#but it's still a beautiful read and much more poignant than anything written by ellis

[beevean]

You! You get it!

What was even the point of including Hector and Isaac, if you changed their delicate, equal relationship into “Isaac thinks Hector is a moron, Hector doesn’t even seem to remember Isaac exists”? Are they even foils of each other? In what way, “Isaac is a super flawless badass and Hector is a poor little meow meow”? :V

And I was so mad when I saw the flashback of Dracula manipuating Hector. Nevermind that it completely reverses the canon fact of Hector being the favorite (which makes his betrayal even more poignant IMO), but, there’s not a single person in the show that even respects him! Dracula, Isaac, Carmilla, Lenore - everyone seems to think of him as a useful idiot at best! And Hector really does nothing to dispel the notion! No joke, when S3 started with Isaac wanting to kill Hector, I thought “get in line boy, everyone already hates Hector, you ain’t special and you’re just doing this because the wiki demands it”. I rarely saw a character being so throroughly disrespected by the narrative.

(and if someone comes to me saying “oh but lenore does respect hector in s4″ i will bite them. see if i don’t. fuck that manipulative bratty rapist.)

I really liked the “I want to live” scene, I did. Maybe it’s because, despite all my gripes with N!Isaac, I can’t get enough of his VA and how he speaks. But I can’t get over how Isaac acknowledges how Hector had no agency in what he did. That’s not forgiveness, that’s a slap in the face - yeah, it took 2 seasons for Hector to actually do shit, didn’t it. And Hector is just like “oh you’ve changed” (yeah thanks for telling us, show. again. i didn’t forget how much netflixvania loves to tell you stuff as if you were as stupid as hector), but, did he even spare a thought about Isaac all this time? What is their relationship now? Are they even friends? Why should I care about Isaac’s feelings for Hector, when he went from “that idiot” to “fuck him imma kill him” to “oh right he was an idiot and nothing that happened was his fault”?

(I also can’t get over how Hector wanted to resurrect Dracula while Isaac was the one learning to move on from him... they fucking swapped the characters and everyone worships this Isaac that is actually Hector in disguise HATRED AND MALICE HECTOR WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE ONE REALIZING THAT HE CAN BE MORE THAN A TOOL)

EVERYTHING NETFLIX FANS LOVE ABOUT N!ISAAC, THE COD MANGA DID BETTER 17 YEARS AGO. I AM READY TO DIE ON THIS HILL.

But then again, we’re supposed to feel sorry for poow widdle Isaac because the mean bad humans didn’t like that he was travelling with demons... which also gave him a convenient excuse to kill and build an even bigger army while still being “sympathetic”. So yeah. Bias all around. Hector is fetish material, Isaac gets to have everything he wants and gets the profound speeches. Guess Ellis didn’t find the idea of him suffering appealing enough :\

[studentsofshield]

What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?

By Vincent Faust

(This was originally published on October 25, 2015)

Is Superman still relevant?

This is a question DC has struggled to answer since he came back from his heavily publicized death in 1993 (if not further back). An almost innumerable number of casual superhero fans will argue that Supes is no longer relevant. Legions of hardcore comics fanboys will go to bat for this position too. He’s too idealistic. He wears underwear over his pants. His secret identity is dumb. Why is our intended number one superhero not even from our planet? He’s way, way too overpowered. But at the same time, with all that power he doesn’t do all that he can do, he holds back. He’s an outdated hero from a forgotten era. These same sentiments are thrown around to a lesser extent toward Captain America. What went wrong? Can the “Big Blue Boy Scout” be saved? Joe Kelly’s revered “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way” tries to address this question.

Action Comics Vol 1 775 (2001) Written by Joe Kelly; penciled by Doug Mahnke and Lee Bermejo; inked by Tom Nguyen, Dexter Vines and others; colored by Rob Schwager; lettered by Comicraft

Superman hasn’t had a truly mass appeal ongoing title in years. Superman and Action have been critical and financial disappointments since the New 52, outside of the esoteric bits Grant Morrison did that were bound to not be film source material or mega sellers. James Robinson, Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns (among others) were juggling him before the reboot with middling success. It seems that almost every great Superman story is a limited series or one-shot. All-Star, Birthright, Secret Identity, Man of Steel, Red Son, For All Seasons. Is he just hard to write for?

