Mountain of Judgment

Anthony Lane Watches the Watchmen

2009-03-02T21:05:00.006-05:00

Hey nerds, remember what it was like before a few better-looking and more talented nerds than you took over key jobs in Hollywood and Entertainment Weekly, and all of a sudden, the things you love became (ironic quote marks) cool? (Forget for now that, just like post-Nirvana alt rock by 1995, the taste of victory immediately turned to ash in your mouth.)

Before comic books gained their current, ephemeral, (definitely more quotes around this one) respect, they were something for anyone over 15 to be embarrassed about, unless they were about tits and getting high, in which case you had until you were 23. The New Yorker's own Rex Reed, Anthony Lane is decidely not part of the Lost-writing-staff, Onion-AV-Club geek pack, and he's here to make you feel like a frustrated fucking loser again. You know that complex, intelligent comic you loved, the one that you thought proved you weren't simply an arrested development case completely wasting all of your free time and money? Lane is here to tell you that normal people can't tell the difference between Watchmen and that orange guy on the sea horse from the cartoon, whatshisname. Flash Gordon or something.

Does that bother you at all? Ah, Nostalgia. How the ghost of you clings.

It's not about Lane's review of the Watchmen movie. Haven't seen it yet, I take his word and that of most other serious critics so far that it blows. But what will make you feel like a misunderstood-and-bitterly-frustrated 15-year-old in 1986 all over again, trying to explain that no, these comics are different to someone impatiently looking at you like you're becoming increasingly retarded before their eyes, is the particular way in which Lane goes after writer Alan Moore. A rundown:

For every masterwork, such as “Persepolis” or “Maus,” there seem to be shelves of cod mythology and rainy dystopias, patrolled by rock-jawed heroes and their melon-breasted sidekicks. Fans of the stuff are masonically loyal, prickling with a defensiveness and an ardor that not even Wagnerians can match. One lord of the genre is a glowering, hairy Englishman named Alan Moore, the coauthor of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” and “V for Vendetta.”

So: In opposition to the genuinely literary graphic novels a serious person can count on one hand and still have fingers left over for picking through the caviar, Moore is a master of rock-jawed, melon-breasted cod mythology. But, you counter, From Hell, Lost Girls, Promethea, and besides, Watchmen itself is a caustic rebuke to superhero morality! And Lane responds, "Let's give this fucking geek a swirlie!" You see, you're prickling with defensiveness and ardor. A cult member. Think that's unfair? That Lane premptively makes it impossible for you to point out where he might be wrong? I think he's got a dick you can suck. Let's continue:

The problem is that Snyder, following Moore, is so insanely aroused by the look of vengeance, and by the stylized application of physical power, that the film ends up twice as fascistic as the forces it wishes to lampoon.

And you quite reasonably reply, "Aroused? Mr. Lane, I can't speak to Snyder's film, but you're entirely misreading Moore. One can argue that he's entirely conscious about manipulating and recontextualizing comic book violence. Much of the book is an attempt to deglamorize cartoon brutality by making it ugly and messy--take, for instance, the use of Kitty Genovese's murder, or the way Moore constructs the mutilation scene in Chapter Ten of From He--" but you have to admit it sounds wicked funny with your underwear pulled up to your armpits, and all the laughter in the locker room drowns out your point anyway.

You want to see the attempted rape of a superwoman, her bright latex costume cast aside and her head banged against the baize of a pool table? The assault is there in Moore’s book, one panel of which homes in on the blood that leaps from her punched mouth, but the pool table is Snyder’s own embroidery. You want to hear Moore’s attempt at urban jeremiad? “This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” That line from the book may be meant as a punky retread of James Ellroy, but it sounds to me like a writer trying much, much too hard...

And you, starting to get angry by now, say "But Moore intends Rorschach to be a self-important, self-delusional wreck, defensively reinventing himself as a ridiculously hard-boiled fictional character! The purple prose is the character, not the writer!" (Although Swamp Thing and Killing Joke lurk uncomfortably in the back of your head.) "Moore is using Sally Jupiter to make a point about the exploitation of women and their bodies, how that limits womens' choices and forces many to go along with their degredation!"

Amid these pompous grabs at horror, neither author nor director has much grasp of what genuine, unhyped suffering might be like, or what pity should attend it; they are too busy fussing over the fate of the human race—a sure sign of metaphysical vulgarity—to be bothered with lesser plights.

You're sputtering now: "Little Walter Kovacs! Dr. Malcom Long! The news vendor and the kid reading Tales of the Black Frieghter! The lesbian cab driver! Janey Slater! Hollis Mason! Regular people's lives are woven into the entire thing. Those bodies splattered across the opening pages of Chapter 12? They're the individual lives that Ozymandias presumes to destroy with his dicking around. Jesus, Lane, didn't you even read the book?" And he says, "Not like you did, 800 times. I looked at it, enough to know what Moore was getting at: whiny, juvenile liberal doomsday screed mixed with T&A and guys in leather masks. But don't you remember I had to give it back to you because you said you just couldn't sleep right without it under your pillow? And don't you mean comic book?"

Incoherent, overblown, and grimy with misogyny, “Watchmen” marks the final demolition of the comic strip, and it leaves you wondering: where did the comedy go?

"Yeah," you say, "like that laugh riot Maus you congratulated at the top of the piece." But Lane can't hear you. Your voice is all muffled inside that locker. Although, as you sit stuffed in there sweating with your knees wedged into your neck, you have to give Lane, at the end, credit for accidentally hitting on Moore's intention, one that the superhero side of the industry had to ignore--the final demolition of a certain kind of comic strip.

Two Thoughts on the Possibly Upcoming Watchmen Movie

2009-01-08T10:52:00.010-05:00

1) Rumors abound that WB and Zack Snyder have altered the ending of the Watchmen film adaptation to replace the "giant squid" of the original book with a frame-job making it look as if Dr. Manhattan attacked his namesake.

While I really do understand a studio wanting to shy away from something as ridiculous-seeming as "giant squid", this substitution completely undermines Moore's ending. The Squid that Ate New York is designed to evoke a human vagina and anus, thereby triggering misogynistic terror of the female "other" in the phallocentric, patriarchal world that serves as Watchmen's backdrop.

The squid also serves as a sly meta-commentary on the primal power of girls to get boys to put away their superhero comics and toys--and, Ozymandias hopes, their nuclear missles. Replacing the giant vagina with the giant blue penis of Dr. Manhattan at the story's climax flips the thematic point on its head. Of course, so much of Watchmen beyond its plot is criticism about what comics are and how they function, that much Moore's work was fated to be ignored. This one seems particularly egregious, though. I can only think Snyder a) didn't understand the story he was adapting, or b) didn't give a shit.

2) It's entertaining to see the stupidest man in the universe, Jonah Goldberg, working so hard to make Watchmen seem as stupid and small as he is. Goldberg's agenda is to use Watchmen as a negative example in the continuing campaign to sanctify Ronald Reagan--as an avatar for the pure, wholesome wonderfullness of conservative ideas. Yes, some of Watchmen is a critique of the shittiest aspects of the Thatcher/Reagan 1980s in which the book was written. But more than 20 years later, and the possibly temporary collapse of the Soviet empire aside, *those aspects continue to be shitty*. But if Goldberg and his fellow conservatives think the way back to power is to keep arguing decades-old disagreements, and deifying long-dead politicians via comic-book criticism, by all means, knock yourselves out.

Beyond Goldberg, the less said about whom the better--but really, if he were rocketed to Bizarro World, he'd be the stupidest man there by a mile, including Bizarro Beppo the Supermonkey--it's sad to see in the comments, actual, bona-fide comic book writers like Bill Willingham and James Hudnall so wildly misinterpret aspects of Moore's work.

To start with Hudnall, there is a reason why the English language contains the words "hero" and "protagonist". Just because Rorshcach moves the (seeming) plot along does not make him the story's hero.

Willingham bizarrely (by warping the story through his political filter) seems to think that Moore, against all evidence, has a favored viewpoint--of Ozymandias. He writes:

... I have to disagree that the leftist character Ozymandias was the villain of Watchmen. I believe he was the (tragic) hero of the story. I won’t try to argue Alan Moore’s original intent, but that’s the way I read the book. Ozymandias’ plot succeeded, even if he didn’t survive the execution of it. At the end, the surviving superheroes decide to let the scheme go forth, with the one exception of Rorschach, who Moore has gone on record as describing as a villainous and despicable character, even if he stopped short of calling him the outright villain of the piece.

I see the book as a chronicle of the wonderful but tragic genius hero who saw the way to save the world, and was the only one willing to do all of the horrible things needed to bring that about — just like all of those poor souls who had and will have to die horribly in order to bring about the glorious communist utopia that will come, if only the superior geniuses of the left are willing to break enough eggs to accomplish it.

My politics differ a hundred percent from that nonsense, but this is how I read the Watchmen story — an impressive but deeply flawed work by an incredible talent.

No. One of the most radical things about Watchmen as a superhero text is how it refuses to settle on any character or philosophy as the right, "heroic" one--like the raft of dead men, the entire world is adrift, cut loose from its moorings. Everyone is improvising and everyone is compromised, whether they recognize it or not. They're all alone in casting themselves as the heroes of the story, whether by sacrificing their morals for the greater good, or sticking to their ethics despite the consequences. Speculation about who's the intended hero, or Goldberg alleging that the West is cast as "the real villain" is flat-out foolish. Ozymandias and Rorschach are both moral monsters, in a world filled with and inured to them. Goldberg calls Moore's alleged nilhistic ambiguity "the left's ill-advised, ahistoric, and self-indulgent response to Reaganism" but he's the same guy who's spent the past couple of years pimping a book that claims liberals are the real fascists, with the primary evidence being the ease with which he repeatedly puts "liberal" and fascist" next to each other in sentences.

Willingham also falls down the rabbit hole of trying to debunk the mechanics of the final page's oblique homage to Kind Hearts and Coronets by speculating "what would happen next", which is pretty much the definition of something like "retardation" if that word were okay to use. It's possible to spin out any number of plausible scenarios for what happens to Rorschach's journal, but it's fruitless--Moore tells us what to expect with the "nothing ever ends" line. Whether by the journal or otherwise, eventually all of man's schemes will unravel, statues (even of Ronald Reagan!) will crumble and be swallowed by the lone and level sands ...

Someone ought to write a poem about that.

Whew

2008-10-23T10:52:00.004-05:00

For my own selfish reasons, I was apprehensive about what Grant Morrison might say concerning Leo Quintum in his new Newsarama interview--as it happens, he's about exactly as cagey on Leo as the comic itself (italics mine):

Grant Morrison: Yeah, he was exactly as you say, my attempt to create an updated take on the character of “Superman’s scientist friend” – in the vein of Emil Hamilton from the animated show and the ‘90s stories. Science so often goes wrong in Superman stories, and I thought it was important to show the potential for science to go right or to be elevated by contact with Superman’s shining positive spirit.

I was thinking of Quintum as a kind of “Man Who Fell To Earth” character with a mysterious unearthly background. For a while I toyed with the notion that he was some kind of avatar of Lightray of the New Gods, but as All Star developed, that didn’t fit the tone, and he was allowed to simply be himself.

Eventually it just came down to simplicity. Leo Quintum represents the “good” scientific spirit – the rational, enlightened, progressive, utopian kind of scientist I figured Superman might inspire to greatness. It was interesting to me how so many people expected Quintum to turn out bad at the end. It shows how conditioned we are in our miserable, self–loathing, suspicious society to expect the worst of everyone, rather than hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just what we expect from stories.

Having said that, there is indeed a necessary whiff of Lucifer about Quintum. His name, Leo Quintum, conjures images of solar force, lions and lightbringers and he has elements of the classic Trickster figure about him. He even refers to himself as “The Devil Himself” in issue #10.

What he’s doing at the end of the story should, for all its gee–whiz futurity, feel slightly ambiguous, slightly fake, slightly “Hollywood.” Yes, he’s fulfilling Superman’s wishes by cloning an heir to Superman and Lois and inaugurating a Superman dynasty that will last until the end of time – but he’s also commodifying Superman, figuring out how it’s done, turning him into a brand, a franchise, a bigger–and–better “revamp,” the ultimate coming attraction, fresher than fresh, newer than new but familiar too. Quintum has figured out the “formula” for Superman and improved upon it.

And then you can go back to the start of All Star Superman issue #1 and read the “formula” for yourself, condensed into eight words on the first page and then expanded upon throughout the story! The solar journey is an endless circle naturally. A perfect puzzle that is its own solution.

That more or less clinches it for me.

Die Hardstrodamus

2008-10-10T14:37:00.002-05:00

Fox Poll: Nearly Two-Thirds Say Ayers Makes No Difference to Their Vote

White FBI Agent Johnson: Just like fuckin' Saigon, eh slick?

Black FBI Agent Johnson: I was in junior high, dickhead.

Godawful

2008-09-26T10:18:00.002-05:00

I love Krypto, I really, really, really love Krypto. And I'll admit, James Robinson does right by the modern version of the character in the new issue of Superman. But everybody? The rest of the comic is a pile of dogshit. It took me less than four minutes to read, was filled with bad dialogue, and Robinson can't write the character of Superman to save his life. Look at the scene with Teen Zatara. Superman, with his hat in his hand, is a sarcastic, dismissive douchebag to the person he's begging for help. Superman. Then look at the whacked-out scene that ends the book, as Superman bascially uses the population of Metropolis as a proxy to lecture his wife that's she's a horrid bitch for trying to separate him from his dog.

Yes, the fight between Krypto and Atlas was well-staged, and yes, it's a clever idea to introduce a Zatara into the supporting cast, given the original's place in Action Comics. But so far, Robinson's run on Superman is only confirming for me that his writerly quirks (tangential conversations; drawn-out, shapeless plotting; random focus on otherwise meaningless background characters; etc.) which could be charmingly idiosynchratic in Starman when used on his own creations and forgotten third-stringers, just seems like bad, lazy writing under the glare of the spotlight.

Scipio says anyone who didn't cry at the end of the issue has his pity. Even as a huge Krypto fan, I say anyone who cried at the end of this issue has lead poisoning. I just wish I had video footage of the Absorbascon commenter who claims he gave the book a standing ovation in the aisle of his comic shop. Then I could die happy.

All-Star Luthor: Xs and Os

2008-09-22T09:47:00.015-05:00

Thanks to David Uzumeri at Funnybook Babylon for inspiring this post:

So All-Star Superman #12 is out. Superman is in the sun, evil is vanquished, humanity is ready to step into the future, and unspoken on the page but near the heart of the series, Lex Luthor and Leo Quintum are the same guy.

Throughout the series Leo has been presented as an obvious opposite number for Luthor, a scientific genius who actually uses his abilities to shape a better future instead of merely talking about it. But A-SS #12 puts the final puzzle pieces together, and makes it clear that Leo isn't merely a mirror for Luthor. He literally is Luthor--older, wiser, humane. And that's not just clever, elliptical plotting from Morrison. It gets straight to the thematic center of the story, to Morrison's idea of who Superman is, what he's capable of, what superhero comics mean now to those who read them.

Morrison has said that The Invisibles is optimally designed for its second reading--that you can only really start to understand the experience if you've already experienced it. To me this means that perceiving time in one direction limits your frame of reference too much to understand what's happening until it has already happened, and you're able to reflect. You can only discern a structure from outside the structure. So here's how I see the structure as it pertains to Luthor:

Throughout A-SS, Superman has maintained a belief that even Luthor can be redeemed. For all the labors Superman undertakes, proving his faith in Luthor is perhaps his toughest challenge, and the one task he seemingly fails, given only the evidence on the page. But we've seen over and over that Morrison's Superman, the perfect man, is never wrong, and always wins in the end. So what are the chances he fails to save Luthor?

Think about the events of A-SS #12--Luthor, juiced up on Superman's powers, finally understands the simple, harmonious structure of the universe. He touches the mind of god. Seemingly, it doesn't last, as Superman proceeds to deck him at his moment of enlightenment. Luthor's evil, petty nature reasserts itself, aghast that Superman has beaten him yet again. Then Superman lays him flat, and ends with a stinging rebuke: "You could have saved the world years ago if it really mattered to you, Luthor." But is this a disappointed write-off or a challenge?

After Superman leaves to reignite the sun, Luthor has a year to think about it--a year in which, according to the epilogue, even he is moved by Superman's memorial service, and, as Quintum himself says, the villain diminishes in the absence of his rival. So, let's say you're Luthor. Superman's finally gone, the world looks different to you now, and his final statement is ringing in your ears. Maybe you give up and let yourself be executed, as the overt text seems to suggest.

Or maybe you disappear, travel back in time, don a pair of glasses as a foolproof disguise, (plus some hair plugs, switching the X in your name to an O, and adding some colors to your old coat) and you become the man Superman always knew you could be. You devote yourself to scientific pursuits meant to expand human knowledge and create a better world. You place yourself near the sun where Superman must come to your rescue in issue #1 so that in #12, he may rescue the sun itself, and every creature that lives in its light. And eventually, because you earned Superman's total trust, you are given the chance to continue your former enemy's legacy for thousands of years, through the P.R.O.J.E.C.T. Remember, Superman is always right, and Superman always wins in the end. And if even Luthor can be saved by Superman, every single one of us is saved. What's more, Superman must know who Quintum is. That's why he's willing to entrust Leo with his and Lois's DNA--because he knows the man Luthor was, and the man Quintum has become. He has the confidence of seeing his beliefs proven true before his eyes.

Assuming that Leo is Lex, the next question is why? That is, why does Morrison, in nearly all his significant superhero comics, keep returning to the idea of the future reaching back to the past, so that they may save each other? The trope is present in Animal Man, New X-Men, DC 1 Million and The Invisibles, to name a few.

I think it might have something to do with the essential nature of superhero comics as they are created and experienced now, read primarily by adults, pale reflections of an idealized aspect of many readers' childhoods. There's the wish fulfillment aspect; hindsight as the ultimate superpower--the chance to do it all over again, but better. Leo is Lex's chance to be the man he always bragged about being, if only Superman weren't there to impede him. Again, Leo/Lex is the stand-in for all of humanity, in that regard.

All-Star Superman, the comic, is like a meta version of Leo Quintum. It's the Superman concept's chance to actually be what DC has puffed its chest about for decades--Superman as role model, Christ figure, avatar of morality and decency, etc. Except instead of telling us that in endless mediocre stories where Superman actually acts like a fool, dithering and crying, All-Star Superman shows us that role model in action, what it means to portray the best of our natures in a cape with a propensity for punching the fuck out of things.

The book itself recalls the past--not only of Superman, but for the people reading the comic, their own pasts. But it does so only in order to prepare the way for a brighter (Superman not only is in, but *is* the sun now) future. Grant Morrison strikes me as a nostalgic futurist, continually hopeful that by sifting the sands of our former selves, we can filter out all but utopia.

Ultimately, Luthor/Quintum is the lynch-pin character in the book, because 1) he initiates the plot, 2) he displays real (albeit off-panel) character growth in moving from the Luthor at the end of #12 to the Quintum at the beginning of #1, and 3) by doing so he symbolizes Morrison's hope for humanity. Superman himself is a beautiful cipher--by design, he's an avatar for perfection, always there for everyone else--for Leo and his crew, for the goth girl on the ledge, for Luthor, eventually for every living thing on Earth--to help them evolve, to become better. That's how Morrison ends so many of his stories--with humanity soaring into the sky to face Maggedon in JLA, or stepping beyond their physical forms to expanded consciousness in The Invisibles. All-Star Superman may be the most graceful version of the standard Morrison ending yet.

