This is a review I wrote for the Livingston Post website. Only the Insane Jane portion of the review will be available on the Post; you can find it here [link].
Bluewater’s Movie Hopefuls
Jane Floats; Tom Corbett Sinks
Jane Floats; Tom Corbett Sinks
The recent
explosion of comic book-to-film adaptations has proven a double-edged sword,
both for comic franchises and their fans. Some excellent recent movies, such as
The Avengers, have shown the storytelling
potential of the movement. At the same time, this burgeoning trend has had the
opposite effect: more bad movies are made out of comics, and more bad comics
are made into movies.
Bluewater
Productions comic book label has recently paired with Pleroma Entertainment, an
independent film studio, to bring two of its comics to the big screen. The
first is a solid entry, an original series called Insane Jane. The second is a less noble endeavor, Tom
Corbett, Space Cadet, based off novels and
1950’s TV series of the same name.
Insane
Jane is the story of a mentally unstable
young woman, known only as “Jane”, who believes herself to be a superhero.
Teaming up with a recent arrival to her mental ward, she manages to escape the
hospital and the clutches of imaginary supervillains. Insane Jane is deeply reminiscent of Neil Gaiman’s the
Sandman series; the art and internal
narration could almost be mistaken for an issue featuring Gaiman’s character
Delirium. Darren G. Davis’ stenciled-photograph style, complete with
disorienting backgrounds, pulls the reader into Jane’s world. Her superhero
fantasies glow with supersaturated color as she kicks and punches her way to
justice. The real world of the mental ward is, in contrast, bled of color –
dull common rooms, nurses, and muttering patients, shuffling in line to get
their medicine. Who wouldn’t prefer the fantasy? As Jane struggles with her
mental instability, the simple, childlike fantasy world wins out over
complicated reality. Her dramatic escape from the ward is wonderfully absurd.
The reader wants to run after her, to join her flight from reality into a
childlike world of superheroes. I look forward to reading the rest of the Insane
Jane series, if only to see if the
intriguing premise, so beautifully realized in the first issue, will carry well
over several issues.
If
producing a longing for childish fantasy and adventure is a hallmark of Insane
Jane, Tom Corbett, Space Cadet is notable for having the opposite effect. Tom
Corbett ostensibly takes place in a Space
Academy where, according to the tagline, “Juggling schoolwork, cadet training
and saving the world, Tom is on the adventure of his life in his new adventures
[sic].” Where all this
“adventure” comes in is difficult to see. There were spaceships, men standing
around in uniforms, something about robots. Maybe. I really couldn’t tell.
The art of the
comic does nothing to evoke outer space, action, or even vaguely interesting
characters. Cover artist Chris Colbert teases the reader with a couple of nice
images on the cover and title page, and we expect more of the same on the
interiors: a nicely rendered, if generic, action-cartoon style.
Once we get to the
actual story, however, we are served up a blotchy mess, courtesy of John
DaCosta and his passing acquaintance, Corel Painter. I would have been slightly
less angered by this bait-and-switch if Mr. DaCosta had even put the minimum of
effort into his work. Some grainy Hubble
Space Telescope images, copied and pasted into the background, might have evoked
a half-way interesting environment for his spaceships to swim around in.
Photographs of corridors or control panels behind his characters might have
added some life to his interior scenes. Instead, his ethereally blobby,
barely-distinguishable characters and machines float around in blobby,
barely-distinguishable environments. It’s a challenge to even figure out what’s
going on, let alone engage in the world and actions of the characters.
The
writing fares little better. Bill Spangler tries half-heartedly to give Tom and
Friends the life and interest that is lacking in the art, and fails. Darren G.
Davis, Editor and Publisher, was perhaps out to lunch while his Letterer,
Wilson Ramos Jr., slapped some text balloons in random places so he could get
to his next project. I counted four instances where one character was quite
obviously speaking another character’s lines, a situation that could have
provided some levity if the dialogue wasn’t utterly lackluster.
Perhaps
the most depressing aspect of the whole series – besides all the money, time
and effort that went into publishing such a shambles – is that it uses the name
of a TV series whose sole charm came from the idea that, wow, these people are
in space. Kids in the 1950’s would put
on their space suit and helmet and sit down in front of the TV to watch men in
costumes zoom around in a little toy rocketship and blow things up. Even if the
child knows they’re watching campy schlock, they are still drawn into that
world. If Tom Corbett had
remained faithful to that sense of wonder, as Insane Jane did so effectively, it might have been a halfway decent comic.
Instead,
we are treated to another unnecessary “remake” and “update” of an old TV series
that wasn’t that classic to begin with. My best analogy for this comic is the
1998 film adaptation of Lost in Space.
Remember that? Of course you don’t. It was lackluster, weird, and embarrassing.
I can expect no less from a film adaptation of Tom Corbett. Tom Corbett, Space Cadet is nothing but a shoddy product trying to cash in on
a nostalgic title. The forward by TV series cast member Jan Merlin, the
deceptive cover by Chris Colbert, and the blurbs from Sci Fi Magazine and Ain’t
It Cool News leave you scratching your head: “Did Pleroma Entertainment only
look at the outside of the comic before optioning it as a movie?” There are two
plausible answers: either Pleroma was seriously deceived by Bluewater, or the
movie option was a done deal even before the comic was made. The comic itself
is nothing more than an afterthought – and not even a fully-formed one, at
that.
In
conclusion, I’d like to congratulate Insane Jane on her forthcoming movie; as for Tom Corbett, Space Cadet, I’m not holding my breath.
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