Luckily, the new Star Trek movie (subtitled “Into  Darkness” for the purists; for the rest of us it’s just more Star Trek) was worth the effort, and the wait. It is significantly better than the last entry, not that that’s saying much. I really hated a lot of things about the first one; it took the combined attractions of Zachary Quinto and Simon Pegg to get me into my seat, and even then I almost walked out when the Federation somehow forgot to defend its homeworlds. (I have two words for the Federation: “planetary defense”. Try it.) I am glad to report that while the Star Fleet Admiralty hasn’t gotten a whole lot smarter in this one, the populations of several important planets aren’t sacrificed to its stupidity. Plus Quinto and Pegg, along with Zoe Saldana, put in entertaining performances, there is a lot of zesty space opera action, and even some kind of a plot. It is not bad at all. Read more under the cut, where spoilers abound.

From the opening sequence, which is completely absurd and just as completely awesome (there’s no way a deep space ship with FTL capability can do that, but it looks terrific doing it), it’s quite clear that what we have here is an old fashioned space opera, action packed and character driven. At times, and in spite of the layers of state of the art CGI effects layered on top of every damn thing, the film has almost a steampunk feel– perhaps the right word is warppunk. The 1960s imagination in the background of both the technology and the worldbuilding gives the finished product a rather pleasing sense of belonging to a vanished time. In this space opera, Star Fleet officers wear grey garrison uniforms with stiff formal caps, the Klingon ships look like robot moths, and there is a Giant Evil Enterprise that will just rock your world, with an Evil Admiral played by Peter Weller to go with it.

As everyone’s probably heard by now, the big villain is Khan. If you ignore the odd dissonance between his pale English looks and Khan’s Sikh name, fan favorite Benedict Cumberbatch is very good in the part of that icy paragon of genetic superiority. Opinions differ on whether Cumberbatch is beautiful or not (he is an orchid, not a rose), but its certainly true that it’s hard to take your eyes off him whenever he is on screen.

Nobody much disagrees with the contention that Zachary Quinto and Zoe Saldana are both beautiful, and there is a real chemistry to the continuing romance between their characters. I could watch this Spock and Uhura bicker all day, and Uhura has several very important plot points of her own that display her loyalty, her intelligence and professional skills, and her ability to be extremely badass in a fight. I wish there was enough plot to go around to give Karl Urban’s Bones (who was the high point of the last film) or Anton Yelchin’s Chekhov an equal opportunity, but at least Simon Pegg as Scotty had a lot of interesting things to do, and chance to be badass in his own way.

But of course, the core of any Star Trek story is the epic bromance between Kirk and Spock. I am no fan of either Chris Pine or Jim Kirk, but Pine’s Kirk doesn’t bother me– I’ve always though Kirk was an ass, and Pine plays him as an ass, and it works out fine. Zachary Quinto’s sassy, brilliant, upright Spock delights me, and not just because of Quinto’s dark eyed good looks and how fine he looks in the ears and Spock’s objectively ridiculous soup bowl haircut. And that new uniform cap, too.

How many times have we seen Kirk and Spock say a “final” goodbye through an unbreakable, but transparent, barrier, reaching out to each other but unable to touch and make one last connection? It happens here, too, and I actually teared up this time. It’s mostly Quinto, I admit– his Spock is pretty darn soulful. But I couldn’t help thinking– if Kirk could actually die here, young, and brave and stupid and generous and unworthy, leaving this remarkable friend behind to mourn, bewildered by the strength of his emotions, all through the rest of a long, long life … now that would be a movie. There’s no power on any planet that would let that happen. Every entry in the series has to end with all the characters set up for the next one. But a writer can always dream.

This Olds is a pure driver.  It’s very well turned out, in a beautiful aqua two-tone with white interior piped in the darker shade,but the bugs  on the front end a few other little details let you know that this car still works for a living, accompanying its lucky owner to the big box store for an ordinary errand.  It’s reassuring to car lovers to see a great old car from the past that’s still being driven to something other than car club events and car shows.  And dig those crazy fender skirts!

Artistically, this drawing is a classic example of the cartoonist getting carried away and having way too much fun with a drawing of the day.  The detailed patterns on his shirt and waistcoat meant that this crazy image took more than two hours to draw, and probably another 30 minutes or so of corrections to get exactly right.  Click on the image to see the somewhat obsessive results. Oh, well, it was fun, and I was watching TV at the same time, so I wouldn’t have been able to work on anything serious in those hours anyway.  And the drawing turned out fairly well.

