#not sure what comic of dubious quality i will read for Post 3

[tasteless-lemonade]

Stressful Comic Reading: The Human Target

My pilot chapter of Stressful Comic Reading, All-Star Batman & Robin, was pretty much just angry splutter about the infamous "Batman: Year One" sequel. To this one, I'd like to make a more structured text. At the core, I'm still complaining endless about shiny spandex people comic book, but now with more coherence.

Synopsis: Christopher Chance, The Human Target, disguises himself as Lex Luthor to see who is trying to murder him. Due to that, Chance ends up taking a poison that was meant for Luthor, and now has 12 days to live. He spends his last days looking for the killer, who is someone among the Justice League International.

If you never read a JLI book, maybe you will like The Human Target. If you are a JLI fan like me, it probably won't be the most enjoyable experience

Tora is written as a femme fatale, "good girl actually bad girl" style. Not only that, she openly despises being a nice sweet girl. She clearly hates it and her actions throughout the book are motivated because she doesn't want to be nice anymore. She gets angry to be referred to as kind and sweet.

Now, a storyline that deals with how Tora feels with the common view of her being shallow "sweet" would be nice. But this whole story seems to hate the idea that Tora might be a sweet girl. Tora doesn't has to be a femme fatale bad girl in order to be interesting and Tom King obviously hates this version of Tora, as he is always trying to show his Tora is better, his Tora is way better than boring, nice Tora.

Because oooh, my stories deal with MURDER and SEX so they are Deep™ and much better than your kind-hearted heroism.

The same way he is trying to say his Tora is better, he is trying to say his Tora relationship is better. Yes, now we talk about Guy Gardner.

This whole characterization of Guy is based of him at his absolute worst moments. Calling Tora a bitch, stalking her, beating up Chance for dating her. People can argue that Guy was indeed an asshole during his first JLI moments, but The Human Target canonically takes place after Tora came back from the dead. It makes no sense for him to be acting the way he is acting, unless years of character development have been magically erased.

Actually, it makes. In an effort to make Chance/Tora look better and to make the author's self insert Chance look cool, Guy is written as a abusive, jealous ex who has an unhealthy obsession with Tora and a hatred towards Chance for "stealing his girl"

Then the book falls into the typical of "Man beating up girlfriend's ex to prove how he is such a Better Man For Her". Sigh.

There's a scene where Tora and Chance kill Guy and go fuck while the corpse is melting downstairs, for fuck's sake.

It would later be confirmed Guy faked his death here with Tora's help, but it still clearly a scene to show how Chance is awesome and this cool action hero and the man Tora needs that I feel like someone kicked me in the balls again. This trope never sounds good.

"What about the rest of the JLI?" you may ask. Well, they are certainly here.

They just show-up in the story, do what is needed for the plot to move and then disappear, not being given actual characterization or development. For a book supposedly about the JLI, I was waiting for them to be more than plot devices. AND STILL.

Bea??? Had an affair with J'onn???? Cause he liked being burnt??? But felt guilty for it??? Why???

Other than that, Bea doesn't do much other than be Tora's friend (still queercoded) and a suspect for Chance's poisoning. Almost all of J'onn moments is just "J'onn you did something bad you slept with Bea" and basically no depth other than that.

Ted has a nice moment of team-up with Ice and talks to Chance to give him information for the plot to move forward. Booster shows up and eats some bagels and that's it. There's also this take on Booster and Beetle relationship which is... questionable. At best.

Rocket Red is the only one who seems to care about Guy (because despite referring to the team as family, no one, not even Tora seems to at least like Guy throughout the whole book). He asks Chance where Guy is, because he wants to at least bury his brother. I gotta say, it was a good scene.

G'nort is also there to... uh... be a plot device for... take them to Oa and... that's it.

That's it. During 12 issues, we got beautiful art and some wonderful mischaracterization of these guys, well done!

To quote the words of @shoesofthefishermanswife

[framecaught]

Transmedia Storytelling: A Perspective on the Homestuck Epilogues

First of all, thank you for reading my first post! I created this blog to document some of my research for a directed study project. I’ll be looking at Homestuck from an interdisciplinary lens but focusing especially on its formal artistic qualities and place in art history. The blog will contain various points of analysis which I develop over the course of the project. For my first piece of writing, I wanted to tackle (from a new perspective) what I view as a complicating factor in the controversy surrounding the Homestuck Epilogues.

