popcultureadventures

[popcultureadventures]

Comics Critique: Thor: God of Thunder 1-11

There is a lack of in-depth comic criticism going around, isn’t there? I understand why: just between Marvel, DC and Image there is far too much content to review on a monthly basis considering what I assume would be a very small readership. But still, I can’t help but be disappointed with the lack of smart, critical writing going around about contemporary “pop” comics. Expect to see a few think pieces pop up around the launch of a new #1 from a current indie darling, or a progressive super hero book, but expect even more to see that media attention immediately vanish.  Talk about self defeating. If no one can be bothered to put real thought into critiquing these books, then why should the writers and artists and editors ever put any effort into making sure they can stand up to real thought? Anyway, why sit around feeling bad when you could be providing a good example? I’m going to try and write at least a few words about each comic I read. And what I read and when will be all over the place and with no real rhyme or reason :)

Anyway, let’s get on with it and cross the Rainbow Bridge to Asgardia, shall we?

Thor: God of Thunder is the starting point for the current Thor run, written by Jason Aaron and here pencilled by Esad Ribic. You’ve probably seen it in the news as the origin of the “female Thor” that caused the usual boring arguments that we should have worked through in the 90s. But that’s all I’ll say about that. This book I’m actually reviewing comes well before female Thor, and stars regular dick and Mjölnir wielding Thor in a fairly classical adventure. Actually, it stars three Thor’s with dicks, but only two with Mjölnir. But I digress. There are two main ideas Aaron is playing with here: The first is that of a new villain, the God Butcher, who is a seriously powerful and ambitious entity dead set on killing every “God” in the universe, whether they be from Earth’s pantheon or others. The second is the way Aaron splits his story between three different iterations of Thor, the past, present, and future, in the first arc before bringing them together in the second arc for a multi Thor beat down.

Unfortunately, I think Aaron seriously missed a trick or two in his execution of both these concepts. When you’re sure a story is going to go one way and it instead veers off into another well developed direction it can be a nice surprise. What’s more disappointing is when, after developing an interesting idea, the story abandons it and doesn’t find anything of substance to replace it. These issues suffer from just such disappointment. The direction of Aaron’s set up seems fairly clear. Past Thor is arrogant, and prone to making stupid mistakes. In 893 A.D. his initial encounter with the God Butcher is going to go horribly wrong, and instead of owning up to his mistakes he will hide them, so as to protect his pride. Present Thor has to pay for his previous incarnation’s hubris, proving again his moral compass has evolved since Odin banished him to Earth. Meanwhile future Thor, now king of a destroyed Asgard, is going to foreshadow future stories and be a snarky bad ass. This is what I had pegged from about issue 2, and indeed, this is kind of what happens. But it’s all very muddled. Let’s examine the text in detail.

In this page we see one of Gorr’s victims explain to present Thor that “Everything he’s doing now, it’s all because of this cave and what you did to him there.” Keep in mind this is before we find out what past Thor did.

Later, we see past Thor captured by Gorr and seemingly about to give in to torture. He’s rescued in the next panel, and so Aaron sustains the question of "What Thor did in the cave”.

Here’s are the pages crossing between past Thor’s showdown with Gorr post rescue, and present Thor putting up with Gorr’s evil plan exposition dump. The explanation provided doesn’t really explain why we should blame Thor for Gorr’s current actions. It just adds up to “I was killing a lot of God’s, but then Thor almost stopped me, so I realised I had to kill even more and also create a crazy evil master plan”. So we’re meant to blame past Thor for, what, not checking for a body? Can we really expect a viking in 893 A.D. to be genre savvy? It seems Aaron is building up to past Thor having committed some kind of shocking “Original Sin” (haha), but all that foreshadowing doesn’t amount to anything. Except...

And so we finally see Thor’s infamous pride surface. He demands that “we will never speak of this day again.” At first this confused me, due to the lack of direct explanation for what exactly he wished to keep secret. But I guess he just doesn’t want word getting out that he was defeated and held prisoner?

Now, it’s always tricky when you get the feeling that your preconceived notions of a text have influenced your reaction, positive or negative. In this case, I know that nu Thor is coming. I know that original flavour Thor is going to be deemed unworthy and lose Mjölnir. The specifics, I have no idea of. But I was expecting Aaron to begin seeding this development with some hints as to Thor’s flaws, flaws which could easily be consistent with many prior characterisations. And he really does’t. Even when past Thor appears next to Thors 2 and 3 in the second arc through timey wimey machinations, he isn’t characterised as stupid or arrogant as he has been by other writers. He’s just a little more rash, and his no holds barred heroics even come off kind of cool?