UPDATE: Finally had a chance to look through all the issues. In addition to Superman's line in #12 "You could have saved the world years ago if it really mattered to you, Luthor," a commenter below points out that in #1, Quintum tells Superman that he too is trying to escape a "doomed world--called the past." Further, in A-SS #10, when Superman gives Quintum his genome, the scientist questions the decision, saying "I could be the devil himself for all you know." Superman replies "Oh, I think I'm a better judge of character than that, Professor," then hands him the vials containing his and Lois' DNA, saying "This is how much I trust you, Leo." The scene takes on a completely new meaning, assuming Quintum is Luthor.

LATER UPDATE: Be sure to check the comments for the discussion, kicked off by RAB, of the derivation of the name "Quintum."

My Favorite Blog Comment Ever

2008-08-17T20:13:00.000-05:00

"The success of Batman is all about Heath Ledgers untimely death. The movie itself is morally simplistic, stylistically confusing and the women are 2d. Hollywood can bend itself backwards working out the formula of it's success but it is about Heath's death. The film itself is no Star Wars."

On Radio Silence

2008-03-25T11:51:00.003-05:00

I have had no notable opinions about anything since January 14th. This is for the best, considering the crushing oversupply of opinions.

I loved Matt Kindt's SuperSpy, but I haven't thought about it hard enough to articulate why. I'm supporting Obama for all of the same reasons as everyone else I know. I agree with everything I've read about the new R.E.M. album, both positive and negative. In the past few months I have finally caught up with, to my delight, the TV series Arrested Development, Jaime Hernandez's Maggie & Hopey stories, Scott Pilgrim and the Sly & the Family Stone CD reissues.

But mostly, I'm insanely impatient for the glacier currently covering Vermont to recede. I'm pretty sure there are a bunch of frozen blog posts buried in my backyard.

Why I Love The Wedding Present

2008-03-25T11:48:00.002-05:00

"I suppose the themes are lust, jealousy, betrayal, regret, obsession, super-heroes. The usual."

El Rey out in the U.S. on Manifesto Records, May 20.

Six Days Of Hoe-etry. One Night Of Poetry.

2008-01-14T23:39:00.000-05:00

as above, so below-etry
it must be hell reading my heavenly poetry

you've been bad so I spank your po-po-etry
give you a time-out for writing oh-no-etry

your rhymes are john doe-etry, I just tagged your toe-etry
dumped in an unmarked grave by my poetry

you ate the yellow snow-etry
Major Tetley in the incident at Ox-Bow-etry

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello-etry
I'm John, Paul and George, you're just Ringo-etry

check your pants, you've got camel-toe-etry
plus they're stained bright red from your heavy flow-etry

your gun won't shoot, you're out of ammo-etry
your ass got capped by my poetry

you're stuck in reverse; I've got the Big Mo'-etry
your rhymes die on the vine; I eat Miracle-Gro-etry

Got no proof your rhyme balance is sufficient; now you’re in escrow-etry*
your lines are so straight; I pick my afro-etry
I’ve read your work, it don’t suck, it blow-etry
You can't keep up; I think you might be slow-etry
I win; this is my place; you don’t even show-etry
how 'bout a little fire, scarecrow-etry?

I’m smooth like butter; you spread cheap oleo-etry
people love my lines, they say “wherefore art thou, Romeo-etry?”

I’m afraid I drifted off reading your clichéd old status-quo-etry
did my couplets burn you badly? Rub on some fresh aloe-etry

you guzzle Welch’s grape juice while I’m sipping Moet-try
Moe fingers in the eyes of your sub-Shemp Curly Joe-etry

try some Irish Spring, you stink, I think you’ve got severe B.O.-etry
I read you then throw up, just like when I drink cocoa-etry

I climb a tree and take a pee on your so-so-etry
jiggle the handle; you just got flushed by my poetry

you're amateur hour; make way for some pro-etry
I’ll put you in the doghouse with my Hi-Pro Glow-etry

I'm storming the beach at Anzio-etry
while you eat whale blubber in Oslo-etry

you plead "Don't tase me, bro-etry!"
too late--you got shocked--by my poetry!

*thanks to Dave for the clarification

Skeptical About Comics?

2008-01-14T23:20:00.000-05:00

A couple of years ago, a friend teaching a high school class on comics filled with resistant kids asked me to write an apologia for the form. Hence the references to incredibly past-sell-date pop culture toward the end--not to mention a sense that we're well past the time when comics would need to be explained. Anyway, here goes, insufferable tone, stereotyping and all:

Skeptical about comics? You’re part of a very select club…basically 99% of the U.S. population.

For some comic book readers, part of being a fan is having a complex about it. Some of us feel compelled to “prove” that our hobby/habit/whatever isn’t pathetic, isn’t a sign of arrested development or a way to get grade school kids into the back of the van. We blanket our non-comics reading friends with examples of comics we adore. “You have to read Watchmen!” “You’ve just got to check out Love & Rockets!” When they arch their eyebrows, when TV shows treat comics as shorthand for illiteracy, when people we love flip lazily through our favorite comic only to shrug and say “I don’t get it,” we take it personally. We passionately insist that comics can be as valid as art on one hand (poetry, serious novels, painting) and popular entertainment on the other (summer blockbuster movies, hit songs, etc.) Our love for something so unpopular makes us outcasts and we get defensive about it—even as we tell ourselves that comics’ very unpopularity proves our refined tastes. If you love a musician or a writer or a movie that the mainstream ignores, you might know the feeling. You want everybody to know about them, love them, give them the respect they deserve—but you also want to keep them to yourself.

Also, because comics aren’t that easy to find, they tend to attract devoted fans who care to make the effort to seek them out, while repelling casual readers who might pick up a comic now or then but can’t be bothered to drive to a special store populated by geeks, where it smells like a sandwich from Subway—even though nobody there has eaten one. That’s the stereotype, anyway. And it’s one that the big superhero publishers have catered to, producing comics expressly for the obsessed fans, with backstories so complex that it’s nearly impossible for a new reader to pick up a random issue of X-Men and know what’s going on without a decoder ring.

Because of this tendency, the problem comics fans face is that many comics really are junk—not worth wasting your time on even if your precise goal is to waste your time. There are many reasons why comics are no longer mass culture, no longer sold by the millions at every corner store and newsstand like they were in the 1940s and 1950s—some reasons include limited distribution, competition from TV and video games, CGI action movies that outdo any special effect a comic artist might draw. But one of the biggest reasons is that so many comics suck. It’s hard to see through the clutter. And the clutter exists at both ends of the spectrum: stupid yet obscure comics about steroid junkies in capes pounding each other into paste, as well as pretentious “art’ comics written by skinny white guys who never got over their anger about being shoved into lockers while the cute girls laughed.

Statistics show that if you don’t start smoking as a kid or teenager, you probably won’t as an adult. It’s not much different with comics, aside from the lung cancer. If you haven’t enjoyed comics or even read them by the time you’re through puberty, it’s a hard sell to convince you that you should try them afterward. Even after decades of serious comics for adults about sex, drug use, the Holocaust, growing old, getting sick, everything under the sun--most people still associate comics and cartooning with stupid little kids. That’s just how it is.

But I’m supposed to tell you why you ought to read comics. Because despite everything I just said, you absolutely should read comics—for the same reason you should check out MF Doom albums or see The Life Aquatic, watch Gilmore Girls or listen to Little Steven’s Underground Garage on the radio. Because you should always make an effort to seek out the best, smartest stuff in any medium. Because there are comics out there that will make you think, make you nervous, make you laugh, get you all excited, make you cry. And I mean YOU. You specifically. There are comics being published right now that address your particular interests. Comics can be about anything. All the manga from Japan proves that—giant robots, cowboys, high school romances, demons, pop music, ninjas, gay ninjas inside giant robots in a battle of the bands against cowboy demons at the high school dance. Comics can be silly or subversive, tragic or optimistic. Sometimes all at once. And as Scott McCloud explains, there are things comics can do that no other kind of artistic expression can duplicate.

For instance: the cartoonist Chris Ware has a comic strip called “Big Tex,” about a dimwitted cowboy whose father openly hates him. Takes him for rides and leaves him alone in the woods. Calls him stupid and worthless. One particular “Big Tex” comic strip is broken into a dozen panels, each showing a part of Tex’s house and yard. You don’t see any people, just the house, a tree, and the word balloons of Tex meekly absorbing verbal abuse from his father. Taken all together, the individual pictures add up to a bigger picture of the whole house. But each separate panel takes place at a different point in time—so as you read the strip from left to right, top to bottom, the panels also add up to a life, as you get the story of Tex’s entire miserable existence from childhood to adulthood. All within one unmoving picture of a house, broken into fragments, just as Tex’s life has been broken into fragments. My description can’t do it justice, can’t really explain the impact. In this case, you really do have to see it. But that’s the power of comics, what makes them special. They’re a separate language, visual and verbal elements intertwined into something different than either. Because comics creators can shape panels any way they want, and because you can read at your own pace, comics are free to speed up and slow down time in ways that movies can’t duplicate. They can show details that books are forced to explain.

I love comics because…well, I’ve never known how not to. They’ve been part of my life since I was three years old. I loved them then for their absurd invention—flying dogs from outer space, magic rings, heroes throwing monsters into the sun. I love comics now for some of the same escapist reasons, but also because many of the independent comics I follow these days offer the most personal expression you’ll find in the popular arts. There are far fewer layers of producers, directors, editors, management people telling a comic book artist what to say or how to say it in order to make more money. It’s straight from the artist’s head to the page to the reader—or at least closer to that ideal than anything else I can think of.

Skeptical about comics? Good. It pays to be skeptical about everything. But don’t let that stop you from trying a few. You might even like them.

With The Excitement Still Lingering

2007-09-21T14:15:00.001-05:00

Now that I've had a few years to think about it, I've realized that DC actually only raped itself.

And that nobody loves superhero comics more than Brad Meltzer.

Shorter "Tales of The Sinestro Corps: Parallax #1"

2007-09-21T14:11:00.001-05:00

Well, that's not entirely true. I am out the four dollars.

When Fangirls' Moms Attack

2007-09-21T11:41:00.001-05:00

From DC's The Atom #26, August-September 1966. I was struck by both the tone and nature of the request. Entirely civil, (although the editor had complete control of the message, of course.) And she's not arguing over the way women are portrayed on Atom covers, but that they aren't represented at all--not as villains, not as heroes, allies or bystanders, even as damsels in distress. The Atom's world is very small, and from the covers at least, seemingly vagina-free. Well, except for this:

Anyway, three years, 19 issues and a title change later, Irene's wish was finally granted in a big way, as Jean Loring squeaked under the wire for the final issue of the series. Maybe she was mad about being shut out of the covers since 1962, even while providing the plot for half of the Atom's stories, because she's clearly ready to put a big boot up our heroes' asses:

If you ask me, they look like they deserve it.

(By the way, Scipio gets under the covers with Jean here, here, here, and here.)

Deaf Jam

2007-09-02T21:44:00.000-05:00

The Rick Rubin profile in the New York Times Magazine is truly eye-opening. Rubin is a very smart guy. But that only underscores what dire straits the recording industry is in. After five pages talking about Columbia's daring in hiring Rubin to save the label, we learn just how the legendary producer would do it:

Rubin has a bigger idea. To combat the devastating impact of file sharing, he, like others in the music business (Doug Morris and Jimmy Iovine at Universal, for instance), says that the future of the industry is a subscription model, much like paid cable on a television set. "You would subscribe to music," Rubin explained, as he settled on the velvet couch in his library. "You'd pay, say, $19.95 a month, and the music will come anywhere you'd like. In this new world, there will be a virtual library that will be accessible from your car, from your cellphone, from your computer, from your television. Anywhere. The iPod will be obsolete, but there would be a Walkman-like device you could plug into speakers at home. You'll say, 'Today I want to listen to ... Simon and Garfunkel,' and there they are. The service can have demos, bootlegs, concerts, whatever context the artist wants to put out. And once that model is put into place, the industry will grow 10 times the size it is now."
From Napster to the iPod, the music business has been wrong about how much it can dictate to its audience. "Steve Jobs understood Napster better than the record business did," David Geffen told me. "IPods made it easy for people to share music, and Apple took a big percentage of the business that once belonged to the record companies. The subscription model is the only way to save the music business. If music is easily available at a price of five or six dollars a month, then nobody will steal it."

Dear God. If that's the genius idea, start building the coffin. It's hard to know for sure from the description here, but it certainly sounds to me like the industry wants to move away from the straightforward model where you buy music and own it, to one where you merely rent access to a feed (the more you pay, the more access you get), which I assume you lose all as soon as you fail to pay your monthly subscription fee. Guys, people love their iPods, and the cable TV model sucks ass. Your eagerness to destroy the former and emulate the latter shows you as devils, morons or both. Right now people either buy the tracks they like for a buck or less a pop, or they grab what they want for free. Any system that curtails the listener's possession of music, and the flexibility that provides, will be roundly rejected. Subscription only sounds like a good deal for the labels and their executives on velvet couches--and it only reveals their desperation.

Speaking of which, Rubin's co-label president Steve Barnett wants to make up lost revenue by extorting 50% of concert, online and merchandising proceeds from artists. What an awesome incentive for a band to sign.

I like Danzig II: Lucifuge as much as anybody, but I walk away from this article thinking Rubin is trying to save a system that clearly deserves to die. These people could have priced CDs at $8-$10 (given the format's lower manufacturing costs than cassettes) but instead they went for the short money and ripped everyone off for upwards of $20 a disc at the major retailers. They could have supported iTunes and its competitors. (Hey, Universal, good luck selling your own shit for $3 a track or whatever you end up charging. The NYT article refers to Apple's across-the-board 99 cent song pricing as a problem, but it's one of the precious few things associated with the music industry that shows any respect for music fans--so of course the industry wants to kill it.)

There is no easy answer to file sharing, but it's hard to see the industry go down ugly, trying to force a new model that effectively takes the music you buy away from you in order to secure their increasingly irrelevant place in the profit chain.

The Pact

2007-08-29T07:56:00.000-05:00

No, not swapping my first-born son with Darkseid. I've made a deal with my wife: for every day that I go running, she'll read a comic. So far, I've gotten her to read the first five issues of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Sleeper. (She said she didn't like it much at first--too violent--but I noticed yesterday that she was reading ahead. She is a sucker for finding out what happens next.)

After she finishes the first trade, I think I'll have her read Jeff Parker and Leonard Kirk's Agents of Atlas, as I work on getting from a 36 back into my wedding pants. Any other suggestions for what I should have her read? The last serial comic she followed with any kind of enthusiasm was The Invisibles.

Surfing. Safari.

2007-08-09T13:10:00.000-05:00

The trip from Vermont to San Diego wasn't all comics and nerdgasms. We also got in a surfing lesson for Theo, courtesy of Dave:

And a trip to the San Diego Zoo:

Just Like Everyone Else

2007-08-09T12:38:00.000-05:00

I attended Comic-Con this year (my third in six years), only this time I took my 8-year-old, Theo along for the geekery. He was a fantastic traveling companion, and it was fascinating to experience the show from his perspective. He was patient beyond reason as the old man flipped through endless boxes of comics--almost as patient as I was following his hunt for Pokemon cards. Unsurprisingly, Theo was good for about 20 minutes of Roy Thomas reminiscences about late 60s Marvel, a good sign of his general mental health. He impressed a number of aging back issue dealers with his appreciation for his favorite artist, Jack Kirby. (To date, the kid has read every Marvel superhero book in order from FF #1 through July of 1965. Along with his enthusiasm for classic Little Lulu, Krazy Kat, Segar's Popeye, the works of Jeff Smith and above all Jack Cole's Plastic Man, he has better taste than most adult comics fans. In other words, he has my taste, which is one of the benefits of having kids.)

Following Theo around, we went to sections of the con I've never been to, namely the toy booths in the most crowded center section of the floor, with frequent trips to the Lego and Pokemon booths. In other news Dave and I picked up the last two copies of I Shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets! at the Fantagraphics booth during Paul Karasik's signing session, I bought a big stack of old DC 80-Page Giants and 100-page Super Spectaculars, our friend Dana found a number of the Super Pets comics she was looking for, and Dave achieved his goal for the show of hobnobbing with A-listers.

Veejayology

2007-08-09T12:29:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, even Prince has to talk to complete fucking idiots in the course of doing his job. Just like the rest of us!

Sway: Let's talk about the album, Musicology. All right, that term, I play dominoes, and when you study dominology, that means you're a master at dominoes, so Musicology, is that what that means? That you're a master at music?

At which point the interview ended as Prince choked the MTV News correspondent to death with his microphone cord.

John Byrne in a Nutshell

2007-07-05T14:58:00.000-05:00

Queen Bitch, on the New Gods Omnibus: "the first volume has an introduction by Grant Morrison, who is, of course, well known for his association with these characters."

John, that you can't see the fundamental connection between Morrison and Kirby is exactly your problem. Hint: it's not about redoing the same exact comics that Kirby already did first, and better. Morrison wrote the introduction not because he did time in the trenches doing alternately decent and forgettable Kirby homages like you, but because he is the obvious heir to Kirby's weird, boundless creativity. He actually took the old man up on the challenge to fill the world with your own crazy-ass shit. When he's actually worked on books Kirby started, like X-Men, he, unlike you, has had the good sense to make them contemporary, make them relevant, and make them his own. You're a decent (even improving) penciller, John, but most of your career has been illuminated by reflected light from Kirby's sun. What's bizarre is that you actively decided to do this, like it was the moral high ground.

The Invisibles. The Filth. WE3. Vimanarama. Seaguy. Seven Soldiers. JLA: Rock of Ages. Flex Mentallo. That's why Morrison got to write the introduction.

Ratatouille

2007-07-05T13:46:00.000-05:00

Loved: the animation, and the overall tone. I'm grateful that someone is making animated movies without passing off wall-to-wall Hollywood "insider" circle jerking as jokes. The first Shrek made me hate. I can't stand that I even know who Jeffery Katzenberg is. At least Brad Bird pictures don't require any knowledge of the film maker's relationship with Disney executives. The humor in Ratatouille is never sarcastic, at least not in a way that assumes you read US magazine.

Didn't Love: I didn't buy the hair-pulling thing for a second. Rat chef yes, human marionette, no. Also, the swipe at critics was cheap, simplistic and felt very defensive on Bird's part--as if to show, loudly, that those 96% positive ratings at Rotten Tomatoes don't go to his head. And finally, it drives me insane that for all its accomplishments, this is the same exact CGI cartoon every studio has been making since Toy Story. One critic called Ratatouille "a story about fulfilling one’s dreams, about going beyond preconceived boundaries and following your heart" which might as well be a marco on his keyboard. "Have the courage to be yourself" is a fine message, but it gets a little stale after 1,000 pictures. Just be yourself, talking action figure/fish/car/bug/beaver/toilet brush! And next year Pixar brings us Wall-E, the story of a robot who finds the courage to shake off his programming and be himself. Thank god. Where do these Imaginauts come up with their ideas?

