Whiskey And Horseradish

Spring Review #2 is in the works…coming soon…

It’s just that right now I have this incredible sinus pressure to deal with, you see. Anybody else have this thing? I’m sure they have it down in Seattle only ten times worse, poor Seattle’s really getting hammered by Nature these last couple of years…

Anyway, whiskey and horseradish. Don’t laugh; it works. What you do is, you eat about a half a teaspoon of strong horseradish, and kind of crunch it around on your molars…then add some whiskey to the mix. Chew. Swish. Swallow.

Repeat.

If your bug starts in the throat, and you catch it in time…phfft! No more bug. I’m telling you.

Unfortunately, mine started in the sinuses, and the old W+H treatment might have killed it, too, but I was late in taking action on it. And then I got stoopid, and forgot all about the jar of horseradish in the back of my fridge. Might try it now, though. Besides, they tell me horseradish is high in Vitamin C, you know?

What happens is: the whiskey sterilizes your throat, and the whiskey and the radish together send a GEYSER of fumes up through all the empty spaces in your head. It’s your classic case of killing two birds with one low-yield nuclear device, really.

Trust me.

Cripes, where’s that whiskey…

What I’m supposed to be doing now instead of this, I have no idea. Did I have no work to do, paycheques to cash, socks to launder, places to meet?

No idea.

I’m not even sure what time it is, because when I’m sick I turn into that bane of girlfriends everywhere, a manly manly blob. I go caveman. I do no housekeeping. I do not keep myself neat and tidy. I empty no wastepaper baskets, turn off no lights or stove elements, I leave water running all over the place, I throw stuff on the ground when I’m done with it. Blob? I’m a heap. Hell, I’m Swamp Thing. I’m Nero crossed with Pigpen crossed with Friar Tuck crossed with Fred C. Dobbs. Currently about all I can bring myself to accomplish is making pots of tea, correcting people who are WRONG! on the Internet, and — most luxurious of all these things — reading Thor Essentials #3…which as it turns out really is essential for me, since it collects the great Mangog story which I swear I used to have in a Treasury Edition somewhere along the way, completes the Enchanters storyline I first began reading in Son Of Origins (Of Marvel Comics) who knows how many years ago now, introduces both the Wrecker and Ulik the troll, pits Thor against Galactus, and just generally kicks my ass with all the Thor stuff the longboxes are lacking. Plus: kooky Tales Of Asgard! My God, what a messed-up comic this used to be, all Stan and Jack’s Asgardian “technology”…simply mad. Of course it’s in black and white, which sucks — because these are some unbelievable comics when they’re coloured — but then again it was cheap, and I’m sick, and I’ve finished all my macaroons and wonton soup and ginger ale so I’ll take what I can get.

Plus it’s AWESOME. Volstagg’s dialogue alone is worth the price of admission.

Oh, I also picked up League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen Vol. II, Hellboy: Right Hand Of Doom, All-Star Superman #10, and finally one of those Immortal Iron Fists you all have been raving about. Plus a cheap-ass prize for P-Tor, which I’m enjoying at this moment.

So all in all, it’s not so bad, even if I do think I’ve discovered a new sickness called Whooping Sneeze.

In fact, the whole gruesomely colourful experience has given me an idea. From now on, every time I get sick I’m going to take a hundred bucks and head to the comic shop, come home and order in Chinese food, and then unplug the phone and crank up the dishevellment to 11, ’til I’m back on my feet. Caveman? Next time I’m going cave bear. On the list: more Fourth World Omnibus, Dr. Strange: The Oath, Promethea, Gaiman’s Eternals, and Silver Star. And a whole lotta whiskey. And horseradish.

Okay, I’ll just start out with the horseradish and whiskey. Then head on into the plain old whiskey.

Anyway, Spring Review #2…I’m excited about it, actually.

Just have to see what kind of damage I can do to this here bottle first, is all…

End Interload.

Comics Fans Are Scum

No sooner do I set down my copy of All-Star Superman #10, than I hear this news:

“After seventy years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago – the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics Vol. 1.”

Now that’s just a beautiful thing to read, isn’t it?

Yeah.

However, no sooner do I discover this wonderful story, but I also discover a related one that’s decidedly uglier, in the comments to this post.

…

And, words fail me, of course. So instead of ranting and raving about it, let me just take this moment to bow my head and silently thank whatever super-powers may be that the opinions of Newsarama trolls count for squat in this big, beautiful universe of ours.

You can join me, if you like.

…

Ahhhh…that’s better, right?

