Sympathy For Dan Slott

But, “sympathy” is as far as it goes.

Let me just make it clear at the outset: I like Dan Slott, I would like to support his work, but I don’t buy She-Hulk, and I don’t download it either.

This will become important later on.

Today I’ve been reading this column (scroll down to get to the bit on “Digital Comics”), and feel strongly moved to point out that this is just Mr. DeBlieck’s opinion, and no matter how authoritative he makes it sound he can only speak for himself. Certainly he can’t speak for me: as I’ve pointed out many times before (some might use the expression “ad nauseum“), I’m a music publisher myself, and I’m totally cool with people downloading songs I’ve written. I’m nowhere near alone in this, either: a lot of music publishers feel that supposedly-larcenous downloads translate into record/concert ticket/T-shirt sales down the road, that otherwise wouldn’t exist. To be blunt: it isn’t stealing if it puts money in your pocket. So please, until there’s a large and vocal group of comics artists advocating for the free and unrestricted downloading of printed material as a legitimate PR measure, kindly include my industry OUT of this little tempest, thank you very much. These things aren’t the same; they’re not supporting evidence for each other; the RIAA is out for themselves, and not for me. They don’t represent me. In fact my old record company owes me quite a lot of money, that they don’t seem in an awful hurry to pay, and if I want it I’ll have to sue them for it. They’re having quite a lovely little ride on my interest, and the interest of many like me, so it’s by no means a settled situation who’s getting hurt by what. Furthermore, as for “it’s illegal, that means it’s wrong”… that it’s illegal as of this moment I grant, but that doesn’t at all mean it’s wrong. We’re talking facts here, now. Illegal does not equal wrong. “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate”, etc. etc. As of this moment that song-downloading stuff is illegal, but if you ask me it’s not wrong, but right.

And anyway, good luck stopping it.

So: I don’t buy She-Hulk, neither do I download it. I don’t read it at all. Which I guess means my “vote” for Mr. Slott’s career has already been cast, which is a shame, because as I said, I like his writing, and I’d like to support it. I’ve read She-Hulk in the past. But, my past reading, plus a buck-fifty, will just about buy Dan and his family a cup of coffee to split between them, and that’s an awful hard fact, but somehow I’m just going to have to learn to live with it.

But on the other hand…

Now that I’m a disinterested observer, now that I can answer an exit poll, let me ask this question: if I were to buy an issue of She-Hulk and give it to the library, what kind of “vote” would that constitute?

For? Or against?

I think I can pretty much guarantee Mr. Slott that he’d be read a few hundred, or even (possibly) a couple thousand times if I did so…even after She-Hulk concludes with (oh, doubtless!) its 500th issue, he’ll still be read. Maybe even, by some, loved. But it won’t do a damn thing for his career.

Or, will it?

I don’t know; these are some pretty deep waters, eh? I mean, think of poor Elton John: hundreds of thousands of dollars are earned a year by people playing “Rocket Man”, to say nothing of the gratuitous dope and sex sometimes tossed into the guitar case on a Friday night…literally thousands of people make a living each year by playing music that he owns, and I think it’s pretty plain that it all does exactly jack for his career. Or, does it? I mean if I spin that old Greatest Hits record of his I’ve got, that certainly does jack for him…the money he earned on that record, whenever it was sold (and I really don’t remember, I think it was a birthday present actually), is in all likelihood spent, now, and it isn’t coming back. But when the guy down at the restaurant plays “Rocket Man” on his guitar, maybe it screws EJ over by persuading the older couple at the bar to get a Singapore Sling whose cost he sees nothing of, in remembrance of that trip to Barbados they took years ago…but at least he’s remembered too, along with the trip. And, being remembered, maybe he’ll make some more money down the line. Hard to say. Maybe Barbados will make some money down the line too. I really don’t know.

Happily, nor do I care.

As you might have guessed from the title of my last post, I recently read some downloaded comics, in amongst the purchased kind. Yes, it’s true! I did! But Mr. Slott’s comics were not among them, and even if they had been, I’d probably have skipped them. Because it costs me nothing not to read She-Hulk. I don’t even feel bad about it. There are tonnes upon tonnes of comics out there, to read and to buy, and I couldn’t look at all of them, even if I were a millionaire. A vote? Yes, but more than just a vote, because there are so many possible elections that I have to choose which ones to get involved in: nomination is an important metaphor here, too, because not everybody gets the nod. Dr. Strange: The Oath does. Agents Of Atlas does. The Eternals does. And that means all of these will be run-off against each other until they’ve each been elected to sit on my bookshelf. Eventually.

But, why would I buy them, when I can already read them for nothing?

