The Factual Opinion

Comics Of The Weak: It's When The Neckbeards Disapprove, That's When You're On The Right Track

From Mome 19, which is the best volume of the series so far. While it's arguable that the series has moved a bit away from whatever original plan it may have had by shortening the list of contributors (#19 has eight, much less than the usual number) and including artists few Fantagraphic fans will be unaware of (almost every contributor has at least one published book to their name already), it's pretty difficult to argue with the results. Josh Simmons' "White Rhinocerous Part 1", a collaboration with the Partridge in the Pear Tree (kill me now, that name) adorns both covers and consists both of Josh appropriating non-horror objects in use of the same creepy fearshow stylings he brought in Cockbone, as well as a being a twisted introduction to his latest (probably doomed) lead, an overweight white girl who looks like an overweight Michael Jackson. It's short, makes sense, is funny: great comic.

The rest of Mome 19 doesn't fall apart on the job either--TIm Lane produces one of his classic steeped-in-Americana portrayals, this one of a runaway husband staring into an abandoned carnival in hopes of finding enough nostalgia to pilot him home, Olivier Schrauwen brings more evidence of why his appeal should stretch beyond the 16 or so people who have seen his comics in a painful riff on an elderly man desperately escaping his broken meat sleeve to dally in a (possibly inspired by the Shaw/Santoro style?) candy-colored world of fantasy, and Gilbert Hernandez does...well. One of those comics that's drawn really well, that's funny, and yet doesn't make a huge amount of sense. It's about the Mexican Herbie.

There's other good stuff too, like God taking a shit on the Catholic Church. But the real prize here is DJ Bryant, who, according to the back cover bio, has released one short comic for an anthology and done some strips for Cinema Sewer. Now, if that's true--if the guy has actually done that little published work--then it might be necessary to clear off the mantelpiece and yell at the moon for a little while, because now there's another reason--in a month that's been absolutely goddamn good and full of them--to get a little bit ecstatic about comics for a moment, even if that clashes with the basic formation of our current universe, which is one of complete and utter degradation, shame, horror, rejection, depression, entitlement, hate, idiocy, gluttony, posturing, basically just an intense loathing of absolutely every single thing that could be considered sincere or, if we're being frank about it, human.

See, this is one of those old comics, very similar in tone and plot to something EC might have published (or, as Fanta's own Four Color Fear collection depicts, any one of the publishers in the early 50's who were smart enough to ape EC's style). It's about a guy, who married a girl, and the girl treats him like shit, and he takes it. Over and over again, she humiliates him, physically assaults him, sexually emasculates him, forces him into the rain so she can fuck somebody else in front of him, all while his constant weakness, his unfailing willingness to accept whatever punishment she dishes out, serves to perpetuate the hatred she has for him.

And oh yes, because it is 2010, because MOME and DJ Bryant don't have to pretend the way EC did that their primary audience is children, the sex is explicitly depicted, driving home the one thing that similarly toned stories (like Four Color Fear's opener "Hen-Pecked Harry") fail too. This victimized husband is getting something out of the relationship, and under DJ Bryant's able, perverse hand, what he's getting is clearly something that a part of him graeatly enjoys, and that enjoyment may be the whole reason he ended up in these positions in the first place.

Laced with sex, violence and murder, Bryant's final contribution to this grunting backwards homage is the delve into mania, and its here that he makes clear who he was thinking about: Steve Ditko.

Although the comic's first page had already thrown a Know Your Shit reference to Ditko's "Driven To Destruction" (caught here by Claire Donner), it's when our mid-range psycho goes full tilt loon that the comic detonates. Transitioning seamlessly between raw, hard sex and a full mental breakdown, Bryant starts splitting faces down the middle, blending panels into one, and by the ambiguous close, he's succeeded in surpassing his inspirations. Alongside a group of contemporaries who possess some of comic's most innovative talents, he chose refinement. It fucking worked. 

Secret Avengers # 5
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by David Aja & Michael Lark
Published by Marvel Comics

Secret Avengers issues 1-4 weren't garbage comics, but let's be honest: you spent the whole time wondering why in the hell Moon Knight was on the team, when you remembered Moon Knight WAS on the team, which wasn't that often. Now, this, on the other hand--it's not what Secret Avengers could have been, because it's not about the Secret Avengers at all, it's another one of those sneak-him-onboard Nick Fury issues (not at all dissimilar to the Nick Fury issue of New Avengers that Bendis wrote, which, like Secret, had much more interesting and well let's just say it, better, art than whoever else was drawing New Avengers at the time, although that's neither here nor there anyway, as New Avengers wasn't a comic that really needed to have art at all, so it almost never did, although there were some occasionally interesting poster drawings interspersed amongst those thousands of panels featuring people talking at extraordinarily great lengths about what was eventually revealed to be absolutely nothing of consequence.)