I mean, space shark!

Unfortunately, I think that by not following through on his setup for past Thor Aaron severely limits the potential for Gorr the God Butcher, who could have been a great new villain in an era where such creations are in short supply. Villains are almost always more effective when their point of view has a twisted (or even perfectly sensible) logic to it. If past Thor had done something actually heinous than Gorr might have a decent reason for wanting all God’s extinct. I hate to sound like too much of a backseat writer when I should be discussing what’s on the page instead of what’s not. There just seems to be a lot of missed potential here.

Gorr’s grand motivations provide the main thematic backbone of the text. He hails from a barren, perhaps post apocalyptic planet where he and his tribe struggle to survive. He loses his mother to predators, his partner dies while pregnant with one of his children, and he struggles to provide for his remaining children. All the while, his culture demands complete fealty to their pantheon. The fact that Gorr’s people often sacrifice what little resources they have as offerings to these God’s angers him, when no matter how much anyone prays the call never seems to be answered. Eventually Gorr is abandoned by his tribe for being a heretic, and just as he resigns himself to death he encounters cosmic beings locked in combat. After stealing the power of one of these beings he takes to the stars  and goes about killing Gods, convinced that they do the universe more harm than good.

It’s certainly interesting that during issue 1 the reader is introduced to present Thor in a sequence that reverses this story. On a similarly barren planet, albeit one where the resident culture is without belief God, a thirsty child prays to any God’s out there in the universe to bring rain. Thor, hearing the prayer, provides amply in an heroic act. This alien species also provides a striking resemblance to Gorr’s. 

So, two conflicting stories with conflicting morals. Gorr’s story will jive well with an atheist outlook, while Thor’s story will seem ridiculous. But Thor is a comic about God’s, and thus it’s going to be about faith, and every comic that truly works with the character is going to be directly addressing this issue and either asking the reader to believe or question. Here, Aaron seems to be asking us to believe, if not in an ultimate God, then in Thor the comic character. Thor, who even in his supposedly most flawed incarnation is heroic and fair. Thor, who answers a child’s prayer from across the universe. Thor, who will fight for Asgard until the end of time.

Gorr’s story ends when it becomes clear that, by destroying all God’s, he has become a de facto God himself. Ever in denial, the only way he can admit this obvious fact is through a family created from his powers, seemingly built from different aspects of his psyche. Aaron telegraphs Gorr’s fate as the “God of Hypocrisy” early on, and while the reveal might have been a cute twist in a 2 or 3 issue story, as the conclusion to 11 chapters of build up it feels too convenient as a way to quickly justify Gorr’s defeat.

So, rather then providing a deconstruction of the Thor character, these issues of God of Thunder seem to instead be a celebration of the character in a few of his different configurations. The fact that Aaron consistently rejects or fails to address criticisms of the character, after decades of post Watchmen comics deconstructing iconic heroes, could almost be said to be a fresh subversion in itself. And yet it can’t help but feel slight, because it’s a story missing a serious dramatic arc for its hero. I’m still excited to see what Aaron does with Thor next, but I hope he does get around to properly testing his protagonist.

[popcultureadventures]

Role Playing, Dragon Slaying, and Discovering Who We Used to Be

NOTE: This is a post I wrote a year and a bit ago but kind of forgot to finish. It’s still very under cooked tbh but there’s not really any point in cleaning it up seeing as how the me of today would approach it very differently.  I hope it at least makes a little bit of sense.

Recently I made the now rare decision to seriously commit to a sizable game. Dragon Age: Inquisition is the third in a series of dragon slaying simulators during which you can also partake in side activities such as saving the world from an all powerful evil, making tough decisions about the future of society and generally being the centre of attention at all times. Bioware, the studio responsible, are quite good at making these monstrous, fully voice acted RPGs, though I do wish they would give some of their tropes a rest. There’s only so many times you can save the world before it becomes hard to give a shit.