Dagwood's Better Off Not Knowing.

2007-06-18T11:24:00.000-05:00

The Giant Sucking Sound You Hear Is Matt Brady

2007-06-02T19:51:00.000-05:00

Whatever you think of the various Marvel controversies, I think we can all agree that Matt Brady is perhaps the most servile toad in what passes for mainstream comics journalism. From his latest salad-tossing of Joe Quesada:

NRAMA:
Despite your (Marvel’s) intentions or lack thereof in regards to the now infamous Heroes for Hire #13 cover, which last week you made clear was not or intended to suggest “tentacle rape” [groan], when something like this is created that some people can and obviously have interrupted it as suggesting or too close for comfort to something like that, do you ever consider making a change in acknowledgement of those who are upset by it, even if it wasn’t your intention?
Is that too slippery a slope to go down, to give in to public protest even when it wasn’t intended to be what they’re protesting?

Of course Joe responds with the "I'm sorry if you're upset for taking it the wrong way" non-apology favored by dicks everywhere, from your worst ex to the President, which is no surprise because Joe is a dick, in the business of selling crap comics* to other dicks. As long as he wants to keep prying money out of sexually-stunted losers' pockets, the last thing he can do is come out and admit it. Joe gets extra points for avoiding the actual point by arguing an extreme that no one else did:

I took every single exception that every single person had, regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual preference, what have you, into account and decided to make sure I wasn’t upsetting everyone of those applecarts, I wouldn’t be able to ever publish another comic again.

So it's obvious that Quesada can never listen to any complaint that anyone might ever have about any subject, no matter how justified, because it would mean the end of the entire comic industry. Why do you hate America so much, girls?

Anyway, that's Joe. But Brady, good God--I don't know why I think he should know better. He clearly knows what side his bread is buttered on. Still, it amazes me the depths to which he will sink in order to maintain his access, how far he goes beyond the call of duty to curry favor with these people. What kind of question is the above for anyone who professes to call himself a journalist, even if it's a journalist of superhero comic book companies? "Interrupted"? Brady can't even transcribe his own interview correctly? And how many times could he assert that Marvel clearly didn't intend anything suggestive by producing a cover featuring giant, veiny, cylindrical shapes dripping white goo on the hyper-inflated breasts of unconscious, chained-up women? Judy Miller was tougher on the Bush administration. These aren't even softballs; Brady is lovingly blowing clouds of dandelion seeds. He's an embarrassment. Why not ask Joe if these complainers are hurting America, or if people should pray for him in the face of his adversity?

*Ed Brubaker and Jeff Parker books being the exception to the rule

Sequelitis

2007-05-08T21:33:00.000-05:00

Writing for the LA Times in the wake of Spider-Man 3's record-breaking opening, Patrick Goldstein seizes on our current 14-sequel summer and the impending Indiana Jones 4 to express his dismay that Hollywood is more than ever ruled by film franchises, and that so many promising directors have chosen to become "brand managers" rather than commit themselves to producing singular works of genuine art. In a broad sense, this argument is dissatisfying. In its details, it is just stupid. (To single out Sam Raimi of all people, who made his career on a zombie movie series, seems particularly ridiculous.)

Goldstein throws out a number of potential reasons why directors might sign up for sequels, including: the money, artistic propriety, the money, the creative challenge of putting a fresh spin on material while retaining a series' core appeal, and the money. But Goldstein entirely fails to account for the particular attractions of serialized storytelling for both audiences and filmmakers. Here I think it is useful to separate the impulses of the Brett Ratner journeymen who sign up to direct part 3s from those like Raimi, Nolan and Singer who have guided entire franchises. (Although the former occasionally gives us such gems as Cuaron's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.)

While it is true that very few conventional film series ever approach art, I don't see this as a valid knock against series or those who direct them. It is not clear that movie makers all have a responsibility to aspire to art over craft and entertainment, and besides, series can accomplish things in terms of scope, character development and thematic variation that singular films typically cannot. Some stories are simply take longer to tell than can be accommodated by one movie. Dickens, Trollope, Twain etc. certainly understood the appeal of serials and series. At a time when narratively complex, heavily serialized shows such as Lost and Heroes have attained both critical acclaim and mass popularity, and Battlestar Galactica is hailed as one of the best TV programs of all time, it is bewildering to me that Goldstein would fail to acknowledge one of the core attractions for directors to take ownership over franchises. Well, aside from the money. Namely, the ability to develop stories and characters over time--not just the time glossed over in an artful montage, like Charles Foster Kane and wife at the breakfast table, but over real time, as audiences get to live with characters over a span of years. The arcs traveled by Michael Corleone or even, to a lesser degree the Spidey series' Harry Osborn would not be nearly as compelling if experienced in one sitting. I get the sense that Raimi has genuine affection for the Spider-Man characters, and has enjoyed, up until now at least, navigating them through their paces in a series of interconnected episodes that 1) replicate the serialized nature of the source material and 2) definitively resolve only by the last act of the third film. For its real flaws, Raimi's Spider-Man 3 certainly provides a completion to a number of threads that had been left untied in previous installments. Goldstein doesn't see the possibility that a filmmaker might see a creative unity in a trilogy, and so is left with only the mercenary (paycheck-hunting directors) and pathetic (lazy, nostalgic viewers) as explanations. His value judgments about true artists refusing to "repeat themselves, preferring to explore the unknown rather than revisit past triumphs" seem altogether too limiting to me, and just as nostalgic in their own way.

Turnabout?

2007-05-08T21:18:00.000-05:00

Conjecture here, but I would like to think that Grant Morrison has just returned the favor to DC chief Dan Didio (who completely blew the surprise ending to 52, months in advance) by casually revealing just what big mystery DC's new weekly series Countdown is counting down to:

We all wanted to do something new with the multiple Earths so what you've already seen in 52 is simply the tip of the iceberg - each parallel world now has its own huge new backstory and characters and each could basically form the foundation for a complete line of new books. If you like the ongoing soap opera dynamics of New Earth, you can watch Mary Marvel turning to the dark side as her skirt gets shorter and shorter, or you can buy the Earth 5 line of books featuring more iconic versions of the Marvel Family. If you miss Vic Sage as the Question, you should be able to follow the adventures of Vic's counterpart on the Charlton/Watchmen world of Earth 4.

The idea behind the Megaverse is to basically create a number of big new franchise possibilities. It's like having several comics companies and universes under one umbrella, so, as I say, there could be one book or a whole line of books spinning out of the new Earth 10 (I handled that particular revamp, so I can tell you that the original concept of the Freedom Fighters on a world where the Nazis won World War 2 has been greatly reconsidered, expanded and intensified into something that's a bit more Wagnerian and apocalyptic and a bit more adult) That's how I'd like to see the Megaverse played out as we move forward. And no crossovers! Each of the parallel universes should exist in its own separate stream with no contact from the others - not until we have a story worthy of bringing them together.

In any event, it is refreshing to see creators consciously adding something to a superhero line for once, rather than subtracting from it.

I Accept Responsibility

2007-04-29T12:23:00.000-05:00

Little did I know when I taught my intro to comics course this past winter, starting with one of the worst comics of all time, that my student Stefan Claypool was a multi-media superstar--the driving force behind Middlebury Radio Theater. You know where this is going.

Without further ado: Corpses Coast to Coast...the radio drama!

Under any other circumstances, I'd call it over the top, but that's really not possible with this story, which I found in the Mr. Monster's Hi-Shock Schlock reprint comic.

"Shenanigans"

2007-04-23T20:34:00.000-05:00

Please stop using this word.

Now.

This applies to everyone. (Except leprechauns.)

In other news, not blogging is so awesome.

Hurricane Alberto

2007-03-30T13:06:00.000-05:00

It is impossible to learn from your mistakes when you cannot recognize that you make any. Hence we have a President eager to follow exactly the same pattern he did in the Katrina crisis, sticking by his inept, corrupt cronies even as they drag down his presidency. If the stubborn non-response to Katrina contributed significantly to pushing Bush's support down into the mid-30s, where it has been stuck for most of his second term, how low will this identical performance bring him?

"I can tell you that the president has confidence in [Gonzales]," said Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino. President Bush "believes the attorney general can overcome the challenges that are before him," she said.

Perino said the White House is not interviewing prospective candidates to replace Gonzales and said Bush is satisfied with his and the department's efforts so far to be responsive to Congress.

Just swap out the names Brown and Chertoff and it's like the fall of 2005 all over again. If the last six years of experience hadn't taught me otherwise, I would be stunned.

The other possibility, of course, is that Bush has no other choice because Alberto is the crumbling levee between him and the criminal prosecution flood, and he fears that when Abu Gonzales goes, he'll be washed away.

This Party Sucks. You People Just Don't Know How To Have A Good Time.

2007-03-28T13:23:00.000-05:00

It's that point in the office party when everyone is looking around at each other uncomfortably. The boss has spent the entire night chugging gin and tonics. He passed the lampshade-on-the-head stage an hour ago, then moved onto stumbling around getting in-between guys and their wives, loudly slurring about his sexual prowess. Now he's standing in the middle of the living room trying to take off his pants to show everybody his dick, asking which of these dumb broads wants to take a ride in the boss's Lexus. The board of directors is standing in the corner with looks of disgusted shock on their faces, the proceedings are being broadcast to the entire shareholders meeting where investors sit in stunned silence, and the boss thinks he's the life of the party. "This is my goddamn company" he bellows, "and I'll wave my dick around at my own goddamn party if I fucking want to and if you bitches don't like it you can suck it." Hey, the sales guys think it's funny, right? "I said, which of you whores wants to go for a drive?"

The only question now is who's going to have enough guts to step up and take away the keys.

Sadly, this is barely a metaphor.

What Abe Believes: March 27, 2007 Edition

2007-03-27T18:58:00.000-05:00

"Juice is made from melted popsicles."

"The real Darth Vader steals Darth Vader action figures from kids because he doesn't like toys made of him."

"State cops can go anywhere."

Get In This Capsule Baby! We Are Blasting Off!

2007-03-27T09:17:00.000-05:00

Eep: Darwyn Cooke's take on The Spirit is very, very pretty. The writing is serviceable, the art is spectacular...but what really makes my heart skip a beat is the cover stock--heavy weight like a number of DC's other "prestige" monthlies (Green Lantern, Brave and the Bold) but with a matte finish that reflects much less light than the standard glossy paper, which holds the book's muted colors wonderfully, and which is as smooth to the touch as a baby's bottom. It's this aspect that vaults the comic from enjoyable read to outright fetish object. My only complaint may seem strange to level at a book which notably features done-in-one-issue tales in an era where most comics are padded for trade paperback publication. But I do think I'd like the stories more if Cooke forced himself, a la Eisner, to compress them into fewer pages. I don't mind padding too much when it looks as nice as this, but Cooke's a stronger stylist than he is a writer, and it affects his overall storytelling. Eisner's sentimental melodrama was helped by the page compression--perhaps because Eisner's character studies and O Henry twist plots were made for the short story format. I think the wispiness of Cooke's plots would benefit from a similar condensation. How about two ten pagers per issue? I feel like an asshole for nitpicking what is, on balance, one of the best mainstream books being published, but I'm pretty sure it could be even better.

Opp: I refuse to link to The Corner, but I love how Jonah Goldberg says "anti-torture absolutist" like that's an untenable position. Quoth Jonah: "But I think the anti-torture absolutists want to make as few thoughtful distinctions as possible — no doubt out of a desire to create "bright lines" between acceptable and unacceptable behaviors."

Really, it's no more ridiculous than "anti-baby rape absolutist" or "anti-serial killer absolutist," DoughBob LoadPants. And since when did staunch conservatives give a flying fuck about "thoughtful distinctions"? Oh wait, I know, when they're justifying war crimes!

Ork: "The Cylons were created by man. They evolved. They rebelled. There are many copies. And they have a plan." However, what if "they" aren't the Cylons we've been following for three seasons, and who don't seem to have much of a clear plan at all, but rather the Cylons who have just been revealed? [SEASON THREE FINALE SPOILERS AHEAD--AND DAVE, WILL YOU JUST START WATCHING THIS GODDAMN THING ALREADY?]

It's utterly implausible that the final five Cylons would have ended up among the last 40,000 survivors of the 12 colonies, in positions of significant influence, by mere chance. Whether they're conscious of it or not, the current situation had to be orchestrated to put them all into positions where they could survive to lead resistance to the other Cylons (not just on New Caprica or in the fleet, but during Anders' time leading the resistance on Caprica itself. Speaking of Anders, on further reflection we should probably assume that his sports celebrity status precludes the final five from having recognizable copies of themselves.) I also wonder if Tory's position in the group would have been filled by original Presidential aide Billy Keikeya had that actor stayed with the series. Or maybe Billy is Cylon #1 after all--wouldn't that be a cool reveal...

Ah Ah: Today I pick up my copy of LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver. Tonight I rock.

Right after I help put the kids to bed. And do the dishes. But then I rock!

One If By Land, Two If By C***.

2007-03-26T13:19:00.000-05:00

Note: I had to post this preview image from Green Lantern #18 by feel, as I am now completely blind.

Is this:
A) what happens when you stare too long into the sun (or alternately, female genitalia lit up like a quasar)?
B) a hysterical reaction to the utter retardation of the above image?
C) both?

Either way, it's clear that DC is just messing with people at this point.

On The Separation Of Church And Stately Wayne Manor

2007-03-21T13:41:00.000-05:00

Steven Grant is right on all points. But the primary reason why I can't stand "concrete Judeo-Christian figures"--be they God, superhero angels, or divinely-directed Spirits of Vengeance in my superhero comics is that atheistic and rationally thinking characters are by default rendered as at best misguided, and at worst as delusional fools in deep denial, desperately rationalizing away their interactions with The Demon, The Spectre or the big guy himself.

Comic books typically excel at making the abstract concrete; that's highly problematic when you're dealing with issues of faith. The natural tendency of the cartoonist to draw the thing, to create visual representations of ideas, directly cuts against a force or concept which gains all its power from its invisibility and unprovability. To be blunt, comics featuring these concepts as concrete characters are almost always every bit as stupid as religious fundamentalism itself. I resent that in modern comics the atheism of Ted Knight or Mr. Terrific isn't a matter of debate-they're simply wrong. It's particularly galling to see this point made repeatedly in the DC universe, a direct descendant of Julie Schwartz's "clockwork universe" which had the good sense to leave God off the table (aside from "The Voice" in the Spectre strip.)

At least we seem to be past the 1990s tendency for superheroes to solve problems through non-denominational Super-Prayer; by clasping hands and believing together in the power of good to vanquish bad vibes (see: Mark Waid). Whatever else can be said about Civil War, at least it didn't go that route.

The Current State Of The Bush Administration

2007-03-21T13:33:00.000-05:00

Which is ironic, considering the pretext on which they first made their authoritarian power grab.

Logic, which was never a strong suit with these guys, has now been completely abandoned. I have been fooled before, often by myself, but it's really, finally looking like jig-is-up time for Chimpy. All that remains is a last, desperate dance to play out the clock and avoid prison.

"G.O.P." Stands For Perverted Nazi Bastards

2007-03-15T11:45:00.000-05:00

Desperately flailing WH Press Secretary Tony Snow on his boss at this morning's press gaggle:

What he does is, as the Commander-in-Chief, he also delegates responsibility to Cabinet officers.

It bears repeating: the President is the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, not of the nation, its citizens or Cabinet officers.

Between their fetishes for "C-I-C" and "pleasure of the President", what a bunch of leather slaves these Republicans are. Why not just call Bush "Master", or better yet "God"? One gets the impression they simply love mouthing the words "commander" and "pleasure" in relation to Bush.

Mistakes Were Made

2007-03-14T13:31:00.000-05:00

A number of incomplete statements were made by this department concerning the futility of any modern cartoonist attempting to tell a successful Captain Marvel story. Comments were submitted to the effect that this--like Kirby's New Gods, Cole's Plastic Man and Eisner's Spirit, was a property animated by specific talents, and which spoke to a specific cultural and historic moment long gone. Testimony was delivered that DC had never managed to successfully recapture the spirit of the C.C. Beck salad days. Denny O'Neil failed. Roy Thomas failed. Jerry Ordway failed. Geoff Johns failed. The short, charming run on the character by E. Nelson Bridwell and Don Newton was considered to be the exception that proved the rule.

Jeff Smith has apparently rendered these statements inoperative with the first two issues of Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil. Against all odds, this series manages to evoke the whimsy of the classic rendition without being a slave to it. It seems to genuinely speak to contemporary kids rather than speaking to the inner children that 45-year-old men not-so-secretly harbor in their doughy/sunken bosoms. It has a light touch, a dash of Roald Dahl-style menace and perfectly calibrated ambitions. Most importantly, it was a hit with the department's 8- and 4-year-old sons, who thrilled at the alligator men, laughed at Billy's little sister, and loved fitting the back covers together into a bigger picture.

I am accountable. Of course, many statements are made by this department every day, and in any event, the underlying assertion is still valid. I remind you that I have overcome many personal obstacles of a highly personal nature to become the CEO of this department.

I have no intention of resigning.

Bronze John Weekend

2007-03-09T09:54:00.000-05:00

So here comes 300, and with it Frank Miller's continued assertion that violence is sex. (Only better.)

Why Frank bothers me, in Lance Mannion's words:

Miller, who created the graphic...ahem...novels Sin City and 300, is credited with saving Batman for DC, but he did it by turning a goofy kids’ comic book about the world’s greatest detective into a perpetual revenge fantasy starring the world’s most violent arrested adolescent. Batman since the Dark Knight returned has been a medium for late teenage and early twentysomething men whose own adolescences were arrested at the point they first took an honest look in the mirror and saw that they would never be the type who quarterbacks teams to Super Bowl victories and date cheerleaders, to see their self-pitying misanthropy acted out in not quite cathartic violence. “Take that world, for not appreciating me!”

Then again, my favorite version of Batman wore an Indian headdress and fought alien dinosaurs on the moon in 3,700 AD, so what do I know? (Concession: Miller's Batman Year One is very entertaining. Were it the only example of that approach to Batman, it--and Miller's approach to the character, would be unimpeachable. That, however, is Earth 53.)

Also, Mannion's point about how laughable it is to compare George Effing Bush to either Xeres or Leonidas, who were both, ahem, warrior kings.

The Definition Of Irony

2007-03-07T15:47:00.000-05:00

Mary Matalin describing anyone that she doesn't see in a mirror as a "demonstrable partisan liar".

True Grit

2007-03-07T12:55:00.000-05:00

Eric Shanower sure gives a good interview. Here's a highlight, responding to the interviewer's description of his epic swords and sandals comic book Age of Bronze as "gritty and realistic":

I have trouble with the phrase “gritty and realistic.” Why do people say that? Why don’t they say “beautiful and realistic” or “hilarious and realistic”? Certainly beauty and hilarity are real. Grit isn’t the only realistic thing in life. “Gritty” makes me imagine crunching sand in my teeth, an impression I don’t think I’ve ever gotten from comics.

Actually, I believe I had that exact sensation while reading Identity Crisis. If I remember correctly, it also gave me bloody stools and night terrors.

Elsewhere in the interview, I dig Shanower's defense of not including the Greek gods or the supernatural in his version of the Trojan War by saying "I don't believe in them and Age of Bronze is my statement about what life is like; not what life should be or what it could be, but what it’s like."