Amen. And: what fantastic news.

It’s a great day.

Wow, That is A Good Idea…

…For an X-Files movie poster. It really is.

Actually makes me want to see the movie.

Not to jump the gun on a forthcoming post, but you know how the ability to know how to do it right seems to be in incredibly short supply in the corporate entertainment world, these days? Where once that ability was usually the thing you had to have, if you wanted a job?

Just knowing someone out there gets to do it right — even if it’s only in a small way –is something I find tremendously cheering. More of this sort of thing, please, World.

The All-Whizzers Squad

Madeley was just talking about The Flash…

Here’s my problem. I grew up on Barry Allen. I loved the post-Crisis Wally West. I hated Mark Waid’s Wally West. I love the way Waid writes Barry Allen. I don’t want Barry Allen to come back. I hated Impulse. I love the whole idea of Kid Flash. I don’t like Max Mercury. I do like Max Mercury. Jesse Quick I can take or leave. Jesse Quick I can not take or leave.

I love Jay and Joan.

And Iris.

And even that hippie chick that used to stay with them…little miss Nosy…

And even Zoom (although I can think of two Flash issues featuring Zoom I’d like Superboy-Prime to have punched away, can’t you?), and even the new guy, what’s-his-name, Hunter Zoloman.

And Tina, Jerry, Chunk, the good Piper…I suppose even Linda, a little bit (although Linda is clearly to Waid as Storm is to Claremont)…Wally’s parents…

Basically anybody but Abra Kadabra. Because Jesus did Waid go to that well once too often…

But what’s to be done about it all?

Everything Flash is all phooked, right?

No. Here’s what I’d like to see Mark Waid write, and he’d absolutely rip it up, too.

Flash as Avengers.

The All-Flash Squadron.

The Flash Family.

I’d even sit still for Barry returning, if I could read that. A big Mansion for them all to live in (hey, Chunk has one! Remeber your old pal Chunk?); twenty characters, all connected. Barry. Jay. Max. Bart. Jesse. Wally. The lot. Are you listening, Mark? Oh heck, okay already: throw in Abra Kadabra, if you must. And reform a Rogue, throw him in there too.

Okay, wait: Jay and Joan still live across the river.

But the rest of them.

I’m telling you I’d BUY that comic! Every single stinkin’ month!

Still would prefer Messner-Loebs. But Waid would be fine too! And I know Mark can write Barry, and I know that when Mark’s on, he’s freakin’ ON…

Sigh…

But: never in a million years, obviously. Absolutely impossible.

Flash Fact. More’s the pity.

Spring Review #1: The Road That Goes In Both Directions

Is Alan Moore a Universal Genius?

Well…

No, of course he’s not. Though I yield to no one in my love of Voice Of The Fire – especially I loved the trick of “Hob’s Hog”, a thing that as I’ve said before I think Alan Moore does better than anyone, and perhaps it’s the finest degraded-vernacular first-person narration I’ve ever come across — truly a magic spell! — nevertheless I won’t deny that in a handful of places the book is something just a little bit less than pure gold. I think it’s a fantastic, exciting, brilliant experiment, and in spots something of an out-and-out triumph…but in other spots I confess I think it misses pure gold just by an inch or two, and hits pure silver instead. Very pure silver; but silver. Similarly, though I can sit and read, watch, or listen to his thoughts on culture, philosophy, magic, and the future for hours on end — and I really can, for me he throws off sparks of inspiration so thick that it might as well really be magic — and of course he would say it really is, and what’m I looking so surprised about anyway — good heavens, what an idea-man he is! — still Alan can’t talk with absolute brilliance about everything in the world…and though he is (for example) more serious than Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis, he is not as up-to-date, and therefore some of his talk inevitably falls the tiniest bit flatter than some other of his talk.

And I haven’t heard the recordings of his Happenings. I’m sure I’d like them. I might even love them.

But would they be pure gold? I’m not going to say I think anything about this one way or another, except finding out is going to be half the fun, so don’t ask me to spoil it for myself by idolizing Alan too much…

And I loved the Black Dossier, and even think I detected in it some extra-sly material that effectively answers some of the more sensible-sounding criticisms of it…

But I thought his mimicking of the styles of other authors was not as convincing as some other mimickings of this kind. The Shakespeare really wasn’t a good match at all (oh, well, come on! Let’s be reasonable, my God what do I want from poor Alan…!), the Wodehouse didn’t sound very much like Wodehouse, the Kerouac was funny but unreadable…and so.

So.