Obviously, because I’m gonna want to re-read them. There’s no mystery to that, I hope: after all, just like you, I’m a comic-book collector. I built a special shelf to hold all my longboxes, for God’s sake. I don’t read once, and then forget, for heaven’s sake we all know that…just as we all should know that I have no intention of firing up various drives and programs each time I want another look at Marcos Martin’s incredible artwork. No. I’m gonna buy the thing. It’s a lock. Because, you know why they say most online businesses fail? Because people feel as though they’re already paying, even if the thing they’re getting is free, because they’re having to sit at the computer, download shit, whatever, when they’d rather be doing something else instead. In the end, as long as we’re talking about comic books (and particularly as long as we’re talking about the habits of the existing market of comic-book purchasers), it’s far more convenient to buy something you like and hold it in your hand, than it is to endlessly muck around with a keyboard and a mouse. So that’s a sale you’ve made, Marvel! And not just one: because frankly, even though I already liked Brian K. Vaughan’s work, I had my doubts about how good his Dr. Strange would be. Not that I thought it would suck, but I just worried that he might not do Doc as much justice as he does for his own creations. This does happen, you know. Robert Kirkman disappointed me on his FF and his MTU, and that took me by surprise. I follow writers (and now more than ever, when mainline flagship properties I once would’ve wanted to buy automatically sometimes suck), but at the same time, writers are more mercurial than they’ve ever been before, too, and sometimes a favourite will let you down! This never used to happen in the old days: a Bill Mantlo story was a Bill Mantlo story, a Len Wein story was a Len Wein story, and it was all very consistent. You absolutely knew what you were getting, every time. Now, even when you’re talking about a talented writer, there are fewer guarantees. Take Peter Milligan, for example: a great writer, nevertheless I’ve learned not to follow him everywhere…I’ve learned to distinguish the places where he’ll be absolutely astounding from the places where he won’t…

Anyway, as I was saying: Brian K. Vaughan (gee, something tells me I’m misspelling that) has won me over completely with his Dr. Strange, and therefore he’s jumped up to “must buy guy” in my book generally…as for Marcos Martin, I’ve been a fan of his since his star turn on Batgirl: Year One, but here he exceeds all expectations.

And, I love Dr. Strange!

So there you have it. Another satisfied customer.

Now, is it too much to ask that there be a satisfied vendor, as well?

I have a lot of sympathy for Dan Slott, as a writer who thinks he’s seeing potential sales walk out the door. But on the other hand, I’m not sure he should be blaming his fans for that. In music, there’s a wide listener-base that never buys a record: they turn on the radio, instead. And lots of people wait for a movie to come on TV, instead of paying to see it at the theatre. But the people who made the art in question still get some money, in this model, and then later on, when some smallish percentage of free listeners or viewers decide what they’ve been exposed to is worth their hard-earned dollars and cents, they get some money again. In the case of illegal music downloading, this works out even better: because studies show that the people who download are the same people who buy, and that the people who don’t download, don’t buy. Plain and simple. So it’s actually better than the radio, because as far as promotional play goes, it’s much more targeted to free-spending consumers. Well, that’s the trade-off for not being able to charge for it at the point of use, I guess…that when it comes back to you later on, it comes back bigger…

But would it work for comics?

That’s hard to say. Popular wisdom says that comics, at least Big Two comics, are at a choke point: more expensive product, less content, diluted brands, unreliable delivery, a shrinking market, and most importantly no casual base of free readers, means that they’re understandably jealous of what sales they do make…and yet, on the other hand, the new system of free distribution exists despite their jealousy, in practical terms beyond their power to shut down, and whether they like it or not, it does function as a promotional network, and not just as a black market. It’s already happening.

But, they’re not using it.

I’d like it a lot if writers and artists and companies could get paid for each copy of their books that gets read (or at least, abstracted), but I doubt if I would ever be willing to pay a fee to view comics online that have been scanned in from those books. It’s just not for me: I find the interface slightly cumbersome, and to be frank, it’s really easy to do without a constant stream of new comics whose quality varies drastically from title to title. As for paying money to view a couple pages of a printed comic book…no, definitely not. I don’t pay for teasers at the movies…hell, I don’t even really like teasers, and usually I’d rather do without them. Also, and let me be blunt once again: I have a lot of other options. The library is just down the road. So is a restaurant, and a newspaper. Just looking around me, I’ve got about fifty books here I’ve meaning to read, but haven’t got to yet. I have unwatched DVDs on my coffee table. I have several thousand comic books already sitting right here in this room with me. And so I could do a lot of different things, besides paying to read somebody’s advertising.

Well, I won’t pay to listen to the radio, either.

One could imagine a Marvel or DC free download site, that tracks visitors and hosts advertising, and from which a great deal of information about the effectiveness of free downloads as a marketing tool could be extracted. Maybe, even, from which a great deal of marketing information about the popularity of specific writers and artists could be drawn. To me, that sounds like pretty good stuff, and a handy way to prevent unauthorized scanning-and-copying. But then, I would say that: because I don’t have to put anything at risk for this wonderful idea, do I? And the fact is, it might not work. It might even backfire, by encouraging people to get into the free-downloading habit. It might actually erode newsstand sales! Who knows what it might do!

But on the other hand, as I said…that network’s not going away anytime soon, anyway. So it’s either that, or this. Meaning that if you don’t opt for that (and I would, but that’s just me), you will certainly get this. And meanwhile Dan needs to get paid, you know? So: sympathy. I definitely sympathize with Dan Slott. It’s a tough situation, when there is some sort of money to be made there, but your employers won’t take the necessary steps to make it, and so you can’t earn it. And meanwhile, how many of those downloads are translating to sales of Single Green Female, anyway? Some of them? Most of them? None of them? Are they actually translating to fewer sales of SGF? Oh, God…so like the comics company you work for, you too must be jealous of your existing sales. Naturally. Obviously. I understand entirely. Hence my sympathy.

But, fair warning, Dan: if you don’t want me to read your comics, I won’t read them.

Been Caught Reading

Or, as I might have called it…

“Flashback! To A Ton Of Comics Everyone Already Read Months Ago…!”

It’ll be a short one this time; however I will have a follow-up.

