Hi folks.
Sorry for the sudden disappearance again. A few issues between my current hosting company and the old one. Things may get a little rocky with the site this week, but hopefully just for a short while.
Nothing for you good folks today, except this: I hope President Obama follows in the footsteps of his illustrious predecessors Josiah Bartlett and Matthew Santos.
All I’m saying is that my primary feeling today isn’t so much one of hope, as of relief. And I don’t care what side of politics you come down on, the man on his way out was a fucking baboon.
More on this over at the Toybox.
On a similar note, via Aint It Cool (I know, I know), the CBC are planning a reality show where former Prime Ministers judge individuals on whether they’d make good PMs. While I was hoping to rib chum Plok about this, it turns out the Beeb has already bought the remake rights off of them. Oh dear. I am half hoping S4C will nick the idea for the Assembly, but we’re not that far away from Rhodri’s retirement; it’s quite possible someone will take this seriously and the next First Minister will get in on a phone vote.
I assume this is one of those let’s-get-The-Kids-into-politics things, ignoring the fact that The Kids are busy wearing hoodies and knifing grannies for their iPhones. Or something. I lose track.
Click here for the Alhazred Heights archive page. Fonts from Blambot.
More strips over at the Toybox, which will start back on its Tuesday/Thursday schedule tomorrow.
Wolverine gets a lot of stick, some of it deserved. Though I’ve never been much of a fan, there’s obviously something going on there because there aren’t many characters created specifically to fill a team role who go on to sustain not only their own books, but who can be deployed as a guaranteed sales-raising guest star. Whether or not this is a good thing is, as always, open to conjecture.
Core Genre: Wolverine is the super-hero version of the Man With No Name, an outlaw with a violent, uncertain past in line with the darker, more ambiguous post-Leone kind of cowboy. So I’m enclined to place him under Western, although considering his nationality that’s more of a North Western. The Frontier Fiction of Jack London, maybe.
Before the Jemas/Quesada/Jenkins/Kubert Origin, it was accepted that to give Wolverine a definitive backstory would kill the mystery of the character, and take the character with it. I’ve seen the series criticised by some for doing exactly that. I disagree.
First of all, the idea that Wolverine’s backstory is in anyway mysterious is wrong. From the very beginning his creator Len Wein intended for him to be a mutated wolverine, though thank fuck they didn’t follow through on that. Claremont and Byrne, the creators most responsible for shaping the character’s early days, also intended for the character to be old enough to have fought in the Second World War.
Of course, the readers didn’t know all this yet, but it wasn’t long before the gaps started to get filled in. Alpha Flight, Weapon X, a long history with Sabretooth, fighting alongside Captain America in the ’40s; not a definitive timeline, perhaps, but plenty of things to delineate his history. Heavy hints of wetwork for intelligence agencies. And as soon as we get into his solo series we have the Japan stuff, a bizarre story about a boy raised by actual wolverines, life with Silver Fox and her subsequent murder, and so on. Although how much of this come under the ‘implanted memory’ get-out clause is anyone’s guess.
Regardless of how much of this is later retconned or proven false, it shows how his writers have been playing around with his origins for a long time. Considering how much fans and creators protest that his backstory should be hidden, they’ve certainly engaged with a lot of books over time that deal with possible origins. Ditto for the ‘angry loner who hunts alone’ thing. Guy’s supporting cast is bigger than the Batman Family.
A) Healing factor
B) Animal senses
C) Claws
D) Adamantium-laced skeleton
E) Berserker rage
F) Is (sigh) the best there is at what he does, and what he does isn’t pretty.
If nothing else, Wolverine is a survivor. His healing factor is the centre of his character, survival as mutant power. I like the idea that the reason for his memory issues is the healing factor crudely patching up a damaged psychology.
Who are Wolverine’s villains? Every damn thing. Everyone he’s ever met, every situation he’s ever been in. He’s his own worst enemy, and that doesn’t just mean the character as he’s defined in his present, but also the person he used to be. Every different aspect of his past, whether nobleman, frontiersman, assassin or samurai, becomes a different enemy, and creates a new conflict that Wolverine has to survive. Wolverine never triumphs. The best he can hope for is that he sees another day.
