Random Reviews- JLA: The Island of Dr Moreau

Random Reviews

JLA: The Island of Dr Moreau

Background

I should probably start by explaining what this is and why it exists. For those of you who aren't comic fans or who aren't particularly familiar with DC comics, this is an Elseworlds story. Elseworlds comics are set in alternate universes to the "main" DC universe and feature famous characters in new and (supposedly) interesting ways. Some of these stories are set in universes similar to the original universe, while others are wildly different; only one Elseworlds story ever tried to recreate the old "Imaginary Story" formula of setting it in the mainstream universe and then taking events in a whole new direction from that point, and that was JLA: Act of God, one of the most notoriously bad Elseworlds in comic history.

Elseworlds are extremely hit and miss. There are good stories; Superman: Red Son, JLA: The Nail, Batman: Darkest Knight, etc. But there are also a lot of bad ones; some of the most infamous are Kamandi: At Earth's End and the aforementioned Act Of God. Some are almost agressively average, and some are just plain weird. The problem, in my opinion, is that Elseworlds are almost impossible to judge on their own merits, they demand comparison to mainstream stories; Elseworlds are designed to be a fresh new take on the mythology, but if you go too far in that, you basically end up with an original story with a couple of names and concepts tagged on that just seem out of place.

Others go one step further by simply placing the characters in famous stories such as Frankenstein (Batman: Castle of the Bat), usually following the original plot until around halfway through and then completely changing direction about hallway through. JLA: The Island of Doctor Moreau is one of those.

Plot

I'm going to admit right now that I've not read The Island of Doctor Moreau or seen either of the movie adaptations. I saw the Simpsons parody on one of their Halloween episodes, but that doesn't really count.

Heh. Disco Shew.

Anyway, I read the Wikipedia summary for the novel, and, to cut it down a lot: narrator washes up on an island owned by a crazy scientist called Moreau, Moreau has been using the power of technobabble to surgically alter animals into humanoids that worship him and that he has been trying to make act human, they regress and kill Moreau, the narrator escapes on a boat and lives in solitude for the rest of his life. It really isn't a premise that lends itself to superheroics, but it could be a good start for a halfway decent tounge in cheek parody. Which this is not.

Anyway, like I said, the first part of the comic follows the book pretty well, but with a couple of changes; the narrator is now Lucas "Snapper" Carr, a recurring background character who I've only seen  in the Justice League: Year One miniseries, Moreau's assistant is now Professor Ivo, a mad scientist and recurring villain, and Moreau's animal-men are rough equivalents of the Justice League. We have Deanna- an albino gorilla Wonder Woman, Jubatus- a cheetah version of the Flash, and, um...

I'm gonna level with you, I have no idea who the rest of these guys are meant to be. There's a dolphin man called Delphinus, who I guess is probably Aquaman; a scaly guy called Komodo, who might be Killer Croc but could be Martian Manhunter for all I know; and Bernardus- a dogman with electric eels growing out of his arm. Black Lightning? Cyborg? Just who the hell is this guy? This is a classic case of an Elseworlds going too far- at least one of these guys could probably be considered an Original Character.

Also, Snapper is an idiot. I get that superpowered animal people are a little outside the average person's frame of reference, but if your only comment on a clearly inhuman  and furry  cheetah man is that he has "weirdly mottled skin" I have to wonder exactly what kind of university your biology degree came from (yeah, he has a biology degree). Then again, maybe he just has vision problems, since he's apparently unable to tell whether or not those really are eels growing out of the dog-man's arm.

Anyway, Snapper exposits that Moreau fled the law and England when he was caught performing illegal surgical experiments on animals. He goes to Moreau's lab to find him and Ivo operating on a porcupine-bear thing called "Black Arrow", who I suppose is meant to be Oliver Queen, but I'm going by the name alone, and "Dirus Falconus", he's a roughly humanoid hawk/wolf hybrid, a "Hawk-man" if you will. It's actually a pretty atmospheric scene, and looking at the writers biography he's a very talented and experienced writer who was Editor-in-Chief at Marvel for a while, and some parts of this story are genuinely well done. He just clearly didn't bring his A-game for this one.

Moreau rambles for a few pages to demonstrate that (just in case the audience are as dumb as Snapper) hey, this guy might be evil, and, though I'm probably overanalysing here- more than a little crazy. We also learn that Moreau has formed a cult around himself consisting of a series of commandments that forbid such animal-like behaviour as eating meat, which is kinda weird since A- humans eat meat, and B- only one of these creatures is a herbivore.