One of Superman: only read the first Johns/Donner/Kubert Action Comics issue, but…wow. Loved it. Seriously. Fanboyish questions about new Kryptonian kids aside, not only is it an engaging story in which I totally recognize the Superman I grew up with, but my God Adam Kubert can draw! Holy crap! I’ve always liked him, but this knocked me flat. Absolutely fantastic. And, even better, absolutely Superman. Where I impotently complained about the story-necessity of Venom’s presence in Spider-Man 3, here I’ll play the hypocrite: as a relaunch of Superman, this is great, even if it’s great for exactly the same thing that makes me wring my hands about Spidey. Must get all the other other current Superman titles now…!

One of Dr. Thirteen: were people really complaining about the jumped-up Freudian humour in this feature? Wow, but I think it’s enormously clever, don’t you? I’d read this at its present length as a weekly, it’d be great. I’d be thrilled to buy it in different sizes and formats as a TPB, too, chopped up into Roman-numeralized chapters: fantastic! A completely brilliant idea, in or out of the DC universe.

One of Eternals: similarly, I don’t see how anyone could hate this series. Not only is JR Jr. somehow getting even better at drawing comics every time he does one, but after a little quiet reflection…yes, I think this is as good a reintroduction to the Eternals as anyone’s ever likely to cook up. It’ll never be Kirby, but then we knew it wasn’t going to be. And the story certainly isn’t a Kirby story. But, you know…look at what it is, because by this time our eyes should be quite used to seeing it: it’s an ambitious reclamation that actually utilizes the old Alan Moore devices (and how long have writers been using those elegantly-wrought wrenches to hammer their twopenny story nails into particle-board for, anyway? Twenty years now? Twenty-five?) in order to place Jack’s creations in a universe whose continuity he’d already outgrown by the time he made them. The Eternals…my God, what a problem they were! Too much imagining, not enough rationalizing, for the post-Anarchy Period Marvel to deal with. And although in the past I’ve had my own small ideas about how to bring them back without vapourizing their charm, or even their inconsistencies, and even though my methods are not the ones Neil and JRJR seized on…still, I mean whaddaya want? The Marvel Universe has grown incredibly boring as time’s gone on, because after it stopped its imaginative expansions it had nothing else to do but consume its own heart…but these Eternals, Deviants, and Celestials are different from what they were before, now. They’re potentially interesting. You could do things with them, now. The way Jack left them they were far too radioactively Kirbyfied for anyone else to risk touching them, but so was everything at Marvel, once upon a time…and what wasn’t Kirbyfied was Ditkoized, which can be even more dangerous. Admittedly, this was some of Jack’s more far-out Cosmic Origins stuff, so it was always gonna stay hotter for longer…but, that only meant it needed a more nuanced approach to reclaim it from the bottom of Jack’s unique mod-myth ocean. And nuanced is just what Neil’s delivered, if anyone would care to look: think that Civil War crossover was an accident? Think the amnesia thing was chosen just because it was superficially convenient? It was superficially convenient, of course, but it also was made to make sense with the specifics, and in my opinion it succeeds wonderfully. But I’ll have a little more to say about that at some later date.

Two of Batman: I like these new/old Batmen. What more is there to say?

One of Astro City: really, Internet? You thought “The Eagle And The Mountain” was all charged with post-9/11-ness? I’m not saying it’s a super, super stretch, mind you, but…it isn’t exactly sitting right in your hand, is it? Maybe on the bedside table…

Two of Agents Of Atlas: I still miss the 3D Man, but I don’t see how I could ask for much more than this.

Two of Dr. Strange: boy, Neilalien must be happy with “The Oath”. I know I am. Unreal, somebody gets it, I truly am amazed and pleased. I was beginning to think no one really liked Doc very much anymore. Not as a property. As a character. An incredible relief to find out I was wrong about that.

One of The All-New Atom: hey, this is great! Could’ve gone for some less Wikipedian science-quotes, but…wow, again I can’t believe it, I liked it, I’m…just really speechless, it’s such a relief to read comics which aren’t totally boring…

Okay, that’s all I can do for now. I’ll be back, and more coherent, later. Unfortunately I’ll also probably be more long-winded, too.

Oh well! So far it makes a nice zippy four-colour stew in my head…maybe things aren’t so bad after all…

Undisciplined Stuff

JLA #1, that is.

Why I feel the need to comment on it, I’ll never understand.

I liked Identity Crisis, as a decently-constructed story.  Which had its flaws, sure — big ones, even! — but even so.  This thing, though…

What’s annoying are the parts that work, because they distract — powerfully — from the much greater number of things that don’t.  It’s kind of frustrating, really.  Conclusion:  if there was a course in comic-book university called “Captioning 101:  Juxtaposing Scene And Dialogue”, JLA #1 would be on the syllabus for both good and bad reasons.

I can only conclude that JLA #0 was a rush job, but that the rush took away necessary time from JLA #1 regardless.  I think I’d read more of this story, possibly.  But, those goddamn captions, when they’re bad, they’re SO BAD…!  Gah.  You want Novocaine for ‘em.

However, unlike JLA #0 (stupid, pointless numbering!), it was readable.  Occasionally cringeworthy.  But readable nonetheless.  So I find I must retract some of my stronger objections to Brad Meltzer’s writing.

Okay.  Now I’ll give this a good, long rest.

RELIEF!!!

Fixed the damn problem.  Billions of bilious blistering blue barnacles.  They thought that Tommy took the Tsar’s Tonka trucks to Timbuktu.   ruthfully,  his keyboard is ge  ing kind of old,  hough.

Must do something about that.  One day soon.

JLA #0 By Brad Meltzer Is All But Unreadable!