Actually, considering everything he’s been through, maybe that’s wrong. He can’t really be killed, not considering his core power, so he can’t escape any of his actions. He won’t even get the peace of the grave. Even survival itself becomes his enemy, because the best he can hope for is achieving a measure of peace.
There’s some depressing stuff behind that yellow spandex.
But it’s not really the nihilism people come for. Everyone likes a rogue, and if we think of the action movie culture that brought characters like Wolverine and the Punisher to prominence in the 80s we can see that the attraction was mostly a surface one. Blood, rage and Rambo. Luckily for Logan, there was still enough to him that he stayed popular after circumstances changed.
Comics writers are fond of bringing in Z-list heroes without their own titles into their team books. There’s more than one reason for this. Dan Didio, referring to the new Teen Titans line up, is right in saying that this is a way to keep telling stories with characters that have potential, but can’t sustain their own books. Other writers continually site the difficulties with progressing character when progress is only allowed to happen in the home title, with a completely different set of editors and writers.
All true, of course. But you have to ask yourself whether your readers want to read a book about Blue Beetle, or Huntress, or fucking Geo-Force. The realities of day-to-day publishing may get in the way, but if people want to read about the Magnificent Seven then maybe that’s who should be in the JLA.
Sorry, got a bit distracted there.
The point is, the practicalities of juggling characters spread over various titles make Big Gun team books difficult to handle, making runs like Morrison’s JLA even more impressive. This isn’t a new problem, and is the main reason why Avengers isn’t really expected to be a Big Gun title in the same way Justice League is. Hawkeye and Wonder Man and whoever allow the team book writer to own some characters.
The best execution of this kind of team book has to be the X-Men. The mutants are so successful, in fact, that they’ve been able to spin off several characters that can stand on their own feet, although Wolverine’s probably the only really successful one (and more on him next week). But most of the X-Men are resolutely one-note, in both power-gimmick and character, and this is very deliberate.
Core Genre: Science Fiction, with the usual Marvel mixture of everything else.
The X-Men should be taken as a single character, a plural protagonist in the nomenclature of screenwriting. Their conflict occurs on two levels; drama between the various X-Men themselves, and the external conflict with their villains. The operatics of the X-Soap has always been the most-discussed element of the book, and it probably goes without saying by now that the psychology of the thing isn’t what I’m going to concentrate on, so as usual I’ll skip over that in favour of the mechanics of the thing.
A) A team
B) of mutant
C) students
D) with distinct powers
E) and access to advanced technology
F) defend a world that fears and hates them
Considering the complexity of its implications, that’s one of the most elegant concepts you’re going to find in comics. Stan Lee and his various colleagues really were that good.
What’s interesting here is that every element here is the root of both internal and external conflict. Hmm, it looks like I will be talking psychology after all. Well, it’s the X-Men. You just can’t avoid it. Their personal conflict stems from their powers, or their race, or their relationship with non-mutants. They argue with each other as well as the outside world. And this is mirrored in their conflict with their antagonists.
Factor A tells us their mode of interaction, a gestalt identity. B is the source of their abilities, and also the inciting element of their conflict, either with other mutants or with non-mutants. B leads to both D (how they interact with antagonists) and F (which gives context to the interaction). Personally, I could live without the advanced technology of factor E, but the jets and the danger rooms and Cerebro/Cerebra have been integral from the start, shaping how the villains are located and put into context.
And their villains are very interesting. Intolerant Homo Sapiens, and intolerant Homo Superior. Peaceful integration is the ultimate goal, even if it has to be fought for. It’s easy to cast a cynical eye over superheroes and their drive to solve problems with their fists, but I’m reminded of a quote from author (and daughter of the Fair Country) Jo Walton, as found in the sidebar of Making Light: “Peace means something different from ‘not fighting’… Peace is an active and complex thing and sometimes fighting is part of what it takes to get it.”
