The series is only about 35 issues long (#0-#30, plus the graphic novel 2112), but Byrne does a very good job of turning it from a Clonus Horror tribute comic into a story that eats time-travel, holodeck incidrnts and alternate-reality tropes alive. In fact, it’s elegant in a way that I wish ‘Inception’ (2010) had been.

Unlike every other comic book property out there, I doubt that Next Men will be made into a movie anytime soon. That, because the studios have utterly failed to get past the Superman idea of comic book heroes in capes and tights to bother with the concept of character-driven, often literary aspects of Bronze Age and Modern Age comic books.  The reason that Alan Moore’s masterpieces, Watchmen (published 1987) and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (published 1999) failed as movies is that both were part of a period of postmodern thinking in American comic books that the movies have yet to catch up with.

JBNM is like one of those wtf?! moments in Season 4 of Farscape where the bottom keep falling out and the rabbit-hole just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

For those  interested, Next Men is supposed to be revived as an ongoing title this Fall.

If anyone is thinking of trying to do a catch-up with the Next Men, IDW sells them both as a pair of bande-dessiné style black-and-white books ($18/per) and a 3-volume color edition ($33/per) that I presume is printed on better paper with a nice semi-gloss finish. There are at least 6 trade paperback volumes of the original run, but those cost about $16/per and the trades above are the better value. If you hunt them out, you can probably find the b&w volumes for as little as $11.25/per+shipping on Ebay or Amazon, slightly used.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

1. ‘Children of Men’
2. ‘Moon’
3. ‘District 9′
4. ‘A Scanner Darkly’
5. ‘Avatar’
6. ‘Donnie Darko’
7. ‘Star Trek’
8. ‘Minority Report’
9. ‘Cloverfield’
10. ‘Serenity’

CoM, check; Moon, looked good, but it didn’t keep me awake; District 9, not — why South Africa? — and on and on. I am just incapable of becoming excited by most of these titles. Minority Report was interesting because of it’s Philip K. Dick cachet (and the fact that it was made during Bush II) , but very few of those movies had the **umph** of the movies I grew up on. As a child of the ’70s and ’80s, I feel as though I’ve lived a charmed life, given that the following came out during the period that sanned 1979-1989:

‘Alien’ (1979)
‘Altered States’ (1980) ‘The Empire Strikes Back (1980)
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)
‘Blade Runner’ (1982)
‘The Thing’ (1982)
‘Return of the Jedi’ (1983)
‘Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai’ (1984)
‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ (1984)
‘Dune’ (1980) ‘Back to the Future’ (1985) ‘Brazil’ (1985)
‘Re-Animator’ (1985)
‘Aliens’ (1986)
‘The Fly’ (1986)
‘Robocop’ (1987)
‘Near Dark (1987)
‘They Live’ (1988)

And I’m still unable to think of a good sf movie for 1989.

Since some of the best sci-fi of the passing decade has occurred on the small screen, I couldn’t resist listing a few television shows, if only because their effect on our pop-culture was indelible. In no particular order:

‘The Man from Earth’ (2007)
‘Children of Men’ (2006)
‘Minority Report’ (2002)
“Firefly”
“Battlestar Galactica”
‘Night Watch’ (2004) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_%282004_film%29
‘Day Watch’ (2007) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_Watch_%28film%29
‘Iron Man’ (2008) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man_%28film%29
‘X-Men 2′ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_2_%28movie%29
“Farscape” (1999-2003) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape

Many of these moives and shows, I’ve already written about on this site.
Now, none of these entertainments as groundbreaking as any of those eighties movies, but I just needed a place to start this thing.

During the week, I’ll make an attempt to justify my choices, but in the meantime, I’ll ask readers in the audience to recommend their own science-fiction favorites or offer their own recommendations from a faded

Terry Gilliam attempted to bring ‘Watchmen’ to life twice, once in 1989 and a decade later, in 1999. He gave up because he felt that the story couldn’t be adequately covered in 2 hours’ time and that the material might be better dealt with as a miniseries, Though there is no Gilliam ‘Watchmen’, I credit ‘Watchmen’ and it’s alternate-apocalyptic 1985 for the rich visual landscape of thr film that Gilliam went on to produce in the mid-’90′s, ’12 Monkeys’ (1995).