A Sad Day

2007-03-06T15:47:00.000-05:00

Over at the Washington Post web site, legal analyst Jeralyn Merritt began her live chat by proclaiming this a "sad day for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby".

Yeah, that's definitely the lede. Not a good day for the justice system or the American people, but a sad day for a reprehensible convicted perjurer who, like his bosses, confused public service with the mob. It's like saying Nov. 22 1963 was a sad day for Lee Harvey Oswald. Libby intentionally derailed the legitimate case against the administration that the country deserved. His now proven criminal actions effectively killed our right to know.

Libby is like anybody who drives a Hummer; an asshole by default. There are no extenuating circumstances, no reasonable explanations, no room for sympathy. If you drive a Hummer or serve as Chief of Staff for Dick Cheney, you're a pigfucker, case closed. What's more, you know you're a pigfucker. You get off on being a pigfucker, and snicker about it with your pigfucker buddies as you drive around in your Hummers looking for pigs to fuck. "Hey, look at those fucking hippies way down there in their hybrid car giving us the finger! Roll down the window and dump our Arby's wrappers on them! John Edwards is a faggot!"

Libby's not noble, he's not the pitiable fall guy, not as Merritt has described him elsewhere merely "a messenger and employee" who unfortunately got caught in a political crossfire. He's a terrible American up to his neck in the crimes of his bosses. An utter piece of shit who positively decided to be where he is now.

Commentators have remarked on Libby's lack of reaction to the guilty verdicts. Well, of course. The outcome of the trial is basically irrelevant to him. If anything, the conviction just means the plan worked. This is a man who obstructed justice and committed perjury to shield Dick Cheney et al against charges of outing a deep cover CIA agent working on WMD in a despicable act of revenge meant to protect his insane war. Just because Darth Cheney is worse doesn't somehow redeem his water carrier. Feel sorry for his three kids? Not as sorry as they should feel for having a dad who decided to subvert justice out of loyalty to men who deserve none. Libby deserves more time in the joint than he'll ever see.

A sad day? It was a sad day when he decided to lie. Today is a goddamn party.

Hearsay, But Depressing Nevertheless

2007-02-28T14:28:00.000-05:00

A co-worker's husband sells heavy equipment of some kind. At a recent sales meeting, one of his clients said the following:

"I heard that Obama guy changed his name to sound more like a terrorist."

To which someone in the room replied,

"Yeah, I heard that too."

A Very Good Question

2007-02-28T13:26:00.000-05:00

Dave, after I explained Stan and Jack's Mangog (a living prison for a billion billion tyrants, hell bent on drawing the OdinSword and cleaving the Realm Eternal in twain) to him:

"Did they know they were writing for recreational drug users?"

(image by Terry Beatty)

Thin Skinned Miscellany

2007-02-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

1) In light of recent throw-a-cape-on-James-Brown comics blog dramatics, I'd like to point out that it is entirely possible to be both a wonderfully funny, graceful, entertaining writer capable of penetrating insight on a regular basis and a thin-skinned, occasionally downright cruel writer who likes baiting people but who can't stand being called on it. Some people can't help starting or at least fomenting the very arguments they claim they don't want to have. And everything else aside, when John Byrne has your back, it's time to take a long, hard look in the mirror. (full disclosure: I've been banned for, I assume, getting into a disagreement there.)

2) One of comics blogging's rightfully certified invaluable resources, Dirk Deppey, went off the rails yesterday in his criticism of Garry Trudeau's recent strips about right-wing use of "Democrat Party" as an epithet. Deppey:

Speaking of dumb-ass comic-strip controversies: According to Editor & Publisher, two comic strips (Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury and Darrin Bell’s Candorville) are riffing against the latest apparent attack on the Democrats by the Republicans — referring to them as the “Democrat Party”:

The use of “Democrat” Party is considered a slur, because it makes the Democratic Party seem, well, less democratic. And “Democrat” puts contemptuous emphasis on the letters “rat.”

Is this serious? Because I’m getting a strong “Mommy, he’s looking at me funny!” vibe from all this. Hint: If you’re going to comment on politics, it’s generally a good idea to convince people that you’re coming at the subject from a clever, superior point of view. Failing that, try to avoid giving the impression that you’re a thin-skinned jackass. Isn’t Garry Trudeau supposed to be smarter than this? (Above: Apparently not. Sequence from last Sunday’s Doonesbury strip, ©2007 G.B. Trudeau, age eight.)

As Dirk ought to know or could easily take the time find out if he's about to call Trudeau stupid and immature, the "Democrat Party” swipe so loved by W. these days has been used pejoratively by the right for decades--Hendrik Hertzberg traced it from the Harding Administration, up through Joe McCarthy and Newt Gingrich in a New Yorker piece last year:

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060807ta_talk_hertzberg

As Hertzberg says, ““Democrat Party” is a slur, or intended to be—a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but “Democrat Party” is jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams “rat.” At a slightly higher level of sophistication, it’s an attempt to deny the enemy the positive connotations of its chosen appellation.”

Markus says it best in the Journalista comments: "the use of the tactic makes it very clear that your opponent’s antagonism is not rooted in a substantial philosophical (political) disagreement but instead simple disrespect for you as a person. The other side is indicating that you’re not worth talking to, which - back in the political field - pretty much equates to abandoning democratic principles in favour of simple mudslinging."

How is something like this not appropriate for a Doonesbury strip? It's in Garry's wheelhouse, for Christ's sake. Whether or not his execution was funny is debatable, but the pettiness and hypocrisy of the right aren't exactly new topics for the guy.

Comics and TV Authorship

2007-02-27T08:23:00.000-05:00

During my month at Middlebury College teaching Intro to the Graphic Novel I had the pleasure of meeting Assistant Professor Jason Mittell from the American Studies and Film & Media Culture Departments. Jason is a media scholar specializing in TV, genre theory, animation and new media among other things; if our classes hadn't met at the same time this winter, I definitely would have been in his Cartoon Culture class discussing Simpsons episodes and Bugs Bunny shorts.

Jason runs the self-explanatory blog JustTV. Not long ago, using my favorite show Gilmore Girls as an example, he posted thoughts on the problem of authorship in TV--who can rightfully be called the "creator" of these programs, often put together by hundreds of people with help/interference from network suits and advertisers? I sent him a note about how this relates to the mainstream comics field, which he was kind enough to run as a post. Coincidentally, Steven Grant tackled the same topic with more insight about a week later in his column for CBR.

More recently, Jason has been involved in the discussion at Middlebury over the use of Wikipedia in the classroom (Midd's History Dept. recently banned the site as a research source), garnering a mention in the New York Times. If you have any interest in how TV is shaped by and shapes our culture, check out the blog.

I Have DNA Proof That James Cameron Is A Dimwat

2007-02-26T15:44:00.000-05:00

All of the articles I've seen about filmmaker James Cameron's documentary (just in time for Easter!) about the supposed 20-year-old discovery of Jesus' remains (along with, for good measure, those of his entire family--including a son!) allege that this will provide ammunition for skeptics of Christianity. Tim McGirk of Time says it will "stir up a titanic debate between believers and skeptics." The BBC quotes Prof. Stephen Pfann as saying "sceptics, in general, would like to see something that pokes holes into the story that so many people hold dear."

I am only one small voice, but I can safely say that for this avowed atheist, all this "discovery" shows is that Cameron is an egotistical doofus. Which should come as no shock to anyone who has followed his Hollywood career. I suppose that this could provide ammunitions for cranks, but the entire premise is so stupid--what exactly is the "DNA testing" supposed to "prove"?

I understand that many people are compelled to prove things like this one way or the other. Anne, the boys and I are currently watching Michael Wood's highly entertaining 1985 BBC documentary In Search of the Trojan War in which Wood relates the attempts to discover the historical basis, if any, for Homer's Iliad. Wood himself is clearly driven by the belief that the poem must contain literal, historical truth, and that one of the ancient cities uncovered in the late 1800s at the Dardanelles is likely Homer's Troy. But as one scholar he interviews says, (and I paraphrase) who cares? The truth of Homer's poem is not something that can be archeologically proven. All readers collaborate with the poet to create their own Troy in their imaginations, rendering any historic truth irrelevant to the art. Conversely, the dig site on the plain at Hisarlik is intrinsically interesting and historically revealing without the need to specifically tie it to the events of the poem. Wood calls these comments "ambiguous", as they clearly don't fit his thesis, support the romantic conception of archaeologists or make for compelling TV.

Wood seems to want to show that the events of the Iliad really happened. The same impulse drives those who hunt for Noah's ark, the people who sell the "Jesus Never Existed' pamphlet in the back of The Nation and now Cameron. But aside from the obvious desire to make money off of the documentary, why? Can Cameron harbor any illusions that this tomb could actually "prove" anything? We're talking about 2,000 years of faith--faith that for many people, hasn't been shaken by the the most dramatic discoveries of science over that time, understandings of biology and the physical universe that directly contradict biblical assertions. We see now that some deeply fucked up right-wing Christians (is there any other kind?) think that the idea of a heliocentric solar system itself is a Jewish conspiracy going back to Copernicus himself. James Cameron and his ossuaries which may or may not be labeled with the common names that correspond to Jesus' family aren't going to put a dent in that. It's merely embarrassing.

Fuck yeah

2007-02-14T18:48:00.000-05:00

That is all.

Sky Quits Over Chicken Incident

2007-02-09T16:46:00.000-05:00

EARTH (AP) -- The heavens themselves resigned Friday following an episode that caused a security scare in a small chicken.

The announcement about the firmament resigning was made in an internal memo sent to the oceans, polar caps and land masses.

In a statement to the rest of the biosphere, the sky said it regrets the stir that the incident caused. It has also agreed to pay the sum of 2 million acorns to the chicken.

''It's my hope that my decision allows us to put this chapter behind us and get back to our mission of delivering unrivaled oxygen, carbon dioxide, clear views of the sun and stars, clouds that look a little like horses and castles, and gentle breezes for organisms of all ages,'' the sky said.

Cartoon Network Chief Quits Over Marketing Stunt

These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

2007-02-07T22:23:00.000-05:00

Taken at WRMC FM, Middlebury College, 1/31/07; that's my writing on the station sticker, circa 1992.

The Surefire Way To Score A Room For Comic-Con

2007-02-07T11:13:00.000-05:00

Step One: Arrange for your best friend from college to live in San Diego, preferably two blocks from the beach.

Step Two: Claim your spot on his floor.

Step Three: Hang out with his family and friends. Chip in for food. Compliment him on his fine dog. Attend show with him. Feel very grateful that you are not one of the people bashing your head into your computer screen in February.

What's Not To Love?

2007-02-06T21:24:00.000-05:00

Before you can love anyone else, you must learn to love yourself.

I love everyone.

Virtually Straight

2007-02-06T12:31:00.000-05:00

Oh my goodness. From the Times:

Haggard Pronounced 'Completely Heterosexual'

DENVER (AP) -- One of four ministers who oversaw three weeks of intensive counseling for the Rev. Ted Haggard said the disgraced minister emerged convinced that he is ''completely heterosexual.''
....

''He is completely heterosexual,'' Ralph said. ''That is something he discovered. It was the acting-out situations where things took place. It wasn't a constant thing.''

Really, Ted was intensely heterosexual at least 99% of the time. All those hours driving to and from church, grilling steaks, watching college football and preaching without engaging in sex acts with a male prostitute ought to count for something, oughtn't they? He was only gay for a few minutes at at time, you know, as a kind of experiment. That's how sexuality works. So you see, any "acting-out" that went on is statistically insignificant.

Then again, an inability to act out is what got Ted into trouble in the first place.

I adore the end of the article where it becomes apparent that the most important thing for Colorado Springs, the ministers, et al is to make sure that Ted and his family move away. Far, far away. And that Ted find "secular work" in order to "heal the wound." I would say that you have to love these people, except that really, you ought to throw rocks at them.

So Classy

2007-01-31T21:51:00.000-05:00

Here they are: the survivors of AMST 1001 Introduction to the Graphic Novel, the course I spent the past month teaching at Middlebury College. Left to right: Brian, Todd, Dan, Kristen, Sakura, Cameron, Andrew, David, John, Daniel (in front, as Hulk), Danny, Nick, Stefan, Ben, Eliot, Jason, Allyson, Tucker, Jamie, Jess (Danielle missing--and missed, at theater conference in MA)

Now that's it's all said and done (except for about 50 papers I have to grade) check out the course web site.

Now back to your irregularly scheduled ranting.

This Blog Is Like School On Saturday: No Class

2007-01-20T21:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in at least forever, but I have a reason: this month I've been teaching a Winter Term class at Middlebury College called Introduction to the Graphic Novel. Me, 22 great students, a giant stack of comics...and last Thursday a fantastic visit from fellow Vermonter and brilliant comics artist Steve Bissette. First breakfast at Steve's Park Diner in downtown Middlebury, then off to the school. Over the course of two hours, Steve walked the students through the evolution of the modern graphic novel form (starting with It Rhymes With Lust), showed some *very* rare video footage of Alan Moore, Frank Miller and others, and described the process of constructing a story--all with numerous visual examples. He then was kind enough to stay for lunch and field questions from nearly half the class, for more than 90 minutes. It was a great day in what's shaping up to be one of the most memorable months of my life.

I've returned to the Middlebury campus a number of times since graduating in 1993--reunions, day trips to visit old friends from the faculty. But this is the first time since I graduated that I've been on campus with something to do, a bag full of books and a checklist of tasks to accomplish. It's at once deeply odd and a huge thrill. Here I am with a wife and two kids, a decade and a half removed from school, but this month, here I am as well, trudging across the snow of Battell Field at 10PM after a screening. I love watching all of the students come to grips with Maus, Our Cancer Year, "Master Race", and Little Lulu. There's a surreal quality to it all, which really hit me as I graded quizzes in which I had asked the class to identify a number of quotes from the reading, including the classic 'Die--like crawling ants!" from the Superman story in Action Comics #2.

The class wraps up at the end of the month. I hope to get back to this place more often after that.

Iraq? How Did That Happen?

2006-12-13T16:18:00.000-05:00

Employing the classic "mistakes were made" passive voice, except of course, not one single mistake has ever been made:

Standing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Bush said he and the nation's top military commanders had "a very candid and fruitful discussion about how to secure this country and about how to win a war that we now find ourselves in." (emphasis all mine)

A lot easier to say than "the war I insisted upon," or "the war I cynically lied us into," I suppose. This basic evasion of responsibility for the defining action of his entire life is worse than clueless. Far beyond denial. The man is an absolute monster, a moral coward of the highest order and lowest stripe. He's not gonna let his old man or his old man's friends bail him out or let his whole stupid back-stabbing country push him around, no sir. He'll announce his decis-i-katin' when he's durn good n' ready and not a second befur. So hey America, fuck you. What part of "commander-in-chief" don't you understand?

This, finally, is what you get when you elect Wilbur Van Snobbe from Little Lulu as your president. Ha; I say "finally" like Bush won't limbo exponentially lower over the next two years. And up until Inauguration Day 2009, columnists will undoubtedly continue asking, with sincere optimism, if Bush might have "learned his lesson", if he might, at last, be willing to reach out.

The answer is no, never. If he's fucked, you are too. That's how W. rolls.

Feel The Foom

2006-12-09T23:19:00.000-05:00

PS, I Love You

2006-12-08T09:58:00.000-05:00

Gilmore Girls: Haters, You're Wrong.

2006-12-07T10:31:00.000-05:00

Despite what you may have heard, Gilmore Girls is still a very smart television show. The new producers and writers of the CW program have been met with enormous skepticism as they try to create a seventh (likely final) season for the series. As this season has progressed, many critics and fans have complained about a dulling of the dialogue, questioned themes and character choices or jumped off entirely. While the show is somewhat slower-paced this year, and the repartee is less obscure-pop-culture-sharp, I think Gilmore Girls is still one of the brightest spots on the dial--and the new creative team clearly knows the characters. The latest, very good episode, "Merry Fisticuffs", is a great example.

The leads, Lorelai and her daughter Rory, have always gotten themselves into trouble by avoiding unpleasant situations; they''d much rather white lie, outright lie or sin by omission than deal with painful or awkward truths. Last season, this shared character flaw kept Rory from talking to her mother or facing up to herself for half a year, and it eventually led to Lorelai's break-up with her fiance Luke, who has--or rather used to have--his own avoidance problems. At that point, fans (and even the actress, Lauren Graham) complained that Lorelai was acting out of character--but that has been her character since the pilot episode. Avoiding her parents. Avoiding commitment. Avoiding bad news. Rory was the exception to the rule. Currently, the avoidance trait has alienated Rory from her new friends and boyfriend, while it has caused Lorelai to elope with Rory's dad Christopher, which is seeming like a dumber idea with each new episode. Of course she's in denial about it.

This week finds Lorelai resisting Christopher's attempts--desperate and immature though they may be--to genuinely become part of her life. His efforts to ingratiate himself into her Stars Hollow community failed last week, so this week he wants to buy them a new house out of town. He sees Lorelai holding Luke's new niece, so he immediately wants to impregnate her. It's dawning on him that ring or no ring, he can't really ever "have" her for sure--which terrifies him. His fatal flaw is that he wants her but he can't accept her--catch the bit where he keeps taking out the groceries she puts in the cart. If anything is going to break up this marriage, it's Chris denying her food. From the junk food binges to Friday Night Dinners at Richard and Emily's, food has always symbolized the nuturing Lorelai never got from her mother. It is no coincidence that Luke runs a diner, feeding people for a living.

As Lorelai's mother Emily says to her daughter at the end of the episode, in the best scene Kelly Bishop has gotten all season, Christopher is weak and a fool, but likable. Emily believes that he, like all men, needs to be carefully managed, and that Lorelai needs to drop her self-denial and independence in order to protect her own interests. It's mercenary, cynical, heartfelt, at least partially true and totally in character. Of course, Lorelai always ends up following the opposite of her mother's advice, so we can see where this is all going.

The old show under Amy Sherman-Palladino was consistently good at creating complicated situations where you could empathize with everyone involved, and every conflict was motivated by character. (Up until Luke's secret daughter arrived, anyway.) Tuesday's show captured that dynamic better than they have all season. I appreciate that the writers made Christopher right to be upset, even if he's really reacting to his own impotence, overcompensating in all the wrong (but understandable) ways. Lorelai should be more willing to compromise, just as, paradoxically, Chris should be more willing to let her be herself. By the way: has there been an episode yet this year when Chris didn't have to flaunt his insecurity by reminding people that's he's rich? Again, he's still likable, even when he's being pathetic. Too bad for him that he knows it.

Meanwhile, Rory has allowed herself to become entangled in a pathetic lie told by her former friend Marty, who took a walk a few years ago after Rory rejected his advances for those of Logan. Now Marty is dating Rory's new friend and pretends that he and Rory have never met. Rory, not eager to reveal Marty's weird behavior to her friend, says nothing, and lets the pretense drag on far too long, even after Marty makes it clear he still wants her. (Yes, goddamn it, it's a soap opera and I. Don't. Care.) Logan, rich enough never to have to worry what anyone thinks, refuses to play along and explains the charade over dinner--causing Rory's friend, quite understandably, to flip out. Rory is mad at Logan for embarrassing her, not allowing her to control the situation. Logan seems contemptuous of Marty and Rory's weakness--and is probably more than a little vindictively jealous. (After two and a half years I still don't know if I like Logan, which is probably good. All the best characters on the show are at least that ambivalent.) The Rory and Lorelai plots have mirrored each other all season, and that doubling has only been heightened over the last two or three episodes: Logan/Chris, Rory/Lorelai, Marty/Luke. It was amusing how Rory was unable to use her Gilmore superpower of talking someone into submission in order to make herself feel better, as she went to her friend's apartment to explain, only to have the door shut in her face. Kid, you should know by now that stuff only works in Stars Hollow.