And have you noticed that he seems to thrive particularly well in the superhero genre, or anyway the quasi-superhero genre?

And not quite so well when he’s out of it…

Oh, well except of course there’s From Hell…and Big Numbers as well, maybe…

And I’ve got news for you: now there’s Lost Girls, too.

No kidding: it’s a stunner.

A Universal Genius he might not be, but Lost Girls sure won’t do much to convince you of that. It is simply — yes — pure gold. I’ve never seen his much-vaunted talent for double vu on such fantastic, effective display; I’ve never been so amazed at the pure cleverness of his conceit. Consider two things, here: one, his (heretofore merely amusing, but now something else besides) insistence that Lost Girls is not erotica but porn…and two, that he might’ve chosen to pull the Watchmen trick of making up thinly-veiled “alternate” versions of these beloved children’s stories — that we all would’ve known were intended to be Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy anyway — but he didn’t.

But, why didn’t he?

Hey, it worked for Watchmen, and it worked incredibly well: in fact it worked better that way, than if he had used the pre-existing characters!

So?

Why?

There’s an obvious answer to this: which is simply that if one desires to discuss the powerful current of sexual implication that runs underneath much of our childrens’ literature, that discussion benefits from the re-imagining of the old familiar characters as themselves, instead of as shadowy cognates with new names, ambiguous pointers to a strictly suggestive or wished-for meaning that’s never allowed to become what it really is, or intends to be. I mean…first of all, it pulls completely against the point. Because the point’s supposed to be about freeing truths that were previously sublimated! And it’s really hard enough already: Alice is Alice, but until the end of Book One she isn’t specifically named as “our” Alice. Neither is Wendy, though it’s just as hard to miss that Wendy is who she is. Meanwhile Dorothy is the plainest-spoken of these identifications, but even she can’t help but be somewhat masked, by (for example) the replacement of the movie’s Ruby Slippers with the book’s original Silver Shoes, by a new nickname, by a whole bunch of things. And they’re all older; they all have new invented histories and sexual inclinations and lives; it’s really hard enough already. Without Alan’s brilliant double-vu shenanigans it wouldn’t even be possible to do it. But even Alan can only stretch double vu so far before it breaks.

That’s the obvious answer.

Here’s the not-so-obvious one: if the girls had been called (say) Donna, and Nikki, and Shelley, instead of Wendy and Dorothy and Alice…

Why then, it wouldn’t have been porn.

Only erotica.

Yes: only erotica. The kind of stuff art teachers put on their walls to intrigue their slightly-tipsy students or browbeat their button-down businessmen brothers-in-law with…oh, oh! Oh, the avant-garde. What they love today, you’ll love tomorrow…!

Porn’s not like that. Nobody loves it tomorrow.

And yet is porn so vile, by its nature? It is not; and yet, it is. Porn can dress itself up as it likes, give words to itself to say that are sly, cute, coy, or otherwise defensible-sounding…and yet all porn’s defences are really only pretenses, and no one really buys it, and indeed no one ever really sees it. Except the, ah…the enthusiast.

“Enthusiast.”

Ah, porn, porn, porn…who you trying to kid, friend Porn? There are no “enthusiasts”, just people with excuses to make. Excuses that must, that do, always fall flat. Because porn is porn. As the young amoral folk say today: “it is what it is.” And that’s all that it is.

And here’s the beauty of it: I cannot hang Lost Girls — for all its beauty! — on my wall, and call it erotica. I cannot call it art, though art is most definitely what it is. Because people will ask me what it’s about. And if I dare to tell them…

“It’s about Alice In Wonderland, Wendy Darling, and Dorothy Gale fucking each other…”

No, oh no! I can’t tell them that! They’ll think I’m some kind of sick pervert!

Guaranteed they will.

A nineteen-year old girl of my acquaintance — you see how delicate I am (“hey, man…it is what it is”) — recently asked me about my copy of Lost Girls. And I told her what it was. What it is? What it is. And she asked if she could read it, and I said: “Um…I guess so…”

And then she asked if she could borrow it.

And I said:

“Hell no! Look, I don’t care if you are nineteen, I’m pretty sure lending you this would get me strung up…!“

Hence: it’s porn. Not erotica.

If you have to hide it when people come over for dinner: it’s porn. Not erotica.

No matter how artsy or delicate it is.