Moore’s ambivalent heroes were a sea-change for comic book industry back in 1985, but Zack Snyder’s 2009 film stops far, far short of of Moore’s moral revisionism and even further from the Watchmen send-up that was Brad Bird’s ‘The Incredibles‘ (2004).

Anyone attempting to translate Moore’s 12-issue, 264 page graphic novel — a would-be 4-1/2 hours in screenplay-time — into filmed entertainment had a daunting enterprise ahead of them.

Snyder’s ‘Watchmen’ fails as an adaptation because the writers failed to adequately adapt the prosaic storyline to suit the 2-hour commercial format. The David Hayter/Alex Tse screenplay, hews too close to the dramatic beats of the original novel. At full length, those beats have their place because they furnish Moore’s 8 protagonists with engaging backstories, however, even at 166 minutes, the 264 page version of the thing fails to be fully satisfied.My other problem with the movie — besides the length — was the writers’ decision to comp so closely to the comic books’ dialogue and Snyder’s tolerance for some very average performances. I often felt as though the actors were reading their lines off of a teleprompter rather than inhabiting their characters. That and 2009 is not 1986 — people like Chrysler’s Lee Iacocca have neither standing or relevance, 23 years later after Chrysler has been bought, sold and is in the ditch once again. I’m certain that 90% of the cherished 16-24 viewing audience drew a complete blank the movie’s reference to Iacoccoca.

As a fanboy, I generally like to see my favorite stories faithfully reproduced for the screen. However, as an audience member, I saw too many rich characters crowding the screen, only to see their potential wasted. Each and every one of Moore’s Minutemen team were not only superheroes, but also tragic figures, trapped in their own peculiar hells. Silk Spctre (Sally Jupiter) is a 2nd-generation hero, having inherited her title from her mother, Sally Juspeczyk. Similarly, Nite Owl aka Daniel Dreiberg wears the costume of a legendary Silver Age hero. But the most formidable dysfunctions are to be found in the older heroes — Dr. Manhattan, the original Silk Spectre, Ozymandias and the Comedian because their idealism and nostallgia poison their daily lives.

Like Oliver North, The Comedian sees himself as a formidable patriot, despite the fact that his marching orders came from questionable quarters. When the one super-powered being, Jon Osterman, transmigrates into Doctor Manhattan, he leaves his humanity behind.

From my writerly perspective, Watchmen ought to have been Rohrshach’s picture — as with ‘Taxi Driver’, we ought to have had a good long taste of Rohrshach’s daily, hard-luck P.O.V., down to stealing Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl’s beans. The rising action of the Comedian’s death should have allowed Rohrshach to recount his troubled relationship with the man, but deciding to investigate the matter nonetheless.

There was no reason for this movie to run almost 3 hours. If you’ve got 246 pages of comic book script to turn into a movie and only 120 minutes to tell the story, then you’re going to have to cut some pages. Sometimes this happened, but we lost lots of important character development along the way. This is especially tragic because Watchmen is a character-driven piece. Like ‘Rosebud’ in ‘Citizen Kane’ we had an opportunity to see Jon Osterman’s childhood obsession with watches, but that didn’t play out in this film, even though it showed up on ‘Heroes’ (and then, was wasted).

I’m sure that the Snyder’s choices will justify themselves upon the 2nd and 3rd viewing, but the name of the game in moving works of literature into film is adaptation. Though I’m a huge fan of Carla Gugino, they ought to have diminished her role more and given Malin Akerman more space to explore being a 2nd-generation hero and Dr. Manhattan’s forgotten love interest, precisely because the Osterman/Janey Slater subplot doesn’t pay off as well as it does in the book.