Much of the public dislike and misunderstanding of Superman has to do with his appearances in media outside of comics. Superhero adaptations had almost universally been bubblegum for decades. Batman ‘66 defined campiness, intentionally or not. Early serials were poorly adapted, purely picking up the superficial aspects of the characters and stories that had proven so memorable on the page. 

In 1978 Richard Donner changed that forever. He set out to prove that superheroes could work on the silver screen. Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman were involved. He figured out how to achieve the flight effect convincingly. It worked. The film was a massive success. Millions were inspired by Christopher Reeve’s portrayal. Everyone knows John Williams’ iconic theme just the same as his other masterpieces from Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter or Jurassic Park. They can whistle it on cue. Despite it’s successes, the film started a blight on Superman’s reputation that wouldn’t be realized until years later.

Donner can’t be faulted for being a devout Superman fan. Years later, he would co-plot an acclaimed Superman story with Geoff Johns. However, perhaps he was too into the early Silver Age stories of his youth or had too much boundless imagination. His Superman had nigh endless powers. At the climax of the film, Lois Lane dies. Superman infamously flies around the Earth so fast that he manages to reverse time and save her life. Though arguably cheap plotting, the idea was novel and it made for a visually and emotionally memorable set piece. This stood out to the audiences though. It was a great movie, but people like underdogs and characters with faults. Spider-Man is ridiculously popular for a reason. The dude can just reverse time whenever he screws up and has only one weakness to a rare rock. 

Jerry Seinfeld, another fan of Supes, brought this argument even more into the mainstream through bits on his show and some Amex commercials. 

In his original stories by Siegel and Shuster, Superman could simply leap over buildings in a single bound. The more writers, artists and crazy stories that he was strung through, the more powers he picked up along the way. Flight, super strength, super speed, heat vision, X-ray vision, super hearing, super breath (with freezing ability), and depending on your canon, literally anything else. Post-Crisis on Infinite Earths, John Byrne tried hard to boil Superman down to his basic power set. The problem was that the average American was not reading comics in 1986. Their vision of the Man of Steel was still Richard Donner’s interpretation, and neither Bryan Singer nor Zach Snyder has done much to waver that in the meantime.

Parallel to the public’s souring on Superman, a new crop of superheroes was popping up that directly challenged his ideals. In the 1990s, Image comics boasted how their characters and stories dealt with the moral grey and weren’t simple 1940s cardboard cutouts. They killed the murderers, rapists and child molesters of the world. Marvel and DC understandably chased after this success and pumped up characters like the Punisher, Deadpool (interestingly Joe Kelly is considered Deadpool’s biggest innovator and signature creator) or Lobo. Though in retrospect many of these stories are considered garbage, they sold bucket loads. 

A new wave of writers and artists were popping up too. Some brilliant men from across the pond with trademark UK dark humor and cynicism to infuse into these stories. Though your early image anti-heroes were throwaway pieces of shit, some of these books were genius. Warren Ellis and Bryan Hitch’s Authority was arguably the peak of this. A superhero team with the motto “by any means necessary.” They fought “God” at a point. Though not the top of the charts, the Authority is easily one of the most influential projects of the era, its DNA of moral ambiguity and wide screen action bleeding into everything under the sun.

“What’s So Funny” starts with a new superhero team making their entrance by obliterating a giant mutated creature, along with half of the city around the battle. They announce themselves as The Elite by forcefully downloading their manifesto to every computer in the world (a la Apple and U2). They then completely demolish a team of villains that had aims to turn Tokyo to rubble. 

The reader is introduced to these infamous newcomers on the scene. We have Menagerie, a buxom woman with a symbiotic suit reminiscent of Venom or Witchblade; Coldcast, a comically humongous, muscular Black man accessorized with manacles and chains with abilities of electromagnetism; The Hat, an elemental with his eponymous fedora from which he can pull anything he desires; and their leader Manchester Black, a smoking, Union Jack graphic tee, Doc Martens and leather trench coat-clad, purple-haired, incredibly powerful telekinetic. Black’s inspiration is practically transparent, whether it is The Authority’s Jenny Sparks or more broadly the British writers aforementioned. 

