VEN-GEANCE FROM THE GRAVE…

…KILLS THE PEE-PULL HE ONCE SAVED.

Iron Man was great! Pretty much every human being with a blog has already told you exactly why it was great, though, so I won’t belabor the whole thing TOO much. I’ll just say the designs were beautiful, Robert Downey Jr. is America’s greatest living genius (take THAT, Nobel-Prize-winning quantum physicist Murray Gell-Mann! ), the action/humor balance was just right, and The Dude had a beard to end all beards. And that final moment before the credits was just brilliant, too… I’ve always wanted to see a scene like that.

BUT. I was talking to a friend of mine earlier, and he had a serious problem with the movie. He just couldn’t get past the weakness of the villain. And, you know, it’s true, the villain isn’t quite as compelling as everything else in the movie. It didn’t bother me as much as it bothered him, but I could see where he was coming from. The actor (Is it a spoiler to say who it is? It’s kind of obvious…) does a great job with what he was given, but honestly, he wasn’t given a whole lot. And maybe that was unavoidable; In this new batch of superhero movies, there’s so much time spent setting up just who these heroes are, their origins, their powers, their inner conflicts, relation to the supporting cast, etc., that the bad guys and their plots often get sidelined a bit. Spider-Man Number One and Batman Begins both had that problem, I think. Maybe the issue is just that great villains and “origin stories” have trouble fitting in the same movie… You have to get past all that before you’ll have time to develop a really strong, memorable movie bastard.

Then again, as my friend pointed out, tell that to Clarence Boddicker.

Anyway, the discussion did bring up the question, “Who are your favorite movie villains of the past few years (say, 10)?” So here’s the list of bad guys I’ve seriously enjoyed hating over the past decade (not really in any order, except maybe the first two):

1. Anton Chigurgh (No Country for Old Men)
2. Captain Vidal (Pan’s Labyrinth)
3. Stuntman Mike (Death Proof)
4. O-Ren Ishii… and Elle Driver and Budd and GoGo (the Kill Billses)
5. Agent Smith (The Matrix)
6. Tyler Durden (Fight Club)
7. Mrs. Carmody (The Mist)
8. Kroenen (Hellboy)
9. Dr. Octopus (Spider-Man 2)
10. Sadako (Ringu)

I guess I felt sorry for Dr. Octopus more than I hated him, really, but still, a solid character. And, yeah, Kroenen is more of a cool visual than a cool character (”A slight case of the bobafetts,” as his physician would say). But he’s got an interesting backstory, so he stays. Davy Jones is pretty much in the same boat as Kroenen in that sense, but it’s important to cut lists like this off at 10, lest we risk angering the Great Gods of Arbitrarium.

Who’s on your list? (Just the past 10 years, I mean. Apologies to Mr. Boddicker.)

Commissions: ROUND THREE.

I can’t believe I’ve never drawn Death before. I drew Delirium for the SDCC souvenir book a few years ago, but never Death. Or any of the other Endless, actually. It might be fun to do a whole lineup someday…

HORDES of commissions this time around, folks. I can’t thank you enough for all the requests. (But here’s one at least: THANK YOU!) I posted a couple of my favorites below, but you can see a few more in the commissions gallery (including, oddly enough, a drawing of noted action transvestite Eddie Izzard).

Black Canary came out best, I think. Surprised the hell out of me!

If you’d like to commission your own famous DC comic character sketch (or, y’know, something NOT owned by the Time/Warner corporation), send your requests to serenity@heartshapedskull.com. The base price is $50, and $30 for each additional character on the same page.

And since I’m shilling my wares…

Did you know nearly every page of Serenity Rose Vol. 2 is currently available in the Heart Shaped Shop? SR Vol. 2 pages are $50, the dwindling supply of SR Vol. 1 pages are $30 each, and all the Kimmie66 pages are $20 (they’re kinda small). There’s some other stuff in there, too, every stitch of it perfect for gift-giving. I’m sure some sort of holiday is coming up… In fact, it’s the Gofflin’s birthday on Friday. Why not buy my wife the gift of her husband’s artwork, to hang on the wall of the home we share? It’s gotta be better than the crap I bought!

BTW, we’re probably going to go watch Iron Man and have tapas. Consider that a sort of advance “twitter” in blog form.

Thanks again for all the great commission requests! I’ve already got some cool stuff lined up for next time, but don’t be afraid to send some more:

serenity@heartshapedskull.com