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Wolverine is by far one of the more interesting of the first-generation X-Men. He’s cranky; he carries his own moral code around like an invisible cloud often circumventing plans and strategies to do what he believes is right; he’s confident, and he’s practically indestructible. In short, Wolverine is the perfect anti-hero. Unfortunately, ‘Origins’ does little to dig under those surface qualities to show us just how he actually got to be the way he is.

Beginning in 1845 in rural Canada, ‘Origins’ introduces a sibling relationship between Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Sabretooth (Liev Schreiber) and the years of soldiering the two brothers do between the death of their real, shared father and the Vietnam war are told in a visually artful way that tells us next to nothing about their characters. It isn’t until this last war, it seems, when Wolverine has had enough of his brother’s blood lust.

The bulk of the film centers quite rightly on how Wolverine acquired the adamantium, courtesy Col. William Stryker (Danny Houston here; Brian Cox in ‘X2?), adhering to his skeleton and how he lost his memories of a more than 100-year lifespan. The conflict between the human and the animal is expressly spoken of in the story but never really conveyed; it is a foregone conclusion that Wolverine will take Stryker’s offer and that he will continue to struggle with the beast within himself. And therein lies the major problem with this film: Like ‘Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith’ because we know what comes after it the inherent drama of the origin is vastly diminished.

Visually stylish and packed with both action and fight sequences, director Gavin Hood could have cut about 20 minutes in the second act without sacrificing the intricate set-up of Stryker’s betrayal. Too, Hood, on only his third film, makes a couple of rookie mistakes attempting to show us too much in some places and not allowing for enough breathing room in others; Wolverine’s embarrassment at the accidents caused by his brand new adamantium claws is priceless and a too brief bit of humor in a film that otherwise takes itself with the utmost seriousness. And for those who pay attention to such details, it is worth noting that while he is never referred to in ‘Origins’ as Sabretooth it’s likely because producers wasted the character in the first film in the franchise by presenting him as a mute animal barely up to average intelligence which is a clear diversion from Schreiber’s portrayal.

Hugh Jackman shoulders the burden of Wolverine well, delivering with a consistency of performance that should satisfy most casual fans. Let’s just hope that the producers and keepers of the X-Men series are smart enough to make their next move ‘X-Men Origins: Storm’.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

While this installment of Batman seems to be the most successful commercial film since James Cameron’s ‘Titanic‘, you’d think that such a movie would have to have a simple storyline to keep selling tickets at such a rapid pace, week after week. Not so, here.

Despite the relatively simple two-villain interplay and some romantic conflict lifted from a drugstore novel, TDK takes what should be a simple, 90-minute flick and turns it into an angsty and operatic 150-minute movie that will challenge your kidneys to make it to the end-credits.

What Nolan, his co-writer and brother, Christopher and David Goyer attempt to do with that extra hour is create a dramatically plausible Batman, capable of transcendin multple genres at once — the Historical Allegory, the science-fiction flick, the comic book flick and the Lifetime movie-of-the-Week, where the Rachel Dawes character is concerned.. Promotional materials for the movie indication Nolan’s interest in creating a film more ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ than Spider-Man in it’s sensibility.

One of the things that Anne-the-filmmaker, my Cineblog partner here complained about was the lack of focus that many of the shots seemed to have. That could be easily chalked-up to the oversized IMAX film-format that Nolan and chose to shoot much of the movie on — a variation on 70mm film-stock that runs at roughly 3x the conventional frame-rate, roughly 60 frames-per-second.

The problem for non-IMAX theaters is that the prints for conventional theaters are shrunk-down and de-resed for the 35mm/24fps resolution of conventional theaters, resulting in a smaller, fuzzier picture.

Story problems begin when they try to fuse Batman’s street-level crime-drama with the international, high-finance aspects, The Joker’s terrorist ambitions and the romantic ambitions of Bruce Wayne’s double-antagonist, Gotham’s new District Attorney, Harvey Dent. Like the IMAX film, the whole thing just doesn’t scale well.

Now, don’t get me wrong, the first 15 minutes are thrilling — some unidentified criminals execute a well coordinated heist of a mob bank. As, in the best caper flics, it’s a delight to watch a bunch of characters execute a well-planned heist. But once Nolan finishes that sequence, the whole affair proceeds to become another two or three movies, piled into the same movie screen. For another 140 minutes.

