clunky, rushed and at times incomprehensible. You might not have to boycott this movie -- it's so bad, it could boycott itself."

More on Avatar Racebending

Eye of Katara

Roland Kelts has posted about the racebending controversy at TCJ. He argues much more succinctly the same points I made about the ethnic and creative fault-lines of much (anime-inspired) modern cartooning and animation vs. the racial politics of live action, but he seems to confuse Japanese anime adaptations with Avatar when he starts talking about casting Japanese actors:

But there’s another problem: Few Japanese actors can speak English fluently, and those few who can are often too old for the roles they might play (Ken Watanabe being the perfect example).  Do Asian source stories like anime need Asian actors to deliver the aura properly?  And if so: Where to find them?

I'm not sure why he thinks they have to be Japanese or Asian nationals sporting exotic accents, since the issue is more about balanced casting for Asian Americans, or anyone from a minority background, who already can speak English fluently enough to play the roles being cast.

Martha Nichols, MANAA, Michael Le, and Angry Asian Man slam director M Night Shyamalan's defense of the casting choices. It must be nice for Paramount to know that it can depend on him to be a team player.

Of course the organized protests no longer have any chance of changing those decisions. The protesters have to content themselves with making a statement and stirring up enough displeasure to affect the film's summer launch.

For all the publicity, the cast's ethnicity is only the most outward part of the film. There are still the core concerns that arise whenever adapting works from different mediums which could sink the movie even if the casting was pitch perfect. Take the writing for example: Here's Shyamalan's response to a question about altering Avatar's brand of humor for the big screen:

Hopefully there is enough that you will still see characters that you love. But there is so much latitude with an animation that you don’t get with live action.

Obviously, changes have to be made when translating an animated television show into a motion picture trilogy. But given his track record as a director and his interview answers, I don't foresee him succeeding in this area.

More on Avatar Racebending

Tom Spurgeon finally posts his "best of 2009" list. This time he splits his choices into subdivisions like best archive reprint, or best first print collected edition. I'm not one to put too much stock in "best of" lists. But if I did, Tom's is a good a place to start.

CNN's belated report on the controversial video game RapeLay is predictably broad and sensationalistic, and prompted mangaka Nogami Takeshi to write an open letter protesting the stereotyping of Japanese culture. The highlight of the letter is when he quotes the Gospel of John 8:1–11. Score one for Takeshi!

David Welsh writes in appreciation of the geek-oriented series Glee. The television show premiered over here on cable less than three months ago. It's populated by the usual collection of high school stereotypes and bufoons - some highly irritating and some pretty amusing. The writing is hit or miss, but the singing is both infectious and bolsters the generally optimistic outlook of the show.

Speaking of cable TV, I'm not too crazy about Animax Asia. The channel usually broadcasts english dubbed versions of various anime serials, which wouldn't be half as annoying except that the quality of the voice acting is mostly indifferent. But they also air subtitled versions of more current anime, which usually prompts me to complain about the poor subtitling. One example which is nearing completion is the delayed telecast of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. The anime is as far as I can tell, a faithful adaptation of the manga, which is pretty grim for a shonen series. The channel's subtitles tend to err on the side of literal but clunky translations. Another which recently began airing is the anime version of the yonkoma K-On! The series is as pandering as any moe-inspired seinen comedy. Think of it as Glee with J-pop in place of Broadway show tunes, and without the sex or the bitchy popular kids. It's available in subtitled and dubbed versions so viewers can choose which is less grating to them.

I am afraid I am Buddhist, not Christian, but I respect your Lord nonetheless. His word that you, me and all mankind are hentai is pregnant with meaning. Yet, there is a difference between “His” views (that you share) and mine. I do not think that people being hentai is a sin. There is nothing wrong with rational people being hentai.

I, at any rate, do not see anything wrong with that. Do you?

- Takeshi Nogami

Magical Girl Pretty Sammy by AIC

Last November, Republic Act No. 9775 was signed into law. This anti-child pornography act criminalized, among other things, "computer-generated, digitally or manually crafted images or graphics of a person who is represented or who is made to appear to be a child as defined herein." In Japan the Tokyo Metropolitan Assembly (link via ANN; translation here and here) is now deliberating on voting for their own version of an anti-child pornography bill this coming June. Canned Dogs has translated part of the proposed legislation as "Any character that regardless of actual age has an appearance of being under 18, and has a possibility of causing youths to lust for or possibility of bringing this fantasy to real life, will have to be censored." Various manga creators have responded in opposition to the bill, including Ashita no Joe/Tomorrow’s Joe artist Tetsuya Chiba, Doraemon creator Fujiko Fujio, Moto Hagio, Rumiko Takahashi, Machiko Satonaka, and Go Nagai. Several appeared in front of the Tokyo government offices to release a signed statement on March 15 (via Kotaku; tr here) expressing their protest of the bill. Yoshitoshi ABe, in a separate statement, described the bill as "...an unconstitutional and ridiculous piece of legislation. I’m not talking about children’s books. I mean mass market publications, anime, games, and all manners of works. Both Doraemon and Sazae-san are right out!" He goes on to say:

Humankind has been entrusted with much power, but if we abuse that power to do away with things that we do not like, then thinking in that way, we will give birth to this sterilized room kind of society. The purpose of freedom of speech, in my opinion, is to defend against precisely that sort of thing.

Discussion of the proposed legislation has been predictably polarized. For a more nuanced take on the issue, there is Roland Kelts. In the end he comes down on the side of ABe:

“Pedophiles frequently use realistic cartoon depictions to indoctrinate their child victims to persuade them that such [sexual] acts are okay,” says Jake Adelstein, author of Tokyo Vice and a board member of Polaris Project Japan, an organization that combats human trafficking in Japan and the sexual exploitation of women and children. “When this stuff is legal, you’re giving pedophiles a weapon.”

But is it the fault of manga and anime artists that their work is being appropriated by criminals? Hollywood films regularly glamorize war—but are wars Hollywood’s fault? And if manga and anime depictions of youthful sexuality are outlawed in Japan and the United States, will that really deter pedophiles?

I also lean towards this position. This is a highly sensitive and emotionally charged issue. But I'm skeptical about whether the enforcement of such overly-strict laws are necessary or will have the desired net effect of deterring child abuse; but I'm also weary of simplistic cause and effect arguments often used to justify them.

Update: Simon Jones has linked to a pretty comprehensive article on the proposed legislation, known in Japan as hijitsuzai seishounen. It separates what isn't banned (material already marked 18+) from what is banned (non-pornographic manga, anime, games, movies for all demographic groups), and the groups pushing for this law (the usual coalition of Parent-Teacher Associations, militant feminists and conservative Christians). What is particularly disturbing is how broad the ban would be if it takes effect.
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