Closet Sci-Fi Geek » Edwin McRae

Brian K Vaughan

Edwin McRae — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 01:53:24 +0000

This guy’s well worth a read. First…Ex-Machina.

A defunct superhero turns in his wings and manages to get elected Mayor of New York after he stops one of the planes from plowing into the World Trade Center. Not your classic super hero stuff – much more interesting.

And then there’s ‘The Last Man’.

A mysterious plague wipes out all of the men bar one. Interesting alternate future stuff. Not mind-blowing, but damned entertaining.

If you’re into ‘comics for the thinker’ then Brian K Vaughan’s your man.

Spidey & Red Sonja Get It On (Kind Of)

Edwin McRae — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 07:05:58 +0000

My random selection from the local library – ‘Spiderman and Red Sonja’. Not my usual choice as I generally despise Spiderman. But hey, it’s Red Sonja.

And how was it? Artistically, very cool indeed. Beautiful images all around – can’t fault it. Conceptually? Groovy. Spidey’s plunged into Red Sonja’s D&D universe, as is a decent chunk of New York, by an evil sorcerer from Sonja’s world. The story? Not too shabby. Nothing surprising, but nothing too clunky either. The writing? Oeming’s usual style. State the obvious whenever you can because of course the images can’t do a lot of that work for you. Of course. And lets have oaths galore. I think Red Sonja makes an oath to disembowel some man every three or four frames. She never does.

Still, aside from the dialogue, it’s an entertaining read. Worth a quick look.

Edwin

www.edwinmcrae.com

Codehunters – Stunning!

Edwin McRae — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 02:04:25 +0000

Long time no see, y’all. Here to order you to check out Codehunters.

Ben Hibon has done an amazing job with his animated short, Codehunters. Absolutely beautiful, and a must for cyberpunk/steampunk fans out there. At first glance it reminded my of Jamie Hewlett’s work (Gorillaz/Tank Girl) and there are touches of Peter Chung in there too (Dark Fury). Mad Max meets Akira. The near-dark future stuff that nightmares are made of.

Words from The Edwin.

http://edwinmcrae.com

Reflecting on Evil

Edwin McRae — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:54:11 +0000

I went to see ‘Mirrors’ last night. A damn fine horror. Low body count but high shock factor, with a gruesome death in there that I’ve simply never seen before. All the good freaky mirror tricks, plus a few new ones. Add the superb manipulation of suspense, and the macabre mise-en-scene (a burned out department store from an opulent yesteryear), and there really wasn’t much that left me wanting.

Mirrors have always freaked me out a bit. Who the hell is that staring back at me? Why does he obey me? And what happens if he doesn’t? ‘The Tain’ by China Melville is a great exploration of this. Our reflections, the Imagos, rebel and invade. Very creepy stuff, particularly the disembodied reflections – hands that pair up to make bird-like creatures that infest a post-apocalyptic London like the pigeons that are now all dead. And beautifully written, as always with China.

And to this day I have never been able to say ‘Candyman’ five times in a mirror.

Max & Co

Edwin McRae — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:18:54 +0000

I went to see Max & Co this week. A cute story by Christine Dory and Emmanuel Salinger, and very cool stop animation. The mise-en-scene is a nice mixture of steam-punky technology and alpine small-town idealism. And thereâ€™s something I really like about French with subtitles. Just sounds cool.

While itâ€™s essentially a kids film, it has some nice adult level moments, like when the captured flies are gassed, have orgasms, and lay eggs while cavorting drunkenly through the air. Well, I laughed.

So, highly recommend it if you get the chance to see it.

Zombies on the brain

Edwin McRae — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 02:46:32 +0000

Zombieâ€™s scare the bejesus out of me. I read in a dream book that Zombies represent a disconnection from feelings. If you are feeling numb, depressed, cold inside, or if you are completely consumed by a certain feeling, like hunger or fury, then you are the closest to being a zombie â€“ at least according to dream symbolists. I think the loss of rational thought, that which makes us civilised human beings, is also what makes Zombies a terrifying prospect. Youâ€™re bog-standard, shambling, â€˜brainsâ€™ groaning Zombie is a classic example, and made wonderfully chilling in the game, â€˜Resident Evilâ€™. The other, and I personally think scarier Zombie, is the â€˜Rage Zombieâ€™ portrayed in Danny Boyle’s â€™28 Days Laterâ€™. That film, and â€™28 Weeks Laterâ€™, have given me nightmares, and I still half expect when I look up at the glass sliders first thing in the morning, when itâ€™s still twilight, to see a rage zombie, drooling blood, glaring at me with red eyes, just waiting to dive through the glass and eat my spleen.

