So, Witchblade...

So, Witchblade...

  Why Witchblade? Becuase I know jack squat about Top Cow's property save for disjointed summaries I've read online that make it seem like Alien had sex with Spriggan and its baby grew up to have sex with Spawn, who then walked out on the resulting baby (YES, WTF?). It had a tv show at some point but got cancelled -- the girl from Hard Target was in it.

See? Hard Target!

  This is about issues 1-8: here we go... Oh! Here Be Spolers, people. Of course.   I should, in theory, be falling into this thing with a beginner's mind, and I'm gonna be making it up as I go. Honest.
  The thing feels like a strange nineties comic.

  To open things up proper (just past the beginning) we are welcomed by noirish [sic] monologuing beat cop Sara Pezzini (or "Pez" to the guys) tackling an undercover bust while dressed as a "slut" for no apparent reason... and that is all you need to know about this comic's initial approach to aesthetics: pretty girl, big plump breasts, round butt, tiny waist. She is a brunette bombshell of a woman, just so you know, guys. The proud owner of long, shapely legs, brown long hair, and a pink thong under that red hooker dress -- you know all this before you even see her face.

  She's also a hothead with a strong sense of justice who knows how to carry herself in a fight, but you only find about this later, after the comic has showcased her assets for a good while.
  Part of me thinks this whole insane sprint right out of the gate was meant to capture audience attention as fast as possible, because the story about Sara getting into insane situation after insane situation -- her partner dying, she mortally wounded but rescued by a weird-ass globe (Witchblade!), murdering a bunch of people before losing consciousness, taken to the hospital, getting out of the hospital, grabbing the glove, trying to revive her dead parner and zombifying him and freaking the fuck out and getting rid of the glove, going on an angry workout and looking hot, getting abducted, getting shot, wearing the globe again, burning some more people with it, and getting her ass kicked by a long haired weirdo she found attractive (because she likes "bad boys"), ETC. -- all happens at so fucking slow a pace that, maybe, they just felt like they HAD to fall on the tittays and booty just enough to warrant going into the long haul and make more issues.

  I assume. Because, again, the thing is really, really weird. The script has groan inducing lines like "The pistol is like part of my hand and I'm a super-hero... blasting the badguys with my fireballs of justice," as narrated by Sara when she shooting a poor bastard's kneecap in the opening moments of her character's intro -- all mid a gymnastics tumble, legs spread, ass raised...

Yeah. That looks so functional... wonder where she learned that.

  Ok? Ok... but all that comes after she's done relaying the audience a story about her childhood and how she ended up becoming a cop and why. Not uninteresting stuff. Just jarring, considering the visuals.

  Furthermore, the thing is extremely fond of the big no-no in illustrated storytelling known as MASSIVE. WALLS. OF. TEXT, as if it wanted real bad to be a novel but settled for what it ended up as.

  The more you know: The comic book adaptation of Phillip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by BOOM! Studios many years later does share a similar look, though the latter was made with the specific intention of adapting prose and images. No shit. Coincidence? Who knows. 

  Michael Turner's art is able for what it is trying to do yet when looking at everything put together it is easy to tell each page is cluttered as fuck and quite the eyesore.

  Boobs and letters, I call it.

  Though the girls are real pretty to look at... in an insane sort of way -- a live girl would quickly find her ass wholly incapacitated due to severe back pain if she were to attempt but one of Sara's numerous poses, and same goes for any of the other females for that matter; the guys are your usual shade of grimacing, slack-jawed 90's roided musclemen who, like the women, all tend to look kind of same-ish.

  So it isn't that much of a stretch to say that Witchblade sought to rely on a very particular audience demographic for support: adolescent young males nearing adulthood with coin to spare... so, *girlies*, this was not, from the very outset, meant to cater to your tastes without quite frequently annoying you -- not visually at least.

  That is not necessarily a bad thing so long as the source material is clear about where its aims lie.

  But Witchblade is anything but clear in that department.

  On one end it constantly parades a presumptively perfectly assembled object (of many) for men to project their lustful wants and gawk at -- on the other lies the developing story of a confused, angry person holding on to her life by a thread as it's turned upside down and pummeled into shit because someone, somewhere is obsessed with some ugly-ass sentient glove. And shit is earnest.

  To further confuse matters, sprinkled across Sara's conflict with creep-fest Kenneth Irons (or, as I call him: Asshole Magic Batman) are disses at men's sexist pseudo protective behavior towards females, issues of women in the workplace, jabs at the fashion industry, and some mockery aimed at scientology thrown in for good measure.

  As it urns out, the sentient glove in question, the Witchblade of the title, is an item of "great power" and yadda-yadda -- it has been worn by many women through the ages and now Sara is the current wearer. If this sounds like Buffy to you then you are correct but, despite the similarities, Sara Pezzini came *first* as a fully featured character -- not accounting for the silly movie, of course. And her budding adventure isn't wholly nonsensical: things happen organically and the characters are not complete and utter morons which is a surprise (because nineties).