Here’s where Alan’s genius of conception (not to mention sense of humour — again, double vu) really shows. If it were Donna, and Nikki, and Shelley, then it could be erotica: “what’s it about?” Well, it’s about exploring the undercurrent of sexuality in childrens’ stories, my dear…why haven’t you always felt, that when the tornado comes for Dorothy…

“Wait, wait. This is Dorothy? Like, from the Wizard of Oz?“

Of course not, my sweet. Why, what do you take me for? No, this is only a girl that may be Dorothy, that might be Dorothy…because, don’t you agree, isn’t Dorothy really a metaphor for all young women on the brink of sexual awareness? So we might legitimately say, then, that there is no Dorothy…never has been a Dorothy…

Oh, but please: allow me to take your coat. Gracious, where are my manners…

Now that’s some erotica right there, friends. That is some plausible deniability. No, no…not porn. Good heavens, Constable, what an imagination you’ve got! No, this is erotica…

Perfectly harmless stuff, I assure you!

Now…may I freshen your drink?

Meanwhile they lock me in a room, and then they throw away the room, for letting a nineteen-year old woman, mind! see a picture of an old lady doing something nasty with another old lady.

Ha.

Well, such was the genius of Alan’s intention.

Mind you, it wasn’t all his intention…

Let’s talk art for a minute. I confess when I discovered who Melinda Gebbie was, I was a bit trepidatious — would she turn out to be the comics version of Linda McCartney? Although I could appreciate the intellectual suitability of the particular style she brought to the work (that I saw in excerpted panels online), still I wondered if she was doing it that way because, well, she couldn’t do it any other way. Not that I’m a snob for any kind of art! But I worried a little, deep down, that her art wouldn’t live up to Alan’s words, and Alan’s fine conceit.

Shame on me.

In fact, shame on me twice: once for doubting, and a second time for denying Melinda credit for shaping and originating that very conceit, that very cleverness and complexity, that Alan’s name on the book convinced me to expect. Alan Moore, without question, writes a damn fine pictorial narrative; but he’s also (which may be higher praise) a very dedicated believer in artistic collaboration, and he does a damn fine job of that too. Well, I’m not just making this up: you can see it throughout his body of work. Alan’s a fantastic Maker, but he’s not THE Maker, not the one and only Maker…well, who in their right mind would overlook Eddie Campbell or Dave Gibbons or Steve Bissette, just because Alan Moore was there? It doesn’t make sense, and it isn’t supportable — “artist” does not mean “secretary”, except in the Blakean sense of all creators being but secretaries “of a greater Author”.

So: Melinda. This is every bit as much her book as it is Alan’s, and my God she makes great stuff of it. One often encounters art which is jolting at first, but then swiftly draws the reader in past the membrane of defamiliarization, almost mesmerically into a state of aligned vision (the principle of opposition becoming the principle of harmony, if you will), a lot like going cross-eyed.  Or, like reading something with 3D glasses on, and then looking up at the real world to find it gives you a headache?  (A-HA!)  And the art in Lost Girls is like that, only more fast-acting: at the risk of sounding like a complete idiot, it doesn’t lower you into the rabbit-hole, it drops you. And then you’re falling. And how? Why? Well, because these are very powerfully recursive images Melinda gives us — very very powerfully recursive images, that use the story to tell the story of the story…

You Watchmen lovers out there, take note: this is really something. This is M.C. Escher. This is not just Alan. This is Melinda.

I won’t even spoil it for you. The thing’s an onion; it’s got layers. It’s a Julia Set. It’s a thrilling accomplishment. Go buy it, go read it…double vu, Good Lord. It really is.

Quite a staggering achievement, for PORN.

Which is by its nature something as unsavoury, as it is ineliminable.  Yes.  And, yes:  this may already be the most intellectually audacious comic I’ve ever read, even though I’ve only just finished Book One. And something in me says I should wait to read it all, before I post this review…not because I may be let down by Books Two and Three (I’m absolutely confident that I won’t be), but because no doubt Books Two and Three contain such marvellous and felicitous outrages in them, that no half-decent reviewer could bring himself to pass over without mentioning…

But then another part of me is saying that if I wait, I’ll only have less to say. Because I’ll have too much to say: already Book One (and a bit of Book Two) very nearly defeat me. If you were ever a person who thought that Alan Moore had grown overly reliant on a small handful of stylistic choices and narrative techniques, if you ever thought to yourself “oh, bloody Alan Moore again with his juxtapositions and his foreshadowings and his double meanings, can’t he ever learn more than one tune to put all those excellent words to?”, then come on and see what use he’s putting that bag of tricks to, these days. This right here, this is a novel that he and Melinda have written. This cries out for a couple dozen inches in the New York Times Review of Books. This is not fooling around, this is about something. This is a million miles away from “style-as-crutch”.