[Shudder]

Lately Iâ€™ve watched Robert Rodriguezâ€™s â€˜Terror Planetâ€™ and Johnathan Kingâ€™s â€˜Black Sheepâ€™. Neither of these frightened me â€“ in fact they made me laugh which was the creatorsâ€™ intention Iâ€™m sure. â€˜Black Sheepâ€™ was particularly cool as I grew up on a sheep farm and my father always wanted me to write a story about mobs of rabid sheep revolting and running amok. Johnathan King got there before me, and Dad would have loved â€˜Black Sheepâ€™ had he lived to see it.

So thereâ€™s my thoughts on Zombies. What do you fullas and fullesses think about them?

Ascii Star Wars

Edwin McRae — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:19:16 +0000

Thought I’d give this a quick mention as it’s very cool. I used to make Ascii pictures of things on my old Atari 600XL back in the eighties. These guys have elevated it to an art form!

Click on the picture to go an see Star Wars, animated in Ascii. It rocks.

Starfleet

Edwin McRae — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:45:05 +0000

Since Iâ€™m in a cycle of reminiscence about the SF influences of my childhood at the moment, I thought Iâ€™d share Starfleet with you. I remember being so excited about it as a kid. The baddies were scary, with centipede mind control devises on their heads, not to mention their creep, insectoid ships.

And for some reason, I can always remember the scene when the fat, red-headed puppet, John Lee, had a cold and was blowing bubbles of snot out his nose. I just found it fascinating that a puppet could get a cold.

Of course, at the time, I didnâ€™t know the Starfleet was originally called â€˜X-Bomberâ€™ and was a Japanese series overdubbed with English. I always thought it was one a Jerry Anderson series, like Thunderbirds of Terrahawks (both of which I also loved).

Samurai Pizza Cats

Edwin McRae — Tue, 27 May 2008 21:25:48 +0000

Now, does anyone else remember Samurai Pizza Cats? A groovy parody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Personally, I loved it. It was anarchic and had a manic creativity that TMNT lacked.

The Pizza Cats, Speedy Cerviche (pronounced â€œser-vee-chayâ€), Polly Esther, and Guido Anchovy, were a pizza delivery team during their down-time, and the rest of the time saved the city, Little Tokyo, from destruction from gigantic villainous futuristic robots.

I remember distinctly one robotic creature that captured people and drank their blood. For what reason, I forget. But I do remember it was thwarted when it drank the blood of a fat, gluttonous character whose blood levels of monosodium glutamate caused it a serious headache.

Anyway, another relic from the 90s thatâ€™s well worth a look. A show that I would have loved to have written for. Still would.

And something to think about. Did SPC and TMNT coincide with an explosion of pizza consumption in Japan?

If you woke up tomorrow with a different set of memories, would you still be you?

Edwin McRae — Fri, 23 May 2008 03:07:52 +0000

A while back I watched A Scanner Darkly. While this is a good enough film (and yet another cinematic adaptation of a Philip K Dick novel), it’s certainly not the best film I’ve seen about fractured identities and perspectives that are warped by drugs or technology. Total Recall has much more fun with the

topic. Based on â€œWe Can Remember It for You Wholesaleâ€ by Philip K . Dick, it raises the fundamental question – do memories define character? If your memories tell you that you are a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy; does that make you a gun-slinging, ass-kicking spy? Bladerunner (based on Philip K Dick’s, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) takes a more meditative approach to the topic. Is the film-noiresque hero, Deckard, real or not? Is he a human or is he a replicant who has forgotten that he is artificial. The random selection of antique photos on Deckard’s piano gives us a clue. Are they a record of Deckard’s past or are they a badly constructed history; a collation of tenuously linked memories. Then there’s the unicorn dream he keeps having. Again, is this his subconscious at work or another memory, implanted by Tyrell Corporation? Similarly, if you can hide memories, can you hide a personality? Take Talia Winters from Babylon 5. One minute she is a mild mannered telepath, minding her own business as best she can, the next minute her ‘sleeper’ personality has been activated and she’s a cold-blooded killer. Ditto with The Long Kiss Goodnight. Amiable housewife becomes professional killer. There are many many many other examples. But just one question really. If you woke up tomorrow with a completely different set of memories, would you still be you?