Looking To The Stars - Clerks 2 and Civil War #3

First, A Few Words To The Wise…

There is a Clerks 2 Review here, but this is going to be sappy, emotional and above all thoughtful criticism for the most part. So if you just want to know if it is funny or worth seeing, the short version is Yes. It is funny. Jay and Silent Bob are in it. Randall is his usual crass self. And Dante is still Fate’s Chamberpot. If you want to learn something, stick around. If not, enjoy the flick.

Last week, in case you didn’t read it, I spoke a bit about how the movie Clerks changed my life for the better at a time when I was younger, more foolish and wondering what to do with my life while being trapped in a crummy job and lacking direction.

Now, nearly ten years after I saw that film, I am a little bit older, relatively less foolish and am trying to find a respectable full-time job. I’ve also found that I also have about the same hold on the direction I am going in as I did when I was 18. Which is, ironically, very much the same situation Dante Hicks is in as Clerks 2.

As the movie opens, Dante’s future seems fairly certain. Free of the Quick Stop and RST Video for nearly a year, Dante is going into his last day of work at the Mooby’s Fast Food place. He has a fiance who is getting ready to drag him down to Florida and an easy life in a house bought by his in-laws, managing a car wash owned by his father-in-law and generally getting away from the Hell that has been the first 33 years of his life.

It gives nothing away to say that naturally, things get complicated and that by the end of the film, everything has been put in jeopardy. Comic antics ensue, of course. There is much comedic geekery, including a much needed slam of the live-action Transformers movie, a view of Fantasy Fandom vs. Sci-Fi Fandom and a hilarious dissertation upon the accidental use of racial slurs.

But underneath the “stupid humor for smart people” as Kevin Smith once said when asked to describe his movies, there is a big heart and a big message to this film. Dante Hicks, like Hamlet, is a man doomed by his inaction and indecisiveness and Randall is his Horatio. If the first Clerks taught us that we are often the architects of our own prisons, this Clerks teaches us that life is too short to spend worrying about what you should do with your life if you don’t live your life, for good or ill, in the first place.

A less mature Smith might have illustrated this point with a Star Wars quote; “Do or do not; there is no try,” could have done the lackluster Dante a lot of good about 15 years earlier. But he is past that point and so is most of Smith’s audience. Instead, Smith offers more subtle tributes to his influences – including a musical montage to “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” that hails rather than mocks Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and a black-to-white fade that suggests, much like The Wizard of Oz, that there is no place like home. And like before, the movie ends with a Soul Asylum song. And a very good Soul Asylum song, at that I should say.

In short, the movie is not just a laugh-fest. It’s got an important thought behind it as well. And you get to see a lot more of Jason Mewes than most people would want to see. If that’s not worth your six clams, I don’t know what is.

And since my review of Clerks 2 was a littler shorter and sweeter than I expected, here’s a bonus review – short version and a longer version – of Civil War #3.

Now, long time readers know that I’m not a big fan of Mark Millar. In the past, I’ve referred to him as a poor man’s Grant Morrison and as a pitiful hack who was plundering better storylines from DC Comics in order to continue his work at Marvel. His run on Spider-Man, for instance, being a poorly executed, continuity-ignoring parody of Jeph Loeb’s Hush.

It will probably be a surprise, then, for me to say that I liked the story of Civil War #3 very much.

Seriously, you don’t get better than this for sheer drama. Two groups of heroes, divided by a political dispute on the field of battle as indifferent politicians look on. And then a third party, who would benefit from the hero’s destruction, unleashes a magical, electric force that is capable of destroying them all.

Truly inspiring stuff. And I did love it… when I read that exact same story in Kindgom Come.

(Oh come on. You didn’t think I was really going to say something good about a Mark Millar book, did you?)

For the short review, I hand the podium over to my illustrious and illustrated fictional colleague, J. Jonah Jameson.

The Short Review

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. Same Matt website.