I said Inquisition was the third in its series, and one of Bioware’s favourite tricks is providing the ability to import your old save file into a sequel, theoretically allowing you to carry through a personalised world state between games. In practice this usually just means the odd dialogue change (“Hey, remember when previous protagonist X banged companion Y? Good times.”), but it can be a nice touch. Due to, I suppose, the generally buggy nature of the tech and the generational leap on ye olde consoles Bioware opted to abandon direct save transferral for Inquisition and instead made a website called The Keep, in which you define what your previous choices were and save them as a world state to import into your game when you begin.

This makes for an awkward situation. I don’t know about you but I don’t actually remember everything I did in a videogame I played four years ago. I was fairly certain about the bigger picture stuff: Who was king, which companions I’d had, who I’d “romanced” (Humorously, in Dragon Age: Origins a romance consisted mainly of showering an interested party with gifts until they fuck you, so I always remember to use the term in air quotes). The smaller stuff though was completely wiped from my brain. I didn’t even remember most of these side quests happening, let alone what my decisions were within them.

Thankfully I still had Origins installed and my save files were intact.

Stepping into a portal, I am transported back to the world of 2011…

2011

Your middle years of schooling can easily be your worst. Gone is the innocence of the first decade of your life, replaced instead by the intense posturing of early adolescence. You want freedom without knowing the responsibility it entails. Unlike some high schools, which can do a decent job of treating students like adults-adjacent, middle schools will eternally be treating 14 year olds like they haven’t developed free thought. I saw this all around me, but my middle school years were actually quite enjoyable because they featured one thing that my earlier years had not: Friends. Having a small group of people who would at least let me hang around with them was a huge relief, and automatically a marked improvement. Despite all those things I mentioned before being absolutely accurate, I largely enjoyed grades 7-9.

This also marked the first time I owned a computer capable of properly modern games, and with that came many joyous nights, school or otherwise, of illicitly playing into the wee hours of the morning. Dragon Age: Origins is probably the most all consuming game I played from this era. I imagine even just the single playthrough took up 6 months of my life. I remember it particularly fondly.

NOW

I load up the last save point, which is the post final battle epilogue. It’s unnervingly happy. A whole epics worth of characters, most of them good friends, greet me, bright and friendly. They thank me and detail the exciting plans they have for the rest of their life. There is not a single person dissatisfied. Me, or my character, more or less did everything perfectly. All the white hats are getting their desserts. The black hats are vanquished.

How boring.

2011

Razzman the wood elf (in distinctly un elfy armour)

He is a wood elf, beautiful and pure. Though an outsider to the dominant, human society, his grace and poise gives him no trouble earning respect from even the most intense racists. Why would you want to be a city elf tainted by generations of serfhood, or an arrogant human, or a silly looking drawf, when you could be this guy? He is clearly the world’s saviour.

He knows there is always a right answer. The right answer is the one in the middle, the one that satisfies everyone equally. The right answer is the boring one. Pop music is only for the stupid and religion is only for the brainwashed. If you’re smart enough, if you’re gifted enough, there is no grey in the world.

I thought I was smart. I thought I was gifted. I thought of the life around me as a ditch that I’d claw myself out of because I was better than others. I had a superiority complex, obviously. I don’t miss being that person but to be morbidly honest I do miss getting to exist as that person. Life was easier. I may have been stupid, sexist and and spotty, but it felt really natural to be all those things.

NOW

It’s more of a struggle now. It’s harder to know what to do, because I realise there is nothing that deserves to be loved unconditionally. This is what I learnt straight away. These days when I construct a story (which is what you’re really doing while playing an RPG) I’m more interested in a complex and flawed rendition than I am in the happiest endings. Conflict is what makes a narrative sing, and RPGs have an unfortunate tendency (one which I fell prone to) to encourage the safe option that doesn’t make anyone angry or generate any conflict. Plus it usually gets you the most loot.

I realise I’ve just swapped one archetype for another. Instead of the classical definition of a Hero I’ve gravitated towards a modernist interpretation. Neither are inherently more interesting, or unique.

Just as I cringe at the naivete and childishness of my Dragon Age character I have no doubt that in a few years time I will look back and cringe at this very blog. “Marvel at the poor understanding of sentence structure! Be amazed by the lousy humour! Experience the shock of intense procrastination!” This is just human nature. But I think, I at least hope, that things are a little more interesting now. I hope that my character in Inquisition won’t be a paragon without personality but rather the broad strokes of a real person with flaws and fears and dreams. I hope this blog is more open to others and certainly funnier than the snarky tripe I thought I was most intelligent for writing on Facebook when I was 13. I hope that all this hand wringing about the complexities of growing up will result in some kind of positive conclusion. And I’m glad I got to experience a most rare and powerful thing: a true insight into my past. It can give you hope to see how much you’ve changed. It shows you how much higher you’re capable of going.