Bruce Wayne is Batman; we know that from Batman Begins. Rachel Dawes, Wayne’s childhood sweetheart in the prior movie — Katie Holmes , there, reprised here by Maggie Gyllenhaal. And then there’s ADA Harvey Dent, competing for Dawes’ affections and that of Gotham’s chief prosecutor. Finally, there’s The Joker, the movie most easily identifiable villain.

Whether or not it was Nolan’s intention to comment upon Human Civilization after 9-11, it’s become apparent that Batman has become too good at his job. Violent crime in Gotham has apparently plummeted some 90%, because Batman has successfully detected and prosecuted all criminal enterprises in Gotham since the end of the first movie. He’s so successful that the police department routinely broadcasts the Bat-signal, simply to discourage criminal activity.

Madman that he is, The Joker sees this detente as a business opportunity. Now that organized crime is hunkered-down around its boardroom tables, The Joker elects to set off random explosions and make off with the criminals’ dirty money.

The Joker describes himself as an agent of chaos. Throughout the film, he repeatedly raises the bar, first by offering a cash reward for Batman’s identity and then, inexplicably, a bounty on a Wayne Corporation employee who may have a line on Batman’s identity

So what’s to like here? More than two and a half hours of bladder-challenging Batman, if that’s your cup of tea. Heeth Ledger’s last performance and Aaron Eckhart’s best ever. The effects might get an Oscar, if only because the media has gushed about the film all summer. Me. I’m waiting for Aranofsky to direct a redacted version of the ‘Hush‘ storyline.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

But The Middleman isn’t just some dime-store comic book property, it’s a fun, literate and self-conscious treatment of semi-secret agents, superheroes and villains, a pop-culture confiture that rivals anything Joss Whedon and the Gilmore Girls ever offered up in zither’s fast-paced talk-fests. While I’ve not read the comic book, it is said to be ingenious.

Grillo-Marxuach is also the creator and veteran producer of such shows as “Medium” (2005), “Lost” (2004), and the short-lived “Boomtown” (2002). Middleman is probably best characterized as a reprise of the original Patrick McNee iteration of The Avengers, but updated and self-deconstructing as Grillo-Marxuach and his team name drop cult memes as varied as Stuart Gordon and The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency without skipping a beat. Middleman is admirably tongue-in-cheek fare for an audience that can appreciate the absurdity of modern ‘reality’ television as well as the buddy-dramedy Secret Agent shows of yesteryear, from ‘Wild, Wild West’ to , yes, ‘Get Smart’.

Though the parent network, ABC has picked-up a few similarly quirk-filled shows during the past several years (‘Dirty Sexy Money‘, ‘Lost’ and ‘Pushing Daisies‘ come to mind) it has chosen to bury Middleman on ABC Family along with the provocative ‘Kyle XY’. One would think that clones, robots and The 700 Club wouldn’t mix well, yet ABC Family has chosen to program all of these shows on the same network.

Why ABC Family would relegate an ambitious new genre show to a para-religous network is anyone’s guess, but the results of moving an engaging, family-friendly show from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. on in the gulag of para-religious basic cable can only be interpreted as willful sabotage.

Fact of the matter is that the real audience for this show would be the comic-book savvy Buffistas, Browncoats and former Farscape fans, if not the fans of SciFi Channel’s ‘Eureka‘.

Middleman stars Matt Keeslar in the titular role as a gadget-wielding superhero of sorts who is out to defend the world from mad scientists, criminal organizations and rogue daytime television hosts with the assistance of his able lieutenant, Wendy Watson (Natalie Morales).

In the first episode, Wendy and the Middleman go up against a PG-rated tentacled Hentai monster and cybernetically enhanced apes, in that order. Subsequent episodes feature Lucha Libre Wresters, Prada-wearing Succubi, Jewelery-eating aliens and evil daytime talk-show hosts. The dialogue is fast and pithy.