Mission: Shogun Bagworks

Like most people, I think the best kind of robot is the kind whose chest opens up so it can shoot missiles or energy beams at its enemies.

(Shogun Warrior Dangard Ace deploying that chest-based what-for.)

Also, like most people, I have long said "But there could never be a backpack that reminds me of the best kind of robot".

(And lo comes Mission Workshop to prove me unimaginably, and consequentially, incorrect. Gaze upon the Mission Rhake, with its chest gawping and its payload imaginable. Image from Zdnet.)

So that's 400 wing-wangs I'm gonna have to spend, I guess. And that's a big pile of yua!

What's weird is that I can't quite tell at this late remove how / why I knew / know that Shogun Warrior Dangard Ace can open its chest to shoot missile laser things and that that's an incredibly cool and important thing to do. It took me metric forever to find an image of the chest-blasting fromthe only issue I had (issue 9), and that image is one tiny panel of two missiles launching that, spoiler: the big monster shrugs off like nothing. So why did I then spend a couple years drawing giant robots (that I was careful to identify as "ancient"), most of which had opening chest plates that revealed neat weapons?

The world may never know.

(I mean, it's not like I saw this rad attack, cropped from here. Anyway, this slightly radder attack.)

Side note one: man, the comics I grew up on sure were turbo-ruined by bad coloring printed cheaply on awful paper. Check out this great Herb Trimpe art and believe me when I tell you the color version of this that I had looked substantially less good than this. That monster design is exceedingly odd, though, with teeth and tongue coming out of what appears to be eyelids...and the whole thing breathes fire?, and it's extremely pleasing in its oddness. Also pleasing is that I could not explain why its name is "Starchild" with powerful telescopes and substantial computing power at my disposal. Also I very much appreciate the least unsuccessful giant robot attack being a head-first tackle that causes the monster to "whump".

Side note two: one of the pitfalls of buying your comics off a spinner rack is that you might only have one issue of a book, and that issue might mostly focus on a character that ... turns out not to be a good one. The issue you pluck might well in fact focus on a character that somebody could even say ... "sucked". (The summary of his career is not the most exciting read.)

(Man, that is some action of the old type. I actually still really like this way of telling a story.)

And yet something about this stuff still makes me happy. And I don't think it's exclusively nostalgia. The Trimpe art is fun, and there's some energy and weirdness to the giant-robots-fighting-monsters genre that translates pretty well to the comic format. I don't know if it's enough to get me to join the backpack brigade, but it's at the very least the closest I've come for a long time now.

—Fat, ever ready to drive a giant robot (as long as it's not a stick)

ANNOUNCING: Like a Shit Sandwich

One of the stories of Reviewiera is the story of Fat & Tinzeroes, collaborating. "Some stuff," we argue, "is better than some other stuff," and we commit to the promulgation of that claim in all available fora. We began with our legendary, not at all fictional, scam to get our college to pay for us to eat hamburger sandwiches with french fried potatoes garnish while watching movies like Black Dog and Knightriders review collective B3—Bad Food, Bad Movies, Bad People, demonstrating that bad movies are pretty much the best stuff we can think of. Following that, Giant Turtle Patrol kept our nights full and our skies free of monstrous incursion; Super! Hero! Shared! Housing! made sure that the people who are bad at being people were kept safely in giant houses together, far the hell away from the rest of us... And so on.

But! We forgot to mention here, in our homeland of Reviewiera, that we are RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MINUTE still, again working hard to ring out the message: "some stuff, damn it, really is better than some other stuff". In the new project, we devote ourselves to that stuff that is worse than 'most all other; that stuff is: work. Yes, Tinzeroes and I are, essentially, reviewing work, those activities we (all) do to facilitate living our real lives.

SPOILER: the reviews are coming in and they are NOT particularly favorable.

The project is called Like a Shit Sandwich, based on the classic dad-level aphorism:

Life is like a shit sandwich—the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat.

It's an email newsletter, comes out three times a month, with words mostly by me and art all by Tinzeroes, a chosen-just-for-you HEAVY TUNE in each issue, along with an interesting quote about work, found by me. It's a lot of fun, it goes straight to your inbox, so you can read it at work without anybody being the wiser, and we'll never do a thing in the world with your email address, okay?

You can get a taste of the project here, and you can sign up to receive every issue here. Please enjoy!

Gamera

d.d. tinzeroes: See now, the KAIJU SESSIONS¹ began in late July or early August of 2002. Ultratom(!) & I, we had a play-date.

Ultratom(!): Yeah yeah, you were living in the Clinton neighborhood. We were going to go see Master of the Flying Guillotine, versus the One-Armed Boxer, no less, at the Clinton Street Theatre.

d.d. tinzeroes: Wish it was versus One-Armed Swordsman. Tho' Flying Guillotine is entertainment of the highest order. Anyways, one of us or both of us screwed up...