[popcultureadventures]

About to install windows on a Mac. Apologies in advance if the universe folds in on itself.

[popcultureadventures]

Oh Peter you rascal (Amazing Spider-Man 1963 #20)

[popcultureadventures]

"Things Just Ain't What They Used to Be": A History of Teenagers (Come Dancing)

PART 1

Contrary to popular belief, there is still well crafted pop music on the radio. Over exposure can force you to develop a hatred for whatever four chords are currently the most popular and that’s fair enough. But there’s no denying that, say, Royals is a deep cut. It’s not spectacularly meaningful or revolutionary, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a great song.

*clicks fingers*

Now, let’s have a look at the list of the top Australian singles for 1978:

You’re the One that I Want - Oliva Newton-John and John Travolta

Mull of Kintyre - Wings

Rivers of Babylon - Boney M

Stayin’ Alive - Bee Gees

Black is Black - La Belle Epoque

Macho Man - Village People

It’s a Heartache - Bonnie Tyler

Three Times a Lady - The Commodores

You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth - Meatloaf

Baker Street - Gerry Rafferty

On the Rivers of Babylon youtube video JORGEPSOUSA911 commented 3 weeks ago:

“Hey people, THIS is MUSIC, not the garbage you hear everywhere these days”

If you are a really big fan of Boney M., I apologise in advance. Maybe they do truly deserve to go down with the classics. I just don’t see it. The disco drums are a terrible fit for the song, the jaunty acoustic guitar is grating and for a top 10 pop hit the lyrics are awfully cluttered. If you think otherwise: Cool. But I’m sure you could find a couple of songs on that list that you think are just as underwhelming.

The comments on all these songs are filled with people repeating the same old adage: “Man, music just ain’t what it used to be.” We’re used to seeing these comments made about the Beatles or MIles Davis and in the face of such awe inspiring perfection it’s fair to nod your head in approval (although I, of course, believe otherwise). But… Boney M? Really???

It’s interesting but predictable that the songs that the rest of the world has long forgotten (for good reason) are still seemingly held up as the apex of art by the generation they originally appealed to. It’s the same for the 60s, the 80s, the 90s, and I suspect it’s been the same for all of human history and will be the same for all of our future.    

As time goes by people die, as all people do, and these songs will be forgotten forever. When you put it like that it seems sad, but it’s probably for the best that in a hundred years time no one will know the name Celine Dion.

  PART 2

Pop culture is ruled by teens. Or, at least, it has been for the past 70 years. Ironically, it was only once the adults started labelling them Teenagers that there was no going back. This was now a group of people, united by common behaviours, emotions and ideologies. And this group of people could be sold to like no other. I may love to go on wistfully about the cultural and artistic value of pop culture but there is no denying that we’re talking about a monetary pursuit. It just turns out money, free time, boredom and susceptibility to peer pressure happens to be the most potent mix for $$$.

So those who would spend the most money became the guardians of pop culture. It makes perfect sense. But once you’re out of that age bracket, as a consumer you become irrelevant. A dinosaur. New pop music is no longer for you, so you stop listening to new pop music. You listen to the pop music that was made for you, and you cling onto it. “Why does music suck so much now?” “When did it all become so vapid?” “When did it stop being made me for me?”

But how did this work before teenagers? If you were a 17 year old white American in 1874, what did you do to get your musical kicks? How did you shove the finger to the establishment and draw a line in the sand, saying “that was you, but this is me”?

Well, you probably did it by dancing. The evolution of dancing in ages past is shockingly similar to how we view musical genres now. Styles came and went, each one viewed as more immoral (read: too sexy) than the last by older generations. Older generations who fruitlessly lashed out against the younger ones, calling for a ban to these devilishness new forms of partying. But throughout the 19th century the popularity of ballroom dancing was dwindling as the steps grew more complicated and the people of the era started seeking out more casual fun. New styles were introduced such as German, which has more in common with musical chairs than the slow twirl of moustachioed men and over dressed, heat stroke suffering women we might normally associate with the period. Change was afoot, and it was change that the old guard was going to resist. They always do.