Yes, that's scientifically plausible.

Also, Moreau looks like Santa Claus

Anyway, since Snapper's arrived he's decided to take his JLA or "Justifiers of Law to the Anointed". As a side note, Ivo refers to them as "Just a Lot of Animals". As a side note, the Just'a Lotta Animals were a group of animal parody versions of the JLA, who existed on an alternate Earth prior to Crisis On Inifinite Earths and appeared in a comic entitled "Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew", that Roy Thomas, the writer of this story, contributed to. I know things that I have no business knowing.

Green Lambkin, The Crash, Wonder Wabbit, Captain Carrot, Aquaduck, Batmouse and Super-Squirrel

No punchline or anything, there's literally nothing I can add here

Anyway, since we've reached the point in the adaptation where we abandon the plot of the original, they return to England, and Moreau decides to prove his creations' worth by setting them on Jack the Ripper. I should mention that throughout the story Snapper becomes increasingly concerned that the JLA are regressing back to beasts.

The JLA search Whitehall to no avail but eventually they corner him after he claims another victim and find him in a makeshift "House Of Pain" where he's been using prostitutes as test subjects to reverse Moreau's experiments- transforming people into animals. Why? Because he's Moreau's first test subject, an Orang-utan-man. Okay...

This is an orang-utan with a moustache and a bowler hat.

We're meant to take him seriously as credible threat and ruthless killer.

This is not a parody. 

So anyway, he pulls the usual "join me" villain speech, but instead Wonder Gorilla bashes his head out against the wall. The JLA decide "screw Moreau's crazy laws" and eat his corpse, and at this point I'm wondering if all this could have been avoided if Moreau simply used slightly less aggressive animals as his test subjects. I don't see a sheep-man becoming a raging monster, is all I'm saying.

This comic predates Infinite Crisis by three years if you're interested

Anyway, Moreau declares success despite either not having a body to show the police and the press, or having a body that's been picked clean. Again I question the logic of the characters in this story; if my private army of mutant super-carnivores who I'd forbidden to eat meat and who are in constant danger of regressing to savagery dropped a carcass in my lap, I'd be slightly worried. Also, if he had seen the body, wouldn't he recognise the fact that it's clearly not a human being? I think a scientific genius could recognise the pretty clear differences between an orang-utan and a person.

Anyway, Snapper leaves but has a premonition that something bad is going to happen, so he comes back just as Moreau is trying to force the JLA to go through another set of operations to splice some ape in there, thereby transforming them into Gods. There's a fine line between genius and madness and Moreau is using it as a skipping rope. They refuse, so Moreau threatens them with a gun and shoots Delphinus, half the animals turn on him while the others side with him inexplicably.

Literally two pages ago, you were openly defying him, you ate the orang-utan along with everyone else. WTH is going on?

They get into a fight, Ivo and Moreau are killed and the JLA along with them. Snapper torches the place and leaves. The End!

Conclusion

I did not go into this with high hopes, but this did manage to exceed my expectations slightly. There's no real criteria an Elseworlds needs to fill to be good, but this just doesn't work for me. I can't describe it other than saying that it just doesn't feel right- it's too far into the source material with not enough elements of the DCU, so it's not a good Elseworlds. That isn't to say you can't have a good Elseworlds story that takes place in a wildly different universe; Roy Thomas himself wrote two others- Superman's Metropolis and Superman: War of the Worlds, both of which I really like, but they still have deep connections to the DCU and still feel like Superman stories. I swear if you changed some names and costumes and told me this was an independent, I would believe you. I've read a comic called Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer, I'll believe anything.

Whether or not it's a good story is a different matter. It's.

.. not so great. It's readable, but that's about it. The plot is solid enough, but Jack the Ripper being an orang-utan was completely unnecessary, since it doesn't affect the plot in any way- if he'd just been some random nutjob human, the story would be exactly the same. Which is a problem because there was potential there as both a Moreau subject and as one of the most notorious serial killers in history, but no, he just exists to get his head bashed in and that's it. I've mentioned that the division in the JLA made no sense and came out of nowhere, but superhero teams fall apart over nothing all the time, so that's okay. Nobody's actions make any kind of sense- these people are operating on a logic all their own.