So yeah: this is a Nick Fury comic, and it's a lot like what Brubaker was doing on Captain America back when Captain America clearly had a planned story that it was in the business of telling, which was the time period from when the comic started up until those issues where the Chinese war doctor showed up and Namor scowled around to show off how skeeved out he was by all these Chinese war doctor experiments. Namely, Secret Avengers is a comic where serious men with serious jawlines drop guns into their hands in homage to Asian gangster flicks so that they can clamber around inside Steranko inspired panels, all while talking about ridiculous things; glorious, wonderful, ridiculous things, like flying cars, and robots with souls, and it's all rather pleasant and rewarding. There's even reason to hope that it might last through future issues, when the comic returns to being about a team that has Moon Knight on it, for some reason that will hopefully never be explained.

The Spirit # 6
Written by David Hine & Brian Azzarello
Art by Moritat & Eduardo Risso
Published by DC Comics

The only way out is through, so let's pause for a second and forget that the First Wave launch has been a non-stop clusterfuck of late shipping and changing creative teams. This, for what it's worth, is actually the sort of thing that's worth spending time with.

HE MEANS HIS FISTS and he's supposed to be the Shadow, this Spirit, and while the historical importance of that second choice would assumedly make the lack of the first work, it hasn't yet. But look at the man David Hine has started to create: he's less Eisner, more Miller, and yet he somehow feels fresh, unsheathed from Frank's plastic wrap of icons and fetish. Under Moritat's hands, the visuals are taking a firmer shape: molten steel traps ignite the flesh of killer and savior alike, brute-filled shadows explode into blizzards of melodrama, all while Gabriel Bautista grows less and less willing to force a thousand colors into the panel. This comic is getting better--gnarlier, meaner--and while the Spirit can't be as cool as the Shadow, there's got to be a way to make this motherfucker play. He may now be under the control of hands that understand that.

Thor # 615
Written by Matt Fraction
Art by Pasquel Ferry & Matt Hollingsworth
Published by Marvel Comics

Well, it's certainly nice to find out that Matt Fraction is such a stalwart member of the Writers Who Hate Poetry club that he's willing to extend that loathing into the scripts of his comics and bisect the torsos of those damnable verse-loving depressives. But the important, historical draw here is the corporate hands of Disney, who have lovingly inserted a gigantic two page advertisement for their upcoming Tron film, which used to be called TR2N, until somebody sobered up and took the idiot out of their ass.

Oh wait maybe that's part of the comic

Justice League of America # 49
Written by James Robinson
Art by...wait, it's better if you actually SEE this credits box.

Count it up: that's NINE inkers, two pencilers.
Published by You Guessed It

No fucking around: that's crazy as shit! Justice League of America is, or used to be, the marquee book for this company, the one thing they could count on to sell alongside the other things they could count on to sell, which was A) Superman and B) Batman. Batman's still trucking along okay, although the next few months of non-stop Bat-spin-off comics will probably bring it low, which is where Superman lives. Justice League--give it a rest. Nine inkers? Two pencilers? How does the workflow for that even get handled? Do they just send everybody FTP access and say "finish whatever you can, whoever's first gets the money" and then everybody just pulls an all-nighter, toasted on white crosses? Does Rod Reis hang out with Photoshop open, waiting for his email box to ping at him? Dude, is somebody taking bets? Is there a leader board? Hell, why not try a return to those old contests where you could win your name in a comic, only this time whoever writes the best letter about why DC should keep pretending having James Robinson on staff is as much a draw as Johns and Morrison will get the opportunity to ink an actual page in a JLA comic? (As long as they include a "don't mention Starman" rule, they could have a real challenge on their hands!)

Besides all that other nonsense, JLA 49 is otherwise notable for the new Arsenal editorial dictate (and since it happened in a Morrison Batman issue, you gotta assume it's a rule) which states that all flashback/nightmare versions of the character have to include some kind of visual notation that the character is now armless. Witness!

Fantastic Four #583
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Art by Steve Epting & Paul Mounts
Published by Marvel Comics

Seems like an odd decision to make Reed Richard's daughter so intensely unlikeable through actual plot devices--after all, both of those kids are just unlikeable on the sheer principle of their existence alone, aggravating it even further by having Epting draw one of them with the most demanding punch-her-in-the-face sliminess he can muster is just risky. And yet, it's nice to see Hickman doing something different after spending so many issues riffing off of Supreme and Tom Strong. Maybe the next issue comes with a pony?

Titans # 27
Written by Eric Wallace
Art by Fabrizio Fiorentino
Published by DC Comics

Doing this was sort of an educational experience, as it pointed out that, no matter their failings, Marvel & DC are fundamentally more skillful when it comes to readable versions of serialized comic books than a lot of their competetitors. See, there's comics published by IDW, Dynamite, Top Cow and Boom that just don't make any sense, no matter how many times you read them. The work published by DC and Marvel can still be just as bad as some of those comics, but they're still comprehensible on the most basic level, even someone with the the most fundamental understanding of English is going to be able to grasp that what they're seeing is supposed to be a story of some kind, and not just a mishmash of shiny colored pages with words scattered across them.

But then, there's Titans. The first issue in its new, Deathstroke/Arsenal focused run was a veritable buffet line of mind-boggling confusion, a comic that featured multiple, unexplained narrators, held scenes of some plot importance off-panel in service of some kind of weird anti-comics argument that boiled down to "fuck you, here's a drawing of a door for two pages", all while refusing to present any evidence that the comic had actually been completed, at any level, prior to publication. There was a team? They were around? Maybe behind one of those doors that kept showing up?