As I head deeper into Book Two, I cannot imagine having any cause to reverse myself on that. Although if I do, you’ll be the first to know!

But beware, casual reader: Alan wasn’t joking. This is fucking PORN.

And also, just by the way: a masterpiece.

…So, only one more bit of business to tidy up, then…

I found myself wondering just now, as I was going to check on the rice, what my friend Willow may make of this review of mine. Not that I can alter my opinion to conform to anyone’s reading but my own! But I didn’t just go out and get Lost Girls because it’s Alan Moore, I also went out and got it because I’d read so much controversial stuff about it online, that I had difficulty believing in. Many, many feminist comics bloggers (I do feel silly using “feminist” that way, because it almost feels as though I’m accusing people of being all single-issue-y — in the comics blogosphere anyway, I suppose the always-contested term “feminism” has accumulated some specific bullshit connotations that I’m uncomfortable with, and so therefore it feels like I’m overgeneralizing even to talk about feminist comics bloggers, as though there should be anything outre about feminist anything in FREAKING 2008 FOR GOD’S SAKE…!), have spoken out against it, some quite passionately.

I can only say (to my friend Willow, whose respect I’d be sorry to lose) that I believe those bloggers (those comics bloggers, damnit!) have not — sorry, sorry, you’ll pardon the expression, but I have to, it’s the mot juste — damn you, Alan — penetrated to the artistic intention of Lost Girls. To my reasonably well-travelled eyes, there’s much here, in this brilliantly, purposely transgressive work, for an enlightened person to welcome. And so…? I confess to being a bit downcast at the outcries against it. Surely if feminism stands for anything, it stands for uncompromising honesty — and Lost Girls, as a work, is just about as honest as it comes. It seems to me.

But of course — your mileage may vary.

Now please stand by to see if I find any reason to do an about-face after all.

Pleasant dreams, Bloggers!

To Tom Foss, And All Users Of Moderated Comments

I’d just like to say, yeah, moderate away, that doesn’t bug me.

What bugs me is something completely different:  entering a Google username and password.

I’m sure no one cares but me, but I just don’t like having to do it, so I don’t.  Which puts a crimp in the blogosphere if there is anyone else like me, but if there isn’t, then it’s just me, so…

Moderate away, I guess.

However Tom, just thought I’d tell you:  that link in your last post doesn’t go anywhere.

Stockholm Syndrome

In a strange hiccup of synchronicity, though not knowing a thing about all the various Valerie D’Orazio controversies of recent days, I nevertheless chose yesterday to follow a whim by reading Kevin Huxford’s blog — and let me tell you, if only for the the oddball relationship he has with his trolls, it was fucking fascinating.

However, if you’re thinking of checking it out, you might want to pack a lunch.

Maybe two.

A Message Sent To No One

Or as I call them: the Liberal Party of Canada.

Listen up, Liberal Party of Canada.

I hate the Harper Conservatives like nobody’s business. I think they’re bad for the country, and bad for the world. And worse even than that: they’ve made every day a potential election.

I have to watch their fucking election-style ads, even when an election hasn’t been called.

So it’s really just like an election, except I don’t get to say: okay I vote, now fucking SHUT UP.

And you’re responsible for that. You: the gutless Liberal Party of Canada.

I understand you want to win. I want you to win. But I just want you to know three things.

One, I despise with all my soul the Harper Conservatives. “Conservatives” — that’s a joke. They’re semi-professional WASTERS. They’re not Conservatives at all. They’re vandals. They’re the people that the next President of the United States, whoever that may be, will be far to the left of.

That’s embarrassing shit.

Two, if you force an election, I will vote for you. I don’t care if you win. I want an election, because I hate the way our (ugh) Government does business in Parliament. And they’re daring you — they’re daring me! — to sit through another election. Well, bring it on.

No, seriously Liberal Party of Canada — bring it on.

Oh, you don’t want to bring it on? Not just yet? Tell you what, I get that. I don’t like it, but I get it. You’re waiting until you can be reasonably sure you’ll win it, before you make it happen. Of course if you bring it on now, and lose, you’ll still have my vote, forever.

But you have to remember, I hate these guys.

And therefore if you delay, if you keep approving shit by them out of strategy, if you delay and delay and delay…

I’ll vote for you…

If you call it today, I’ll vote for you forever and forever, as the best chance to beat those bastards. And (or is it “but”?) if you wait, and wait, and wait, and don’t take a stand, just so you can position yourselves to beat them…

I’ll vote for you…

But Three: GOD HELP YOU IF YOU DON’T WIN THEN, AND WIN BIG. Because if you waste my life by waiting, and then you don’t win…

You’ll lose my vote.