The story does have some genuinely dramatic and slightly disturbing moments- like I said there was a good creative team behind this, and Moreau himself does come off as a genuinely unbalanced and dangerous individual, but that's probably because he's the only character with an actual personality. Out of the JLA, only Deanna has anything approaching a character trait, Ivo is completely useless and has drunkenness as his only characteristic, and Snapper is a bland protagonist to rival Keanu Reeves.

Even looks a little like him.

Basically this comic is stupid in none of the fun ways. Elseworlds tend to take themselves very seriously, I don't think I've ever seen an intentionally ridiculous Elseworlds (although some are a bit more lighthearted than others), and that's usually okay if the story is good, but this story just doesn't lend itself to that kind of tone. Roy Thomas already created a series about superhero animals that was well-liked and well-remembered. I guess he was hoping he could do that again but "Darker And Edgier", to use the TvTropes term, but it just didn't work. This wasn't a doomed concept, but at the same time it wasn't going to be the next Watchmen either. Overall, I think if the execution had been a bit different- with some more overt connections to the DCU, and maybe if they had taken better advantage of the Jack the Ripper idea, this could have been okay, but they didn't and it isn't. If you want a score I'd have to say 2/5, not completely terrible, but nowhere near as good as it could have been.

Furry cosplayers. Only a matter of time.

Favourite Panel

Heh. No real reason for why I like this one so much, I just like it when Americans write that sort of dialogue for British characters.

Stuff From My Life- Monster Dream

Stuff From My Life

I had a weird dream last night. I was a member of a team of boy monster hunters (I think I was about twelve), and we disbanded when our leader disappeared presumed dead on our last mission. After we'd grown up he returned, reunited us and took us down into the sewers, which lead to a series of underground caverns. We split into groups and I went with him. Eventually we were attacked by a giant crocodile which I destroyed with dynamite. There was no blood but the pieces were scattered around the caverns, and all of us needed to track them down and destroy them because they could move by themselves. I was about to stab a lump of tail with a sword I suddenly had, and then I woke up.

I'm not a psychologist, but I think it means I'm either sexually repressed, or I need to watch fewer cartoons.

Mum's Birthday

Happy Birthday Mum

I love you

Stupid Beliefs- The Flat Earth Society

Stupid Things That Stupid People Believe

The Flat Earth Society

Background

Popular history credits Christopher Columbus with two major achievements; being the first European to discover America, and proving that the world was round. Both are not true. Modern historical consensus is that the first European to discover America was a Viking explorer and Christian missionary called Leif Ericson who called it Vinland, and there's even some debate about whether he was actually the first- according to his own saga, he got directions from a Swede and rescued two shipwrecked sailors.

Secondly, Columbus wasn't trying to prove the world was round because people already knew it was, it would be like a modern physicist trying to prove that things fall at the same rate in a vacuum- people would have laughed at him. Columbus was trying to sail around the back of the world to find a passage to India- the waters between Western Europe and India being pretty dangerous at the time. If you don't believe me, have a look at this poorly-proportioned America-free globe, made before Columbus set sail.

I think that's meant to be Asia but don't hold me to it

In all fairness, while Columbus may have totally failed at the only goal he set for himself, his landing on America lead to the colonisation of North America, the extinction of several Native tribes, and for better or worse pretty much all of human history from that point on, whereas Leif Ericson's lead to absolutely fuck all.

Did people really believe this?

Yes, yes they did. Pretty much every culture on Earth before reaching a certain level of scientific development believed that the world was flat- and can you really blame them? It does look flat to the naked eye, unless you happen to be on a boat or watching one. However, we don't really give ancient civilisations enough credit a lot of the time, ancient Greek philosopers like Pythagoras and Aristotle were able to figure it out, and, although the Christianity has a bit of a reputation for stamping down on science like a schoolyard bully, most early fathers of the Church accepted a round Earth as fact. Throughout the middle ages, European and Islamic scholars more or less agreed the world was a globe, but astronomers in Asia refused to buy it at first.

The reason for the "Myth of the Flat Earth"- the belief that people once widely though the world was flat- is mostly due to an American writer called Washington Irving, who first wrote the popular story of Columbus; and the rest of it is due to the fact that, by the 19th Century, historians looked at the Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages" of ignorance after the fall of Rome. We all like to think we're part of the smartest generation, so it's nice to imagine everyone in the past as a Bible-thumping inbred moron who doesn't know how fire works.