Superman comes across them multiple times, witnessing their scorched Earth tactics. All the while, their approval ratings are soaring. 

A powerful series of panels shows a group of young kids playing “superheroes” like they would cowboys and Indians or army games. The kid playing Superman is pissed and storms off with, “I can’t KILL you, but YOU can kill ME! How can I stop you if I CAN’T KILL?” His friend dressed as Black replies, “You CAN’T. So let us kill YOU. And you can be SOMEONE ELSE.” Over a beautiful Metropolis sunset, “Okay, kill me an’ I’ll be somebody COOL. Bein’ Superman IS SO BEAT” is captioned.

In bed, Superman discusses with Lois his plans to put the Elite in line. 

Superman - “People have to know that there’s ANOTHER WAY, Lois. They have to hear a voice of COMPASSION and FAITH instead of SPITE and ANGER. They have to see that SOMEONE believes in humanity strongly enough…”

Lois - “To DIE for them?”

Supes requests the battle be held off-planet to prevent collateral damage (something slightly altered for the animated adaptation of this story). 

Black monologues that “This isn’t about LOVE. It’s about removing the cancers that fester in us and flushing them down the TOILET. The people don’t WANT babysitters in SPANDEX to slap them on the wrist when they’re bad. They want SURGEONS to cut the ugly bits from them and CHARGE them through the moral NOSE. DOCTOR MANCHESTER BLACK at your service.”

After initially wrecking the Man of Steel and thinking they have won without contest, the Elite are surprised by Superman coming back and seemingly killing all of them off without much effort. 

Before dealing with Black, he’s asked “How does it feel to have your FLAWS EXPLOITED? To be DECONSTRUCTED? How does it feel to WATCH DREAMS DIE?”

He proceeds to whip out the heat vision, to the amusement of Black. Supes then explains that he just performed surgery and removed the abnormality in his foe’s brain that lent him his powers. Black breaks down in tears and yells that the Big Blue has shown the world that he’s no better than the Elite. Superman turns to the cameras and explains how Black’s morals that he briefly borrowed aren’t right. He states, in an almost fourth wall breaking manner, “I don’t LIKE my heroes ugly and mean. Just don’t BELIEVE in it.” 

The issue ends with the poignant final page that begins this post.

“Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us. And on my soul, I swear… until my dream of a world where dignity, honor and justice becomes the reality we all share, I’ll never stop fighting. Ever.”

Through this story Joe Kelly argues that, even with his endless powers, Superman is still important to our world, both in the DCU and in real life, as a powerful aspiration to reach toward. 

Superman is often compared to Jesus. In reality, a pair of Jews gave birth to this monolithic figure that an entire fictional mythos revolves around. On the page, a mighty civilization sends their last son to ours to protect and inspire us. Cinematographers are especially huge fans of pumping up this parallel. Superheroes taught me my morality. Peter Parker, Bruce Banner, Bruce Wayne and Charles Xavier are my biblical figures.

Action Comics 775 is considered one of the greatest Superman stories of all time. Hell, it’s considered one of the greatest comic stories of all time. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I have to agree that it is one of the best Supes stories of all time. It isn’t without its faults though. 

The biggest flaw of the story is pacing. A running start to immediately introduce us to the Elite is a great idea. The initial reactions of media types and then-president Lex Luthor are handled well.

Once Superman actually meets the Elite, the plot moves along way too jarringly. Part of the problem is the conveyance of action. The quickness of the first scene makes sense to show the sheer power of the Elite. Their splash page introduction is on point. The second fight they crash with the Klee-Tees suffers from poor storytelling from the art team. It is simply unclear how time passes and movement occurs between the panels. It’s unknown whether this blame should fall on Kelly’s script or the execution on pencils.

The Lois and Clark conversation in bed is executed perfectly though. The monochromatic coloring on these pages works wonders to set the mood. The shot of Superman standing in the street right before calling on the fight is beautiful.

