Friday, May 16, 2008

Ff/Iron Man: Big in Japan 3 page 17

The Apocalypse Beast in this image looks horrifying but is too goofy to be really frightening. The upper panel has all the players in comic book mode, with short bodies and big heads, including the Beast himself, as he tears through the curtain of Reality. (You recognize that curtain in every scene where it appears because there is a grid on the opposite side.) Beastie has those long rake-like fingernails, that are really terrible, and that stomach mouth with perfect teeth, though the teeth in his face mouth are pretty worn and scraggly.
To me the truly scary figure in this page is crazy Dr. Yamane, who thought it was a good idea to loose that beast upon the world, and who is seen climbing ice crevasses in his fundoshi (loincloth) and back markings to greet the beast. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar said,
"Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous."
I am not sure how much of a thinker Yamane is, but he does have that dangerously lean and hungry look.

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