The idea of a flat earth was mostly dead therefore, until the late 19th and early 20th Century. You need to understand that education wasn't widespread back then, and it was mostly just the basics- reading, spelling, simple maths, boys here are your pickaxes, girls here are your brooms. To the average working-class 19th Century man, the world looked flat so it was flat- stood to reason. Various crackpot scientists and "Zeteic societies" started to spring out of the woodwork, carrying out experiments that seemed to prove the world was flat, the most famous was the "Bedford Level Experiment". These experiments did seem convincing at the time, but have since been proven to be seriously flawed due to the people creating them having a poor understanding of physics, and several optical illusions. Eventually religion started to get involved, with various Christian zealots holding that a flat earth was biblical fact, and when religion and science meet no-one walks out with any dignity. There were public debates between Flat Earthers and real scientists that the "Planists" as they were called were judged as winning.

This went on and one like crazy, according to Joshua Slocum- the first man to sail solo around the world, he was once approached by three men in South Africa who gave him a pamphlet explaining exactly why his landmark history-making voyage was completely impossible.

You wanna say that to my face? Punk?

Do they still believe it?

Yes, but only a few of them. The Flat Earth Society, which I swear to God is a real thing (they have a podcast) was founded in 1956 by an Englishman called Samuel Shelton. Their stated goal is to reach children before they become exposed to the spherical earth "theory" and covert them to the Society's way of thinking, which I'm pretty sure is cult brainwashing. This being 1956, his credibility took an instant hit.

Take that America!

With the wonderful logic of the completely insane, Shelton commented "Would sailing around the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It's the same for those satellites". He then went on to claim that the government were space lizards. As time went on and the two major world superpowers shot more stuff into space he gradually lost more and more support and died in 1971.

End of story right?

Nope, one of his pen pals- Californian (of course he was from California) Charles K. Johnson revamped the society, eventually attracting 3000 members. I'll repeat that- in the 1970's, 3000 people  believed the world was flat. He mostly stayed underground- presumably talking to magical elves and working on his unicorn stew recipe, but in 1980 he published an article in now-defunct science magazine "Science Digest", where he added to his list of symptoms by claiming that there is a worldwide conspiracy to spread misinformation about a round earth, a conspiracy that had included Moses, Columbus and FDR.

NEW WORLD ORDER! NEW WORLD ORDER! ILLUMINATI! BEWARE!!!!

Johnson died in 2001 and the Society was relaunched again in 2004 as a website, since on the Internet there's someone who'll believe anything, like a conspiracy theorist Rule 34. They don't publish membership figures. They claim to be "free thinkers" and have both a wiki and library to catalogue the "different schools of Flat Earth thought". Really.

They claim that gravity is a result of the Earth accelerating upwards at 9.8m/s/s, and that night and day (as well as the seasons) are a result of the sun spinning around above the Earth in a spiral, and that all photographs taken from space have been doctored and anyway most space travel is faked anyway. This is all on their FAQ page by the way, and once again I swear I'm not kidding

I assumed that this website was some kind of parody at first, but they claim to be 100% serious, and are aware that a number of their members may be trolls.

They're a pretty loose and nebulous group- they can't even agree on how the Flat Earth actually looks, but here's the picture on their website, you will notice that Antarctica is a wall. I wonder what these people would have said to Captain Scott.

Conclusion

So that's the Flat Earth Society- the easiest target in history for mockery. Now I feel like I've hit my stride, next time we'll be looking at something more serious but equally uncontroversial (since I'm a spineless coward who only goes after easy targets); Climate Change Denialists. Coming in two weeks.

Stuff From My Life- 19/06/13

Stuff From My Life

19th June 2013

My roomate's away for the week and since he left I've noticed a dip in my personal discipline. My sleep schedule's out, I've been eating junk food at weird times and the dishes are piling up.

We stay out of each other's way most of the time and he doesn't run my life, but I guess sharing chores is a kind of structure that I've been relying on to schedule my life around. It was the same thing when I lived with my parents, if I was going to have the place to myself for the day I'd go almost feral. I heard an interview on the radio with a scientist who believes that, contrary to the conventional wisdom that evolution drove the birth of civilisation it was the other way around. Basically when humans started to form societies, started to farm, developed language etc., we evolved to better fit that mould.

I'm not an anthropologist or an evolutionary biologist but I think my behaviour draws some parallels to that. Maybe it's being in groups like a family, a tribe or just two guys sharing five rooms tgat make us act like civilised people, maybe we rely on the silent judgement of others to guide our behavior and without it we just stop trying and take the path of least resistance or most pleasure, after all, we al do things on our own we'd never do if there were other people in the room.