In this issue, the "team", which is actually just a couple of different shitty half-ass anti-heroes, all of whom may or may not be hatching the world's most underplanned plot to assassinate Deathstroke, fight another group. That group is led by a drug kingpin who is reaping the fiscal whirlwind that stems from that old I Come In Peace (or, if you prefer, because we know that some of you do, that Torchwood mini-series) sour trick of using live human beings (children!) as the source for some supa-dupa drugs. They fight, it doesn't make any sense, ends arbitrarily because everybody forgot that the Marvel-powered kid can kill universes (or something, who knows, nobody ever bothers to explain what those characters can do) and then you get to the meat of the comic, which is also where all the effort seems to be, and two of the characters have sex so that the other character won't relapse on heroin. Oh how quickly we forget the lessons of Rush! 

The Incredible Hulk: Hide In Plain Sight
Written by Bruce Jones
Art by Leandro Fernandez
Published by Marvel Comics

A break from the long-form story that Bruce Jones' run on Hulk is most known for, this five-part story was probably created in case somebody watched the Hulk movie and liked it enough to check out the comic. (Ultimately, that was a short-sighted plan, as the comic would be returning to the middle of what became a 40 odd part story as soon as "Plain Sight" concluded, but then again, few people seem to have liked that Hulk movie to begin with.) Mostly, this is a decent thriller that probably would've worked better in four parts than five, but it's an excellent showcase for Leandro Fernandez, who is mostly known for drawing the worst Punisher MAX arc as well as making Queen & Country's main character so cheesecakey that you have to apologize to people when you recommend it to them. Check this shit out, this was in a Hulk book:

Nice.

Although Hide In Plain Sight isn't without a few missteps, like when it's revealed that the Absorbing Man has possessed a very young girl and forced her to brutally kill her own parents with a very small knife, or the inclusion of a extraordinarily resourceful woman who trusts Bruce Banner completely within hours of meeting him, it's still a solid, quick thriller, and one that, for better or worse, fits in well with Jones' run on the title. Old men being mind-controlled into big handgun suicide: that's an AC/DC song on paper.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

No Pictures: "The Limits of My Language Mean The Limits of My World"

Freedom: A Novel
By Jonathan Franzen, 2010

He came, conquered, then pissed right off again, the derision of a million unforgiving housewives ringing across his apologetic face. Is it any wonder that he returned bearing them a present? Is it any surprise the character that exercised him the last block of years?

Franzen will never escape the legacy of Oprah and the Corrections, and it's well he shouldn't: he's a novelist most concerned with what's right now, more than what should or could be, and he seems content for the first time, finally in concert with the audience he most assuredly will satisfy: this is a book for those who want to read and will pay for the privilege to do so, as long as they're getting to read about themselves. If the disdain he's suffered from some younger writers carries a whiff of truth to it--and in drips, it does, calling an Uncle Tupelo analog "Walnut Surprise" denotes Franzen as somebody who doesn't pay that much attention to Pitchfork--it's besides the point: Freedom, like Corrections, isn't a book for the precocious youth still enamored with style and speed, but that more dissident audience, one seeking the comforting pleasure of Strunk & White-ian craft. An old book, for the middle age, about their right now. (For those who question what seems a weird emphasis on "the population explosion", it's worth knowing that was a talking-point fear on par with Barack Obama, terrorism and "snark" back when the primary audience for Freedom: A Novel were as old as I imagine most of the one-minute glancers that this particular blog attracts to be.) The fear of children fucking too soon, an educated contempt for contemporary music, hysterically funny jeremiads against iPods and blogs, Freedom is interested in grown-ups in an ultimately democratic fashion: you don't have to agree on anything, you just have to survived past a certain date.

It's met with some ambivalence around these parts, some of these goals. Not because it collapses into a Gray's Anatomy/Desperate Housewives fetishization of middle-aged sexual affairs when it comes time for those kinds of twists, not because its dedication to old fashioned Writing Good Sentences ignores the compulsive pleasures of more ambitious experimentation, but merely because it's so sturdily placed in a genre that's been under attack for so long that the assumption that there's something wrong with it has been internalized like bone marrow: this is Literary Fiction, it's Great American, and so it must be dead, wrong, and shit. Immersive as he can be, Franzen--a proud member of the "don't write on an Internet-accessible computer" writing crew--seems to recognize the abandonment of solitary focus that book-reading is so popularly described as having lost. His elder characters stay on track as much as they can, and his most jittery young man is paired with a heavily fictionalized portrayal of autistic manic depression to keep the tides of lost attention at bay, but the wolf of multi-tasking is forever at the door. It's not an accident that Franzen's largest characters in the book are either married to all-consuming actions, like sports or the immobile silence of birdwatching, any more than it is when he glosses over the actual creativity of his one artist character. Purposefully, heroically, Freedom isn't the tombstone of the Great American Novel, but it is one of the few larger pieces of fiction that will be able to ignore the compulsive speed with which these generations live now while still grasping towards that classification. Hiding it as he does, the tang of bitterness multiplies by the end, leaving one desperately fending off the most 2010 of reactions: that's it?