If we move forward just a few decades we find ourselves at a point in history when everyone has just started getting into this Ragtime thing, changing both dance and race relations forever. Just think about it: A genre invented by lower class African-Americans later appropriated by whites. Why, that’s unheard of! Except…Hmmmm. Hey, waitaminute!

The more things change, the more they stay the same. So even if Teenagers did not exist as such, even if the social norms and values were of an alien construction to what we expect today, the ebb and flow of art and culture is all too familiar.

EPILOGUE

On the Royals YouTube video blackeyedog commented:

“Terrible song by another modern day no-talent. The fact that it is played on the radio at all is proof of the abysmal state of music in this dumbed-down 21st century”

Prince Vegeta replied:

“Shut up bitch” 

[popcultureadventures]

An Introduction (Cause My Life Has Begun)

Is music important?

Some people will tell you music is their life. Others see music as just being there. I personally like to think that I’ve listened to so much music my blood is made up of the best melodies and rhythms from ABBA to The Zombies. I would like to say that when I bleed, I bleed Dylan and when I cry, I cry sweet James Brown tears but of course that would be a fucking awful thing to say.

Some people like to turn on the radio during their morning commute. Some people like to go to shows and get hammered. And that’s it. And that’s okay.

But do we, as a societal whole, value it? Is music so important to our way of life that it should be treated with respect? Only the important music, or all music? What is important music? Good music, or just popular music? Does it need to be both?

But I’m not just talking about music.

One amazingly shitty intro later and I’m ready to tell you what I’m actually going to be writing about. I’m writing about intellectualism. Because while I think it’s okay to live your life listening to the same 5 shitty songs over and over again, I do not think it’s okay to deride people because they do otherwise. I do not think it’s okay to look at someone with their own opinions and taste and say “hipster”.

That word. We’ll save that word for later.

Maybe I’m seriously misguided. Maybe those of us who care too much are all just arrogant. Putting too much into something that’s meant to be fun. Maybe we have taken the fun out of it. Our pretentious over-analysing sucking all the enjoyment out of everything. “Man, it’s just a movie about robots blowing up other robots. Stop taking it so seriously.” Hopefully when the dust is settled I’ll have found out.

I also want to look at history. There is I think a frustrating tendency to look at popular culture as only existing post World Wars. Sure, we have composers and authors and all that. We have the canon of Mozart and Dickens and Austen, to not even speak of civilisations outside of this western hemisphere. But we don’t have celebrities. Our view of history has been stripped of all the tabloids and controversy and FUN. But human beings have been exactly the same for thousands of years and I refuse to believe that rock stars and pin up boys and bizarre foreign pop sensations are exclusive to our time and place. I want to find the Lady Gaga of feudal Japan. I want to try and find evidence for how we’ve always been the same and that’s a good thing because it means we can all love each other the same.

And hopefully eventually I’ll stop talking about myself. But not yet.

I had a girlfriend who saw my love of pop culture as an undesirable personality trait. That’s not quite true. It was all those pesky negative opinions that she couldn’t stand. She thought I was too harsh, that it was a waste of time to read all these reviews and form all these opinions and spend so much time thinking about everything. She listened to bad country pop and couldn’t critically analyse her way out of a few layers of bubble wrap. She was/is also an insane crazy person, so take from that what you will.

I vividly remember her asking me why it was that I seemed to hate so many things.

It’s a bit of a contradiction that once you become a pop enthusiast the critical mind you develop stops you from enjoying a lot of stuff.  But I think, and here’s the point that I want to try and hammer home in my writing, that pop culture is wonderful and deserves to be talked about and loved, and yes, sometimes hated. It’s the most awesome reflection of our society and fundamental humanity and if having a greater understanding of all those things means I have a harder time sitting through Super-Special Teenager Saves the World Part 5 then that’s a trade-off I will gladly take.

Not that Super-Special Teenager Saves the World wasn’t good this year. I just thought it fell short of the greatness that was Super Powered White Man Saves America 2014.

On the one hand, it’s easier than ever to be seen and heard. The internet has the potential to get your ideas out there regardless of who you are in reality. Alternatively, there are millions of people trying to do just that, and the idea of presenting something new and unique in such a world is exhausting. I’m not doing or saying anything new. I’m not even going to try.

But I’ll do my very best to repeat all our past mistakes.