Ed just brought me some comics.  I’m working my way through them, saving most of my comments.  I mean, why be rash?  But, and then again…

SERIOUSLY?!?

Brad Meltzer, you can’t be serious.  You just can’t.  Can you?  Oh, how I wish I had Internet knees, so I could get down on them and beg a blogger with a real computer set-up to mash this up by replacing the DC heroes with Moomins…just to demonstrate to you what a huge error you’ve made…

Old news, Internet.  However…I mean, all you said was that this sucked and was dull!  Why didn’t you tell the whole truth?  Why didn’t you reveal the fact that it was horrifyingly, soul-freezingly irrelevant as well?  It’s irrelevancy-making, is what it is!

Okay, perhaps I’m prejudging a little.  I’ll read the next one, and post a retraction or modification if necessary.  Even an apology, if that’s called for.

Annoying fact:  the letter that comes after “A” and which precedes “C” got locked-up roughly halfway through this post.  So kindly forgive my hasty tone, I really can’t edit properly just now.  If I decide a wholesale retraction is warranted at some later date, I’ll put it up…

However, c’mon.  JLA #0 cost four dollars?  hat’s…uh…oh, crap, now the upper-case “t” is gone as well…look, I’m just going to have to revisit this whole post in general, however as it stands I may post lamely again after I get done with JLA #1…and anyway whoever made up this stupid “#0″ convention anyway?  S’driving me crazy…it’s practically, uh, usomethingiquitous, now…

Lasers In The Jungle

I wouldn’t have known about it if I hadn’t by chance read his obituary last year…and it’s ironically stupid of me to have forgotten his name…

But there was a countryman of mine, you see, who saw viral liver cancer wiped out in his lifetime, and no one’s ever heard of him.

Yes: viral liver cancer. Sounds bad, doesn’t it? But it’s gone now. What it was, was a particular strain of hepatitis, that drastically increased the odds of a person getting cancer once they’d been infected with it. Gone like smallpox, now, thank God. And we don’t really think of it, but there are a lot of cancers that we human beings used to fall like grass before on a pretty regular basis, that are gone now too. Stomach cancer used to be a huge problem, for example; all over the world, little poppy-shaped vials turn up at archaeological sites, in the damnedest places…once filled with what is still our very best painkiller, more precious than diamonds, and the only folk remedy there ever was that was capable of dealing with cancer-level pain. How long the stuff took to circulate out to the far reaches of the globe, I can’t say. Probably a very long time indeed. But, what’re you gonna do? Some things can’t be helped just by boiling a little willow bark…

Anyway, a friend of mine has cancer. She just told me about it.

It’s cervical cancer. Caused in something like 90% of cases (as we’ve all just recently been told) by the Human Papilloma Virus, somewhere along the line, sometime, maybe a long time ago. Who knows? That HPV, it’s pretty insidious. Ubiquitous, too. I mean it’s always just been there, drifting through the population like a deep ocean current, a gyre, part of our regular rhythms, unmappable because universal…

But here’s the point: in our lifetimes, yours and mine, HPV seems fated to become as low a risk factor as is that stripe of hepatitis that used to cause the liver cancer way back in the rustic days of the 20^th century, and for that my friend could (and, I hope, will) draw a little solace. She’s the last of the HPV-cancer patients, or anyway just about the last…there are no ten-year-old daughters out there who will one day have to tell their mothers what the doctor said, or at least, there are a hell of a lot fewer of them.

90% fewer of them, to be precise.

Doesn’t really help my friend. On the other hand, she may end up being fine, you see: her treatment may well be 100% effective. Anyway that’s what I’m concentrating on just now: that she may well make a complete recovery.

But at the moment it’s difficult stuff to process. The last two days it was almost all I could think about. Today I thought about it much less, and when I did I wondered why I wasn’t thinking about it more, because I knew I still had some more work to do on it, some more interior freaking out to perform. But you always do wonder why, in this situation, don’t you? Inevitably, any kind of mortality-adjustment like this involves occasional weird gaps of inattention and unconcern, rapidly chased by feelings of loss…

Loss of the feeling that you know you should be feeling. But that, inexplicably, you aren’t.

Which is of course very normal stuff, in fact very textbook stuff. You just can’t maintain the focus, you see. The whole thing takes a certain unalterable lapse of time to slog through, because for part of that time you’re going to be asleep, and for another part you’re going to be on autopilot, and for another part you’re going to be showering or shaving. This is of course in addition to the part of the time when you’re going to feel huge waves crashing down on you. But, that’s only – it can only ever be – part of the time. Yesterday I shaved faster than I probably ever have in my life, cut the hell out of my face, ran to get a couple of beers in order to keep myself from swearing at the furniture and the calendar, tried to reconstruct an eerie dream I’d had about toasters and taxicabs and the Godelian interpretation of General Relativity, and perhaps somewhat unwisely read the full run of Miracleman. A staggering day. But today I watched a hockey game, boiled an egg, thought about cherry blossoms and firewood, read Action Philosophers, and then magically found myself at the liquor store afterwards anyway, just on autopilot, and had to think about what I was there for…before the magic word came to me: tranquilizer.

But, did I really need one?

Hell, who knows. Presumably the work of adjustment is still going on, somewhere belowdecks, so the answer’s probably yes. I tellya, though: watch out for that Miracleman stuff. It packs an extra punch, sometimes.

Anyway…

Where was I?