Visit our blog at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/looking2dastars/

Looking To The Stars - A Few More Of My Favorite Things

My first job was working as a generic clerk then as a video clerk in a books/music/movies superstore that shall remain nameless. It was a cool one at first but after a switch in the management it became more and more unbearable, but ain’t that always the way?

Well, while I was working there I got introduced to a little film that wound up changing my life for the better. It didn’t quite inspire me to follow my dreams (I’ve needed precious little motivation to do that) but it did inspire me not to let my crummy job get me down and to try and stick with college so I’d at least have a chance at a better day-job while I was doing the theater thing at night.

Well, eventually I got fired from that job, anyway and on the same day, I used my last paycheck to buy a copy of this movie which had inspired me so: Clerks.

So naturally, it got my attention when I walked into the comic shop one day and heard the owner complaining about how Marvel Comics had gone crazy. They were handing over the reigns of Daredevil to an unproven writer – guy who made a few movies and written a few indy titles for Oni Press.

Nodding in sympathy (I was a DC boy, what did I care?), I asked who this horrible hack was.

“Kevin Smith or something.”

Unthinkable as this may be today, Kevin Smith was not quite a household name among geeks. Chasing Amy was just barely in the video stores, the Internet was not yet the huge bastion of rabble-rousing message boards that it is now and Mallrats hadn’t yet become a huge cult hit with every comic-reading guy who saw a little of himself in Brodie Bruce.

I knew jack and squat about Daredevil but I knew who the guy who made Clerks was. And if he was going to take a hand at writing comics, I was going to give it a shot. So that leads us to #4 on our Top Ten Chronological Countdown…

The First Marvel Comic: Daredevil #1

Ironically, I didn’t wind up getting this book at the comic shop. In a blunder worthy of Walt and Steve-Dave themselves, the former owner of my first comics-shop ordered too few of the first issue. He expected it to be a critical flop. Instead, he sold out in an hour. Of course the reason he expected this was because of all the people who will buy a #1 anything… until the demand kept coming later in the week, as word of mouth spread among the small comic-reading community of that town.

Thankfully, I was able to get the last copy from the Waldenbooks in the mall.

Chagrined, the store owner wound up tracking down a line on some other things by this Kevin Smith guy, who it seemed was selling some things on that new-fangled Internet. And so it was that I was able to get…

The First Autographed Comic: Clerks: The Comic Book #1

Years later, I would get a book autographed by Kevin Smith in person. That’s a rather prized collection piece right there. And if a picture is worth 1000 words, then this is worth quite a bit.

(And for those of my friends who have commented upon my slight resemblance to Mr. Smith, just so you know- I’m the one in the back wearing the goggles).

What? I was cos-playing Jack Knight!

Anyway, as personally noteworthy as that comic is to me out of all the books I got autographed, simply for the way Kevin Smith indirectly influenced my life, it is not the first book I ever personally got autographed by a creator. No, that distinct honor goes to…

The First Autographed In Person Comic: JLA/Avengers #1

I had the good fortune to run into Kurt Busiek first thing in the morning, just as he was about to leave the DC Comics booth. I later got to spend a good while hanging out with him and George Perez in a signing room and got him to sign the book as well. Sadly, the first issue of Busiek’s Conan was just a few weeks away, so I didn’t have an issue of that to sign yet. But, there’s always the next convention.

Of course it is fun to look at all the significant first-time comics as a collector. But as we all know, a comic is only truly worth something if you read it. So the last four comics in my top ten are going to be books that all touched me in some way or another. They aren’t signed. They aren’t worth much on e-bay. But I won’t trade my copy of them for anything.

And I’m going to talk about them all next time, right?

Wrong.

I’m going to take a break on the reminiscing for a week. Take some time to really do some deep, soulful writing of the prose.

Besides, Clerks 2 comes out next weekend and I’ve just gotta speak my peace about that.

Tune in next week. Same Matt time. Same Matt website.

Visit our blog at: http://www.livejournal.com/users/looking2dastars/