The final fight is way too confusing to tell what is happening. The action should be epic and brutal, not jump cutted along. This is handled a little better in the DC animation version of the story simply due to the differences in the two media. However, this isn’t an excuse when plenty of comics convey action expertly.

I’ve harped on the art a bunch. I’m honestly not a huge fan of this art style in the first place, removed from the actual execution of the story. So I concede bias. However, part of my dissatisfaction may be explained by the fact that this single issue has a grand total of six inkers on it. The premise and most of the script is top of the line though. Oftentimes writers are given too much credit in comics. Their name comes first on the cover. Artists arguably do the most work in actually telling the story. That is the downside with this book, but also why Joe Kelly deserves most of the recognition for its genius.

I think there are a few things that could have been done by Kelly and DC to truly ensure this would stand the test of time as a masterpiece. It desperately needs more focus on the artistic side. I’m honestly not really sure which parts of the book Mahnke did and which ones Bermejo did. I’m not a giant fan of the style, obviously if they somehow got someone like Brian Bolland it would probably be better. However, even accepting the general style, there should have been one penciler and one inker. Speaking of Bolland, it makes a little sense to compare this to The Killing Joke. They’re both highly regarded single issues. 

“What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice & the American Way” stands as a legendary story. Probably one of the absolute best single issues in comics history.

[kinetic-elaboration]

January 17: Less Than Zero

Finally finished my reread of Less Than Zero today. I had all but finished it as of late last week so reading the last ten pages was more of a chore than anything else--like well I slogged through so much of this it would be a shame to quit now! Not that I didn’t enjoy the experience it was just...

I read Zero for the first time my senior year of high school, when I was 18. So literally 10 years ago. And I just had this random desire to reread it, which I indulged as an experiment to see how my perspective had changed.

I do remember liking it in high school. It wasn’t exactly life-changing but I enjoyed it. It’s certainly gone down in my esteem by now, which is fair. I read it, a book about a college freshmen written by a man in his early 20s, from a high school perspective, and now I’m reading it from the perspective of someone who’s done the college thing and reached her late 20s, so hopefully my opinion has altered a little with time and maturity.

I called the book “nihilistic male navel gazing” to B and that’s the harsh version of what I think. The central thesis is obviously “we, the rich children of LA, are dead inside, because we have never wanted for anything and also we do a lot of drugs, and now we’re just desperate for literally anything to make us feel alive. Also our parents are pretty much the same.” Which is not that deep especially for a novel that, while not exactly War and Peace, does clock in at a bit over 200 pages. Like this is not a short story is what I’m saying.

There are certain passages that are so on the nose I can only assume they seemed deep to both 21-year-old Ellis and 18-year-old me, but now they’re almost eye-roll inducing. For example:

“Oh shit, Rip, what don’t you have?” / “I don’t have anything to lose.”

Right, okay then.

I also made the unfortunate decision to read the wiki article for the sequel, Imperial Bedrooms (published 2010, about 3 years after I read Zero), and it sort of made me hate Zero in a way. Which is a little unfair because I only read the wiki article, not the book, but it just sounded so bad. Like bad fanfic bad (everyone is married to everyone else? everyone’s in show business? random extreme violence but it’s on a smart phone so it’s like...innovative?). Like self-indulgent writer up his own ass bad. Like managed to ripoff both Zero and American Psycho even though he wrote both and shouldn’t  have to rip off either bad. I also got the definite impression, again just from the wiki, that Bedrooms was supposed to either destroy any sense of affiliation with Clay, or make the reader feel incredibly guilty for that sense of affiliation Or both. Which bothered me. I read Zero, and still do read Zero, as being like a rather extreme version of a common feeling of disaffection, alienation, and confusion, and incredibly, incredibly tied to Clay’s age and position in life. Without at the time having experienced it personally, I thought it was an attempt to capture that feeling of coming home again--the freshman on winter break. Yes, exaggerated, yes, through the eyes of the Super Rich and Super Drugged Up yeah whatever. And there are certainly places in the Zero text that push against the idea that we’re supposed to identify with Clay as an everyman (his last in-person conversation with Blair, for example, where she says that he doesn’t even try to be present with her, unlike other lovers of hers, implying that he is actually much worse than those around him) and other places that force you to feel guilty for any connection you do, inevitably, feel with him (for example, although he doesn’t participate in the rape of the girl in Rip’s apartment or watch the snuff film with his friends, he doesn’t truly condone either the video or the real life violence, and he certainly doesn’t do anything like call the police or so on). But frankly I find it kinda hard to take the scenes of violence seriously. I feel like they’re mostly there to show just how Serious the author is about his My Lost LA Generation Is Without Feelings thesis. They’re the sort of scenes that I feel are there to try to gross out the audience and, like much of Naked Lunch (which I just read so nice try Ellis you’re not going to impress me), they take me out of the story almost entirely. Like ‘I see what you’re doing, author.’