Oh yes: lasers in the jungle. I suppose everyone knows by now that stomach ulcers aren’t caused by too much spicy food, or even by stress, but by a bacterial incursion into the fine machineries of the gut. A simple course of antibiotics, and the ulcer’s gone. Hurray! But what most of you probably don’t know, just because…I mean, who thinks about such things, who isn’t paid to?…is that it’s possible that osteoporosis may follow the same model. I believe it’s another one of my countrymen, a Czech-Canadian from Montreal if I’m remembering right (remember, according to Canada Post, “Canada” means “the village”…”the neighbours”…”the houses over there”…), who’s been working on osteoporosis from this angle for the last few years. No idea what stage the research is at, or if it’s all turned out to be a buncha crap, or if it’s still going great guns, but the idea is, or anyway the goal was: just swallow this, ma’am, and not only will the osteoporosis be gone, it’ll be reversed.

Quite amazing, huh?

These kinds of things are actually going on all the time, you know. Let’s look at stomach cancer again, for a moment: very differently from stomach ulcers, apparently for a long time it was caused by what people ingested. Here in Paradise, we’re taught that at one time Europe’s only spice was salt, and we tend to look at our salt shakers differently after we hear that, but we think perhaps that it wouldn’t be so, so bad. But of course, not everyone had salt in the Europe of a couple hundred years ago. That’s the thing. Salt was expensive. Nowadays the stuff is literally at elbow and foot, very possibly the supreme sign of our wealth as a society…but when it wasn’t…

I’ve heard people used pinches of bread mould to flavour their food, sometimes, in those elder days.

And maybe it isn’t true, that they did.

But you can see how stomach cancer might have been more common than it is now, if they did.

Or, even if they didn’t! Here we are in a future filled with refrigerants and pasteurizers, and maybe we forget that they have not been the eternal backdrop of the human race throughout time. If something smells funny in my kitchen, I toss it out. If a sandwich or an egg sits on my counter in the summer heat for a few hours, I send it to its final resting-place in the landfill. I can always get another egg, or another sandwich. I am very safe, and don’t even know it. At least, I’m safe from random outbreaks of cancer…!

At least…uh, well now that I think about it…

…But you know, actually, the rates of all cancers over time are diminishing, always, like a reverse stock market. It’s true. And it’s quite remarkable. We’re all quite lucky. Well, the human race is lucky as a whole, I guess, if not necessarily uniformly lucky on an individual basis; unfortunately the curse of everyone’s life is that they either arrived in it ten years too early, or ten years too late…nothing to be done about that, though. You just can’t help that at all. Some people had polio. I’ve heard that was because rising hygeine standards limited the amount of stray fecal matter in the human diet. Right? Wrong? I don’t know; it’s just what I heard. But my point is, it’s always something, and yet we do pretty all right with these “somethings”, and if we had twice the lifetime that the Bible apparently guarantees us…well, we’d still be either ten years too early or ten years too late, but we’d see a few more crutches thrown away between those margins, so…

Anyway, I just wanted you to know: there’s a lot of good stuff going on out there. A lot of breakthroughs being made, that’ll be as swiftly forgotten once they’re part of our everyday human backdrop, like the purple sugar cube and the hum of the fridge kicking in at midnight and the HPV shot girls get at seventeen, as has the name of that fellow from Ontario, the thrice-blessed killer of viral liver cancer. Meanwhile, my friend’s sick, and I’m kind of still getting used to that idea. Gee, I hope I get fully used to it sometime before she’s cured in May, otherwise our June barbeques will be a little awkward, eh? What with the needless talk of death and all…

So remember: overall, in statistical terms, life isn’t fair to us people at all. It’s significantly better than fair, and that’s the truth. We’re doing good. Life is swell.

So…

Onward and upward, I guess, damn it.

Pre-Spidey Jitters

I don’t know why I have them. So far, I’ve really loved these Spider-Man movies. And it isn’t like I’ve got any doubt that this one will be good: I think that’s probably a lock. So why the apprehension? Maybe it’s because I don’t like Venom. Maybe it’s because Venom has already been done to death five million times under every conceivable condition, whether restarted, rebooted, reimagined, or just plain reheated. Maybe it’s because I associate Venom with the beginning of the long, slow slide into the latter-day excessively-laboured high-concept circle-jerk Spidey that I disliked so much.

(I should have something more to say on that shortly, after I let Tom’s recent thoughts percolate in my head a bit…honestly, Tom, I’m almost back! Just five more minutes!)

Or maybe it’s because I guess I figure that in order to even make Venom worth doing, it’ll have to be yet another amping-up of the basic thing that Venom’s all about, and I ask myself: do I need that? Because Venom also constructs Peter Parker, obviously…and even if I understand why that story would be rightly considered to have a fair amount of snap in movie form, I’ve seen that construction process so many times that I don’t know if I’ve got the patience to sit through it again. Venom just tires me, at this point. “Spider-Man No More” has been done fewer times than the whole Venom bit now, you know? And why oh why couldn’t it have been the Lizard and the Sandman and the Green Goblin? Why couldn’t John Jameson just have gone all nutso from space spores, or something?

I wish for the moon, clearly. It’s got to be Venom. People (not me!) really like Venom, and want to see him: they don’t mind sitting around while the Mouse Trap is set up. I’m a whiner. A worry-wart. A despoiler of harmless fun.

And Venom works. You can build a story around him that gets you to the right place, cinematically. It’s all there in the commercial: interlocking revenges that decapitate happiness, a lost ring and a lost promise, the allusion to a necessary sacrifice…all very nice and neat, really. So…why…yes. Tough question.