Occupied City
By David Peace, 2009

The brilliant second in Peace's to-be-finished trilogy of crime in post-World War Two Japan sees the author upping and refining the style of Tokyo Year Zero--this is half-book, half-epic poem, and the real crime that serves as centerpiece this time burns even hotter. Whereas Year Zero was a heavily stylized rendition of crime fictions most reliable device--the pursuit of a serial killer--Occupied City uses the Sadamichi Hirasawa case as its spawning core. (Googling that is to know horror: be warned.)

Crediting Peace as a writer who "pulls no punches" seems cliched, yet its difficult to ignore the aptness of the phrase--here in Occupied City, one finds a writer going much farther afield than his contemporaries (a small number, that) in terms of ambition, violently rejecting any of the standard crime novel conventions, choosing instead to layer out tightly bound chapters in a myriad of styles. Here, one finds entire sections written in unpunctuated mental waste, the product of an unknown detective's scratchpad as he spirals into mania, while the multiple victims gather for choral outpourings of black mass rage, sputtering alongside the living throughout the book, always beginning with chants of "Beneath The Black Gate". Throughout the book, Peace returns to set writing patterns, copying and pasting entire paragraphs to give the relevant passage a sense of oppressive repitition, only to cut the tape so that he can splice multiple narratives in one long string of sentences, using capitalization and italics to code the work--the ghosts jabber about everything at once, it is only our narrator who is willing to provide a crutch.

Like most of Peace's output so far, the book is a grotesque hunchback of cynical contempt, refusing at every introduction to produce characters who can escape the diseased violence that infects them. While only overtly political in a few brief passages circling the various humiliations that a few American soldiers unleash upon the Japanese citizens, there's no escaping the observational tone--the rage squirts out, spattering like the guts of roaches, their carcasses smashed by wet, sticky hands. Judgments are few and far between, and so the result: it's why the word ambition should go so rarely used.

The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company
By David Price, 2008

Pretty much the go-go positive side of the coin that is popularized by the library of collapse on the flip, The Pixar Touch shares a lot of the qualities (stylistic and structural) that books by the Michael Lewis types produce. Here, one reads about the decades in the wilderness spent by Pixar's braintrust, years where they hid their ultimate ambition--to make movies--while struggling to keep the money flowing. While there's a consistent sense that portions of the story are being left unsaid, as it's difficult to believe that so much money could pump in one direction without more animosity, it's not hard to grasp why. It's a book about success, about winning one's goals with very little (beyond time) sacrificed, the story of dreams, eventually fulfilled. 

-Tucker Stone, 2010 

Romancing The Stone?

Amulet Book One
By Kazu Kibuishi
Published by Scholastic 

When I was 10 years old, I would have been in heaven if I’d found something something like Amulet to read. I’m sure ten year olds are currently eating this up. I mean, first the comic starts with an upsetting emotional loss, just like in The Lion King. (Okay, not “just like” the Lion King.) It's just a similar format to that really sad loss that happens right at the beginning. And, well, maybe more than a little similar - it was Simba's father who died at the beginning of the Lion King, and in Amulet it’s Emily's Father. So. Well. There you have it. (You can read that whole part on the author's website if you're interested.)

And while we're on the subject of things I would've eaten up when I was ten years old--man, I used to daydream all the time that I would suddenly find secret passageways in my house, tunnels and secrets that would lead to some kind of mystical something-or-other. (That’s just plain weird too, because the house I grew up in was built in 1973. My parents helped create the blueprint, and God bless them, they’re not that creative. And creative or not, who would have a secret passageway in their house and never tell their family about it?)

Okay, sorry. I went off on a tangent. As I was saying - this would have appealed to me because Emily goes on a journey just like the one I spent a time wishing for myself. One that includes crazy looking creatures, a walking Transformer-like house, and mechanical animals. It’s got action and adventure, and is drawn so that it’s not too cartoony, but not too scary either. (Okay, I didn't with for my dreams to be drawings, but you get the point. I hope.)

Buuuuuut.....yeah, you felt that coming on, didn’t you? But - what do I think of this story from a more removed, grown-up perspective? I can’t really fully review it as an “adult”. I mean, it’s just not meant for adults. That wouldn’t be fair. But I had some feelings about if from the female perspective. More specifically, I had feelings about the impact stories like this can have on young girls.

You might be wondering what could I possibly see wrong with a story that empowers a girl to save her family? Well, I had some problems with the use of the word “power.” Especially when I read the Amulet communicating these words to Emily, the book's protagonist: “Just take the Amulet into your hands and accept it’s power. Without power you cannot attain what you desire.”

It may seem fine at the outset. We’ve stumbled into a typical form of the Hero’s Journey. Nothing wrong with that, it Star Wars can use it, everybody can. It’s usually a pretty reliable form of great entertainment, complete with the dash of character-building-skills that comes from reading about a young person triumphing over their fears, or their bullies, or their odds.

Thing is, we live in a patriarchal society. We do. It’s just a fact. No one is in charge of making it a patriarchy, it's not some dude's job to maintain it. We’ve just inherited his system over the course of thousands of years, it’s the water we swim in. And in this water, generally speaking, the gender neutral terms are him and his, and the Judeo-Christain God religions most often than refer to their spiritual forces with terms like Him, He or King.  Without even realizing what we’re doing with our speech, we’ve come to make women secondary. And those are just the words we use!