The climax of the episode is the fistfight between Christopher and Luke--Chris frustrated by Lorelai's resistance, Luke frustrated by the seeming futility of his efforts to gain partial custody of his daughter and still in shock over his break-up with Lorelai. I find it amazingly perverse for the show to have Luke and Chris beat on each other as proxies for the woman they can't lay a finger on. Clever, and about as dark an idea as the show has ever flirted with. Not to mention one more example of massive avoidance.

Beyond occasionally weaker patter, if anything makes the show seem more conventional this season, it's that the new writers seem to have a harder time juggling the supporting cast; the absence of people like Lane, Sookie, Michel, Jackson, Emily, etc. for weeks at a time is more noticeable than it used to be. The original creators were better at that, I think. Perhaps it's because they've slowed the dialogue down--there's less time to get that extra subplot in there each week. It's also because they've split Lorelai, Rory and Luke onto more or less separate tracks--shuffling amongst them, plus finding room for Taylor or Paris, would be hard for any writer. The direction of the storyline appears to be bringing Luke back into the Gilmore orbit, though, so perhaps this will improve. Given the writers' clear control over the overall plot and character arcs, I'm in it for the duration.

Escalator to Nowhere

2006-12-05T13:59:00.000-05:00

NASA Plans Lunar Outpost
Permanent Base at Moon's South Pole Envisioned by 2024

NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 -- the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.

I'm sorry, but NASA is thinking too small. I believe we must retrofit WW2 battleships with Wave Motion Guns in order to retrieve the Cosmo-DNA from planet Iscandar and repel the Gamilon invaders. My plan is certain to stimulate technological innovation and create jobs. And it will help us save our environment--its express purpose is to rescue Earth from the Gamilon radiation that has rendered our surface uninhabitable, and which will kill the planet within 365 Earth days.

Hurry, Star Force!

I remember back about 1,000 years ago in the Clinton administration, when scientists explained that human space exploration was essentially pointless, too costly in human risk for no scientific reward; that modern robots were far better suited for conducting any research needed. But who listens to scientists? Pantywaists.

My overriding question about the moon base, Mars landing or any other human mission is why? What about a moon base raises it above the level of a multi-billion-dollar stunt? What research could be conducted there that can't occur much closer to home on the ISS? The original moon landings were motivated by the rivalries of the Cold War. I don't see the Islamofascist evildoers racing to claim the moon today.

It's not enough for a generation too young to remember the moon landings to want its own "Fuck Yeah!" moment. It's not enough to want to manufacture a "national purpose" or give Bush an up-with-space-people line for his State of the Union. The Times article fails to explain what vital interest or pressing need requires us to build this outpost. Are there vast diamond deposits up there? Otherwise it seems like a colossal waste of time and talent. If "private interests" want at those "valuable minerals", why should our tax dollars fund their bus ride?

Boosters of manned space exploration and development go on and on and on (and on) about the totally awesome details of building Moon Base Alpha without ever actually, as far as I can tell, getting around to justifying the damn thing. All the enthusiasm in the world--or rather, beyond it--for MAN! IN! SPACE! doesn't get around the apparent uselessness of the whole enterprise (pun intended!). I can think of a few more pressing national interests that could create jobs and save the earth, such as a coordinated effort to confront the effects of global warming. But that's not exactly the stuff of which 8-year-olds' (of all ages) fantasies are made.

"And that was the only folly the people of Springfield ever embarked upon. Except for the popsicle stick skyscraper. And the 50-foot magnifying glass. And that escalator to nowhere."

Headless Hero In Topless Bar

2006-11-29T12:19:00.000-05:00

Dave Cockrum illustrated the first issue of X-Men I ever got, #107 (Oct. 1977) featuring the team versus an ersatz Legion of Super-Heroes in outer space.

Cosmic apocalypse, melodrama, mustachioed space pirates, a million characters running around punching each other--it was a perfect first issue for a six-year-old to stumble across, due in no small part to Cockrum, who really sold the insanity with a solid, downright trustworthy style.

By all accounts, he was a wonderful human being: a significant superhero artist, Vietnam vet, generous, kind, brave in the face of illness.

Too bad about the obit from AP, which--intentionally or not--serves to turn the guy's life and death into one of those ephemeral freakshow stories the media loves; a life reduced to a 5-second joke, headline as punchline:

X-Men illustrator dies in Superman pajamas

COLUMBIA, South Carolina (AP) -- Wearing Superman pajamas and covered with his Batman blanket, comic book illustrator Dave Cockrum died Sunday.

The 63-year-old overhauled the X-Men comic and helped popularize the relatively obscure Marvel Comics in the 1970s. He helped turn the title into a publishing sensation and major film franchise.

Cockrum died in his favorite chair at his home in Belton, South Carolina, after a long battle with diabetes and related complications, his wife Paty Cockrum said Tuesday.

At Cockrum's request, there will be no public services and his body will be cremated, according to Cox Funeral Home. His ashes will be spread on his property. A family friend said he will be cremated in a Green Lantern shirt.

Who doesn't want to go surrounded by loved ones and the things he cared about? But this write-up makes it seem more than a little embarrassing. Admittedly, it's hard to read "63-year-old" and "covered with his Batman blanket" without wincing a bit. Yes, it's factual, but did that have to be the lede? For the vast majority of people reading this item at CNN or wherever, the obit will trigger a smirk. CNN exacerbates the geek angle, pulling the following from the wire copy as "Story Highlights":

• NEW: X-Men illustrator dies at 65 in his Superman pajamas
• NEW: The comic will be cremated wearing a Green Lantern shirt, a friend says
• Cockrum received no movie royalties from the "X-Men" films, a friend says

I'd have put his co-creation of the most popular comic book in the past 30 years ahead of what was printed on his pajamas, but that's just me. They might as well have run with "Biff! Zap! Pow! Holy Death From Diabetes Complications!"

I Think I Own This Album

2006-11-27T20:16:00.000-05:00

The rock, courtesy Arnold Drake, Gerry Talaoc and Phantom Stranger #27

Update: I see Sleestak got there first.Yahooooga.

1 Picture, Worth 1,000 Bendis/Millar Comics

2006-11-27T20:11:00.000-05:00

Back From Oblivion

2006-11-20T21:29:00.000-05:00

If Mike Allred's Madman can return from the beyond, then so can I. The April '07 launch of a Madman Atomic Comics monthly is a very good development; there was a time when the Dark Horse Madman Comics was pretty much the only comic book I truly looked forward to, a bright light in the darkness of the '90s. I wonder what this means for the proposed Robert Rodriguez movie and mini-series that Allred spoke of frequently over the past few years. (I think Rodriguez' time would have been far better spent on a Madman film than another Sin City movie--does the world really need two of those? Or even one, for that matter?) Whatever the case, it's great to have Frank Einstein, Joe and the rest of the gang back. Admittedly, Allred seemed to lose the thread a bit in the last few issues, using them to tie up less interesting strips like his G-Men from Hell. The subsequent Atomics series, while fun, was a bit too convoluted for its own good. But Allred has clearly learned a lot as an artist in the interim, and I can't wait to see the Allred of X-Statix, etc. on his old characters. Should be ginchy.

In less cheerful comics-related news, Occasional Superheroine has wiped her blog and replaced it with a brutally intimate memoir of the end of her employment at DC. It's not the first account of the cynicism and sexism of the mainstream comics industry--but it's one of the most vivid and frank. If you're looking for something to dislike more than the comic Identity Crisis, try the culture at the company that made it: "The rape pages are in!" Johanna Draper Carlson, in response, gave this description of the superhero publishing world yesterday:

You put a bunch of immature men, many of whom were very sick as children or had absent fathers or both, and all of whom escaped into over-muscled power fantasies as a result, in charge of a publishing subgroup with no prestige and little money. Several of them have never worked anywhere else, or if they have, it was at one of the few similar companies in the same industry that behave the same way. They’re still geeks, mentally, with low self-esteem and no success with women, few of whom they actually know in person, but they’re power brokers within their little world, and there are thousands like them who desperately want to be them… and you wonder why it all ends up so twisted?

Like a terrarium, it's a perfect closed system, with the men on either side of the equation--publishers and purchasers--reinforcing one another, bending the superhero comics sharply back toward their ancestors--not in the newspaper comics but in the violent, soft-porn dime novels. Strange to think that Jack Leibowitz originally saw comic books as a legit safety net if his partner Harry Donenfeld's "Spicy" girlie mags got squeezed out. But everything comes around, I suppose. 70 years later, DC's Dan Didio made the same timeless, obvious decision that Donenfeld made when faced with a lineup of science-fiction rags, feminist tracts and sadistic titty books--push the sadistic titty books. Because they sell...the answer to any argument, the real position behind any denial or sexist intent or rationalization of its presence.

To be honest, the DC comics I read now are markedly less vile than the books of just a couple of years ago. But they're built on the backs of books like Identity Crisis, and they're part of the same long-term marketing strategy by the same crew, another side of the pendulum swing on one big, finely-tuned clock.

A: "That's What Positive People Do."

2006-10-26T07:36:00.000-05:00

Q: Why does George W. Bush have a pathological aversion to contingency planning?

People fret that Bush's decisions are governed by End Times delusions, when the truth is that his guiding principles all come from self-help and management books. He's trying to run the country according to Norman Vincent Peale. You can hold the Congress if you think you can. Eliminate all the negative thoughts that prevent you from achieving happiness and success in Iraq. Visualize a way to destroy Social Security and then attain it.

Does the following sound like any big-eared, beady-eyed homegrown would-be dictator you know?

When you have a problem, one that is especially difficult and baffling, perhaps terribly discouraging, there is one basic principle to apply and keep on applying. it is simply this--never quit. To give up is to invite complete defeat.
--Peale, You Can If You Think You Can, page 1

Of course, Peale goes on to suggest approaching a problem in a different way if your current methodology isn't working, but hey, that's paragraph 2, and this is George W. Bush we're talking about.

By the way, during his press conference yesterday, Bush said some variation of "what the American people need to understand" 37,002 times. I counted. Because it would never occur to a positive person that others reject his position because it, you know, sucks. Maybe if he explains it to us one more time, slowly, we'll break "the worry habit", find faith in ourselves and good things will start happening for us.

Found Dead, With A Hooker Or Both

2006-10-25T08:32:00.000-05:00

These are the only circumstances under which Rush Limbaugh deserves to be on the front page of a major newspaper. Yet there he is at the Washington Post, drawing on all of his medical training to denounce Michael J. Fox's ad for Senate candidate Claire McCaskill as acting. And before this more "balanced" version of the story, the Post briefly ran, on its home page, an entirely uncritical version by staffers Daniela Deane and Matthew Mosk. I expect Limbaugh to make sweeping, sneering proclamations about things he doesn't care to understand--it's pretty much his job description--but why would the Post give him such an assist, even if only for a few hours?

Update--ABC News just ran the headline "Hannity: Michael J. Fox Can Be Criticized For Stem Cell Ad", one day after the network's political director Mark Halperin told Bill O'Reilly: "If I were a conservative, I understand why I would feel suspicious that I was not going to get a fair break at the end of an election. We’ve got to make sure we do better, so conservatives don’t have to be concerned about that." This is just more evidence that with 13 days to go, we're all snugly inside the electoral event horizon, where reality itself is bent by the propaganda singularity and no logic, decency or rationality can escape.

Lightning (Lad) Strikes

2006-10-23T21:19:00.000-05:00

I'm kind of an on-again, off-again (right now I'm on) comics reader over a really long period from about 5 to 35. It's hardly novel to point out that I'm typical - there were a lot of 5 year olds reading comics when I was 5, and now all the readers seem to be 35 and up. Once in a while I wonder where the new readers will come from, and what will draw them to comics. I'll admit that I hope my daughter likes comics, because it would be fun to share them with her, but I know that it's pretty statistically unlikely that she'll be interested.

This weekend I went to a really great store in San Diego because a good friend who is a relatively new comics reader was looking to put a dent in her want list of back issues. We had perused the store's booth at comicon and she knew they specialized in old comics. Maybe this happens all over the country all the time - a woman, seemingly normal, suddenly decides that she's interested in collecting obscure comic books from the 1960's - but I think it's pretty unusual. The funny part is that her interest is almost entirely due to something completely coincidental: her cat has the same name as Supergirl's. Seriously.

Due to this extremely minor fact, my friend was willing to go to comicon with me and rope her husband in too (Cole didn't make it out to SD this year, and I thought it would be depressing to go alone so I was grateful and willing to risk boring them), buy a copy of Legion of Super Heroes Archives Vol. 1, and search around on the web for a list of appearances of the Legion of Super Pets. I keep waiting for her to say, "wait a minute, why am I buying these comics - they're retarded!"

Instead, her interest grows. After we went to the comics store I loaned her and her husband a pile of comics that I thought they might like along with Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". By the next day they had read through the whole pile and she was on to the McCloud. So far, however, I haven't been able to come up with anything she likes as much as the Legion of Super Heroes stories from the 60's. I tried Madman, because I thought the tone and the clean layouts would be somewhat similar, but I got a somewhat tepid response. The only thing that really got a good response was a Silver Age Flash story with Gorilla Grodd. Maybe it was his special radiation that made her love him.

As we drove home from the store I started thinking about how frustrating it must be for whoever is out there trying to market comics to new readers. My friend's story is completely useless as a roadmap for how to get new interest in the medium. Goofy coincidences are not a strategy.

I'm left with a couple of questions:
What would you suggest for modern comics for a person who loves 60's LSH stories?
Have you ever seen anyone else become interested in comics after about 10 years old?

I'd be curious what you have to say.

Just To Be Clear

2006-10-18T19:40:00.000-05:00

Scipio's Absorbascon is one of my favorite comic blogs. He seems to love all the same old DC comics that I do. His knowledge and understanding of the Golden Age are impressive. Many of his posts are among the smartest, most entertaining examples of comic book writing on the web.

This one, not so much.

The Measure Of A Man

2006-10-03T16:04:00.000-05:00

Speaker Denny Hastert today on Rush Limbaugh, via Think Progress:

SPEAKER HASTERT: ...this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we’ve tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism — and we’ve worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it — and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.

Why do the teenage victims of online sexual predators in Congress hate America? If they truly loved our country, they'd lie back and think of 9/11.

Which reminds me, don't forget to measure.

Leave It To Lulu

2006-09-27T08:55:00.000-05:00

Can I give you some comics-buying advice?

Two years ago at ComicCon, I bought a scuffed copy of the first Dark Horse Little Lulu reprint collection at a remainder table. I was vaguely aware of the character, I knew it had placed on The Comics Journal's Top 100 English-Language Comics of the 20th Century (#59 to be precise, just behind Charles Aadams New Yorker cartoons and just ahead of Alley Oop.) But I had never read the strip.

Well, I instantly fell in love with it, much as I had with James Kochalka comics at the ComicCon two years before that. It's one of those discoveries that renews my interest in comics and makes me a happier person. The strip, based on a character originated by Marjorie Henderson Buell for the Saturday Evening Post in 1935, is perfectly realized in comic book form by John Stanley and Irving Tripp. The cartooning is a simple, economical delight, the comic pacing is impeccable and the situations are often unexpectedly absurd, even when the strip engages in one of its many formulas--Mr. McNabbem the truant officer chases Lulu; Lulu has to tell the little brat Alvin a story to keep him from being naughty; Lulu is falsely accused by her mother of a minor crime and Tubby steps in to prove that Lulu's father is the culprit; a war of the sexes between Tubby's gang and the neighborhood girls; etc. Within these basic frameworks the stories often have a stream-of-consciousness quality, a bit reminiscent of Crockett Johnson. Much more recently, Kochalka's sublime Peanut Butter & Jeremy comics tap into the same vein. Almost all continuing comics, with Krazy kat as their patron saint, base much of their appeal upon the joys to be found in slight variations to set themes and characters. Superman has fought monsters, plugged volcanoes, smacked up Luthor literally thousands of times, but all a reader needs is the slightest of twists on Superman's use of powers to feel satisfied that he got a new story. Stanley plays this game between the boundaries of comfortable expectations and happy little surprises like few other writers I've come across in commercial comics.

Dark Horse has released collections on a bimonthly schedule, and is now up to 11 volumes (with a 12th scheduled for Oct. 4), each containing about 200 pages of comics in black and white. Amazingly, the work is as good, if not better in vol. 11 as it was in Vol. 1--an exception to R. Crumb's comment--I'm paraphrasing from a faulty memory here--that only the first year of a strip is ever any good. And there are still at least 9 years worth of Stanley stories left to be collected. (Between this and the Peanuts reprints, I'll need more bookshelves.)

I know I've mentioned Little Lulu before. But now Dark Horse has released the Little Lulu Color Special, collecting some of the best work from throughout Stanley/Tripp's run in full color. As good as the bimonthlies have been, this is something else altogether. I've always thought that the black and white reproduction has done a great job of highlighting Stanley's layouts and Tripp's finished cartoons, and placing the emphasis on the stories. But the vibrant color Dark Horse has used here just brings the stories to life. Here's a sample page:

Sorry for the scan size, but you should be able to get the idea. This is one of the least cluttered comics of all time, and a prime example of what Scott McCloud means by "amplification through simplification" in cartooning. I like to think latter-day Steve Ditko would appreciate the execution of this comic. A(lvin) = A(lvin).

Oh yes, the advice: buy all of this. Now that's it's here, the overview provided by the color special is the best place to start. But really, any of the Dark Horse collections are just as much worth it, and will make you and your kids just as happy.

New For 2006

2006-09-22T09:18:00.000-05:00

I was going to write a depressing tirade about how torture is now an American value, but then I saw this:

Yes, for the low price of just $14.99, you can now torture the dog you hate the most in the Star Wars Princess Leia Slave Pet costume. America #1! Every other country some other #!

Gilly On Fire

2006-09-12T08:56:00.000-05:00

I know Dave reads polemicist Steve Gilliard daily, but in case anyone else doesn't (Hi, Mom!), he really outdid himself today. An excerpt:

I'm tired of being bullshitted. Terrorists aren't coming here with nuclear weapons. They aren't going to set one off in Baltimore harbor, because no state, not even a Sadr-run Iraq, would permit such a basic threat to their national security. Osama isn't a threat to they US. You know, most of the stores near Ground Zero were killed by a lack of business, not Osama. People still shop there, still live there, life continues. Who the hell would let crazy people set them up for a nuclear cruise missile attack?

I'm tired of the cowardice masquerading as patriotism. Osama isn't coming to blow up your mall, not coming to poision your water or release a dirty bomb. Because they can't. They couldn't even make the liquid chemical bombs they wanted to. The American muslim community responded to 9/11 by enlisting in the military, not joining Al Qaeda. AQ gets the misfits like Adam Gahan, who was pissed off at his mom, and when Delta snaps him up, he will be blubbering like a small child who banged his knee.