That I don’t know the answer to. Possibly it’s just that I sense the hand of editorial/directorial fate hovering over this Spider-Man, all Damocletian-like, in a way that a non-comics guy wouldn’t, and so I’m getting a double message. Which boils down to: hey, maybe it’s just that Marvel comics are so eager to be movies these days, maybe it’s deja vu, but Good God, don’t you think May Parker’s odds of getting out of this in one piece might be a little, y’know, not too good? I mean obviously I could be wrong about that. Maybe I’m picking up telegraph signals that aren’t really there. I could be.

Not that I’m saying I’m making them up…

Yes, because when Venom shows up you know things are mandated to get really bad, not just run-of-the-mill bad…I mean why else is he the last Boss in the Spider-Man game? Eh? There are expectations there, too, that need fulfilling…but then again, why should I even be perturbed by the idea that there might be a little genuine life-and-death tension in this installment of the excellent Spidey movies, whether it’s mandated or not? Oh, hell…well, you know, isn’t it always that same stupid life-or-death tension with goddamn Venom, isn’t that kind of my point? And isn’t it always that same stupid life-or-death tension with Peter Parker these days in general? He really is pretty poignant. But this poignancy is becoming a poison, a poison that the dose makes. In Amazing Fantasy #15, Peter’s life isn’t too enviable. In USM#1, though, it is hell. And I won’t even get into JMS’ junior Molten Man stuff, let alone The Other (remember that?) but really…gosh. Keep your spider-powers, I don’t want ‘em. They cost too much. I can’t identify with that anymore. You’re going through stuff now that I don’t even have a name for, it’s so damn poignant. Ask me to be interested, ask me to be excited, ask me to hold my breath and bite my nails and fall out of my chair from shock at your cleverness, but just stop asking me to feel, damn it! I’ll feel when I’m damn good and ready!

And another thing: get off my lawn!

If it was the Lizard, I don’t think I’d mind so much. I like the Lizard. Just about everyplace you can get to with Venom, you can get to with the Lizard just as well, if not better. In my opinion. Then again, I grew up with the Lizard, so no wonder I think that. I hated Secret Wars, too. I think the Punisher is kind of boring. I miss Mike Murdock and Karen Page. In short, I’m just an all-round old geezer fan who isn’t willing to let the young people have their own things, is what it is. And I swear, if you kids hit that ball into my yard one more time…!

Yup, that’s it. I just don’t like Venom. I’m bloody sick of all things Venom. Of course, that’s what I said before the USM crew did their Venom story, too, and look how good that was! Very pleasantly surprising.

Grumble. Now if they make me eat my words again, then I’ll really be pissed…

Buddy Guy, Part 3

Hi, and welcome back from my previous comments.

Today I want to talk about Robotika.

Seemingly alone among Internet commenters, I didn’t like it.

But then, I never liked Heavy Metal much, or Frank Miller’s Ronin either.

To be honest, Robotika confuses me. How can someone not know what their influences are? And yet Robotika seems not to know. I have seen that faceless supreme sexless samurai before, just as I’ve seen the alien/available mercenary woman of the wastes before, who talks in a language that’s easy to understand, but hard to decompose.

And am I the only one who recognizes this?

Really?

Well, that amazes me.

Then again, that’s what Archaia is all about, it seems: riffs, and not thinking so hard about them that you spoil the magic. For all the explanations of and enabling details about Robotika‘s world, it’s not an extrapolation but a jump: it’s a universe that our own universe implies, but doesn’t require…it is, in the best tradition of 1980s dystopian adventure, the product of a vacuous shimmer between our world and its, the product of a particular species of imaginative inference. Fantasy, of course, with the trappings of comic-book science fiction. It’s allegory, I guess, or anyway it’s not not allegory. And I’ve seen it a hundred times, I think. Maybe more.

But maybe it knows this: things happen fast in it, refreshingly fast, as fast as an ex-Marvel Jim Starlin story — the samurai buries his holy sword in the floor by the end of issue #1 (which knocked me out, by the way), his brilliantly-covering rice-paddy hat is gone in an accidental stroke in issue #2…he becomes symbolically sexual, and symbolically impotent, and smiles about it (like I wanted Matt Murdock to!) two panels later. And meanwhile we have a new character who eerily mirrors our speechless, sexless, self-destructive master: who’s had his eye removed, and replaced, in a horrible backup-feature scene, but who’s somehow become the long-haired, laughing, apparently freely-emotional favourite character who’s sure to die in an issue or two.

Except, he doesn’t.

Die, that is.

At least, not in the issues I’ve got.

God, I hope he lives, though. And he may: everything is disjointed, here, defeating expectations. It seems the reader is supposed to come on, step up, accept disunity one second after unity has been established, rotate, adapt…but, this is just four issues! How can this world be what it wants to be in so short a time, how can it put us readers through the necessary changes in time to pay off? Well, it won’t do that: one senses the beginnings of a large, large plot, and in backup-features the logic of the world that’ll support it is explicated as much as it perhaps will ever be…although, this being Archaia, one knows there will be more background still…but then, will the extra background be enough to delineate the world, really? This isn’t Artesia; everything is extremely muscular, quick, lugubrious, gestural. We’re not told what the background pattern is supposed to look like. The mercenary-woman is maybe the most talkative of all the characters, the narrator not excepted; but, she says things that are far too complicated, and too dull, to read quickly. A premonition sets in, and it’s not a good one. My advice to the cartoonist is to not translate for our barbarian woman exactly, but have what she says be a simplistic pidgin: because how it is, is frustrating. Everything’s like getting over a big shoulder. I wonder if I will ever be rewarded for it…if I even can ever be rewarded for it…