I think this gorgeous cover is by Mark Swayze, who created the character of Mary Marvel.  Kekionga fans will notice another small tribute to the primary source– Iowa’s hair length, color and texture are based on Mary’s, and she wears a variation on one of Mary Marvel’s classic hairstyles.

(Cover of Captain Marvel Adventures #19. image from Heritage Auction Gallery via stargazer.vonallen.com.)

I know at least some of my readers can read my notehand, if you can you can get a preview of what is almost certainly the last line of the script and an idea of one of the pages of the story itself.  The note under the boots reads “need some kind of interesting background– as” .  The question is, as what?  Unfortunately I do not remember what I was going to write next.  I can only hope it wasn’t a totally brilliant idea that is lost forever.

The fruit crate label idea is the very first one I had, and it’s still my favorite.  Today I thought I’d share a couple of my favorite examples of real fruit crate labels that I am using as references.

“Pacoast” illustrates lettering set along a curved line, and a beautiful font.

“Honest John” features a figure like the one I hope to use: substitute Iowa for the farmer, minicomics for the yams, and add Josef jumping out of the crate.And “Miracle” is just plain fun to look at.  Not that my cover is going to feature a beefcake genie, but it might be good for potential sales if it did.

Local moms had a choice of a number of floral offerings this weekend,

although the accompanying spelling was a bit eccentric.

(photos taken with my iPod Touch.)

Here, the narrator, who is learning to travel between dimensions, comments that “Everywhere you go, old ladies mostly wear black dresses.”  This old lady’s elegant and slightly foofy evening gown is rather different from the sedate frocks that sentence brings to mind, which is sort of the point of the whole thing.The basic inking was done with the brush pen, including all the details of the dress except the leaves of the roses.  Some of the whites were added later with whiteout.  Once assumes that her coiffure is actually a wig.

Let that sink in for a moment.  The Great Gatsby.  In 3-D.

This is what civilization is coming to, and it isn’t pretty.  Well, yes, actually, it is pretty.  It’s very pretty.  But that’s pretty much all it is.

First of all, if you haven’t read The Great Gatsby, or if you haven’t read it since school, read it before you see the movie.  In fact, I recommend reading it instead of seeing the movie.  For the cost of one ticket, particularly if your local theatre charges extra for 3-D, you should be able to buy a nice copy of the book.  It’s not a long novel, more like an overgrown short story, really, and a fast reader might be able to finish it in about the time it takes to drive to the theatre, sit through the previews and watch the movie.  If you read the book, you will be entertained, you will experience a unified artistic vision, you will see a skilled, if not particularly profound, writer at work and at the end of your three hours or so, you will have a good book in your library that you will almost certainly want to read again.  This movie will give you none of this.

But if you know the book well, and are a collector of poor interpretations of it in other media, then read on.  The break is not to hide spoilers, since one assumes that most literate Americans are familiar with the story, but rather to keep people who are not interested in a rather dull example of Hollywood excess from being bored stiff by this blog.

First of all, this is about 60 pounds of movie in a one pound bag,  If there is anywhere for it to go over the top, there it goes. It redefines “heavy handed” for a new generation. It wasn’t so much directed as art directed.  It not only tells too much (a common flaw in Hollywood films), it shows too much, and yet at the same time it manages to leave out significant chunks of the original story.  Of course, it also adds a lot of stuff that wasn’t there in the original, mostly because Fitzgerald was too good a writer to put it there.  At best this is a fantasia on The Great Gatsby, and some small bits of it were absolutely lovely and brought Fitzgerald’s prose to life.  Unfortunately, they were only bits.

The best performance by far was Joel Edgerton as Tom.  This is a first-class Tom as brute jock, and very true to the book.  And I know no one would ever expect these words to come out of my mouth, but Tobey Maguire was not bad.  I normally loathe Maguire’s work, and I have a deep dislike of interpretations of The Great Gatsby that equate Nick Carraway with Fitzgerald and make him the author of the story.  But if you accept that premise, as these filmmakers do, then Maguire was quite good in the part as he found it in the script.  And then there is Leonardo DiCaprio.  I thought for a while, around the time of Inception, that he was going to grow into himself and be an actor, but I think now I was wrong.  DiCaprio is a movie star, a real honest to whatever movie star, and he was the star of this movie.

The best thing about this version of The Great Gatsby is the 3-D.  If you like 3-D movies, you must see this one.  No matter how bad it is in other ways, it looks absolutely wonderful and it exploits every 3-D trick quite cleverly, and even comes up with some new ones.  The trickery sometimes rises to the level of poetry, or at least light verse.  It isn’t enough to salvage the film, but you may enjoy the effect for its own sake.  If you don’t like 3-D, don’t bother.