Posts Tagged ‘Serenity’

Links, links, linkedy links!

August 14th, 2012 by Susie

It’s been a little while since I last posted.  I was planning writing a review of the Amazing Spider-man, but then I went on a week long cruise the day after I saw it and it got sidelined (I saw whales!  It was awesome!).  I’m not going to write a long review, but I will say a little bit about it.  I really liked it, more-so than the original movies (which I liked a lot).  I liked that it felt smaller in scale than those previous films.  Not that it didn’t have plenty of comic book action, but the story felt more personal. It was a movie about a Person with powers, instead of a person with Powers.  I liked Emma Stone as Gwenn Stacy.  I liked that she fit into the love interest role very well, while not being a stereotypical superhero love interest.  She was smart and not in just a “oh look she’s pretty and brainy, aren’t we progressive?” way.  When she got the “I’m going to push you away so I don’t put you in danger” treatment, she knew exactly what was happening and refused to accept it.  And she served a function in the plot other than to be imperiled and-or longed for.  Also, she and Andrew Garfield had really good chemistry together.  Speaking of Garfield, he was very good.  He brought several layers to Peter Parker, which are there in the comics, but I hadn’t seen in the earlier films.  He aptly portrayed Peter as an awkward kid with an enormous burden.  We saw his guilt over his part in his uncle’s death, and his unbridled joy in discovering his new powers.  I also really enjoyed the scene when those powers first manifested

Okay those were my thoughts.  Now to make up for the lack of a legnthy review, here are a bunch of links!

On the topic of our friendly neighborhood web-slinger, check out this Spider-man fan film from 1969!  It’s charmingly homemade, and does capture the simplistic and sort of hokey feel of the early sixties issues.

And here is an awesome article about why Princess Leia is such an important icon.

And now an enormous and intricately detailed model of Serenity, made out of Lego!  How freaking cool is that?

This I only just discovered.  It’s a tumbler devoted to reviewing, page by page the novelization of Back to the Future.  It picks apart the questionable quality of the writing, while also analyzing the story itself.  I especially liked this passage.

“To buy into Back To The Future, you need to accept not only that time travel exists, but that there exists a META-TIME, because changes to the timeline THEMSELVES take time: Marty stops his parents from meeting and rather than disappearing right away, he has a week in 1955 to sort this out before the consequences of that become critical.  In other words, whatever change you make to the timeline ripples through it like a wave in a bedsheet, altering things as it goes, and you’ve got until when that wave catches up with you to fix things if you’ve done something dumb like prevent yourself from being born.

Proof for this is that Marty’s siblings faded away in order from oldest to youngest – the change caught up with them first!   We’re going to assume you start to fade when your birth gets interfered with.  The fading isn’t consistent (Brother Dave fades from top to bottom while Marty just gets less and less opaque), but we’re estimating!  Here we could assume instead that you start fading when the date of your conception gets messed with rather than date of your birth, but we’re not, because that’s a rabbit hole of tracing events back to causes that puts us back in 1955 again.

So!  Since we know the day Marty arrived in 1955 and stopped his parents from meeting (Saturday, November 5th), the day he started actually fading away (a week later on Saturday, November 12th, 1955), the year Marty was born (1968) AND we even can guess at the day (most stuff puts his birthday at either June 12th or June 9th (same as Michael J!)) we can calculate pretty reliably how fast this meta-time lets changes move in this story, which is how fast changes to the timeline propagate.

A change made to the timeline on November 5th, 1955 takes 7 days of real time to ripple through time and reach June 9th, 1968.  That’s 4,604 future days to ripple through (inclusive, so we’re assuming that Marty was born near the end of the day, but it doesn’t make THAT much of a difference), therefore meta-time travels at about 657.71 times faster than regular time here.