And then, unexpectedly, that captivating sideways panel! Well, now I’m not sure. Maybe it is a good idea…

Okay, but let’s get analytical. The first thing in this story is a sort of wondering about a climax, which is defeated; the second thing in it is plunging into a world that’s as it is, and accepting it, no matter how bizarre it is…and climax is defeated here as well, even though our infallible samurai most undoubtedly kicks some serious ass. But then, did we really think he wouldn’t? Honestly, though, it doesn’t matter: this is a learn-on-the-fly Miyazaki-model world, as far as one can tell, and the author knows we don’t understand the rules yet. But, we’re understanding something, I think. East, West, North and South…we’re in a classical science-fiction world of compartmentalized qualities, as zodiacal as any Jack Chalker novel, and it seems clear our protagonist is fated to overcome in each zone. But, is that all that’s going on here? Four issues, again: it doesn’t really seem enough, for what our local auteur means to say. And, indeed, it isn’t. Whatever there is that need to get said, must wait on the next four issues.

Or, am I just hopeful?

Or, has the author/artist successfully communicated to me, subliminally, that there’s something shocking coming up?

I haven’t yet addressed the last backup feature, in which we’re strongly invited to wonder about our hero’s origins and responsibilities…but it seems to be of a piece (in a way) with the thrust of the four issues, in that predictably he’s had things stripped away from him. And I guess I’m intrigued by the idea: how much more will he consent to lose, before he gives up absolutely everything? How will he change, and/or stay the same, before the inevitable detonation of his return to his Queen’s palace?

Or, will he return at all? Maybe, just possibly, it’s a different detonation that the author plans…

Well, I don’t really think so, although that would be nice. However, that I even wonder about it means I rate this comic: wait and see.

I don’t think I’d buy more of it…well, my pocketbook is pretty drained with the other Archaia books I’m buying, isn’t it?…but I’d definitely devour my friend’s copy if he bought it, and eight issues down the road…well who knows…?

So on now to The Killer, where I know exactly what I’m supposed to think. And again, I’ve seen this before. But, how much is Archaia knocking me out? Everything they do is something that I’ve seen before, and yet they find a new way to make me care, every time. And here’s a story about a hit-man which would be cold if it wasn’t so feverish…too often even the story about the professional killer is a fantasy story, with the assassin just sprung full-blown from the head of Zeus, just whoever he is, no high-school graduation picture, no old girlfriends…a vacuous jump, if you will, into a tired old plot of toughness and coolness…

This guy’s different, though. I don’t like him. I don’t hate him, either; but I don’t like him. I think I maybe empathize with him a little, although (as no doubt it’s supposed to be) that empathy constitutes an unpleasant jolt…but like is out of the question.

God, I hope this isn’t made into a movie maybe starring Robert Duvall or something. Or Steve Buscemi. Or Charlie Sheen.

It probably will be, though.

Well, good for Archaia in that case, I guess. But I really don’t have much to say about The Killer, except it’s grabbing me. I look forward to his disintegration, like the guy in that old Jack London story about lighting the fire. I just hope he lives long enough to finish telling me what he thinks.

Well, Guy, you knew I wouldn’t have as much to say about these ones as I did about the others, right? I’ve been particularly skinny with The Killer, but the truth is I just like it straight-up, and so what should I say…however I hope to make up for this reticence next time, with my review of Journey Into Mohawk Country…

Can’t wait!

The Book On The Edge Of Forever

Have you read it, Internet?

You should; it’s blackly humourous, incisive, and ultimately (in the opinion of this reader) convincing. I can recommend it to you without the slightest hesitation, especially if like me you have fallen a little out of love with Harlan Ellison’s public persona. The author calls it an old-fashioned polemical screed, but to me it seems like pretty fair reportage. Anyway, it’s certainly a rewarding read.

One other thing, Internet…

Have you read the various court documents related to the Ellison vs. Fantagraphics lawsuit? They’ve been made available, you know, and they too make for rewarding reading.

And the conversation about them on the TCJ message-boards is even more rewarding, if you’re a legal know-nothing like me. Full disclosure: I think it’d be fair to say that most of the commenters there would admit to having a greater sympathy for Fantagraphics than for Ellison if you asked them. But, that isn’t to say there’s no clarification available there for a person who’s interested in what the lawsuit consists of. At the very least, there’s the occasional reminder from Kim Thompson (wisely avoiding controversial statements that might come back to haunt him later) about just what is and is not at issue in the big dispute. Think he’s lying, dissembling, missing the point, describing the matter of law incompletely? I wish you would join the discussion, then, and enlighten me about that. Ultimately, of course, it doesn’t matter: the judge who will settle the issue doesn’t need me to understand, to do his job. One imagines he is already pretty well informed. And it isn’t your responsibility, after all, to make sure I have a good grasp of the facts. Nor are you qualified to so inform me. However, every once in a while I like to keep current about things, and if you’ve got something to contribute to that project I’d enjoy reading your thoughts. Just for speculative purposes, you understand.

However: two things.