Or mayb I'm just a lazy slob who needs to be peer-pressured into acting like a human being, you be the judge.

Stuff From My Life- 14/06/13

Stuff from my life

14th June 2013

I really don't want to be that guy. I don't want to be the guy that starts a blog just to rail against people who've slighted him in some minor way, but this is one I really need to get out there.

Last Friday, the 14th, I went on a camping weekend, since I hadn't been camping in a long time and I missed it. I'd moved recently and I didn't have a map of the area, but I had Google Maps directions to the campsite which I thought would be enough, I had also left my phone and mp3 player behind to try to leave the world behind for a while. In retrospect of course all those things were very stupid and I fully accept that the situation I found myself in was entirely of my own making.

The plan was to take a bus almost all the way there and walk the last few miles. I missed the last in a series of buses which only ran every three hours or so and decided to walk it, but when I finally got to the right village in the middle of Kent, I couldn't find it, and no-one had heard of it, so I ended up just wandering around, and at this point I'd like to put on record that I was carrying a tent, sleeping bag, cooking utensils, gas stove, and food and clothes for three days on my back. Eventually it got dark and I'd been walking for about seven hours at this point, with about a third of my own body weight strapped to me, sustained by Fruit and Nut Dairy Milk and a 2 litre bottle of Evian, and I stumbled across some kind of hostel.

At the hostel I met some people who hadn't heard of where I was going either, so I turned to leave, naturally at this point a little exasperated, tired and annoyed, so I sighed in frustration and started to storm off. I admit it was a little rude but I feel at least slightly justified in that.

Anyway, as I was leaving one of the guys at the hostel shouted that he would have looked up the location on his phone for me, but because I hadn't been perfectly polite to him, I could piss off, those were his exact words, "piss off".

About ten minutes later, I was walking down a road, and the same guy drove past me in his car (and this would have been about 11 at night at this point), slowed down to tell me he would have helped me had I not been rude to him, and drove off.

About another ten minutes later I met an older man in the street who did help me, actually took me into his home (now it was approaching midnight) and let me look up directions on his own computer. It turned out that the campsite was not, in fact, in or near the village itself but on the other side of the district named after it, fortunately the path there was pretty straightforward. I eventually got to the campsite about 1:30 in the morning, put up my tent and passed out. Apart from that it was an okay trip.

Both these men were total strangers and I don't even know their names, but all I can say is it just goes to show that, while most people are basically good, some people are just dicks.

Random Reviews- Intro

Random Reviews

I'm a huge fan of the website ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com, and, with that in mind I though I might try my hand at some reviews of anything I think deserves a good thrashing, or something I think was underrated and deserves showcasing, or sometimes just stuff I remember watching or reading a long time ago that I want to give a second look.

I think I'll just stick with text reviews for now, but if I get some free time to learn video editing and actually film a review (I have a day job and a couple of obligations on my off time) I might get to it.

In the meantime however, stick around and I'll start by reviewing a comic- JLA: Island of Dr. Moreau. Yes, really, that's a thing.

Stupid Beliefs- Intro

Stupid Things That Stupid People Believe

We live in an age of science and reason. We've conquered ignorance in almost all it's forms, and every day we push the frontiers of human understanding as we look out into the stars, and deep into the structure of subatomic particles. They found the Higgs Boson this year, and a few months ago, there were hints that scientists at CERN may be on the way to isolating and cracking the mystery of dark matter.

I consider myself a reasonable person and a man of science, even if I'm not one of the visionaries pushing the boundaries, I take a keen interest both as an engineer and a student of the universe. So when I see people holding the obviously false as fact, it causes me actual physical pain.

So I'm going to use this little corner of the internet as my own personal soapbox to mock people clinging to ancient superstitions, pseudoscience, and phony religions invented in the last hundred years or so.

We'll be starting with the easiest target I can find, the Flat Earth Society.

Welcome to my Blog

Welcome to my Blog

I've had a couple of blogs over the years. They were up for about three years and amassed a grand total of nine comments between them. I forgot about them, then I deleted them in disgust (along with all my fanfiction) a while ago and now I've decided to give it another try.

 

For this one I've decided to just spew out every random thought that comes to my head and see what happens. I've got some ideas for regular posts so let's see what we can dredge up from my brain and hope for the best.