One problem, cats and kittens: with this number Dave actually fades out too soon (he’s not born till 1963 but he shows effects of fading early in the morning of November 6th, 1955, and with our meta-time speed the changes should only 3.6 years out by then, back in good old 1959).  So we adjust our theory to say that these changes here travel at a speed that AVERAGES out to that 657.71 times faster number, but it can go faster and slower in places.

This raises the question: what does this propagation speed depend on?  Well, there’s actually evidence in the movie that lets us conclude that the speed of changes to the timeline is dependent how much it’s being changed from its original shape.  AND I CAN PROVE IT WITH MATHS AND LOGICS:

So remember that Marty starts to fade, and then Lorraine and George kiss and BAM, everyone in Marty’s photograph fades back in right away, one after the other.  This is obviously way faster than our number from before, but we incorporate this by assuming that the timeline is flexible, but like a spring, it has a preferred shape.  Changes that restore it to its original form propagate much faster (30 years of timeline gets restored in about 4 seconds here, which is a meta-time transmission speed of a zany 236,676,945 times faster than regular time), while those that deform it into unusual shapes travel at our (much) slower speed.

HOWEVER: it gets more a teensy bit more complicated when you do something that changes the timeline back to its original form in one way, but changes it in another way (like oh I don’t know coming up with and then executing a plan to get your parents back together in such a way that one of them experiences an epiphany and moment of personal growth while the other gets assaulted??).   In this case you have TWO ripples going out: the restorative one that puts things back as they were originally with children being born and what not, and the altering one that applies the changes from that baseline.

That’s RIGHT: two ripples, baby, and they’re travelling at different speeds, with the restorative one several orders of magnitude faster!  This is critical because soon when Marty returns back to 1985 he’ll witness himself going back in time again as he remembers it happening, go to bed, and wake up in a future he barely recognizes.  The restorative ripple goes through time, restoring his family, in about four seconds.  We see that happen with the photograph.

What we don’t see (because Marty travels through time pretty quickly after this dance and never looks at the photograph again) is the alterations to the baseline timeline that are happening in the meantime, at a slower speed.  These are the ones changing his family history to the “improved” edition.  When Marty arrives in 1985 he actually gets there BEFORE the alteration ripple gets there (he’s travelled through time and in doing so jumped over the ripple travelling through metatime), so he can watch himself, then he goes to bed.  As he sleeps the altering ripple catches up and changes things around him, causing him to wake up in a 1985 he doesn’t recognize.  This ripple goes faster than the original one did, travelling 30 years in only about 8 hours of real time instead of a week, but here the changes are proportionally much smaller!  All that’s changing is jobs and lifestyles for a few characters, we’re not dealing with an entire family never existing.

I hope that this post convinces you that changes to the timeline in the Back to the Future (Part 1) universe take time to travel through time, and that the speed at which this metatime allows changes is proportional to the size of the change being made!

INTERESTING ASIDE: One cool thing we get from this theory is that a more minor change Marty made in 1955 could’ve affected him while he was hanging out there, and it’s a shame he didn’t put any money in a bank account when he was there because midway through his week in the past he could suddenly discover that he’s rich!!

INTERESTING ASIDE 2: some of you are probably saying “Wait when Marty watches himself it’s the Lone Pine Mall instead of the Twin Pines Mall he remembers, this ruins the theory!” but ACTUALLY, it only strengthens it.  One of the first things Marty does when he arrives in 1955 is kill a pine tree, and that minor ripple had a full week of real time to arrive in 1955.  When I said earlier there are TWO ripples, I was simplifying: each change actually gets its own ripple, which propagates at a speed dependent on the magnitude of the change.  This makes sense as soon as you realize that changes are obviously a spectrum, and not just “major” or “minor”.  When Marty arrives in 1985 again it’s already changed from what he’s remembered in minor ways, in the process of changing in more major ways, and will change more over the next few hours as everything stabilizes into the new normal.