ONE: do the damn research, will you? I’ve been both an Ellison zombie and a Fantagraphics zombie at different points in my lifetime (just as Ed has), and I’m already very well-acquainted with the arguments that proceed from zombiehood. But for Christ’s sake have a little respect, for the litigants if not for me. It’s a free country, and Ellison can sue if he wants to. It’s a free country, and Gary and Kim are entitled to mount their defence. One of them will be proven right, barring a settlement out of court, but none of us know which one of them that’ll be. I don’t care if you’ve got money down on it in Vegas, and I don’t care if you think the whole thing proceeds from massive dickishness on both sides; there is no superiority for you here. Three people, each of whom has contributed an awful lot to the cultural landscape, are putting up their livelihoods to settle this question. And I have my opinion and you have yours, but to be honest I can generate opinions about this thing with a pair of the old D&D dice quite handily, so I don’t need to hear yours restated, and I don’t need to hear mine restated, but I DO need to hear something besides pseudo-ethical posing about who should be right, and who should be wrong. Joe Rice didn’t do either of those things, and also he (I believe) is a self-avowed supergeek semi-moron on this issue into the bargain, so no blame attaches there…well, not for pseudo-ethical posing, anyway…but to the rest of you (and there are a lot of you) all across the web: pretty please. Clean the fucking car.

TWO: Unless and until Unca Harlan brings suit against Christopher Priest and/or Fantagraphics specifically over the wrongness of publishing “The Book On The Edge Of Forever”, I’ll say what I please about it, and it pleases me to say this: as I understand matters, this book has not a single goddamn thing to do with the current dispute, so critique it, review it, do whatever you want with it, but flogging READ the flogging thing if you flogging want to flogging say anything about it. If you please. Otherwise, leave it out of the discussion. My God, from the way some of you carry on you’d think it was illegal to publish a book. But I’ll stand up for this, if for nothing else: who do you think was going to publish this book except for Fantagraphics? NAME THE FUCKING DREAM PUBLISHER OF YOURS WHO WOULD HAVE PUBLISHED IT BETTER. Because I read it and liked it, and if it had been somehow suppressed my life would’ve been poorer, and less free, and so there, there’s my position, and if you want to say I can’t read something negative about someone which anyway appears to be substantially true, then you can, what’s the expression, suck it for me. Harlan may be a dick (and my grammar may be lousy), but I don’t see him saying that either the writing or the publication of this book was WRONG, only that it was maliciously done.

But honestly I think that may be a non-issue.

“Maliciously done but not actually wrong.”

Pretty fair description of the book, in fact.

I may not throw money at Fantagraphics, and I may not throw money at Harlan Ellison, but if somebody fucks with my man the good writer Christopher Priest I’d be willing to throw money at him all day long. ALL. DAY. LONG. And so there’s your First Amendment bullshit, if you like.

And can I get a “hell yeah” from the readers of this blog? Because it’s only just, you see.

Because there’s a lot of disinformation out there, which makes Mr. Priest look culpable for something when he isn’t. And Harlan can say what he likes in his legal complaint, whether or not I strongly disagree with it, but for uninformed people to take up the torch against a blameless man…that’s not cool. And I want to fight against it.

Help me out.

Why it’s like a petition or something.

Omission Statement

I don’t really need to say this; I just want to, for some reason. Well, this is a diary as well as an essay dump, and I don’t need to calculate everything — I’ll just say it.

I kind of decided, quite a while ago, not to do obituary-posts here.

For one thing, there’s an awful lot of people I grew up admiring who are getting a bit older now, and I’m afraid if I started writing eulogies they might gradually crowd out anything else I had to say. Then there’s people it almost embarrasses me not to be able to count as direct influences: if I make a big deal about Dave Cockrum dying, or Marshall Rogers (and those are big deals, naturally) , how do I not mention Arnold Drake? And yet I know Arnold Drake’s work only indirectly, and mostly posthumously. Then there’s Bus Griffiths, whose work I did know, and who was a pretty good representative of those older men who bequeathed to me the province in which I live…but, even eulogizing Bus struck me as a jarring thing to do, and after briefly making a stab at it, I deleted the post. So, can I really go on now to mentioning Johnny Hart, after that? How do you decide where to start with these things, and where can you ever end, once you do?

So I decided to avoid the whole thing.

But now, why do I bring it up? I mean, why do I bring it up now. Well, I don’t know…as I said, sometimes a blog is a diary, and often what gets written in a diary is just what comes out of your fingers that day. Mostly I try to confine my writing here to (I flatter myself) genuine ideas that I actually have about things. But today, I’m thinking about Kurt Vonnegut, an extremely famous and influential writer whose work was always a little problematic for me. I should’ve come to him at 15, but didn’t get around to him until I was 27, rooting through an old roommate’s huge laundry-basket of books. I guess I probably read about twenty or so of these, that penniless summer. And they were very good, I thought, but still a little problematical.

I don’t like Tom Robbins, like at all. Many people I know seem to think I ought to, but I don’t. Kurt Vonnegut I do like, though, which sometimes perplexes me: because his amazing self-created oeuvre isn’t always to my taste, but what he has to say in it is, I think, important enough…and he could certainly write, very admirably. I think more than any other author I’ve encountered (with the possible exception of Dr. Seuss), his style disguised his skill, his intention disguised his art…or maybe it was that his art disguised his intention? All that baby-talk was no accident, anymore than was the occasionally ruthless, almost rootless, lunacy of narrative and plot…anymore than (perhaps) was its effect. It’s probably easy to forget, but we walk about in a Vonnegut-ian world, these days, a plastic world that melts and deforms as we regard it: all unknowing, we walk about in a postwar literature of the impermanent.

I still didn’t like Slapstick.

But that’s a small matter, I guess.

Anyway, that’s why I don’t write eulogies. I’m not really any good at them.

Just thought I’d mention it.