Factor C is the controlling element of the stories. The adventures are all centred round a school or academy, a place of learning. It gives the team its character. It’s also the thing that gives the book a sinister edge.
The idea that a trusted teacher of children sends them out to war is unavoidably creepy. It’s a concept that’s been played with many times since Claremont. I don’t know if this odd vibe was deliberate on the part of Lee and Kirby or just another oddity of 60s Marvel, but it plays to other themes present since the beginning. I’m not sure it can all be considered coincidental, though it may be subconscious rather than conscious.
Student unrest tied in with movements wanting to change the status quo is one of the primary images we have of the Sixties, not only in America but across the world. Stan Lee explicitly wrote this into Spider-man, so it wasn’t something he was oblivious too. I wonder how much this informed the structure of the X-Men. The radicalisation of the young by influential figures is a perennial concern to the Daily Mail crowd, something that can be found in modern hysteria regarding Islamic university organisations, Victorian political concerns, right back to Socrates and Plato.
I’m probably reading too much into it, but the X-Men concept does play into anti-intellectual fears of an educated populace, with university education seen as a threat. Like I say, it’s nothing new but there’s been a lot of it in recent years (and if I was feeling particularly tin-hattish, I’d say it’s yet another tactic to discourage the masses from bettering themselves and to keep education strictly for the privileged few, but that’s just crazy talk isn’t it now.)
Also, the world is run by lizards.
Conclusion: If we dig around there’s some ugly things lurking in the X-Men concept. Of course, that can only help in terms of drama, action and conflict. It shouldn’t be a surprise that, when handled properly, the books are amongst the most popular ever made.
Of all the different kinds of guitar music I like, prog rock’s probably my least favourite. It’s a bit of a surprise that I’ve been listening to quite a bit of it over the past year, and that I’ve mentioned it a few times here.
There was a video not that long ago on YouTube of a school band doing a Yes track with Jon Anderson (I think) singing with them. I don’t have the link, and I don’t recall where I saw the video (either via Making Light or the Whatever), but it was a little piece of genius. As one commentator put it, the pomposity of prog meant it was never able to engage with the one thing it lacked; the enthusiasm of a group of teenagers thumping away at their instruments. That was probably why I ended up revisiting the world of unfeasably long album tracks.
That’s the thing that always comes up about prog. The overblown campness of it all. In the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD war of rock, punk came out on top and that was the end of that. And I can’t help feeling a little sad at that, not least because punk has long outlived its usefulness, its iconography dug up, reanimated and repackaged as just about the least offensive musical opiate ever conceived.
Regardless of the merits or otherwise of the movement they came from, Pink Floyd are inarguably a legendary band. Wish You Were Here has been on the car for ages, and it’s one of the classics. There’s a reason it always turns up in those annual Bestest Ever charts.
It’s Have A Cigar I wanted to bring up. It starts off a straightforward rock track, with a funky bass line and Dave Gilmour doing a bluesier thing than on the rest of the album. It’s not obvious from the kind of thing Pink Floyd are remembered for, but Gilmour’s a hell of a blues player, even if it is the white boy 60s English blues thing of Keith Richards, Clapton and Peter Green (probably shouldn’t lump Green in there, actually, because if BB King says he’s the real thing then that’s good enough for me).
And then we hit 0:25 with a synthy SPOING and it all gets a bit odd.
I imagine that small bit is the musical equivalent of finding out Watchmen isn’t really a formulaic murder investigation. You’re pootering along as normal and suddenly WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT FUCKING SQUID THING. Maybe Watchmen would have been better without the psychic mollusc. Maybe the Floyd track would have been better without the psychadelic assault. But I don’t think so.
Have A Cigar sums up prog to me, and a lot of rock music in a way. The SPOING of the synths is going to turn a lot of people off as being, well, silly at best. And it is deeply, deeply silly. Even so, I can’t help think that when the band first put it together, they thought it was the most edgy, sophisticated thing they could have done. Rugged, fearless experimentation that can’t have the same effect on us after the 80s showed how commonplace electronica would become. That day in the studio, I bet they were as excited as fuck.