Look, I’m not angry, this isn't me trying to soapbox right now. (Not right this second anyway.) I don’t believe there's a cabal of sexism that's consciously pushing this “agenda”. It’s just how it’s been, and it's had a big impact on women--not just in our work places, not just in the home. But even in our beliefs in ourselves and our understanding of what our value is.

I'm bringing all this up because Amulet made me think about it, because the Hero’s Journey is one of those classic symbols of a very masculine story prototype. It uses most of the generally-accepted-as-masculine qualities of physical strength, aggression or logic to overcome obstacles. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the Hero’s Journey. It’s a phenomenal storytelling device. But what would a woman’s journey be like? What would a literary journey story be like if the generally-accepted-as-feminine qualities were the vehicle to her overcoming her obstacles be like? Simply switching the name to The Heroine’s Journey doesn’t work.

Well, If I may answer my own question, it’s hard to know what The Heroine’s Journey would be like because most generally-accepted-as-feminine qualities are not generally accepted as “good” by our society. Traits of the feminine are usually things such as receptivity, creativity, feelings, openness. Not the kind of thing that’s generally encouraged in the board room, right? Or when you face the Monster who lives under the bridge?

And see, since we live in a patriarchy, logic and problem solving are valued a little more than feelings. Really take that in. Because if you’re reading that and thinking, “Yeah, logic and problem solving are more valued because they’re better than discussing feelings” just check that thought. Think about what it might be like if we grew up with logic and emotions being evenly valued. If we grew up without the word “pussy” being an insult, or people saying things like “don’t get your panties in a bunch.” Because it's sayings like that that translate to the instillation of negative values, outlooks where the mere mention of anything remotely feminine turns out to be the worst possible thing you can be. You might call someone a dick or asshole for being insensitive, but calling a guy a pussy is supposed to wound them.  Think about being a girl and knowing that calling someone a girl is an insult. No one’s throwing insults at girls saying “oh, you’re such a boy.” Nah. Doesn’t happen.

I’m saying all of this because in Amulet, our girl Emily finds a power outside of herself and is told that only by embracing that power can she attain her desires. And that very message is the one girls have heard for a very long time. And in my opinion, it’s not working that well. I think a new message is needed in stories written for girls. A new message to combat the messages that our mothers and our mother's mothers have been hearing for generations. And that would be: that the power they need is already inside them. We don’t need the power or approval or guidance of anything outside ourselves. We need to listen to our inner wisdom and develop who we are. Because women today (and yesterday) are spending our whole lives trying to gain power by reaching outside of ourselves. “Do you think I’m pretty? If you do, then I’m okay.” “Am I sexy and do you want me? If you want me, then I’m okay.” “Do you think I”m smart, but not too smart as to challenge the status quo? Phew.” And it’s all there, not necessarily because we just happen to have low self-esteem, but because being a girl is not as valued as being a guy. Or maybe a better way to say that is that being a girl is silently accepted as secondary to being a guy. And so, we end up seeking (without realizing) the approval and acceptance of everyone to affirm that we have value. That we have worth.

Yeah, I’ve kinda turned this into a thing. But damn it, I was so excited to see a young girl as a protagonist. And I still think it’s great. There’s still certainly a lot to be gleaned by children reading this. And honestly, it might not have been as interesting if young Emily was reminded over and over again my her Fairy Godmother-Therapist that all the power she needs “is already inside” her, rather than by gaining power from an Amulet she found in a secret laboratory in a a creepy old house. I don’t honestly know how it could, or that it should, be written in another way. But reading this got me wondering, “Just what exactly would The Heroine’s Journey be like? And would that, could that, shape a whole generation of girls in a new way?” And since I was pondering it, I figured I’d write it down.

I am though, interested to know what happens in Volume 2. So....more to come!

-Nina Stone, 2010

Comics Of The Weak: Well, Sort Of

Everything's in SUCH A TIZZY!

Dakendarkwolverine1
Written by a lady
drawn by a gentleman
published by deviants
read by horny miscreants

This isn't the professionally put together version of sleazy metrosexual super-heroics that was hoped for, at least not quite yet, but it does include strawberry teased models, back room milan model make out sexxxions, four tightly fitted American Apparel outfit changes, and this little chunk of the violence:

ahhhmyeyespleasestopwiththeshinycoloring

Okay, check it: Camuncoli codes the characters above with different weapons each, and he times the violence out so that by panel five in the second row, Mr. Handgun has moved his weapon above his waist and pointed it at mohawk-vest, meaning that's the length of time it took for vest-mohawk to kill the people in those first four middle panels. (In the top panel, the handgun is just beginning its ascent.) Also: all the directional changes in the killing panels fit with where the characters are in space--he turns left, because they're on the left, etc. Fucks the 180 rule, which is one of the reasons Martin Pasko hated Neal Adams (that makes sense later), but it works, who cares.

PS: this fight scene takes place after vest-mohawk-tightpants flirts with Johnny Storm on the phone. Coos right in the Human Torch's ear, he does! 

