Countdown to Jupiter Ascending, Part 1, in which we take a look at some of the Wachowskis' earliest work...
It
may not seem like much at a casual glance, but Ectokid #3 - a near-forgotten Marvel comic from the early nineties,
now likely warming the quarter bin at a comic shop near you - had a significant
impact upon popular culture at large. In its own warped and roundabout way, Ectokid #3 wound up being the spark that
changed cinematic history forever.
How
is it that the third issue of a failed imprint of a comic book company during
the most shameless period of its existence is so “important” to our filmic landscape?
Well, it just so happens to be co-written by one Larry Wachowski, known
nowadays as Lana Wachowski, who along with her brother Andy makes up the
visionary directing duo of - wait for it - the Wachowskis. Taking up the
writing reigns with the third issue and continuing on the series for another
six before its cancellation, Larry (and an uncredited Andy, for the siblings
hardly ever work without each other) was paired with a young artist by the name
of Steve Skroce, who would later be drafted by the duo to storyboard a little
sci-fi superhero project they had of their own, which would be a key factor in
giving The Matrix the green-light
over at Warner Brothers.
So,
yeah… culturally significant, blah-di-blah, but how does the comic itself hold
up? Not terribly well, I’m afraid. Ectokid
was a part of Marvel’s “Razorline” imprint, a collection of comics ideas dreamt
up by Clive Barker - who, it should be noted, didn’t actually write any of the
comics himself, but rather provided series outlines and sort of oversaw the
line while other creators worked on the actual books. As such, much of the
Razorline feels like a disparate collection of half-interesting ideas all
thrown together in stew of 90’s era, Image Comics-styled “edgy” claptrap,
featuring angst-ridden heroes, confusing plot-lines in service to little more
than protracted scenes of ultraviolence and lots of bad guys dressed up as nuns
( …blame Frank Miller). Ectokid was
no different, sort of the Peter Parker/Spider-Man of the line, which sees 14-year-old
Dex Mungo discover his father was a ghost his mom once schtupped, and now finds that he has supernatural powers that grant
him access to the “Ectosphere,” sort of an alternate Earth that exists
concurrent to our world, but which houses all sorts of demons and other
assorted beasties.
The Wachowskis were no
stranger to comics at the time, as they had already contributed work to
Barker’s other series, Hellraiser and
Nightbreed, but Ectokid was their first chance at an ongoing. Being that they were
picking up a series in media res by
previous writer James Robinson and were working off of Barker’s ideas anyway,
it’s somewhat hard to see where in Ectokid
the “Wachowski” begins and the rest of it ends. There is certainly a talent on
display, a wild imagination that is faithfully represented on the page by
Skroce’s art. Also, under their pen, the series takes on a more of a Neil
Gaiman vibe, as Dex encounters the spirits of Edgar Allen Poe and Cyrano de
Bergerac in his jaunts through the Ectoshpere. But still there’s a
half-heartedness to the whole concept that, no matter how many interesting
twists are thrown into the mix, just can’t be escaped. As such, Ectokid is probably best remembered as a
cultural artifact rather than a story on its own, but it does hold worth for
those interested in tracing the development of some of the few filmmakers who
have truly earned the title of “visionary.” It’s definitely worth a handful of
quarters.
While writing for
Marvel Comics, the siblings were also hard at work on a number of screenplays,
eager to break into a world that maybe wasn’t so different from the weird and
frightening Ectosphere itself: Hollywood. The first one to break through the
gate was 1995’s Assassins, starring
Sylvester Stallone and Antonio Banderas and directed by Richard Donner. The
film seems to be one that the siblings are eager to forget, as Donner had Brian
Helgeland rewrite much of the script to tone down the darkness and make it more
palatable for the popcorn munchers, to the extent that the duo lobbied the WGA
and Warners to get their names taken off the film.
Watching Assassins, it’s easy to see why.
Although not dreadful, the film is notable for being an exceptionally bland
action thriller produced in a decade where bland action thrillers were the
order of the day. With Sylvester Stallone headlining the movie with another top
action star, there was the hope that Assassins
could capture that fun, buddy-movie feel of Tango
& Cash *, but almost no joy is to be had in watching Stallone and
Banderas share the screen. Sly spends the whole movie gruff and bored, while
Banderas way overcompensates for his character’s profound lack of depth, as the
two play a game of cat-and-mouse as assassins hired to kill the same mark that
suffers both from pacing issues and a severe lack of originality. There are
enough bones left of the original script to see where a possible subversion of
all these stock action elements might have been possible, but the final film
winds up being the very thing it sought to subvert.
If there’s one
through-line we can trace through all the Wachowskis’ work, it’s this desire to
work in popular commercial art and turn it on its head. Even though little of
their early work does much to show their true promise, there are still just
enough elements on display to show that these kids were a thoughtful pair, and
they had some ideas about our popular entertainment and just how far they could
exploit it to say what was really on their minds.
* If you don’t like Tango & Cash, then there’s probably
no hope for you **.
** Oh no, wait: it’s me there’s no hope for.
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