Americans can do great things when asked. Bush has never asked. Not even to rebuild Ground Zero.

Bush wanted to remake the world, but never had the courage to say so. He uses fear to maintain his power because it is who he is, a man scared of the world. He is weak and thus must maintain power by the basest means possible.

But by doing so, he denied Americans the one thing they expected from him: a measure of justice. Not in of the dungeon or the gulag, but of the courtroom. And they have not gotten that. Not even Osama killed in a last stand with Delta troopers gunning him down. Just dungeons, gulags and the excuse that these pathetic men are so dangerous that not only did they have to be tortured like animals, but now he needs a kangaroo court to try and execute them in. As if his word should end the traditions Americans have died for.

Bush and Cheney do not trust the courts or Congress. They trust power and nothing else. Most of all, they do not trust the American people and that will be their downfall. They are not kings, but men elected by and accountable to the people. No matter how many laws they break or mud they toss, will that ever change. They rule as the weak rule, by fear, fiat and suspicion. And the weak will fail, because those who live in fear can never truly gain the trust and respect of those they attempt to lead.

I Wrap Myself In The Flag. Under The Cloth I Can Feel My Ribs Move. Everything Goes Hack.

2006-09-11T12:52:00.000-05:00

Cartoonist Frank Miller's "This I Believe" (Johnny Calhoun's spoken word album, anyone?) essay is up at the NPR website. Entitled "That Old Piece Of Cloth", it's Miller's reflection on patriotism in the wake of the 9/11/01 terrorist attacks:

I was just a boy in the 1960s. My adolescence wasn't infused with the civil rights struggle or the sexual revolution or the Vietnam War, but with their aftermath.

My high school teachers were ex-hippies and Vietnam vets. People who protested the war and people who served as soldiers. I was taught more about John Lennon than I was about Thomas Jefferson.

Both of my parents were World War II veterans. FDR-era patriots. And I was exactly the age to rebel against them.

It all fit together rather neatly. I could never stomach the flower-child twaddle of the '60s crowd and I was ready to believe that our flag was just an old piece of cloth and that patriotism was just some quaint relic, best left behind us.

It was all about the ideas. I schooled myself in the writings of Madison and Franklin and Adams and Jefferson. I came to love those noble, indestructible ideas. They were ideas, to my young mind, of rebellion and independence, not of idolatry.

But not that piece of old cloth. To me, that stood for unthinking patriotism. It meant about as much to me as that insipid peace sign that was everywhere I looked: just another symbol of a generation's sentimentality, of its narcissistic worship of its own past glories.

Then came that sunny September morning when airplanes crashed into towers a very few miles from my home and thousands of my neighbors were ruthlessly incinerated -- reduced to ash. Now, I draw and write comic books. One thing my job involves is making up bad guys. Imagining human villainy in all its forms. Now the real thing had shown up. The real thing murdered my neighbors. In my city. In my country. Breathing in that awful, chalky crap that filled up the lungs of every New Yorker, then coughing it right out, not knowing what I was coughing up.

For the first time in my life, I know how it feels to face an existential menace. They want us to die. All of a sudden I realize what my parents were talking about all those years.

Patriotism, I now believe, isn't some sentimental, old conceit. It's self-preservation. I believe patriotism is central to a nation's survival. Ben Franklin said it: If we don't all hang together, we all hang separately. Just like you have to fight to protect your friends and family, and you count on them to watch your own back.

So you've got to do what you can to help your country survive. That's if you think your country is worth a damn. Warts and all.

So I've gotten rather fond of that old piece of cloth. Now, when I look at it, I see something precious. I see something perishable.

In and of itself, the essay is fuzzy, either because the public radio venue made Miller cautious, or because his mind simply works this way. To that extent I suppose the essay really doesn't matter, just another minor example of NPR's drift toward the right. But as Chuck Klosterman has said, "what matters is that nothing is ever 'in and of itself'". What matters is Miller's context, and the implications of his vague conclusions.

9/11 had a huge effect on Miller. It has apparently resolved any ambivalence in the questions about authority and freedom he has devoted much of his career to examining, from Daredevil through Dark Knight to 300 and his current project "Holy Terror, Batman!' in which the Caped Crusader will take on Al Qaeda itself, in what Miller openly calls "propaganda."

His inital, quite different reaction, captured in the 2002 anthology 9/11: Artists Respond, was a page of shock-induced nihilism: "I'm sick of flags, I'm sick of god, I've seen the power of faith." A few years remove can make quite a bit of difference. More recently, Miller has promoted the Batman/Al Qaeda book by more or less cribbing the Ann Coulter world-view:

...Miller doesn't hold back on the true purpose of the book, calling it "a piece of propoganda," where 'Batman kicks al Qaeda's ass."

The reason for this work, Miller said, was "an explosion from my gut reaction of what's happening now." He can't stand entertainers who lack the moxie of their '40s counterparts who stood up to Hitler. Holy Terror is "a reminder to people who seem to have forgotten who we're up against."

Miller clearly now believes America is faced with a very real threat to its very existence. In other words, he's scared, and if you're not scared like him you're stupid or asleep. It's hard to not read a measure of relief in Miller's words as he describes the altogether successful effect the terrorists have had on him. Fear has ordered his world, clarified his thinking, resolved his vision into Sin City black and white. Shocked into recognition that the US doesn't sit comfortably outside of history, but is part of it, he has embraced the security of faith in his nation's flag.

Miller has always considered himself an independent thinker, as evidenced by his long-standing suspicion of right and left that he uses to frame his NPR piece. Still, it's not surprising to see him now throw in his lot with the 101st Fighting Keyboard Kommandos against enemies both external and internal. Note that, in both quotes above, Miller's immediate concern is not with the hordes of evil-doers who want us all dead, but with his fellow Americans who apparently suffer from what Don Rumsfeld recently called "intellectual or moral confusion" because they question or criticize our country's response to terrorism. "So you've got to do what you can to help your country survive. That's if you think your country is worth a damn. Warts and all." What is that but "My country right or wrong" in so many words? "America, love it or leave it"? "Warts and all" is a brazen way to brush aside torture, domestic spying...fuck it, incipient totalitarianism. Just when are we allowed to talk about the warts, Frank? When there's a zero percent chance terrorism will ever strike our shores again? Good luck with that. I cannot escape the serendipity of exestential threat for those with authoritarian impulses--The Thing That Ate Western Civilzation so happens to provide one-size-fits-all justification for ever more stringent security measures, ever more restrictions of personal freedom...because "you have no civil liberties when you're dead" as Republican politicians have taken to saying.

But here's the thing. What Miller takes as wide-eyed realism, a raising of consciouness that has transformed his thinking and made him, by his definition, a proudly awakened American patriot, I take as a form of cowardice. This morning I read a new anonymous comment on an old (and now wrong, he ain't dropping out) post of mine about Joe Lieberman; anon's comment read in part:

Until we 'persuade' the good parts of Islam to do away with the parts that still strap bombs on martyrs and expect 72 virgins for it, then all of us, even peace-loving comic-book collecting Democrats are in some dire straits.

These guys positively get boners about this shit. There's nothing they love so much as their new Hitlers coming to kill them and burn their porn collections. And however else Miller might philosophically part from the Keyboarders, here, he's in perfect accordance. Islamic terrorism allows all of them the ability to abase themselves before the Greatest Generation, to apologize for dismissing old-fashioned world-views, and play at putting on their parents' or grandparents' WW2 uniforms. or the costumes of WW2 era comic book creators (many of whom actually enlisted). Or something.

Of course, there's the possibility that the existential threat may be somewhat overhyped, as this NYT Week In Review piece suggests:

As time has passed without a new attack, the voices of skeptics who believe that 9/11 was more a fluke than a harbinger are beginning to be heard.

“A perfectly plausible explanation is that there are no terrorists here,” said John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University who advances the doubters’ case in an article in Foreign Affairs. “I don’t say there’s no threat, but the threat has been massively exaggerated.”

But that is likely to be discounted by those (presidents, defense secretaries, pundits, comic book writers) who find looming apocalypse with its stark battle lines, potential for self-aggrandizement and self-abasement, and convenient pretexts for the accrual of state power too tempting, too satisfying, too self-justifying to ever relinquish. We are called fools or worse by people who wet their beds and point to the piss stain as a proof of their courage.

Update: Speaking of WW2 comparison rhetoric from Bush on down, the always brilliant Digby sums up what I'm trying to say in far fewer words, in the post "Pimping the Greatest Generation":

This rhetoric of epic struggle that rivals WWII and The Cold War serves the simple political purpose of rallying the conservative base so that the Republicans can maintain power. It is guided by the deep psychological need for conservative baby boomers to find some meaning in their pathetic lives and a cynical attempt to co-opt some sunny, simple vision of the Greatest Generation --- who would be the last people to claim the depression and the wars of their lifetimes were either sunny or simple. The younger conservative generation sees it as a cynical political game, which it is.

The entire campaign is built on a Disneyfied version of WWII and boomer childhood nightmare cartoons of The Cold War. They trying to squeeze all the boogeymen of the 20th century into Osama bin Laden's turban in the hope that they can cop a little bit of that Hollywood heroism themselves. (After all, their hero Ronald Reagan didn't actually fight in any real war either --- he just remembered the movies he was in and thought he had.) It is deeply, deeply unserious.

WRMC Vol. 5: A Visual Guide

2006-08-29T22:05:00.000-05:00

Great Moments In Phonetic Spelling

2006-08-26T21:17:00.000-05:00

From Floppity-Rabbits to Horror-Squinkies

2006-08-23T21:47:00.000-05:00

I'm barreling through Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester's dazzling 2004 anthology of pre-1960s comics criticism, Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium. It's an important key to understanding of America's early cultural responses to comics—many, if by no means all, negative or at least highly ambivalent. From severe, Protestant excoriations of the fin de siecle illustration/photography explosion, to modernist appreciations of Krazy Kat's surrealism, to Robert Warshow's compellingly conflicted reaction to his young son's EC Comics fixation, the book's selections alternatively frustrate, surprise, and reveal--sometimes they reveal less about comics than they do about the world views and fears of the intellectuals confronting them. Occasionally, the writing startles.

Perhaps the most passionate (not to say best) essay in the book is by Gershon Legman, whose excerpt from his 1949 book Love and Death: A Study in Censorship hits all of the expected mid-century, Wertham-era notes about the corrosive nature of comics, particularly their glorification of fascist violence. It's all wrapped in the overheated language of the concern troll, allegedly defending against the explotation and degredation of the masses, but simultaneously dripping with contempt for all the slow-moving cows who make such easy targets. Still, it's hard not to get just a little swept up in his passion, difficult to deny the retardation of crass, dehumanizing violence. In all of this he's well within the liberal censor/scold tradition. Superman feeds the "paranoid hostility" of the audience, he's a "one-man flying lynch mob", as well as a perfect authoritarian stooge, etc., etc.. But in the last few paragraphs of the essay he pivots toward another of Dr. Frederic Wertham's bugaboos, in a way that really wakes up the modern reader:

The exploitation of brutality and terror is blatantly apparent. The homosexual element lies somewhat deeper. It is not—at least not importantly—in the obvious faggotry of men kissing one another and saying "I love you," and then flying off through space against orgasm backgrounds of red and purple, not in the transvestist scenes in every kind of comic-book from floppity-rabbits to horror-squinkies, not in the long-haired western killers with tight pants (for choice).

I will interrput only to say that Legman here makes old comic books sound completely fucking awesome, and I want to know exactly which Golden Age comics he was reading, or failing that, precisely what drugs he was on. He continues:

Neither is it in the explicit Samurai subservience of the inevitable little-boy helpers—theoretically identification shoe-horns for children not quite bold enough to identify themselves with Superprig himself—nor in the fainting adulation of thick necks, ham fists, and well-filled jock-straps; the draggy capes and costumes, the shamanistic talismans and superstitions that turn a sissified clerk into a one-man flying lynch-mob with biceps bigger than his brain. It is not even in the two comic-book companies staffed entirely by homosexuals and operating out of our most phalliform skyscraper (emphasis mine, all mine—CO)

The really important homosexuality of the Superman theme—as deep in the hub of the formula as the clothes and kisses are at the periphery—is the lynching pattern itself, in the weak and fearful righteousness with which it achieves its wrong. No matter how bad criminals (or even crime-comics) may be, in identfying himself with them the child does consummate his Oedipean dream of strength; the criminal does break through his environment. The Superman, the Supersleuths, the Super-cops do not. They align themselves always on the side of law, authority, the father; and accept their power passively from a bearded above. They are not competing—not for the forbidden mother, not for any other reward. Like Wild Bill Hickock, our own homosexual hero out thar where men were men—with his long silk stockings and his Lesbian side-kick, Calamity Jane—they are too unvirile to throw off fear, and kill as criminals. Instead, unseen and unsuspected in some corner, they put on a black mask, a sherrif's badge and a Superman suit, and do all of their killing on the side of the law.

Damn those murderous, conformist, brown-shirt homosexual cowards in their giant penis towers! Of course I'm familiar with Wertham's famous accusations of Batman and Robin's alleged gayness, and Wonder Woman's lesbianism. Feiffer's Great Comic Book Heroes hipped me to all that when I was 7 years old. I also know that homosexuality was not so long ago considered by leading "liberal" psychologists a mental illness or weakness of character--arrested development, pathological narccisism, what have you. But Legman really lays it bare. Comics are violence. Comics are queer. Homosexuality is violence. This is from a guy who coined the term "make love not war", a researcher for the Kinsey Institute, a "proto-hippy" as the editors call him who spent decades collecting dirty limericks and who eventually relocated to France to escape US government harrassment over publishing obscenity. (Then again, Wertham himself was a liberal crusader, who like Holy Joe Lieberman today on video games, was just worried about the helpless children.)

One of my favorite Wikipedia entries ever describes Legman: "As a young man he acquired a number of interests including sexuality, erotic folklore, and origami." Yes, have you seen my paper cranes? Oh, or my collection of shaved redheads magazines? (Hell, even his name was Legman.) Described one way, as a sex freak and paper folder who puked at the thought of war and its mass-marketed propaganda, Legman sounds perfectly reasonable. Hey, I'm a sex freak. I too hate war. I can even make a hat for my kid out of a newspaper. Let's drink beers! But Legman had more than that rattling around in his head. I can see where he's going; that violence, and the acquiescence to/enabling of violence, is a fundamental weakness, something to be scorned. Homosexuality serves Legman's purpose as a metaphor for this weak, shameful pull toward the thumb-sucking cowardice of violent authoritarianism. It's still ugly stuff, fatally compromised by its dated conception of sexuality, difficult to read.

Heath Ledger/Joker

2006-08-23T21:34:00.000-05:00

Pardon the consecutive straight-up fanboy posts. It's my break from reading Irving Howe essays on the evils of mechanized mass culture as represented by comics, and articles on the subtle uses and meanings of word balloons in Asterix. Anyway:

Whatever else you could say, dude's certainly got the grin and the chin for the part. I'm sold.

Batman Is In Very Good Hands

2006-08-23T20:58:00.000-05:00

Current Batman comic book writer Grant Morrison at Newsarama on Frank Miller's forthcoming Batman Vs. Al Qaeda train-wreck, Holy Terror, Batman:

First off, the idea that superhero comics should reflect the news headlines is not one I tend to subscribe to. I've always preferred using my comics to talk about the world around me in the language of symbolism and metaphor and I'm more interested in telling stories about how people behave in bizarre situations than I am in commenting on current events...while I won't pretend we all live on Sunnybrook Farm, I don't think its appropriate - particularly in trying times - to present our fictional heroes as unsmiling vengeance machines. I'd rather Batman embodied the best that secular humanism has to offer - a sour-faced, sexually-repressed, humorless, uptight, angry, and all-round grim 'n' gritty Batman would be more likely to join the Taliban surely?...Batman vs. Al Qaeda! It might as well be Bin Laden vs. King Kong! Or how about the sinister Al Qaeda mastermind up against a hungry Hannibal Lecter! For all the good it's likely to do. Cheering on a fictional character as he beats up fictionalized terrorists seems like a decadent indulgence when real terrorists are killing real people in the real world. I'd be so much more impressed if Frank Miller gave up all this graphic novel nonsense, joined the Army and, with a howl of undying hate, rushed headlong onto the front lines with the young soldiers who are actually risking life and limb 'vs' Al Qaeda.

Next, Director Christopher Nolan on the Joker in his upcoming Batman sequel, The Dark Knight:

I would certainly point to The Killing Joke but I also would point very much to the first two appearances of the Joker in the comic. If you look at where the Joker comes from there’s a very clear direction that fits what we’re doing very well.

Add Paul Dini on Detective Comics, plus another Englehart/Rogers revival mini-series on the way, and it actually starts to make up for the past 20 years of terrible, terrible Batman.

Freak Show

2006-08-09T23:17:00.000-05:00

This is the state of the Republican party today:

NEW YORK - The two Republicans vying to challenge Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton this fall tore into each other Wednesday in a debate dominated by angry accusations of personal and professional misconduct and abject dishonesty...

While married to another woman, Spencer fathered two children with his then-chief of staff and substantially raised her salary. He eventually divorced his first wife and married his chief of staff...

"That's something that, in 1998, the Republican Party impeached President Clinton for exactly the same behavior," McFarland said to gasps from the audience. "If you'd been in the military, you would have been court-martialed. If you worked in the federal government, you would have been subject to indictment."

Spencer angrily shot back, saying McFarland had unfairly insulted his children and lied about his record...

So much time was spent discussing Spencer's private life that Carter finally turned the tables, asking McFarland whether disclosures about her own messy past — she accused her father in 1992 of sexually abusing her as a child — were relevant to her fitness to serve.

"That was 50 years ago. I've addressed it. I have nothing further to add," McFarland said...

When asked to pose questions to each other, McFarland cited instances when Spencer had threatened to kill Gov. George Pataki and had used ethnic slurs against Italians and Chinese.

"Is this how you plan to conduct yourself?" McFarland asked.

Spencer said he'd apologized for using crude language and for making jokes that fell flat.

"I'm human," he said.

Then he stripped naked and bit the head off a chicken.

And it lived for 18 months!

"Is This The End Of Zombie Lieberman?"

2006-08-09T12:31:00.000-05:00

Mark Schmidt at Tapped: "Let's find a way to give [Lieberman] a dignified way out, and accord him exactly the level of respect for his service that Lamont did last night, which was considerable and was deserved."

Schmidt makes eminently reasonable points about the aftermath of the Connecticut primary; I agree with him completely that Lieberman is likely to bow to reality and drop his independent bid sooner or later. The guy who thinks the general election voters of Connecticut will love him as much as he loves himself is the same guy who completely, fatally misread his own primary, after all. I assume that polls over the next few weeks will bear this out, as the moderate Dems and independents Joe assumes are his by right recoil from his hubris in the face of concisive defeat.