Now take a look at this:

This is morning glories 1. What happened here, kemosabe? Does the guy in the ugly tie with his silent elbows and "tok" superkick stop, wait for the two guys, turn around and pull his tricks? Does he run up to them and spin around? Do they teleport and exchange places so that he can run in the middle of them to do the moves in panel two?

Not supposed to be spending this kind of time. For extra credit, you can do this in your very on own home with every other fight/action scene in the comic. (Secret tip: don't dilly dally around trying to figure out the architecture of the hallways and rooms, that's a lockbox without solution.)

Comics Journal # 37
Published by Fantagraphics I guess, 1977

The majority of this issue is devoted to stuff about the first Star Wars movie, as well as a half-ad/half-article about the upcoming Superman film that looks exactly like what Wizard might have produced if they'd been around in the 70's. The best part of the issue is found in Gary Groth's editorial evisceration of Jim Steranko's response to Mediascene (a zine Steranko was responsible for editing) being busted for publishing a plagiarized article. The article was about the upcoming Superman movie, Steranko's response to the plagiarism was a long-winded "this isn't a big deal, chill out". After that, there's a couple of good reviews by Kim Thompson, amongst others, one really hard to read Avengers review that goes into explicit detail about what's depicted in every single panel on every single page, and then an irritating convention write-up that keeps repeating the phrase "I hate kids". (If only you'd waited! They weren't going to be a problem much longer!) It all rounds up with a pretty decent interview with Martin Pasko, who talks some serious shit about Neal Adams, reveals that he has no idea how well any of his books sell unless they get cancelled, seems convinced that nobody in their right mind would ever pay more than thirty cents for a comic book, and basically says every single thing you've heard anybody say about excessive violence in super-hero comic books, expensive comic books, continuity errors, and the only thing substantially different in all of it compared to what you read yesterday at Robot 6's comment section is that the conversation took place in 1977 and not 2010.

Amazing Spider-Man # 643
Written by Mark Waid
Art by Paul Azaceta
Published by Marvel Comics

It's always worth remembering that there's a massive chunk of people that read comics who also pay absolutely no attention to the internet's take on them, and it might be worthwhile to laugh hysterically at all of them right now, because there's just no way those silly people with their silly Prodigy accounts are enjoying Mark Waid's joke at the beginning of this issue of Amazing Spider-Man # 643 as much as the rest of us. See, the joke goes something like this: in the last issue, Dr. Octopus, who lives in a cocoon now and no longer has the fat guy version of a girl's pageboy haircut (so many genders!), happened to deliver a baby and then cut the umbilical cord right in the middle of that poorly furnished coffee shop that Harry Osborn does a bad job of running. (Seriously, how much furniture does that place actually have?) 

So, in the beginning of this issue, Spider-Man rants and rants and rants, silently, about how gross it is that he had to see Dr. Octopus do THAT, you know, with an UMBILICAL CORD, like: so gross, UMBILICAL CORDS SHOULD BE INSIDE WOMEN, not OUTSIDE, GREATEST GENERATION. But then Waid plays it out even further, and has Spidey start questioning if maybe he's the one with the problem, going so far as to say "am I just getting old and fussy?", and if you can't see the mimicry of certain "I don't buy super-hero comics because they're just straight up fucking gross now" punditry, then you're just lying because seriously it takes like two seconds on twitter to find those kinds of remarks, hell I think "super-heroes are too violent for my precious orca-looking four year old, how ever will I distract him long enough so that I can have the kind of sexual affairs described in Oprah's recent Book Club pick" was the plot of a Brazzers video with Lezley Zen last week. (She succeeded.)

The Incal: John Difool, Class "R" Detective
Written by Alexandro Jodorowsky
Art by Zoran Janjetov & Valerie Beltran
Published by Humanoids

This isn't a piece of shit or anything like that, but it's still only a "pretty okay" version of something like that Marcos Martin Captain America comic where James Robinson told you the exciting story of what happened while Steve Rogers was on the way to the super-soldier injection. No matter how good it gets--and Martin drew anorexic Cap' pretty damn well--it's a story already told, one that has so many marks it has to hit that the capacity to surprise or engage on any level is constantly sublimated by the needs of utility. If you've read the Incal, you already know that John Difool has to 1) survive this story 2) still be an asshole after this story ends 3) and at some point have sex with a goddess disguised as a prostitute. (Of course, maybe you haven't read the Incal first, but come the fuck on: who reads the second volume of the not-illustrated-by-Moebius Incal prequel before they read the illustrated-by-Moebius Incal? CRAZY PEOPLE, that's who, let's never speak of them again.)

Peepo Choo #2
By Felipe Smith
Published by Vertical

There's this pretty good comic inside Peepo Choo about a perverted giant with real-deal facial hair who kills the shit out of things, masturbates a pail of semen into a condom when other people are killing the shit out of things, but that comic is lurking amongst a period-accurate depiction of boring, unimaginative adolescent sex-fantasy (oh god--she's wearing a towel! they're in the missionary position! stop before you blister my hands!), to say nothing of the parts about some cosplay kid who is upset to go to Japan and find out blah blah blah he wants to wear funny ears every day while singing, ho-hum making friends sure is a pickle we can all relate to.