  Right from the very start, somewhere between all the boobanies and flexing, this comic aims to be so much more than mere escapism. Because in the world of over-muscled, over-sexed super heroes of 1995, someone seemingly wanted to throw a story about a self-sufficient woman in there. She goes through harsh-shit with no easy path in sight and pulled into every other direction save the right one... she suffers unwanted homicidal attention, gets stalked by a manipulative older man who, making the best of her vulnerable state of mind, butters her up with sweet words and lavish gifts, turning her into a docile, less assertive, poutier version of herself... and manages to make her feel *GOOD* about it... kinda like Twilight...

He even bought her a dress, because that oughta melt bitches right up, don't it? Uh-huh...

  But, lo and behold, Sara Pezzini overcomes the asshole's ploys, and then she overcomes HIM by going back to what really defined her in the beginning (thematically at least) and making the right choices, starting with trusting herself and asserting her independence and self reliance. She even learns a valuable life lesson along the way: his pearl necklace wasn't for her! Wait, wha... is that subtext hiding somewhere in there?? I dunno, maybe? She was still half naked when going through her epiphany thingie so, yeah... guess I'm confused about it.
  There is a female empowerment message running through all eight issues, but it is kinda awkward to guess where, exactly, it comes from when your powerful, assertive heroine tends to look like this whenever she has to power the fuck up:

Feelin' empowered, girl? Or maybe just cold, I dunno...

  And that is why things revert back to the plain weird so often because the plot, obviously, does not come from a malicious place -- it is just too damn complicated for it to be a throw away joke.
  So far the comic feels like a disjointed mess, both visually and thematically, and a PAIN in the eyes to read, but it does enough things right that it holds my continued attention. Maybe it improves? We'll see.

Moar on the Witchblade at a later time... twats.

Words to take to heart: "...It is not wise to remove a fly from a friend's foreheead with a hatchet!!"

Tai Chi This...

  Turns out Keanu Reeves is a good director... excellent, even... okay, bad pun. But he's good at it, for realsies.

  The story is about a fellow named Tiger Chen (because why the fuck not) who does Tai Chi -- but not your grandma's kind of calisthenics and rather the wet dream of wuxia aficuonados everywhere. And he does it for peanuts too.

  What? Yes, dude is dirt poor because an old fat bastard in his pj's (his "master") somehow convinced him that it is "not honorable" to make an honest living out of his talents and so poor tiger has to work a frustrating dead end job as a courier for the Chinese version of Fed Ex (I guess... did I mention I watched this thing with no subtitles on?) and so is forced to get his fighting fix by partaking in pussified amateur bouts for no monies against the kung fu equivalents of redshirts. And there's a love story angle with a cute girl somewhere in there but it doesn't really matter... because manly and breaking things (peole, really).

  Kinda sucks to be the guy, really.

  But not all is lost for him. His ability does get noticed by Keanu Reeves's shady businessman in DONAKA MARK (because fuck yeah?) who offers him a lucrative "job" beating fools inside a small room in what he calls... REAL FIGHTING (or just 'real fighting' because Keanu Reeves is emotionless).

  Homie takes him up in his offer because fuckit, he wants some coin to make ends meet. Keanu smirks about this and many other things -- but mostly because he's, like, so evil and likes to troll the cops and secretly fuck with Tiger's life.

  Dramaz happen. There's a cop subplot, too.

  It's actually a really decent flick if you're into this kind of stuff, more akin to what would resemble a character study of a classic protagonist in these kinds of movies than it is about the nominal macho fare that permeates the genre (it's not an accident that the main character looks like a really, really ugly woman... what?), yet it respects its roots... and that is its problem.

  Fight scenes are the standard flashy, stylized stuff you've come to expect, and they are very well directed BUT... sadly I suffer from the ailment I have termed "faitfanitis," which means, basically, that I like to watch full-contact sports.

  But who cares about any of that? I do, becuase the ailment has ruined my appreciation of these kinds of flicks. No longer can I enjoy movies like this one without finding them extremely silly. It is all just so... lame. Especially this one, because its whole narrative rests over the absurd conceit that there are people out there who would pay to see people fight "for real," which is absolutely true -- but the problem is that this is normal and already happens (see UFC, PRIDE, K-1, etc.). In boxing, MMA (mixed martial arts), or kickboxing.

  In the magic world of this movie there are no injuries (unless they are magical!) or need for proper training regimens like sparring, dieting, etc. People get kicked in the head over and over again, not one needs to preserve his cardio, or put weight on their punches.

  Everyone, and I mean everyone, waifs around at the plot's discretion, screaming like dancing little girls on a steady diet of nothing but sugar and cocaine. And I won't even get started with the unsettling undercurrent of validation of the already-proven-obsolete concept of the "Martial Arts Master" because I will shit a large, square brick.

  But keanu Reeves menacingly hisses at the camera sometime during the movie, which is awesome. But then he pulls a somewhat polt twisty-twist out of his ass near the end which had me kinda scratching my head and totally turned my outrage on its head.
  Yay, I guess.

  Now, bias aside, this movie is definitely not shit. It boasts an honest attempt at decent character development, an assured hand when it comes to shooting action, and a genuine intention at being more than just about said action -- which may well be enough.

If anyone is interested in watching a somewhat short flick that has jack squat in common with real fighting but an earnest heart, they could do way worse than giving this one a spin.