Rather than critiquing the Epilogues’ content or making a judgement about their overall quality, I want to explore a specific criticism which has been echoed time and time again by fans. In an article for the online journal WWAC, Homestuck fan-writer Masha Zhdanova sums up this criticism:

“No matter how much members of the creative team insist that their extension to the Homestuck line of work is no more official than fanwork, if it’s hosted on Homestuck.com, promoted by Homestuck’s official social media accounts, and endorsed by the original creator, I think it’s a little more official than a fanfic with thirty hits on AO3.”

Between attacks on the Epilogues’ themes, treatment of characters, and even prose-quality, fans have frequently referenced the issue of endorsement and canonicity as summarized above. Although the Epilogues and Homestuck’s other successors (including Homestuck^2 and the Friendsims) attempt to tackle themes of canonicity within their narratives, critics of the Epilogues contend that this philosophical provocation falls flat. While the creators argue that the works should form a venue for productively questioning canonicity, fans point to issues of capital and call the works disingenuous. In Episode 52 of the Perfectly Generic Podcast Andrew Hussie explains that, to him, the Epilogues are “heavily implied to be a piece of bridge-media, which is clearly detached from the previous narrative, and conceptually ‘optional’ by its presentation, which allows it to also function as an off-ramp for those inclined to believe the first seven acts of Homestuck were perfectly sufficient.” As Zhdanova paraphrases, a critical view posits that this “optional” reading is impossible. The company ethos and production of capital inherent to the Epilogue’s release—their promotion, their monetization—renders their “fanfic” backdrop completely moot, if not insulting.

Why does appropriating the “aesthetic trappings” [1] of AO3 strike such a chord with critics, though? What’s wrong with the Epilogue creators profiting from their work? Other officially endorsed “post-canon” materials, including the Paradox Space comics, Hiveswap and Friendsim games, have not inspired such virulent opposition. The issue comes down to the association between the AO3 layout and the separation from canon. The Epilogues ask us to read them as “tales of dubious authenticity,” but critics assert that this reading makes no sense in the context of their distribution. It’s not exactly the endorsement or monetization that prevents a “dubious” reading, though. After all, Hiveswap is also endorsed and monetized, yet fans have no problem labeling it as “dubiously canon.” So what is it about the Epilogues’ presentation that seems so incongruous with their premise as “dubious” texts?

I’ve come to understand this issue through the lens of transmedia storytelling. First conceptualized by Henry Jenkins, “transmedia storytelling” involves the production of distinct stories, contained within the same universe, across different media platforms. [2] This allows consumers to pick and choose stories across their favorite media outlets, since each story is self-contained, but superfans can still consume All The Content for a greater experience. The Marvel franchise with its comics, movies, TV shows, and other ephemera, is a great example of the transmedia phenomenon.

How does Homestuck fit into this theory? In an excellent article [3] for the Convergence journal, Kevin Veale lays out a taxonomy for Homestuck’s role in new media frameworks. Rather than dispersing different stories across multiple media platforms, Homestuck combines the “aesthetic trappings” of many media forms into one massive outlet: the Homestuck website [4]. It’s almost like the inverse of transmedia storytelling. Veale describes this type of storytelling as “transmodal.” He further defines Homestuck’s storytelling as “metamedia,” meaning that it manipulates the reader’s expectations of certain media forms to change the reading experience. So, despite its multimedia aspects, Homestuck structures itself around one monolith distribution channel (the website), the importance of which directly feeds into what we know as “upd8 culture.” The Homestuck website itself, as a “frame” which encapsulates Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures, takes on a nostalgic quality; the familiar grey background and adblocks become inextricably linked with the production of the main, “canon” narrative.

Homestuck itself—the main narrative—is a transmodal venture. However, as of writing this post, the Homestuck franchise has taken a leap into transmedia waters, starting with the Paradox Space comics and continuing with Hiveswap, the Friendsims, and Homestuck^2. All four of these examples fit the definition of transmedia ventures: they contain distinct stories still set in the Homestuck universe and are distributed through fundamentally separate media channels from the main comic. Which is to say, crucially, none of them are hosted on the Homestuck website.

This is where I think the issue arises for the Epilogues. The Epilogues, from what I can tell, aimed to present themselves as a transmedia venture rather than a transmodal one. Firstly, they try to act as a “bridge-media,” or self-contained story. They can be read as a continuation of Homestuck, but can also be separated or ignored. Secondly, they take on a distinct format (prose). Hussie notes in PGP Ep. 52 that the Epilogues were originally only meant to be published in print, functioning as a “cursed tome.” In short, they were intended as a transmedia venture: a self contained story, distributed through a separate medium (prose) and separate media channel (print), to be embraced or discarded by consumers at their whim.