Hellblazer # 271
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Simon Bisley, Stefano Landini & Trish Mulvihill
Published by DC Comics

You get a chance to see John Constantine's CD collection in this issue: it's problematic. Tom Waits makes sense, Metallica sort of does although John's a little old to hold onto that band, but the Verve's Urban Hymns and anything by System of a Down? No, sorry, that isn't John Constantine music. (To be accurate, System of a Down is nobody's music.) Be curious whose responsible for that intellectual travesty.

okay maybe travesty is too strong. The part where he jumps out of the window sure was great!

I Die At Midnight
By Kyle Baker
Published by holy shit Vertigo published this?

The last David Lapham comic anybody around here read featured a scene where a women cut a chunk out of her crotch regions to better hold a knife, a knife which she then used to fuck-stab her daughter-raping husband in the mouth. TEA PARTY

Here's the real zinger for you though: the people at Marvel MAX are so scared of what Kyle Baker might do on a Deadpool book by himself that they're sticking that guy--the crotch-slitting incest guy!--on writing details, despite the fact that it would most certainly be cheaper to just have Baker write the fucking thing himself. (And if the last six months have taught us anything, it's taught us that absolutely anyone can write a Deadpool book.) Now, I Die At Midnight isn't anybody's top-drawer Baker comic, despite having a great opening section, but still: this fucking guy! This fucking 64 pages of Dick Tracy in one week guy!

...

oh whatever you go be sad then. put that on your resume, that sadness.

Thunderbolts # 148
Written by Jeff Parker
Art by Kev Walker Declan Shalvey, The Transporter & Fabio D'Auria
Published by Marvel Comics

You've got to hand it to Marvel, they certainly know when they aren't keeping up with the times. See, the popular thing to do right now is to make comics that people don't want to buy or at the very least to fuck up the ones that they do, and since Jeff Parker and Kev Walker were producing something that had started okay and moved right on over to pretty fucking great, it was decided to tie the title into what's called a "mini-event" comic (the word "mini" translates in this case to thirty separate comic books), and change the artist to someone whose style, while not horrible, shares almost nothing with Walker's. How extraordinarily well-planned to do this only four issues in! Oh, and if you're keeping track, the list of Marvel comic book characters who think the whole Shadowland story arc isn't a big deal worth paying attention has now grown from Iron Man, Thor and Captain America to include USAgent. Think about that for a second: a guy in a wheelchair with one fucking arm thinks Shadowland is a total non-starter. How is a reader supposed to care?

Incredible Hulk # 34-54
Written by Bruce Jones
Art by John Romita Jr, Lee Weeks, Stuart Immonen & Mike Deodato
Published by Marvel Comics in a bunch of different formats, the best of which is the one where you get to read this really horrifying essay by Bruce Jones where he explains how Marvel kept changing the artists out from underneath him.

This started off really great, although it seems nowadays to be popular to refer to it as the Hulk-without-a-Hulk book, which is kind of unfair, as both Romita Jr. and Lee Weeks draw some of their most balls out Hulk drawings ever. To say nothing of this, which is great:

But after that, Stuart Immonen got stuck drawing an overly drawn-out riff on Kafka-does-Chandler (with a Lynch soundtrack), and by the time Mike Deodato showed up to draw an Abomination/Hulk throwdown, the whole "terrifying secret organization" had deteriorated into throwing a bunch of easy-to-spot, easier-to-beat obstacles in the way of Bruce Banner, who won't stop talking about how they're trying to bait him with the life of a little boy he doesn't seem to be trying very hard to save. It's still the kind of bad that's sort of better than...

Incredible Hulks # 613
Written by Greg Pak & Scott Reed
Art by Tom Raney, Brian Ching, Victor Olazaba, Jorge Maese, Scott Hanna & John Rauch
Published by Marvel Comics

The Hulk cries disgusting green tears, might be worth finding out if that's canonical. (No it wouldn't.) Here's a shining beacon of what people complain about when they complain about using veiled Raymond Carver phrases to write sentences describing things; that this comic is split into two stories, one of which adds nothing to the story in the last issue (Hulk has a family picnic, mommy and daddy fight at the picnic), the other of which recaps a bunch of Son of Galactic Hulk comics that you didn't read on purpose, but now apparently are expected to care about or at least know of. Besides having too many spin-off comics, the Hulk books have something else in common with Shadowland: they're trying really hard to do something new with the character's usual plots, succeeding, and yet producing something that is about as enjoyable as a comic where Superman tries to pick out which suit he'd like to wear when he sneaks out to watch farming documentaries. Unusual, yes. Still dumb.

Brightest Day # 10
Written by GeoffJohnsPeterJTomasi
Art by Ivan reis scott clark joe prado oclair albert david beaty aspen mlts peter steigerwald john starr
Published by DC Comics

While previous issues have focused on mumbling declamations from talking light fixtures who wish people still understood cared about poetry, this issue is all about taking Firestorm to the Extreme, by giving him an arch-villain named "Deathstorm" who uses the word "boss" (just like my dad's dad did!) as an adjective and blatantly saying that Firestorm is "the most dangerous being in the universe" as if that statement is something that is going to convince people to say "oh, wait, maybe I don't find everything about Firestorm dated and boring and I will buy a comic about him even though I've skipped doing that at every opportunity since I was 12 years old", and then the comic closes it out by throwing old crusty Black Manta back on the scene, because Geoff Johns has yet to find a goofy DC character that he can't take seriously, because serious is the new Black and apparently Manta.

