2012 x 5: Five Pieces of Pop Culture Pleasure

Issue #1 of The Manhattan Projects

The Avengers: Widely hyped blockbusters are typically disappointing, the recently released Hobbit film being a glaring example. The years-in-the-making film version of Marvel Comics' the Avengers is the rare one that's every bit as good as advertised. The obvious object of praise is writer/director Joss Whedon, who found an ideal middle ground between characters and icons, but Whedon's success owes a lot to the magnificent casting done for the Marvel films that lead up to this one. Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark remains the clear favorite and gets most of the best lines, especially in a face-to-face confrontation with Tom Hiddleston as Loki, but the whole group is great to watch. The biggest surprise, though, was Chris Evans as Steve Rogers who does a terrific job of conveying Captain America' s absolutely un-ironic heroism without coming across as a cardboard cutout. Frankly, it shouldn't have worked, but then that was true of this movie in general. With eight lead-worthy characters in the mix, this should have been a terrible mess. Instead, it was the best comics adaptation I've seen, and a sequel can't come soon enough.

Joe Jackson at Strathmore Music Hall: The chance to check Jackson off my list of musicians I need to see live worked out by accident , but I couldn't be happier than it did. Jackson was touring to promote his new album of Duke Ellington songs, but he didn't short-change fans as far as his own songs. As good as Jackson is as a singer and composer, his gifts as an arranger are of anything more prodigious, and this show was no exception. Every song, including ones that were old before I was born, sounded fresh and alive. The closest thing to a complaint I can muster is that he didn't play my own personal favorite of his songs ("Home Town" from the album Big World), which for an artist with Jackson's body of work is no complaint at all.

The Manhattan Projects by Jonathan Hickman: Jonathan Hickman had a great run writing The Fantastic Four for Marvel the last few years. As good as some of those stories have been, though, they pale in comparison to his original series The Manhattan Projects, a collaboration with up-and-coming artist Nick Pitarra published by Image Comics. As the title suggests, the series is set in the 1940s around the Manhattan Project with a cast of characters that includes Robert Openheimer, Albert Einstein and Harry Truman. However, despite the presence of familiar people and and events, this series is far removed from the standard alternate-history approach. Put another way, Hickman is not dealing in what-ifs but rather WTFs. It's hard to summarize without spoiling the story, but a keyword is "multiple". The scientists involved are engaged in multiple projects beyond the atomic bomb, we encounter multiple US presidents and Doctor Openheimer has multiple personalities to name a few. Comparing any new series to one of comics' landmark series is going out on a limb, but this comic bears comparison to Watchmen. Though Pitarra's art is a very different style to Dave Gibbons' work on the older series, it certainly fits the tone of this book. As for the story itself, its intersecting plot threads traversing time, place and mental space may be even more complex than the relatively simply parallel structure Alan Moore used for Watchmen.

Muse - "Explorers": Overall, I like the band Muse better in concept than actuality, but this song from their current album The 2nd Law is a thing a wonder. Epic and uplifting, it clearly calls to mind Queen, especially in the low-key keyboard-based intro, but still manages to sound distinctive and original. For the record, "Madness" from the same album isn't quite as good but is compelling enough that I'll probably find myself checking into their back catalog in earnest after years of resisting.

Star Trek - The Newspaper Comics: While Star Trek comics - good and bad - have been around nearly as long as the show itself, I never knew there had been a newspaper strip until I read about this collection that was released earlier this month. The reasons the strip is less well-known than it should be are detailed in the book, but the key thing is of course the strips themselves. More so than almost any Star Trek comic I've read, they honestly capture the feel of the show and the characters we love. Not only are the stories themselves strong, you can practically hear the voice of Shatner and all the other stars when you read the dialogue.