Instead, when the Epilogues were released through the main Homestuck website, readers couldn’t help but interpret them as part of Homestuck’s long transmodal history. Rather than interacting with a new distribution channel, readers returned to the same nostalgic old grey website. The AO3 formatting gag makes no real difference to readers, as Homestuck patently appropriates the aesthetics of other platforms all throughout its main narrative. This issue of distribution (print versus website), which in turn produces either a transmedia or transmodal reading, is the crux of the criticism I mentioned before. Despite the creators’ protests, readers failed to see any “question” of canonicity because the Epilogues fit perfectly into the comic’s preexisting transmodal framework, supported even further by the nostalgia of the website’s very layout. The Epilogues read as a transmodal contribution to Homestuck’s main channel rather than a post-canon, transmedia narrative (like Paradox Space or the Friendsims) as they were intended. This created a profound dissonance between the fans’ experiences and the creators’ intentions.

How things might have turned out differently if the Epilogues really had been released solely as “cursed tomes,” the world will never know. In PGP, Hussie cites the importance of making content freely accessible on the website as a reason for the online release, which is certainly a valid consideration. Even though the print format offers a much clearer conceptual standpoint as a transmedia “bridge-story” [5], issues of capital and accessibility may still have come to the forefront of discussion. As it stands, though, I think the mix-up between transmedia and transmodal distribution was a key factor in the harsh criticism the Epilogues sparked.

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[1] I love this term, “aesthetic trappings”, which Masha Zhdanova uses, so I’ve overused it to some degree in my post.

[2] Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2007: pg. 98. You can also find a description of transmedia storytelling on his blog.

[3] Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25, no. 5–6 (December 2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954.

[4] Although the Homestuck website shifted branding from mspaintadventures.com to homestuck.com before the Epilogues’ release and has shifted its aesthetic somewhat (re: banners and ads), I treat the core “website” as the same location in my post

[5] Hussie points to numerous fascinating experiences which might have arisen from the print distribution. He describes a tome as “something which maddeningly beckons, due to whatever insanity it surely contains, but also something which causes feelings of trepidation” and references the sheer size of the book and “stark presentation of the black and white covers” as elements which produce this trepidation. The ability to physically experience (through touch) the length of the Epilogues and the impact of the book cover were lost in the online format. Although the Epilogues have been released in their intended book format now, the printed novel still won’t be a “first reading experience” for most fans. 

[aion-rsa]

The New Mutants and Its Nightmare on Elm Street Influences

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This article contains mild The New Mutants spoilers.

The New Mutants is an odd duck. The writing was on the wall back in 2017 when 20th Century Fox first pushed the film off its original 2018 release window. Apparently the delay was the result of the studio wanting to make it more of a horror movie via  reshoots… reshoots that then never happened.

Even so, those horror elements are still on bonkers display in Josh Boone’s final cut of the film, now available on  Blu-ray and VOD. Even without knowing Boone was vocal that the  Nightmare on Elm Street movies were cornerstone influences, it’s clear his mutant mayhem wants to live on the same block.

To be sure, these aspects are more muted than they should be, which is the result of the film’s biggest problem: tonal inconsistency. New Mutants veers wildly between young adult drama, youthful hijinks, and a nigh ‘80s slasher sensibility where very few characters actually get slashed. If reshoots had actually upped the horror quotient, this could fit nicely as a continuation of the Elm Street Kids’ travails. But even in its bizarre current form, there is something there to appreciate, particularly for fans of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.

Nearly 40 years after Robert Englund first growled his way through a Freddy Krueger movie, many fans still think of the first Wes Craven-directed A Nightmare on Elm Street when they look back on that series. But for horror fans of a certain age, 1987’s Dream Warriors was the only Nightmare on Elm Street movie that mattered. It’s the one where Heather Langenkamp’s Nancy Thompson returned, and a gang of street-wise ‘80s teen movie archetypes found themselves locked in a mental hospital with Freddy picking them off one pun at a time. And as these victims found ways to fight back in their nightmares, they became the “Dream Warriors,” just as their film turned into a superhero movie with a body count.

The high concept of a monster fighting the Breakfast Club inside of Nurse Ratched’s hospital is still incredibly appealing today. And it’s emulated from top to bottom in The New Mutants. Not that Boone and his stars have exactly been coy about this fact; Dream Warriors has been name dropped by the filmmakers ever since the first trailer introduced us to the movie’s versions of Rhane Sinclair (Maisie Williams), Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga), and Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt).

Even way back in 2017, Boone told Collider that Dream Warriors was one of New Mutants’ big influences. “I do love Dream Warriors,” Boone said at the time. “I loved the first [movie] as well, but this is very much a rubber reality horror movie for the first about 75% of the movie and then it becomes something else.” 