Because right now in a Conservative minority you do nothing for me. You’re doing nothing for me. And I loathe and despise and abominate these people.

And if you don’t win…

I’d be way better off voting for Old Beady-Eyes. You know who I mean. Jack Layton. NDP.

Because you’re seriously doing nothing. Stephen Harper’s right, you’re not the Opposition right now. You don’t know how to oppose. You’re the weakest fucking tea of an Opposition party I’ve ever seen.

Oppose for real; get my vote forever. These are trying, desperate, worrisome times, and I need someone in my corner that I can count on to do the right thing.

Oppose only as strategy; I give you ONE FUCKING CHANCE TO DO IT RIGHT!

And then I’m voting NDP.

This country’s in a terrible state, and every day that it gets worse is your fault. YOUR FAULT!

I want an election. I want it now. Don’t ask me to wait. Don’t make me wait.

But if you make me wait anyway…I’m telling you.

Fucking WIN!

Or lose my vote.

I’m dead serious.

Dead fucking serious.

These aren’t your ordinary fucking STUPID Ottawa games. These are real people out here, who in a year or less will be getting fucked, not just fucked but ROYALLY fucked. Harper makes Mulroney look like the friend of the fucking poor. He makes Chretien look like a diplomat. These guys are bad.

Fucking do something.

This is your only warning. Take it to heart.

“Each Of These Four Are You, Stephen Strange…”

…Stephen Strange, all of these four are you.

Welcome, Bloggers, to a little tutorial on Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s second most famous creation that I didn’t really expect to have to give, but now see that I probably should. Because it seems there’s a lot of — ahem, can we just call it “modern mythology”? — there’s a lot of modern mythology out there about our good friend Dr. Strange, he of the ASL love-bombing and the flying-carpet opera cape. To wit:

Myth #1: Dr. Strange is an awesome character, but no one can seem to make him work properly.

This is of course a bald-faced lie. The list of creators who’ve written and drawn an absolutely brilliant Dr. Strange is a very, very long one, and it isn’t getting any shorter: didn’t we just see a couple different great Doc interpretations in the last couple of years, in fact? The very idea is absurd — making Dr. Strange work is almost as easy as finding an audience that thinks he’s an awesome character. Fred Hembeck does an excellent Dr. Strange, for heaven’s sake! So let us dismiss this myth right out of hand, Bloggers: there’s no evidence for it.

(And hey: no knock on Fred — he is, after all, the Patron Saint of Comics Bloggers. In fact I call upon him to draw a magic circle or pentagram or something ’round this post to protect it from inauthentic influences…)

Myth #2: Dr. Strange, though an awesome character, is too vaguely omnipowerful; he would work better if he had a clearly-defined power-set that marked out what he couldn’t do.

Well, this is simply Heroclix talk. In fact the few Dr. Strange runs that haven’t worked have been just those that strove to bring some top-down regulation to what Doc can and can’t do — to rationalize the rules of his magic beyond the way it’s been depicted in past stories. No, he can’t do just any old thing; yes, he can do an awful lot nevertheless. But in this way he’s no different from, say, Iron Man: like all comics characters, he lives in an envelope of ability that the necessities of plot must often push — and just like any other character, whatever the writer and artist can come up with for him to do, he can do that. And some writers and artists make plot choices that are not quite as good as some other writers and artists might make, but that isn’t Doc’s fault! Anyway, a poorer choice by one writer is easily corrected by the better choice of a later one — the lesson being, no off-the-cuff mistake in a forty-year old character’s development can ever be a mistake that must stick. It might not always make for the best comics. Depending on its context, it may seem to legitimize further poor choices by later writers (for example, Dr. Strange’s appearances in “What If?” have rarely done well by the character, instead trying to make him into some other character, of lesser interest, and for no good reason)…but in comics, no fumble is (or at least, no fumble should be) unrecoverable. For a character like Dr. Strange especially, it’s only when the walls of context start closing in, and are not stopped, when the death-trap becomes inescapable.

Myth #3: Dr. Strange, though he’s an awesome character, can’t support a solo title as he is; to work better, he at least needs some sort of modification.