Maybe the only people who can really appreciate it are the kids like those teenagers covering Yes, who haven’t got to the point where they only way they can enjoy something like that is in an ironic fashion. Even the irony isn’t a problem, though. Even if the only way you can enjoy it is by rolling your eyes at your dad as he warbles along to something he loved when he was young, and accepting the silliness of those crazy old hippies, than it’s all good. It doesn’t matter what path you have to take before you like something, it only matters that you’re having fun.
Because you know who else lives in that SPOING? Jack Kirby. The guy was an extraordinary talent, an artistic visionary, and deeply silly all at the same time. Something like the original OMAC is, in most ways, fucking stupid, but exactly as fucking stupid as Pink Floyd. Just about everything you could use to defend the King you could use to defend prog, via childlike enthusiasm or ironic detachment, though I suspect the most effect argument is always a matter of craft. You’d have to be an idiot to argue that Kirby didn’t have an incredible technical talent, or that the guys who wrote Shine On You Crazy Diamond weren’t exceptional musicians.
Jack Kirby Lives In The SPOING. Tell me you don’t want that on a t-shirt.
Dead Space
Holy crap, is this game terrifying. And that’s just the intro. Sure, the creepy nursery rhyme theme is a little derivative but I think that’s something computer games are actually really good at. You take the really good bits from genre work (films mostly) and you squish it all together (see Halo, amongst many others). It’s not art, but it’s fun. And this game is packed full of blood-squirty dismembering fun.
The only possible hiccup is that like Condemned and Call of Cthulhu before it, it may be too scary to finish.
Why yes, I am a scaredy cat.
Fallout 3
Depending on what mood I’m in, I could well call Oblivion my favourite computer game. It’s certainly the game I’ve spent the most amount of hours on, by a hee-uge margin. I got it years ago, and because of the finding time thing, I still haven’t completed it. So I’m very much in the target market for a post-apocalyptic version.
Not spent loads of time on it yet because I really do want to finish Dead Space, but I should imagine a lot of ‘09 is going to spent on this one. And, hopefully, Elder Scrolls V in ‘10.
The Rise and Fall of the Shi’ar Empire
I’ve been meaning to get this one for a while. The follow up to Deadly Genesis (reviewed here previously), and like the previous story an entertaining yarn. Brubaker’s an excellent writer, and very good at doing a Claremont-style story in the modern Marvel house style. I feel like I’m damning with faint praise, but that’s not the intention. To be honest, it’s nice to read a superhero comic that doesn’t irritate me on any level.
Lovecraft’s Haunt of Horror and Cthulhu Tales
Sorry, that last one got a bit catty.
A couple of Mythos comics were added to the haul this year, and although I haven’t had chance to read them yet I’ve skimmed through. The MAX title is the hardcover of Richard Corben’s straightforward Lovecraft adaptations, and looks gorgeous. The second is the first paperback collection of BOOM! Studio’s ongoing anothology title. BOOM! Haven’t made a single misstep yet with their Cthulhu titles, and I doubt they’re going to start here.
Arkham Asylum 15th Anniversary edition
Really needs a post to itself. In short: brilliant, better than I remember it. Unfortunately the good bits were all left in Morrison’s original script, so this is the first version I’ve ever read that makes a damned bit of sense. A flawed masterpiece.
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War
Late to the party on this one, as I’ve only just upgraded to a graphics card that can handle the game. I assume we’re all geeks here, and we’re all familiar with the Games Workshop property that is, perhaps, nerdness incarnate.
Let’s just say, if Fallout 3 doesn’t suck up all of my time, then Dawn of War will be getting the rest. Hoo boy, I hope you’re all ready for another dip in productivity. Damn shame I’m fucking awful at RTS games.
The Steel Remains, by Richard Morgan
Britain’s best SF writer tackles fantasy. Half way through this, and it’s very good.