And unlike many X-Men adjacent films, the characters from early New Mutants comics are more or less recognizable in their live-action forms here. Nevertheless, how they’re introduced is pure Dream Warriors.

After a dubious opening sequence in which Hunt’s Dani Moonstar survives a “tornado,” the young girl is committed to an isolated sanitarium along with other teenage mutants. Their chaperone Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga) swears they’re being groomed by an unseen benefactor who we’re led to believe is Charles Xavier… but her evasiveness about the details suggests something more sinister.

All the while, each of the kids is plagued by nightmares, both when they’re asleep and awake. And the waking terrors are of their worst fears come to life. So, yes, this is basically a Freddy movie without Freddy. That in itself could be viewed as damning, both to horror fanatics who want more thrills and superhero fans who like their popcorn buttered the same way every time, but even with its (many) foibles, there is charm in New Mutants’ rough edges. Here is a movie decidedly not a product of the all-too-familiar blockbuster assembly line.

For instance, Boone takes his Dream Warriors aesthetic and runs with it via multiple visual references and plotting echoes, all of which feel unnatural for its superpowered fantasy. In one early scene, a  character briefly entertains suicide while standing atop a menacing Gothic tower, not unlike how Freddy forced Phillip (Bradley Gregg) to throw himself from one in Dream Warriors, earning the label of “suicide” by other characters; in a more overt fashion, New Mutants’ Roberto sits in a wheelchair in another scene, just like the one Will (Ira Heiden) used in Dream Warriors; and the character is later seduced into a watery illusion by a dream girl who is not what she seems, a la Joey’s haphazard “wet dream,” as Freddy coins it, in the direct Dream Warriors sequel, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master (1988).

All of these knowing nudges from Boone and his co-screenwriter Knate Lee are there for Freddy’s Children to catch. Yet they can also both improve and hinder New Mutants. In the plus column, they feel unusual and original for a movie about comic book characters; on the other side of the ledger, few of these “scares” actually go far enough to be frightening. Thus the movie feels strangely unfinished, even after spending years on a shelf. In fact, there are several scene transitions where you know something is missing from pickups that were never filmed.

And yet, that low-fi messy quality may add to its rough hewn, uneven charm for a certain set. Like all of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, this isn’t high art. But the fact it goes for these horror moments with complete sincerity is kind of refreshing. Like Dream Warriors, New Mutants and its cast take their plight seriously, probably too much so. But after a decade of most superhero movies relying on a smug self-deprecation—a persistent invisible smirk at the camera which promises we know it’s nonsense—New Mutants’ emotional earnestness will appeal to a smaller cult audience.

In this vein, the strongest aspect of the film is likely any scene involving Williams’ Rahne and Hunt’s Dani. The former has the benefit of being played by the lone actor to nail her thick accent, as well as the rich horror trope of being a hard-believing Catholic. Like many a teenager from a religious home, Rahne fears Hell, which Bone and Lee’s screenplay embrace in the thematic sense with Rahne also being a glorified werewolf who fears her “evil” mutation.

In the more literal sense, Rahne also struggles with her attraction to Dani. It’s  a romance that doesn’t feel tacked on by a studio note or an afterthought for social media; like Boone’s earlier work, it’s presented as a sincere puppy love story. But even that has echoes in the Nightmare on Elm Street saga, with the second film, Freddy’s Revenge (1985) attempting to tell a subtextual gay love story–one full of shame and literal self-mutilation where the main character transforms into Freddy when he’s attracted to his buddy.

New Mutants does this element better by removing the “sub” in “subtext,” and the shame. Rather it commits to a sweet romance just as earnestly as it commits to a sequence where Rahne’s dead priest returns to haunt her with a demonic voice that sounds a lot like Freddy’s warble. Yet this, too, mirrors a locker room attack in Freddy’s Revenge. 

Despite the tonal dissonance between these two elements both aspects embrace the LGBTQ+ undertones in X-Men comics better than most actual X-Men comics, and in their own way are reminiscent of how goofy ‘80s slasher movies could become comforting outlets for marginalized groups.

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That New Mutants tackles these delicate aspects as brazenly (or some might say as tastelessly) as those ‘80s slashers is kind of wild. It also ensures that New Mutants will eventually find an audience. Perhaps not the audience who superhero movies are so methodically engineered for in the 21st century, nor in the mainstream commercial audience Fox almost quaintly thought this approach would appeal to. It certainly isn’t critics with the movie’s ungainly, batshit tendencies.

But as with Dream Warriors before it, here’s a film in which young people use superpowers to fight the man and topple authority while seeing each other in a way they, nor any superhero movie, has before. It gives this bloody mess teeth… and claws.

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