But man, is it hard to accord Joe considerable respect for his service after everything he has said and done over the past 10 years. I resented him in 1998 for knifing Clinton in the back, even as I understood the alleged politics behind it. I loathed the guy in 2000 based on his obnoxious sanctimony, and his utterly ineffectual performance against Cheney in the VP debate. He intentionally, unforgivably brought a butter knife to a howitzer fight--a tendency that characterized his whole candidacy, right up to his eagerness to cave during the recount. This is the guy who has repeatedly, despicably asserted that "the Constitution promises freedom of religion, not freedom from religion." Who led the morality police against the phantom evils of video games, diverting attention from, you know, actual problems. Who turned his back on Social Security, one of the defining positions of the Democratic Party. Whose people had the gall to argue with CT soldiers in Iraq over their choice of requested weapons, rather than busting his ass as their representative to get them what they wanted. And yes, who made a hobby of basically rimming Geroge W. Bush on national security over the past five years while demonizing his own party. As Josh Marshall has said, Lieberman grew to advocate bipartisan compromise (i.e. capitulation to right wing thugs) for its own sake. Whether he foolishly but sincerely misread the political moment, or just let the admiration of D.C. pundits and his GOP pals go to his head, it doesn't really matter. I don't care why he's such an asshole. I really just want the guy gone, and if official Washington flattering his ego for the next month is the only way to do it, fine. But I run the risk of choking on my own vomit.

There Is A Heppy Land--Furfur A-waay From Bloggink

2006-08-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

I've spent the last couple of weeks blissfully away from this place getting my mind blown by comics all over again. Much of my time has been spent digging into critical texts and resources (most recently Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art, David Carrier's The Aesthetics of Comics and the uneven but fascinating The Education of a Comics Artist anthology, worth it just for things like the Barron Storey interview and McCloud theory on cartoonist types (classicist - formalist - animist - iconoclast), which may well be artificial, a joykill and even wrong, but is quite entertaining nonetheless. As a result of all this, I'm paying much more attention to form and technique than I usually do. And reading better comics.

Every few years my enthusiam for comics wanes--usually after slogging through a glut of superhero books, looking for the kind of kick I got at 14 from Moore's Swamp Thing, or at 17 from Ostrander's Suicide Squad. (Grant Morrison is still reliable in that regard, but he's only one guy.) Luckily, my love for the form has been renewed by a succession of artists well outside the superhero mainstream. Around 2002 I began a huge crush on James Kochalka comics. A year or so ago, in the midst of rotting my brain with DC's endless Crisis crossovers, I was given a jolt by Kevin Huizenga, who seems fluent in the language of comics like nobody else--even Chris Ware, whose meticulous design and relentless darkness occasionally overwhelms me. Huizenga is every bit as deliberate, every bit as inventive, but with a bigger emotional palate.

I have two new objects of cartoon affection, one brand-new, the other 80 years old. The Best Amazon Box Ever arrived on my doorstep last week with Allison Bechdel's recent memoir Fun Home, and the first two volumes of Fantagraphics' Krazy Kat Sunday strip reprints from the 1920s. I'm still unpacking all of them in my head, after which I hope to have much to say. Bechdel's book has instantly vaulted onto my all-time favorites list, along with From Hell, Stuck Rubber Baby and other Important Graphic Novels. What jumps out at me initally is her powerful observational kung fu, that evokes such photographic-memory memoirs as Nabokov's Speak, Memory (helped by obsessively detailed notebooks kept since she was 10) and explicitly, the writings of Marcel Proust. Also, her sense of control, both over her story and her cartooning, is astounding. The last few pages of the book--especially the final page--are like a master class in synthesis of text and art, not to mention hitting you like a ton of bricks (or a bread truck).

Speaking of getting hit with a brick: Krazy & Ignatz. I finally see what Carrier, The Comics Journal and so may others are on about in calling this the greatest artistic achievment in comics history. I know I love it to death; I'm not sure how to talk about it yet. I can say that 1) it provides a clear context for another one of my favorite comics, Kochalka's Peanut Butter and Jeremy, and 2) after even one evening with Herriman, it's very hard to pick up the latest Green Arrow.

Not Looking Forward To Licking Green Arrow's Backside?

2006-07-26T10:14:00.000-05:00

Fortunately, the new DC superheroes stamps are self-adhesive.

Marvel is scheduled to get their own pane of stamps next year. So, the pointless diversion becomes guessing which 10 Marvel heroes, artists and representative issue numbers will make the cut. My guesses:

1) Spider-Man--Steve Ditko--Amazing Spider-Man #19 (w/Sandman)
2) The Hulk--Herb Trimpe--Incredible Hulk #105
3) Captain America--Simon & Kirby--Captain America #109 (1969)
4) The Thing--Jack Kirby--The Thing #6 (1983)
5) Wolverine--Jim Lee--Wolverine #2 (1982 mini-series)
6) Iron Man--Don Heck--Invincible Iron Man #47 (1972)
7) Storm--Dave Cockrum--Storm #6 (2006)
8) Thor--Walt Simonson--Journey Into Mystery #125
9) Daredevil—Gene Colan—Daredevil #27
10) The Human Torch—Dick Ayers—Fantastic Four #54

I figure that like DC, they'll stick to 1) single charactes, rather than teams, given the size of the stamps; 2) golden and silver age characters and artists, with the exceptions of Wolverine (for obvious reasons), and Storm, who is, Invisible Girl aside, the highest-profile female Marvel character; and 3) covers that are as clean and non-violent as possible--which is why I can't see an Elektra stamp.

Other speculation?

Return to Oz

2006-07-24T21:51:00.000-05:00

I didn't attend Comic-Con in San Diego last weekend. This is too bad, because it's always a great excuse for me to visit fellow Mountain contributers Dave and Hilary (no, really! check the archives!). And now that they're new and improved with extra baby power, skipping the event was making me pretty blue.

The weekend was far from a wash, however. First, Dave was kind enough to chase my want list around the show, scoring me two issues of the sublime Haney/Aparo Brave and The Bold--I hereby request Dave to post a summary/commentary of the deeply wack B&B #98, especially considering that it's currently missing from H's index project at the Comic Treadmill. What's more, my family and I made the short trip down I-91 to the Eric Carle Museum in Amherst, MA for the new East Gallery exhibit "The Wonderful Art of Oz", presented on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of author L. Frank Baum's birth.

We've visited the museum a number of times; each has been worthwhile, including a presentation of pre- and post-revolution Russian children's book art, a collection of illustrations for Margaret Wise Brown stories, including Goodnight Moon--and there's always Eric Carle art on display in the West Gallery, from The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Very Lonely Firefly, etc. This time they've outdone themselves with one of the most impressive collections of illustration I've ever seen. My own sense of awe is rooted by having lived with many of these drawings for more than 30 years in book form; actually seeing the originals in person took my breath away.

The show is arranged, loosely, in the plot order of L. Frank Baum's original book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Work from subsequent books and miscellany follows.

The first piece is a huge color lithograph circa 1900 produced to promote the book, featuring WW Denslow's famous title page drawing of the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman clasping hands. From there we see various examples of Denslow's inked production art, over graphite, including the copyright page, chapter headers and the wonderful two-page spread of the field mice drawing the sleeping Lion through the poppy field. Interspersed are more recent interpretations from Maurice Sendak, Chris Van Allsburg, Lisbeth Zwerger, Andy Warhol (a print of Edith Hamilton as the Wicked Witch which I last saw at the Warhol show in Brattleboro a year or two back) and others.

Following this strong start the show shifts gears, becoming a testament to the gorgeously fine linework and imagination of John R. Neil, who took over art duties with Baum's second Oz book, The Marvelous Land of Oz, and who continued on the series long after Baum's death in 1919. Neil's control of his brush is simply awesome: the strands of Dorothy's hair, the tatters of the Shaggy Man's clothes, the stitches holding together the irrepressible Patchwork Girl. The last is one of the show's centerpieces, in the form of the oversized original drawing for the wraparound cover of The Patchwork Girl of Oz, seventh book in the series. The image here really, really doesn't do it justice.

The exhibit wraps up with some items of special interest to me, sunday comic pages from the early 1900s, including a wordless Denslow page and an unpublished 1905 strip credited to Neil. I found this strip fascinating (assuming I remember the description correctly) for its inclusion of the Woozy, a very odd character (see image, desperately grasping tree) who first appeared in the books in 1913's Patchwork Girl. In the strip, featuring the Scarecrow, the Woozy appears to help bring to life a crabby pancake person who inexplicably floats through the air. Best exchange, filtered through my weak memory:

Scarecrow: You nearly scared me to death!

Pancake guy: Well, you scared me to life, so we're even!

All of this is topped off by the museum's great bookstore, containing an exhaustive selection (perhaps the wrong word, as it seems everything is accounted for) of children's picture books. The Oz island featured every single Oz book and Baum non-Oz title in print, as well as a few decidedly out-of-print items. The latter included a find that just about makes up for missing San Diego: a stock of the first four Eric Shanower Oz graphic novels--all signed by the artist. The clerk explained to me that the books (as well as items like the official Oz maps we bought for Abe) were provided by the International Wizard of Oz Club.

If you love children's books, if you're into American history, if you appreciate illustration, if you're anywhere near Western Massachusetts between now and the end of October, you owe it to yourself to see this exhibit.

Alert Level Ivory: Watch Out For Marxist, Exploding Rap CDs

2006-07-13T12:26:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago Walter Kirn wrote for the NYT Book Review a take-down of The Din in the Head, Cynthia Ozick's new book of essays defending the novel from its alleged corruption at the hands of an increasingly relativistic, degraded society. Harold Bloom territory, basically. Kirn quoted this passage, which really stuck out to me:

"A department of English is not the same as a Marxist tutorial. A rap CD is not the same as academic scholarship. A suicide bomber who blows up a pizzeria crowded with baby carriages is not the same as a nation-builder."

Kirn characterizes this bit of hyperbole (although I doubt she means it as such) as "the canon as cannon, holding off the savages." Now, I haven't read the book, and I'm sure that Ozick's second sentence is specifically a dig at Cornel West and slackening intellectual standards. Also, according to strict logic, Ozick isn't necessarily equating Marxism, rap and suicide bombers, but...come on, of course she is. On one side of the divide, English departments, scholarship and nation-building are positive forces dedicated to generating and maintaining civilization. On the other side are the chaotic, thanatos-worshipping forces of leftist political dogma (elsewhere Ozick gives a dismissive backhand to Susan Sontag's politics), baby-killing terrorists, and, um, popular black music. As I said, I haven't read Ozick, so I can't go much past the statement itself. Perhaps I'm missing the context of the rest of the essay, where she discusses the merits of the Ultramagnetic MCs and Cold Crush Brothers. But I suspect she's not exactly down with Doug E. Fresh. And so I suspect that Kirn's characterization of her defending the canon against savages might resonate in more ways than one.

Beyond that, it's fascinating to see how amazingly well terrorism can work regardless of how smart you are. I think that too often we imagine the "masses" recoiling in reactionary, self-protective fear from terroristic violence, but Ozick shows that intellectualism is no innoculation; in fact, it has led quite a few brilliant minds into this kind of wagon-circling raving, apocalyptic visions of dark riders from the east and south (and importantly, from within) ganging up with Sauron to burn down the Shire. As far as I can tell, those leading terror movements are mostly interested in real estate, while Ozick clutches her novels to her chest as if prying Henderson the Rain King from her fingers is Bin Laden's ultimate aim, and ousting the House of Saud is just a side benefit.

The divide between high culture and pop is on my mind lately, as I start preparing to guest-teach a month-long winter term class on graphic novels at my alma mater, an esteemed Northeastern private college. It's the kind of subject matter in the kind of setting that would, no doubt, drive Ozick to tears. Although it's possible that Cornel West would have to write a comic book for her to become aware of their existence. I'm nearly finished with David Carrier's philosophical work The Aesthetics of Comics, and I'm struck by the amount of text Carrier feels obligated to devote to basic defenses of the subject matter's academic worth. In just five years since this book was published, I think some of that defensiveness has given way. But to many scholars, I'm sure such a subject is still a clear signal that everything worth thinking about, everything worth preserving--all those Great Novels Ozick treasures and nurtures like innocent babies in their carriages--is being exploded by cultural suicide bombs.

And just because I'm an anti-intellectual jerk, what I wouldn't give for the opportunity to sit Ozick down with a copy of the 2001 record Party Music by The Coup: the unreleased, original cover designed in June of 2001 had these Marxist rap artists blowing up the World Trade Center. Hat trick!

Wildcat!

2006-07-11T12:10:00.000-05:00

Over at the Treadmill, H has a wonderful post on every Batman/Wildcat team-up in the pages of The Brave and the Bold, as an add-on to his B&B index series.

It really goes way, way beyond the call of duty, (not that I'm complaining) describing each of the five issues in loving detail, excerpting Haney's most insane panels, ranking various aspects of the issues, such as 'Best Cat-O-Cycle Shot"--plus, I'm in there summing up the key ingredients for a perfect Brave and the Bold comic.

Wildcat was the guest-star in my first issue of B&B, which happened to be my first Batman comic, and he's always held a special place in the softest part of my head. He's kind of a low-key Wolverine, but who mercifully escaped ever being written by Chris Claremont. At any rate, the Wildcat B&Bs are worth tracking down, especially the Aparo issues.

Comics For Your Girlfriend

2006-07-11T11:36:00.001-05:00

Gentlemen and ladies, Brad Meltzer is back, in full effect.
(JLA #1 preview image via Newsarama)

Lee Siegel Vs. Ball Caps In the World Series Of Love

2006-06-30T14:01:00.000-05:00

Via Steve Gilliard, The New Republic's culture writer Lee Siegel, fresh off his battle with the "hard fascism" of the left-wing blogosphere, has found a new enemy:

Siegel V. Baseball Caps

Oh how I hate these things. I didn't mind them when a few people wore them. Then it served as the rudimentary expression of taste, or as the vague outline of identity. But soon everyone began putting them on their heads. It's gotten so black kids from the ghetto have to wear them with the bill pulled down over their eyes just so they won't be mistaken for yuppie bankers.

The baseball cap's insinuation that life is a game with transparent rules gets to me. Also the insinuation that by wearing a baseball cap in inappropriate situations--like indoors--you have what it takes to break the rules and win the game. And I'm bothered by the herdlike nature of the baseball-cap trend mixed with its affectation of insouciance. The baseball-cap people want to have the lofty cool indifference of an aristocrat, yet their need to have it in the standard approved way makes them anything but cool and indifferent.

But the baseball cap signifies, most of all, a lazily defiant casualness. It's less insouciant than I-don't-give-a-shit. I have an inborn antagonism toward any type of hierarchy, but I think natural elegance is the best reply to assigned status, not sloppy rebellion. Wearing your standard-issue baseball cap in a restaurant isn't a blow for egalitarianism; it's a hopelessness about the possibility of originality ever to fly in the face of hierarchy. It also gives the impression of someone whose ego is angrily planted on his head. NO, I won't take it off!When I see someone wearing a baseball cap in a movie theater, I want them to bring back the guillotine.

Next in TNR:

Lee Siegel Wishes Someone Would Take These Damnable Beatniks And Flay Them Alive. Seriously.

Lee Siegel Vs. The Punk Kids Who Won't Get Off My Lawn

Lee Siegel Hates Women Who Wear Dungaerees Like They Think They're Working Men

Lee Siegel: "Rock and Roll has got to go!"

Lee Siegel Takes On "Casual Fridays". With A Flamethrower.

Lee Siegel Wants To Know Why Anyone Would Take A Baby On An Airplane, And Will Someone Please Kill Them With A Chainsaw?

Lee Siegel Thinks Tattoos Are Horrid, And Only For Tribesmen

Lee Siegel: You Know What Was Really Sexy? When Women's Clothing Left Something to The Imagination! A Well-Turned Ankle Is Far Sexier Than Some Strumpet Parading Around In Her Bathing Outfit!

Lee Siegel Asks, "quesadilla"? Is that Mexican for grilled cheese sandwich? Why not just call it a Mexican grilled cheese? Who are they trying to kid? (Kill...Kill...)

Lee Siegel's 25 Favorite Lawrence Welk LPs.

Lee Siegel's Jihad Against Ketchup

Lee Siegel thinks the NBA playoffs are too long, and they should just give the medal to the team with the best record at the end of the season. The game has gone downhill anyway since they replaced guys like Bob Cousy with this current crop of baggy pants-wearing jokers. You know what I mean.

Lee Siegel's "Hipper Hopper" Problem...And Yours

Lee Siegel Vs. The Ringtone Of Doom

Lee Siegel On The Prime Example Of Declining Societal Standards, Stanley Crouch

Lee Siegel Saw This Thing On TV The Other Night That He Hated. Not That He Has A TV.

Why I Don't Fart, By Lee Siegel

Lee Siegel Wants These Motherfucking Baseball Caps Out Of This Motherfucking Restaurant.

Take-Offs And Landings

2006-06-30T08:39:00.000-05:00

So the Superman films are about fathers and sons*, and now they are more overtly about adoption. But if the Donner/Lester and Singer pictures are about anything, they are about land; the lands we come from, the lands we come to, the lands we claim, fight and kill over.

Over at Dave's Long Box, many commenters are bemoaning the lack of giant robots for Superman to kick the shit out of. I sympathize, and I hold out hope for a spectacular homage to the Fleischer Mechanical Monsters cartoon in any potential sequel (again, Warner's, Brainiac) but giant robots have nothing to do with the central preoccupation of these movies to date. And that's land.

Donner sets up Krypton and Earth as a contrast in land. The land of Krypton is dead and cold, its civilization old and tired. Krypton is a husk playing out the string until its sun goes supernova. Compared to this, Donner's Earth is Eden, amber waves of grain rolling across endless fields, bursting with life, color and humor. Post-Krypton, Donner's film shows us the Earth's land in all its variety, from mountains to valleys to cities to the molten center of the Earth itself.

For all that, the obvious exemplar of the land theme is Lex Luthor, recast by Donner as an obsessive would-be land baron, introduced with grand schemes of sinking California in order to establish a new coast under his control. Then, in the second film, he ingratiates himself with Zod in order to claim Australia. In Singer's new film, Luthor ratchets up his ambitions, hoping to swamp the enitre United States in order to establish a brand-new continent--a land mass, not coincidentally, made from the stuff of Krypton itself.

As others have pointed out, Luthor's invasion of the Fortress, and pillaging of Jor-El's memory tapes, show him stepping in as a kind of brother to Superman. "He thinks I'm his son", Luthor says of Jor-El's recording. And Luthor and Superman are very much doubles, because Superman is just as concerned with land as Luthor--but for entirely different reasons. Luthor just wants his cut, while Superman wants a place to belong.

As an aside, this is where Anthony Lane's New Yorker reviews so often fail for me. He's so consumed with using the week's movie to make sarcastic jokes at the film's expense, he often misses what the movie is actually about. In his Superman Returns review, he treats Luthor's motivation this way:

Picture my disappointment as I realized that, for all the pizzazz of “Superman Returns,” its global weapon of choice would not be terrorism, or nuclear piracy, or dirty bombs. It would be real estate. What does Warner Bros. have in mind for the next installment? Superman overhauls corporate pension plans? Luthor screws Medicare?

I'm not going to speculate that Lane can't see the reason for Luthor's plot because he's British, and doesn't share the deep, often unhealthy American manifest destiny fixation on land itself as totem/prize/birthright, but for whatever reason, he just doesn't get the point of the movie on a basic level. He also doesn't seem to understand that in our world, the ultimate aim of all that terrorism, nuclear piracy and dirty bombs is...wait for it...land. Bin Laden wants Saudi Arabia. The Isrealis and Palestinians may deeply disagree on matters of religion and philosophy, but it wouldn't matter if they didn't wantto live on the same postage stamp.