Ultratom(!): Man, & I was all pumped up to see Flying Guillotine, too. But, yeah, both d.d. & myself misread the schedule, & faced a troublesome decision: watch a film about D.I.Y. culture starring Ian MacKaye, GWAR, JG Thirwell (one of our mutual heroes), & a bunch of people we never heard of, OR see what kind of entertainment we could find across the street, at Clinton St. Video.

tinzeroes: Rather crestfallen, we retreated to the Video store, &, typically, began wandering around aimlessly. And then, Ultratom(!) sheepishly shuffled from across the store...

Ultratom(!): d.d. had been telling me of his new-found fascination w/ these "kaiju" film thing. I had not had much exposure to these, save for when I was 10, & had seen Rodan, Godzilla's Revenge, & I believe a Mothra film, all of which were hosted by Elvira. Oh yeah, & I saw Godzilla 2000 in the theater.

tinzeroes: Yeah, I'd been devouring kaiju films off the rack at Clinton St. for a few weeks already. They have this tape called Godzilla Fantasia which is all the best clips from the Gojira flixs of the 1950s-1970s², set to select soundtracks from the same movies. I'd also been reading some or another b-movie/bad movie review site which had sang high praises of the '95 Gamera.³

Ultratom(!): YES! And it was Gamera: Guardian of the Universe which had been staring at me since I walked into the store!!

tinzeroes: And when Ultratom(!) walked up w/ those puppy dog eyes I knew the evening's entertainment would involve a giant turtle.

Ultratom(!): I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In retrospect, though, when the girl at the checkout counter told d.d. he had a free rental accumulated from "all those Godzilla films," I should have suspected something...

tinzeroes: Oh, the movie. Right. Well. Giant reptilian turtle. Midair showdown. [shrugs, dusts hands]

Ultratom(!): Months later I showed this movie to my pal Peat. He liked it so much he changed the name of his business server to 'Gamera.'

-transcription & annotations by d.d.



¹ Originally appearing as "KAIJU-0: Gamera ('95)" in d.d. tinzeroes & ultratom(!)'s collaborative volume, the KAIJU SESSIONS (Kuloma-Jokerit Univ. Press, 2003).
² These films are known as the Showa period.
³ The pretty excellent Shrine of Gamera fansite is run, coincidentally, by a dude in Portland.

Mechanical Violator Hakaider

d.d. tinzeroes: I think we watched this... the day before Thanksgiving? That sounds right.¹

Ultratom(!): Yeah, I'd been wanting to see it for about a year or so at that point.

tinzeroes: Why?

Ultratom(!): Because I caught the tail end of it at Peat's dojo some time before. It was on the international channel & had no subtitles or dubbing, but looked pretty damn kewl.²

tinzeroes: I think I wanted to see it because I'd read about it over at the old TeleportCity site, before they updated it.³ I'd also seen director Keita Amamiya's Moon Over Tao & the 2 Zeram films & liked the zude's stuff.⁴ The cover was pretty badass looking, as well.



Ultratom(!): Since there were no subtitles when I saw it at Peat's, I think I had built it up in my mind a bit much. So I felt a little let down after actually seeing it.

tinzeroes: Its true. As nice as the production design & costumes can be, the plot's a little iffy. And sometimes the costumes look like a high-end cosplay convention production or something.

Ultratom(!): Yeah the set design was great, as was the costuming. Very post apocalyptic, in a good way.

tinzeroes: Its also mercifully short. Maybe an hour. The vast majority of Japanese films average a painful 2 hours. I've read this is because, for some reason, the Japanese never let an actor speak off-camera.

Ultratom(!): The final battle was the best. The super-white painted room? And when Haikaider & the bad robot would miss & punch the walls they were filled w/ blood-red tubes & stuff? That was kewl.

tinzeroes: I give it a pair of Lew Alcindors & a Dreamcast.




-transcription & annotations by d.d.

¹ KAIJU SESSIONS. These were a seminal, pre-Reviewiera collaborative project between myself & Ultratom(!). I recently realized they're ideal Reviewieran capsule reviews. This discussion of 1995's Haikaider was originally part of KAIJU-8, a double-feature which included Gojira x Megaguirus (’00).
² Reader beware, Ultratom(!) sez stuf like 'kewl' alot.
³ Truth be told, I owe Teleport City's Keith Allison huge debts of gratitude. I believe, if I remember correctly, that it was he who would gush about how great Patlabor was, among other things. Sir, I salute you!!!
⁴ Director/writer Keita Amamiya is a sort of modern day Harryhausen. Albeit, he might be working w/ budgets smaller even than Harryhausen’s. But the main point is Keita is a F/X kinda guy 1st, & a film-maker 2nd. He started out doing F/X for projects like the feature-film Gunhed & various Kamen Rider television shows. From there he worked his way up until he directed & wrote Zeram. Since then he’s helmed several projects, including Moon Over Tao, where the sci-fi element is present but reduced; & the tv miniseries Mikazuki, which looks fantastic, although I hear it bombed ratings-wise.