INTERESTING ASIDE THE THIRD: the fact that Marty isn’t altered as the timeline catches up with him is something we’ll deal with down the road, because it raises some timey-wimey issues too!”

Okay, hope everybody is good.  That’s all I’ve got right now.  I’ll probably be back after I’ve seen the Dark Knight Rises (if I see it while it’s still in theaters).

New Serenity Comic!

January 18th, 2011 by Susie

This November, Dark Horse put out a the graphic novel the Shepherd’s Tale.  It provided us Browncoats with the long awaited back story of Shepherd Book.  While it was interesting to finally find out what he was hiding, and it was a well written story, it didn’t really feel like an installment of Firefly, since most of the crew only appeared in a couple of pages.  When I think of Firefly, the first thing I think of is the fun of spending time with the nine, very distinct, people living aboard Serenity.  Well Shepherd’s Tale writer, Zack Whedon, has given us just, that in an online only, eight page comic called Serenity: Downtime.

Surprisingly it is available on USA Today’s website, along with a brief introductory article about Firefly/Serenity.  It is awesome!  It feels very much like an episode of Firefly.  It even has close ups of River’s feet!  Here is a little blurb about the comic.

Whedon has tried to create an atmosphere resembling a scene from Firefly. “I wanted to reward those fans by showing these characters like it was a part of the show,” he says.

Downtime follows crewmembers snowed in on a planet filled with, as Whedon puts it, “a bunch of people you don’t want to run into.” Though the whole crew is included, the focus is on the mysterious (and fan-favorite) character known as River.

Check it out here!  Serenity:Downtime

MIAs

January 31st, 2009 by Susie

10756

I am too lazy to do the research myself, maybe you guys can help me figure out,  whatever happened to…?

1) Serenity: the Shepherd’s Tale.  When Dark Horse announced this three issue mini series  that would finally document Shepherd Book’s past, they said it would be out Fall 2008.  I have yet to see it listed in there upcoming lists.

2)Savant and Creote.  Gail Simone’s run on Bird’s of Prey produced some very cool new characters, such as Black Alice, and Misfit, both of whom are still showing up in the series pages.  However my favorite, the duo of Savant and Creote have completely disappeared.   Savant is a highly intelligent, extremely unstable, misogynist pretty boy.  Creote  is his extremely loyal bodyguard/manservant/sidekick/husband?  Despite the fact that their first appearance involved them holding Black Canary prisoner, Oracle was able to turn them into allies and ably used their skills to help her ever growing team.  Savant eventually fled since Oracle’s reforming of him had seriously disturbed his calm, Creote being completely devoted of course went with him.  I assumed they would be back at some point, but that was the last I saw of them.  I hope some writer revives them.  They might make an interesting addition to Gail’s own Wonder Woman run.

3) The next arc of Sky Doll.  Sky Doll was probably my favorite discovery  of last year.  I even bought the hardback trade when it was released even though I knew there was no material in it other than the contents of the three issues already published.  I want to collect it as books.  I am dying to know what happens next, but there has been no sign of when Marvel will bring out the second series.

Pretty pictures

August 2nd, 2008 by Susie

First, here is a cute fanart comic of Captain Hammer fighting Captain Tightpants.  I wonder when we will see a Captain Hammerpants?

 

And here is the twentieth anniversary of Sandman (Neil Gaiman version) poster that debuted at comic con last week

33 artists from the comic’s run contributed.  Geek pop quiz!  Can you identify by name all the characters shown? Bonus points for identifying the artist.  The prize?  Pride in a well trained memory.