And by the way, Lane's Medicare joke sucks.

But enough of him. Luthor knows who he is and what he wants. The character of Superman is just as concerned with land, but as a way of defining his identity. He makes a five-year journey just to see the land that cast him out. Most of the land from Krypton that has made its way to Earth has turned to Kryptonite and is deadly poison to him. He aches for a homeland that spends all of its time now trying to kill him.

Then there are all of the landing/flight puns: the rocket landing in the fetishized Kansas wheat fields (land that I love), Superman gracefully landing all of the objects plunging dangerously from the sky (the airplane, the Daily Planet globe, construction workers, Kitty's car) to Superman's own landings as he steps down gracefully from the clouds. His most interesting landing isn't graceful at all, as he drops with the force of a small mountain onto new Krypton, the force of his arrival cracking the ground around him. The gag seems constructed merely to show Superman's anger, power and determination, but this is a ersatz chunk of Krypton itself he's stepping onto for the first time, and his abuse of the land he walks on is no accident of the filmmaker. Adopted kids turn emotional cartwheels over their birthplaces and birth parents. Longing and anger are often tangled up in a knot. It's hard for me not to see Superman talking out his frustration on the land that literally spit him out by punishing it a little. By the end of the sequence, Superman overtly throws this ugly hunk of Krypton away from Earth, much as Krypton once threw him into the void. With this he has made his choice for Earth once and for all. Then he begins his final landing, plummeting unconscious back to earth like a shooting star. It's a pretty scene, the unconscious hero falling through the sky into the embrace of our land (this land is your land). It reminds me of the classic "Panic in the Sky" episode of The Adventures of Superman TV series, (in which George Reeves' Superman flew up to stop a meteor, then fell back to earth, losing his memory in the process) as it ties up the themes of the movie in a nice bow. As I mentioned in my last post, Luthor ends up with as much land as he deserves, while Superman eventually awakens to embrace the very rocky terrain of his new life: a broken relationship with his true love, and a son he must entrust to others. Superman's no "deadbeat dad" as some facile critics have suggested; he's doing exactly what Jor-El did, giving his son up for adoption because it's the right thing to do. Superman's world has exploded, and his son will be safe with the Earthlings.

While I understand why Singer cut footage of Superman at Krypton's ruins from the start of the film, for length, pacing and to provide for the more dramatic introduction in Ma Kent's field, part of me wishes the scene had stayed in. It would have made the land theme a little easier to see, and served as a good parallel with the expulsion of New Krypton at the end of the film. Ah, well, that's what the DVD is for.

Many detractors of Superman Returns criticize its air of seriousness. Comic book movies, they think, should know their place, and that place is camp. But when the center of your movie is land, there's nothing out of place about a little gravity.

*As Anne pointed out to me, to say that the movie is about father and sons is incomplete. Say that Krypton, as embodied by Jor-El, represents the father for Superman--laws, ethical rules, knowledge. If Krypton is Dad, then Earth is Mom--literally, Mother Earth, represented by the nearly voiceless love of Ma Kent, patiently waiting, then embracing Clark in the corn field upon his return. After that, Clark's character arc is all about coming to terms with Lois as mother. When Superman finally casts New Krypton into space, in some way he is casting out or putting aside his own father ("the father becomes the son and the son becomes the father" or whatever Brando's drug-induced rambling was about), allowing him to step into the role of father. He then falls back again, at the end of the film as in the beginning, to the embrace of the mother planet, yet another parallel in a script loaded with them. This is one of those movies where I find it curious almost no one is talking about the film on its own obvious thematic terms. It's curious that so many critics have had nothing at all to say about what I consider to be the film's clear subject matter. In my opinion, those who cry "boring" or "not enough punching", or who complain that Luthor's scheme was recyclyed from previous films, (without bothering to ask why Luthor would be consistently imagined with a real estate fixation in these films--and what that means for his opposite number) had no idea what they were watching, or what Singer and his writing crew were even trying for.

Decent

2006-06-29T13:41:00.000-05:00

Fundamentally decent hero, decent film.

Yesterday afternoon I left work early to join Anne, Theo and Abe (in his homemade Superman suit, of course) for the first matinee showing of Superman Returns. Tim O'Neil will undoubtedly hate its self-important ponderousness (it's as sure a thing as the sun rising tomorrow.) Nevertheless, I had a good time. And yes, I did tear up more than once, particularly toward the beginning, when the Williams score kicks in and at Superman's first public appearance upon his return. The casting was surprisingly good--even Kate Bosworth as Lois--and the script had a satisfying sense of thematic logic, resolving all of its major points in visually clever and satisfying ways. (I particularly like the irony of Luthor's final fate, considering his goals.) Further, I really appreciated the willingness of the filmmakers to follow through on the set-ups of the first two Donner movies, even if it meant straying, perhaps irrevocably, from the traditional Clark/Lois/Superman relationship formula--if such a thing could even be said to exist anymore given Lois and Clark's long-standing comic-book marriage. By the end, this movie has certainly taken a very different path than the comics, something I can't discuss any further without...

Spoilers:

Many critics find nonsensical Superman's decision to abandon Earth for a quest to revisit the remains of his birth planet, Krypton. I'm not the first to say this, but they obviously don't have close experience with adoption. Many adopted children feel compelled to return to their birthplaces, to seek out some connection to their original home, to understand why. Of course, in Superman's case, the reason why is both more grandiose and more clear-cut than it is for most adoptees. Jor-El and Lara felt that they were incapable of raising their son, not because of economic hardship or social stigma, but because, to be blunt, their planet was exploding. While I hope I never find myself in Ma Kent's shoes, wondering if my son will ever come home, I fully understand that someday Theo, whom we adopted from South Korea at 6 months old, might need to make his own journey. Director Brian Singer, also adopted, uses his simple comic book movie to show how emotionally complicated this can be. Superman doesn't find what he's looking for in the dead remains of Krypton; he screws up nearly every relationship in his adoptive home by leaving; and finally, he casts out Luthor's New Krypton, definitively hurling a heavily symbolic chunk of his birth planet into space--without solving any of his problems back on Earth. Instead he chooses to simply accept them as problems he must live with.

Aside from the adoption issues, consider that at the end of Superman 2, the hero had just sacrificed his best chance at personal happiness with the love of his life. His magic kiss made her forget, but he couldn't. I might want to take a road trip under those circumstances. And again, Superman Returns points out all of the negative consequences of Superman's decision to put his own desires first--which either works as a thematic echo of Superman 2 or makes you wonder if the guy will ever learn.

I don't know how it will play out in any sequels, but for the purposes of this movie, Superman's son, and Lois's relationship with Richard White, feel like organic outgrowths of the characters and circumstances as previously established. The kid also brings the father/son themes of the first film full circle (probably in a way Donner never intended ) that now seems gratifyingly obvious in retrospect. Unfortunately, the goofy Metropolis Clark Kent is now an almost useless construct, as pining for Lois (as a proxy for all of humankind) was pretty much the only thing that anchored him to the identity. Perhaps it's no coincidence that the Clark persona disappears from the back half of the picture, once the question of his relationship with Lois is resolved.

But is their relationship resolved? I can't help thinking of this movie in terms of Raimi's Spider-Man. I strongly suspect that Singer and Warner's have made a conscious decision here to emulate Raimi blockbuster template: doomed romance, decent fella as rival for the girl's affections, a strong focus on how heroic sacrifice tend to ruin your personal life. But of course, Raimi closely based his Spider-Man movies on Donner's Superman pictures, so the two series at this point feel like two dogs chasing each other's tails in an endless circle. However, if Richard White is intended to fill the Harry Osborn/John Jameson role, then moving forward, his relationship with Lois might not be as stable or permanent at it seems at the end of this movie.

The most difficult aspect of the new movie for me has been wading through all of the media pontification about what Superman Is, what he Means, ad infinitum, watching critics and feature writers make points either too obvious or flat-out wrong about a subject I ponder nearly every day, and which they were paid to think about for six hours. Actually, after 30+ years of reading, watching and thinking about Superman, I feel no compulsion to make any grand, definitive statement about the character or what he represents to the greater culture. (For that you'll have to take the class.) All I can say with any degree of certainty at this point is that Anthony Lane is, in blogger parlance, a total wanker. Although it is very nice for him to point out the absurdity of everyone's inability to see through Clark Kent's disguise. How could no one have ever caught that before?

Lane is also still earning that reputation as a master of comic writing. The name Jor-El sounds like "a failed airline"? That's some Dorothy Parker-level shit right there. I know I feel more smugly superior to, and wearied by the rest of the culture having read Lane's review, which is usually the point. It's wonderful of the studios to make all these pictures to serve as punch lines to Lane's uptown Rex Reed routine.

And now, I implore every last one of the Warner Brothers. Please: bring on Brainiac.

President, Emphasis Added

2006-06-27T14:34:00.000-05:00

On Social Security (6/27/06):
If we can't get it done this year, I'm going to try next year. And if we can't get it done next year, I'm going to try the year after that, because it is the right thing to do. It's just so easy to say, let somebody else deal with it.

On Iraq (3/21/06):
[Withdrawal of U.S. forces] will be decided by future presidents and future governments of Iraq.

Super Emotional

2006-06-22T14:00:00.000-05:00

It's unavoidable. Next Wednesday night I will, at some point, cry into my Sour Patch Kids.

Then again, I've been known to cry at Disney cartoons. (Don't die, Beast! Belle loves you!)

Enigmas

2006-06-20T11:42:00.000-05:00

Rock mystery: At iTunes, type in "Message to The Boys" or "Pool and Dive" and the search turns up a link to the Replacements. Yet those songs and the new greatest hits album are, as of yet, nowhere to be found.

Comics mystery: Who will be teaching Introduction to the Graphic Novel at his alma mater this winter? Can his comic book purchases now be written off on his taxes? What is the answer to the extra credit question "Why is Krypto the Super Dog the most awesome ever of all time?"

Blog mystery: Where the hell have I been lately? One three-sentence post a week is bullshit.

Film mystery: Why does Peter Tork hate MovieBoy?

Magazine mystery: Not has Andy Pemberton deservedly been fired from Spin, but rather, how could someone so painfully incompetent have been hired in the first place? Also: is firing enough in this case? Is there any way to incarcerate Pemberton, or strip him of his citizenship ? (UPDATE: okay, he's apparently British, but I don't care, strip that.) For the morbid, Spin and other former print titans gasping their last here.

Seven Soldiers #1 Rescheduled

2006-06-14T12:20:00.000-05:00

New release date: 1963

...or September, whichever comes first.

I've never been bothered by these kinds of delays before; Planetary, From Hell, ACME Novelty, Eightball, All-Star Superman, I usually figure good comics take as long as they take. Even the greatest funnybooks are not exactly life's biggest priority.

But September? (After already being pushed from April to June.) That's five months. This couldn't have been planned any better?

Ah, well. At least the thing is 99.9% guarranteed to be worth the wait. But after such an awful scheduling implosion, how much of its original audience will the book retain?

Comics And Me

2006-06-13T14:17:00.000-05:00

This radioactive guy punched this other guy clear through a wall. Then his big-chested girlfriend got thrown in a woodchipper. Man, it sucked to be him! Then they made a movie about it.

And I liked it.

I Ain't Much, Baby--But I'm All I've Got

2006-06-13T13:30:00.000-05:00

• Warning: If you've been thinking about picking up a copy of "Cresta" by minor Madchester act The Hollow Men because you haven't heard it in 15 years, and your memories are fond, not only is it not as good as you remember, it's not very good at all. However, if you happen across a used copy of Digital Underground's second album, "Sons of the P", it is exactly as good as you remember, which is quite good indeed.

• It is now obvious that Ana Marie Cox, nee Wonkette, planned her current situation (Time magazine commentator who fakes detached befuddlement at those icky progressive blogger creatures) from the very beginning. All of her ass-fucking jokes on Wonkette were studiously non-partisan. Anal sex jokes involving Denny Hastert invariably found their balance in anal sex jokes about Teddy Kennedy. Her shtick was calculated to attract the interest of dirty old Beltway pundits of the Howard Kurtz variety, who quickly and happily let her into the club because she was eager (even over-eager, which they like, it strokes their egos) to play their game by their rules. No Stephen Colbert, she. Her career trajectory is invaluable because it shows that the central value of the Russert/Kurtz/Matthews class is abject, soul-free whoredom. It would be nice to think that Cox's Time gig is some kind of high-level Andy Kaufmanesque gag played on an oblivious elite. And so I shall.

• For those of you who know what I'm talking about, WRMC volume three is nearly ready for release. Matt has been distracted with stupid, trivial things like buying a house, but now he seems to have his priorities back in order and the Rock shall recommence.

• Speaking of the Rock, pandora.com is a thing of wonder. Don't know what kind of music you like? Don't worry, Pandora does. Go, check it out, spend the rest of the day not working (like me right now!) Artist suggestions: The Stone Roses, Tito Puente, Death Cab for Cutie, Kelly Willis, Stan Kenton, Danger Doom, English Beat, Urge Overkill, Count Basie, Thin Lizzy, James Kochalka.

• Abe, one hour after watching The Wiz: "Mom, do you have any dance routines?" (She did. And I love her.)

Down Through The Heavens

2006-06-07T21:41:00.000-05:00

In the immortal words of D. Ferris, it's like this and like this and like this:

Busby Declared Moral Victor in CA-50 Race

2006-06-07T07:37:00.000-05:00

San Diego County—Local school board member Francine Busby defeated her Republican rival Brian Bilbray last night in California district CA-50's special election for a seat in the Moral House of Representatives.

With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Busby led with 51,292 votes, or 45 percent. Bilbray trailed with 56,130 votes, or 50 percent.

"I can't wait to get started," said Busby, who said her moral victory hadn't truly sunk in until she received a congratulatory call from Moral Congressman Paul Hackett, of Ohio.

In recent years Moral Congress has seen a flurry of activity, passing legislation to repeal Bush's tax cuts, effect an orderly withdrawal from Iraq, support veterans, protect Social Security, ensure equal rights for gay people, bolster freedom of expression and strengthen the privacy rights of U.S. citizens. Busby says that there is still work to be done. "After all," she said, "we have a trillion dollar moral surplus to manage". Her primary legislative focus will be perfecting the universal health care bill, which is expected to pass unanimously. Moral Senator Max Cleland has already introduced a companion bill, although a late amendment opening up Texas oil fields to caribou grazing may hurt its chances in that chamber.

But Our Secret Internal GOP Polling Shows That Americans Want To Drink Themselves To Death With This President

2006-06-02T14:25:00.000-05:00

AP on the now daily allegations of murders of Iraqi civilians by U.S. troops:

"But the flow of revelations and investigations threatens to undermine Iraq's new government and public support in America for President Bush's management of the war."

Yes, imagine if all that public support for Bush's management of the war were undermined.

Oh, wait:

ABC/Washington Post Poll (May 11-15, 2006)

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq?"

Approve 32

Disapprove 66

Unsure 1

Dear God, What Have I Done to My Children?

2006-05-30T08:00:00.000-05:00

Friday
Abe (age 3): I want to be Batman!
Theo (age 7): I want to be Batman!
Abe: I'll be the Batman of Earth One.
Theo: No, you have to be the Batman of Earth Two.

Saturday
Abe (outside in polyester Thing costume, 85 degrees, sweating): It's clobberin' time!
Theo (from upstairs window): Yoo hoo, Ben, it's your Aunt Petunia!

Sunday
Me: Hey, Abe, let's go for a walk.
Abe: No, Dad, let's run. You be the Flash who died. I'll be the one who took his costume.

Happy And Sad At The Same Time

2006-05-21T21:38:00.000-05:00

Yesterday in the mail I got two periodicals: the new issue of The Big Takeover and the latest redesign of Spin. While both are ostensibly about music, the two magazines couldn't be more different. The Big Takeover, a biannual put out by veteran rock and roller Jack Rabid, is 232 pages of wall-to-wall copy. The front of the book is loaded with editorials, reviews of live shows and short takes on various artists. The middle of the magazine features in-depth interviews with Franz Ferdinand, the Decemberists, Ivy, New York Dolls, Bob Geldof and others. Many interviews run so long Rabid splits them across issues. The back 85 pages are perhaps the best part of the magazine, filled with hundreds of record reviews by Rabid and a small group of contributing writers. They are obsessed with music, they love it, they know its history and they clearly assume you do too. This magazine makes me very happy.

Spin, on the other hand, is more hideous than ever--I'm not exaggerating at all when I say Spin has enthusiastically transformed itself into People magazine. The redesign is so throughly stupid I almost thought it was an ironic joke. But no, I think the new "Hot/Not" Barometer section is exactly what it looks like. Few articles are longer than a single paragraph, and most of those serve as captions for celebrity photography--Pete Doherty visits son! Meet our new sex columnist! Worst of all are all the "Spin Out" pages throughout the magazine devoted to partying. We're treated to a full spread of Parker Posey's party pictures. A spread of 19-year-old loser club-goers (typical photo: white geek in horn rims and hoodie flashing gang signs) answering the question "What kind of musical instrument would you be?" Six pages of blurbs about heavy metal karaoke bars in Atlanta, dance clubs in San Diego--loaded with pictures of stupid people getting trashed and mugging for the camera. I suppose I'm just not part of Spin's target demographic, which, evidently, is fucking idiots. To say that this would make Bob Guccionne Jr. spin in his grave (were he dead) is an indication of just how awful this is. While it is true that there are now twice as many reviews, the deeper truth is that all but one of the reviews are 2 to 3 sentences in length. The editor-in-chief, Andy Pemberton, says in his Editor's Letter up front, "In preparation for summer, Spin has thrown off the cloak of conformity and donned the leopard-print Speedos of adventure...the all-new Spin is tan, lithe and sinewy...the new Spin is now buff, bold and ready to throw open the doors and go wherever the future leads. I do hope you'll slap on some SPF 45 and come join in the fun".

No, really, he actually wrote that shit and got it published in a national magazine. As for myself, based on this first issue, I hope Pemberton is someday tried for war crimes in the Hague. Spin magazine makes me very sad.

Help Me Get Hip, Assuming That's Even Possible

2006-05-15T11:29:00.000-05:00

I'm often at least a year behind what the cool kids are listening to. The trip to WRMC, with all those cool albums in the new bin, inspired me to turn from the college nostalgia I've been mired in for months to newer music. This week I'm playing catch-up to the tune of maybe 4 CDs, but I can't make up my mind. Please help me pick 4 from the following options:

Apologies to the Queen Mary--Wolf Parade
Chutes Too Narrow--The Shins
Broken Social Scene--Broken Social Scene
Funeral--The Arcade Fire
Catch/Release--The Rakes
Illinois--Sufjan Stevens
A Grand Don't Come For Free--The Streets
Separation Sunday--The Hold Steady
I Am A Bird Now--Antony & The Johnsons
Fox Confessor Brings The Flood--Neko Case
Everything All The Time--Band of Horses

Any other reccomendations are welcome. For conext, my most recent acquisitions include My Morning Jacket, Gnarls Barkley, the Go Team, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Built to Spill, the new Neil Young, Springsteen and Gomez.