Are you noticing that whole “he doesn’t work; he needs to work better” thing yet, Bloggers? I suppose the underlying idea here is that a “working” character is a character who brings home the bacon to his publisher — doesn’t really matter how good the stories are, if the character doesn’t connect with a reasonably large audience, there’s something wrong with him, that needs fixing. In other words, if you build it, they will come; and if they’re not coming, that must be because you didn’t build it.

But this underlying idea is only a cloak of concealment (you’ll pardon me) for another underlying idea, isn’t it? Comics publishers of the past (we should know!) have had no compunctions whatever about changing characters, even changing them drastically, in an effort to grab more readers. That happens all the time, really; it’s part of the game. So why has this never happened before with Dr. Strange?

Answer: historically, there’s been no need for Marvel to screw with the Doc basics, because his appearances have in fact supported sales very well. Not all the time, of course: but then no one ever said every character would be a Spider-Man or a Hulk…or a Wolverine. Or even a (remember those days?) a Ghost Rider. Doc, however, has in the past successfully supported back-up features, solo titles, and team books very adequately for the second-stringer that he is. Also, he’s been the site of some incredibly skilled storytelling, that not only generated a loyal fan-base but even proved attractive to new readers. Doc, in his particular literary niche, is a success story…and he’s been a success story outside it, too, sometimes. The Spider-Man numbers are never coming, but for what Doc is…well, he’s a hell of a performer.

Myth #4: Even though he’s an awesome character, it’s hard to use Dr. Strange in the larger context of the Marvel Universe; if he’s fighting Dormammu in his own book, that’s one thing, but as soon as you put him on a team, his basically-unlimited power makes it difficult to write good team stories, because he overshadows the other characters so much that you basically have to have him be knocked unconscious once an issue.

Corollary: If other characters are having problems with, say, magical menaces, why don’t they just call in Dr. Strange? You’re trying to tell me Reed Richards doesn’t have him on speed-dial, or something? It’s just silly.

May I take this opportunity to mention how much I hate the “Hero X calls in favours from all the other heroes to get them to help him with his (say) Aunt’s illness, dead teammate, magic curse, whatever”? Because I really detest that fannish idea of “Why don’t they just call Brother Voodoo?” Well, maybe Brother Voodoo’s busy doing something else, okay? Not that this can’t be handled delicately; it can. But we’ve seen that before, and it always ends the same way: having exhausted every other Marvel character, only to find none of them can help, the hero ends up turning to Dr. Doom, only to have him offer them a Faustian bargain. Which they enter into, but then wriggle out of, only to find the answer is no further away than their own back yard, or something. But you can’t make a fetish out of this sort of thing — how many times do we need to see it, for God’s sake? In my memory it’s been done exactly three times well (a No-Prize from the Aged Genghis is yours if you can guess which times I mean); and enough, I say, is enough. Official continuity has many rots, but this one’s the rottiest: “why wouldn’t so-and-so just call up…?” Gharrrrr. Yes, if it’s a genuine possibility, it needs to be addressed, plot-wise. No, that doesn’t mean the plot should involve going and seeing all the people that should be able to help, only to have them say “I’m so sorry, but…” Clearly this is just another cloak of concealment, that hides a fan’s contempt (and there is nothing quite like a fan’s contempt, I’m sure you’ll agree) for his own trashy enthusiasm. Once again the walls of context close in, like a death-trap, but this time there really is no way out…the Abomination simply hires someone to plug Bruce Banner in the back of the head with a high-powered rifle.

Problem solved, I guess.

I mean any writer ought to be able to write themselves around such questions. If they don’t, it means they didn’t want to.

But on to Myth #4 proper:

Actually you can have Doc knocked unconscious, if you need to. Hell, sometimes he’s been knocked unconscious in his own book. Again it’s a question of what gets written, and why: and the idea that a writer’s only solution to Doc’s limitless magical whim-whams is to have him knocked out without sufficient cause, that is without an efficient and integral dramatic justification for his unconsciousness, is to me as much as to complain that Doc is too hard a character for unimaginative writers to make stuff up for. Knock him out, if you must; after all, that’s a whole lot better than portraying him as incompetent. But don’t ask for training wheels when so many other creators have found themselves quite up to the challenge of grappling with this very same difficulty. The Defenders premiered in the early Seventies or something, and we haven’t run short of workarounds yet.

This is what the logicians call question-begging, actually. Circular reasoning: “if Doc is so powerful that he can’t be written well in a team setting, how can we write him well in a team setting?” Yes: this certainly begs the question, doesn’t it? My God, if this isn’t begging then I don’t know what is.

Because the answer is to write it so that it isn’t a problem, isn’t it.