All that said, there are parts of Zero I liked. While the style becomes grating after 200 pages, it’s understandable why Ellis made a splash at the time, like when he’s good, he’s very good.

When I read it the first time, I inferred a sort of supernatural presence to it, like the narrative isn’t entirely set in the Real World. This read through, I didn’t see that undertone as much. The supernatural stuff I read into the Palms Springs narrative I now see as more human horror now, and a lot of the other scenes that push at a sense of creepiness now strike me more as the hallucinations of a kid who’s pretty much constantly high, more than anything else. The only outright supernatural bit is the short paragraph about the strange visions people see on Sierra Bonita, and though this is enough to make me think maybe teenage me had something here, it’s not enough to please adult me, really. (Oh also the ‘ghost story’ about the kid who liked to throw parties, then had his house burn down after a girl was brutally raped and murdered at one. That was outright supernatural in a tall-tale sort of way.) I actually think the book would be greatly improved by increasing the creepiness and the hints of something a little...otherworldly. It would be more interesting at least. Places where this could be done include the Palms Springs flashbacks, the almost-final scene where Clay visits the carnival in Topanga Canyon, the scene with Rip looking at the car graveyard, the part where it rains a lot (pages 114-115) and the section on page 77 going to 78.

I also think that pretty much everything in italics is great and I sometimes sort of wish it was the whole book. Like a short story encompassing just those sections. Ellis is at his most precise, most poignant, and most darkly beautiful in those sections; they really stand out amid a lot of emotionless depictions of parties, drugs, and vapid conversations (all of which just make that same point over and over and over: we’re dead inside, dead, dead, dead). TBH the part where Clay and Blair visit Monteray (pages 59-61) could be a stand alone short story all its own.

I obviously have mixed feelings about Clay, especially taking what little I know of Bedrooms into account, but I have stronger feelings about most of the rest of the cast of characters. I hate most of them, except for Julian and Blair. Blair is like pretty much the only one with a soul and Julian is the only one whose unhappiness actually makes me feel something, because his story is so truly tragic. (And, it goes without saying, so much more so in the book, where it’s just left hanging there, where his future is an endless cycle of the same torture, where he does not get the rest of resolution, even the death-resolution of the movie.) (It should also go without saying that I’m talking in terms of narrative here, not real life.) (Also I am semi-confused about the existence of a Julian’s girlfriend character in Bedrooms because I really thought he was gay, like I thought the writing on the bathroom wall at the end was his about himself and maybe he meant ‘I’m a faggot because I sleep with men for money’ and not ‘I’m a faggot because I’m gay’ but I just, yeah, sort of read it the second way anyway is that bad of me?)

I wouldn’t say I was especially moved by Julian’s story but I would say I was closer to moved by it than by almost anything else in the novel, which in all ways tries to keep you numbed from feeling anything real absolutely as much as possible, through the first person narration.

Finally, the movie is still obviously one of the worst movies ever made but I stick by the idea that 18-year-old me had that a much better adaptation would be in the style of a documentary: some faux-artist’s b&w camera recording of his winter break in star-studded LA. I mean it reads like that on the page so why not just make the cinematic equivalent of it?

...I know I said ‘finally’ but I was also going to talk about the weird tense stuff going on but I ALSO want to not think about this book any more so maybe another day if I feel like it or never if I don’t.