Poster legend after the jump
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Absolute Sandman Vol. 2, Echo 1, Ookla the Mok, new issues

March 12th, 2008 by Susie

Lot’s of stuff to write about! 1)Last christmas Florence, and Marty got me the first volume of Absolute Sandman.  It was awesome, the second volume is even better.  The Absolute line (yes the name does make it sound like a promotion for Vodka) from DC is basically a repackaging of some of their most acclaimed series, in oversized, beutifully designed hard covered books.  Usually the art is recolored, and the back of the book is jammed with extra content.  I usually don’t think it is worth buying a second copy of something if the story has not changed, and other Sandman I don’t think I will (although Kingdom Come is tempting).  With Sandman they have reprinted three tpbs, per volume.  Volume 2 contains the Seasons of Mists, a Game of You arcs, and most of the short stories from the Fables and Reflections collection.  Though volume 1 had some really great issues, this is the period in Sandman in my opinion where it came into it’s stride both with the story and the art.  SoM, is an epic that feels like an ancient myth that no one had transcribed yet.  Lucifer decides to quit being the adversary, kicks everyone out of Hell, leaves locking the door behind him.  He gives the key to Dream, whom he had previously vowed to destroy but now just hopes it will make his life a little difficult.  Which it does, as figures from many different pantheons (religious as well as comic book) arrive in the Dreaming seeking the deed to Hell.  Reading it again now, it is amazing how a few small interactions in these early issues set in motion the conclusion of the whole series.   At one time Season of Mists was my favorite arc, but now I feel a Game of You surpasses it.  It is a much smaller scale story than most of the other large arcs, and though Morpheus id in it, he is mostly periphery.  The main character is Barbie, who was a periphery character in the Dollhouse (collected in volume 1).  She had at one time had a very vivid dream life, in which she was a princess in a magic world of talking animals called the Land.  She has however stopped dreaming, and no longer remembers the Land.  In her absence the Land has started to die and is under the thrall of a monster called the Cuckoo.  Barbie does eventually return to the land and the it causes serous damage to the waking world.   The story could just be another “magic land ” like Oz, or Wonderland, but the conclusion id entirely originally.  The supporting cast Barbie’s neighbors: sweet transvestite, Wanda, lesbians Hazel and Foxglove, and the witch Thessaly (the only one to have any importance to the bigger story of Sandman), as well as the Land’s animals, giant dog creature Martin Tenbones, and Wilkinson a cynical rat wearing a trench-coat, are some of the most memorable in the whole series.  These are the stories that where the art  finally moves away from the typical horror comic style (overly lined faces, and colored in sickly purples and greens) .  Despite having some of the most horrific  scenes in the whole series, a man chained to rock in Hell having his chest repeatedly torn open, a pile of decapitated heads singing, the face torn from corpse nailed to wall happily chatting away with it’s wagging tongue.  It was well worth spending seventy dollars for this excellent new printing. 2) I also read echo number 1.  It is Terry Moore’s new creator owned comic.  It appears to be his take on super heroes.  Of course the heroine is one of his beautiful girls.  the first issue is a simple origin story.  Girl taking pictures in the dessert, inadvertently finds herself in the path of a explosion, gain a super powered suit.  That is all that has happened so far.  Except that we know that the owners of the suit seriously nasty, killing the previous wearer of the suit (hence the explosion) just to test it’s durability.  I know in few issues this is going to have completely sucked me in, and the story will be any thing but simple.  This is from the creator of Strangers in Paradise after all. 3) I have totally fallen in Love the album Super Secret from the band Ookla the Mok.  They are by far the geekiest band I have every encountered.  Nearly every high energy song song is a packed with references to comic books, old school science fiction, or alien abductions.  A sample of one of there lyrics from the song Theme from Super Skrull “He can turn one leg invisible, which is not all that practical. Unless you are quite gullible, you won’t get fooled by Super Skrull!”  My favorite song on  the album is called Stop Talking About Comic Books or I will Kill You, but the one I can not stop humming is Guggenheim Love.  The songs are not only catchy, they are hilarious. 4)  In a couple of hours i will head over to my local comic shop and pick up a months a worht of issues.  Including issues of, Buffy, Angel, Runaways, Fables,  Astro City, and the first issue of Serenity: Better Days!  Woo hoo!That is all.