And I’d say “Nuff Said”, here, but…

As it happens, there is a problem with Dr. Strange, Bloggers.

Have you guessed it yet?

Put simply, it’s that Dr. Strange is an awesome character.

That’s the problem right there. No, really. Because, let me ask you, if Dr. Strange were not such an awesome character, would:

Reality #1: Writers (both good and bad) not be more capable of staying away from him?

Reality #2: Every attempt at “updating” him have not been met with something more forgiving than the resounding yawns/guffaws/death threats these attempts have traditionally attracted?

Reality #3: The attempt to turn him into just one more Superpowered Guy not have resulted in enormously increased sales?

Reality #4: Every Doc story that attracted editorial re-writing mandates not have immediately spiralled into awful, sudden crap, shedding readers by the boatload and effectively killing the title?

Marvel would love to have a thriving Dr. Strange title, you see. But that’s only because Dr. Strange is an awesome character that writers and artists simply can’t resist using in their other titles. Interest in Dr. Strange will always be high, because of this. He’ll always be high-profile. He’ll never fade away. But, he can also never be revamped, without losing the awesomeness.

And this presents a problem, I think. Thankfully Marvel has never gone the route that DC went with Dr. Fate in the Nineties, turning him into Wolverine (or maybe just Moon Knight) with a magic pig-sticker and a bad attitude. Those days, at least, are gone. But the problem — the Nineties problem, if you will — of what to do with Dr. Strange still remains.

How do you prove he needs updating, even though he doesn’t?

I’d thought of writing a little bit more on this, here, but…doorways, you know? Not to repeat myself (and others), but maybe I’ve opened too many of them already.

So come on in, Bloggers: let’s have a spirited discussion about it, if we can. Be It Resolved: Dr. Strange Is An Awesome Character, Who Consequently Needs And Deserves An Awesome Creative Team…!

Otherwise, why bother touching him at all?

Be it resolved: in these days of advanced editorial control, of extreme top-down mandated organization and approval, Dr. Strange may be a character that no longer fits with the comics company he was born in. And yet, there’s no way for them to leave him alone. So essentially, Marvel and Doc are at war. And who knows who’ll win?

But I’ll wager a Golden Globule on the human interloper, myself.

How ’bout you?

Those Fools At The Academy, Who Laughed At My Theories…

…And dared to call me MEME…!

Soon I’ll show them all!

Good evening, Bloggers; I’ve been expecting you. In fact, I’m a little surprised it took you so long! Now please, please…there’s no need for such unpleasantness. Please, sit down. Help yourself to refreshment! I recommend the Lafite ’62 — it’s excellent, although I myself am rather more partial to aklavit. Absurd, I suppose, but then none of us can truly escape the prejudices of our youth, can we? Those carefree days…days of simple allegiances, and simple beliefs. Innocent days; that belonged to innocent people.

Shall we toast them?

But I see you are impatient to get down to business. Quite, quite. I too have other, rather pressing, engagements. By all means: let us begin.

I was just chatting with Sean W. (well, I was being longwinded in an email — what passes for chatting, in my world), and it occurred to me that you could learn a lot about what a writer’s general storytelling philosophy is, if you could just find one isolated thing, one little set-piece, one little convention that eventually constrains all writers somewhere along the line, and in which there is a clear and common goal to be achieved, but not much room available for gussying it up. And in all of movies, comics, and television (it also occurred to me), was there ever something that fit that bill so well as the Mad Scientist’s Exposition? Eventually everybody comes to it, I think — even if you write Law & Order episodes, if you write enough of ‘em you’ll probably run out of places to hide from it.

Of course, I could call it Villain’s Exposition. But does that really convey such a specially-constrained character? Any villain can exposit, after all: there’s plenty of room to run with that one. But though Mad Scientists’ ultimate motivations may vary somewhat, the expression those motivations find never does — and always there is the need to communicate, the need to reveal…the need to confide, and even possibly convince. Don’t you agree, Bloggers? By the way, I think you’ll find it quite impossible to reach the signal device at your belt, by now…the chemical contained in your drink (one of my minor discoveries) is very fast-acting. Although I suppose it was rather a shame to waste the Lafite…such a fine vintage, so hard to come by these days…

But then as I said: I prefer aklavit.

So, now that the preliminaries are over, here’s the meme: what’s your favourite Mad Scientist’s Exposition, and what in your opinion makes it the best?

I’ll tell you mine, if you tell me yours.  Well, that’s really the essence of detente, wouldn’t you agree?