The Birthing House by Christopher Ransom
Picked up at random for being a haunted house book on the cheap at Asda. Last book I got from there was Joe Hill’s Heart Shaped Box, and that one was fantastic.
Again, only half way through it. Good points and bad points and I haven’t made my mind up about it yet, but it’s entertaining and it cost about three quid so I shouldn’t really complain either way.
That’s that faint praise thing again, isn’t it?
Anyway, turns out there’s a competition running in connection with the book, and the first prize is a weekend in that haunted hotel in Ludlow (Ludlow?) that’s been mentioned here before, more than once. The town’s obviously cornering the market in this kind of thing.
Hello, readers, and a happy new year to all. A proper one this time, rather than the perfunctory one from the other day.
Plenty of ups and downs over the past few months all over the place, which is a bit of an understatement. I certainly can’t remember a New Year starting so, you know, unpredictably. Where the Journal’s concerned, I think I’ve just about got ahead of the problems that kicked off in November. Unsurprisingly, blogging’s a habit like any other, and you get out of it after a few weeks of not doing it.
Part of the problem is trying to find somewhere to start. It’s not like plenty of things haven’t kicked off in the realms of the nerdish, from whatever the heck is going on in comics to the inauguration of perhaps the most important public figure on the planet: the 11th Doctor.
I’m really looking forward to Matt Smith on Who while dreading Tennant’s departure, and for whatever reason Smith’s arrival is causing a lot of- discomfort, I suppose is the word. Which is a good thing. The Doctor should never be a completely comfortable character, and Tennant’s made it very easy for the audience to be comfortable with him.
On a slightly related point, do you know the number one thing I fucking detest about the internet? When the very first thing any commentator feels the need to add onto any post, be it blog, twitter or fucking Facebook status, is a dismissive comment about the content.
For example:
Jimmy Fanboy is excited about matt smith as who!!!
John McFucknuts says: Eh, I don’t like him. Won’t be watching.
You know what I mean. A terse, pointless and uncorroborated one liner that adds nothing to the conversation. A little dig that says more about someone’s need to be noticed than to actually contribute. The Doctor thing was just the most obvious recent example.
I don’t mind disagreement. Not at all. By all means, should anyone disagree with me on anything, well, that’s why Comments are On. But at least try and make it look like a conversation. Facebook and its ilk are the worst perpetrators, because if you post a blog you’re asking for interaction. If you’re just telling the world what you’re happy about, it seems really mean that the first thing so many of your Fake Internet Friends want to do is kill your mood.
I know, I know. Mean? The internet? Heavens forefend.
I’m reminded of two parallel examples, one recent and one from a while ago that annoyed me so much it’s stayed with me. MightyGodKing notes that a drum and base track- Propane Nightmares by Pendulum- would be good to use in a trailer for a Flash movie. My first thought on listening to the track was to disagree. Not to jump into comments and let the world know that with a one sentence dismissal, mind, just to disagree. I don’t like drum and base, and I don’t really like the track.
But after listening to a while, I found myself agreeing with him. He’s right, it would do the job perfectly. And I found the song growing on me a bit. That kind of thing isn’t my cup of tea, but I can appreciate the merit of a piece of work that’s had some skill applied to it.
John Scalzi once posted a YouTube clip of Travis Barker overlaying drums onto the somewhat duff Soulja Boy track Crank That (incidentally, Trigg, if you’re reading this I meant to send you this link ages ago.) I like R’n'B even less than drum and base, and I’ve never been that big a fan of Blink-182, but even so the Barker video is brilliant. It’s a fantastic example of a different spin the application of specific talent can put on something.
Needless to say, the comments on the posts are a list of banal denials and disagreements. I don’t know how Scalzi does it, incidentally. It must be like having Statler and fucking Waldorf appended to everything you write.
I didn’t really want the first post back to be so negative, but it’s got on my nerves recently and I needed to get it off my chest. Expect tomorrow’s post to be a little bit brighter.
And so disappearing for a short while to recharge the old blogging batteries.