X-23 # 1
Written by Marjorie Liu
Art by Will Conrad & John Rauch
Published by Marvel Comics

There's nothing to this, a trivial remix of Wolverine standards (created to be a murderer, can she defeat her programming, let's go and sleep outdoors, also she's depressed sometimes), but there is a nice little piece of 2010 comic iconography in the back matter, where one of those terrible digital pictures is copied, reduced and pasted, resulting in an brilliant little expose on how easily destructible that kind of shit is, and hopefully foretelling a future where an accidental power outage will destroy all evidence art of its kind ever existed.

Shadowland Ghost Rider # 1
Written by Rob Williams
Art by take it all back, take it all back
Published by people who care about you

return of the king

 return of the KING

DCU Legacies # 5
Written by Len Wein
Art by George Perez, Walt Simonson, Scott Kolins, Mike Atiyeh, Scott Koblish & Allen Passalqua
Published by DC Comics

They should publish more of these, that way people won't have to go to the trouble of remembering stuff they've read before, or picking books off of the shelf: here's a Wikipedia entry for a Crisis, only with more draw-rings! This is part of the reason why digital comics are so exciting: no more leaving the house, no more clogging up the brain with all that pesky "what is it I like again, i keep forgetting because it isn't showing up automatically the way my food does", because now you can just get it injected directly into your bloodstream, the same way my brother and I injected Klonopin into my father's testicles every summer so that he'd have steady hands when he gave us those quality punches in the mouth he called "lovemakers". Sure, maybe you'll miss out on reading Simonson's Adam Strange back-up, which features a part where an alien with a gigantic vacuum cleaner breaks his vacuum cleaner after Adam Strange tricks him into sucking up an alien called Dust Devil. But at least you won't have left your house, and in your house, you can be a Viking.

Prison Pit Book 2
By Johnny Ryan
Published by Fantagraphics

Yeah, would've thought this would've had the top spot for the past week, but Gilbert handed out his own version of steeped in violence black comedy while his brother brought straight up comics perfection, that's already discussed here, Johnny Ryan, let's make it quick.

Prison Pit Book 2, if it has a flaw, it is that it's the second in a series that already cemented the surprise of Angry Youth Comics # 14, which was that Mr. Ryan was totally capable of doing something in comics that lasted longer than a couple of pages at a time. It's more of the same, down to the speed read the panels ignore and the unwillingness to allow for any limitation on Ryan's voracious palate of disgust. That isn't to ignore Book Two's occasional embrace of newness--for example, there seems to be a way off of the planet, and Book One didn't have any rape in it--but to acknowledge that the surprises in store are more of relief than shock: we already found out how good he could be at this, the only question was if he could maintain it.

He most certainly does. Prison Pit Book Two is as funny as Book One, and what it lacks in hysterical wordplay ("want me to send you an e-vite" remains the gold standard), it makes up for in its delirious commitment to excess, both in the grotesqueries on display as well as the suspense. This may not be the comic everybody else were waiting for, but around these parts, it most certainly was. Pin a rose on my dick, call me king of the geckos: I have found my homeland.

-Tucker Stone, 2010

Stunt Casting: Michel Fiffe On The Best Jaime Hernandez Comic Of All Time

What follows is a conversation between The Factual Opinion and Michel Fiffe, the cartoonist responsible for Zegas, Fut Miso & Panoroma, the interviewer responsible for The Beat's Fiffe Files, and the editor responsible for Savage Dragon's Twisted Funnies. Michel is also responsible for two "Master Posts" focusing on the work of The Hernandez Brothers. (One, Two)

The impetus for this conversation came about due to the shared belief between Fiffe and Tucker Stone that the most recent issue of Love and Rockets contains the greatest work of Jaime Hernandez' already legendary career.

The comics contained in Love and Rockets New Stories # 3 are heavily spoiled below.

The Factual Opinion: It struck me when you and I were talking about volume 3 (before you read it) that you weren't as excited for it, after having read volumes 1 and 2. Am I correct on that?

Michel Fiffe: I may have been playing it cool or something, but I doubt it because I'm pretty unabashed about my love for the series. You're probably thinking about Cav. I sold him on the first 2, and he was pretty much done with Jaime's superhero wrap up.

TFO: How'd you feel going into this one then? I hadn't really enjoyed some of Gilbert's stuff in the last two volumes, and I kind of felt like what they were doing wasn't working for the format. Jamie's super-hero stuff felt like something that needed to come out more frequently, that it was more of a serialized pleasure. The first two collections felt like the Brothers were atonally mashed against one another--but with volume three, all of those complaints were out of the window. All of their contributions complemented the other so well. I didn't dislike the first two volumes, and I wouldn't say I was disappointed in them either. They were a great way to check in, but I just felt that the wait...if I'm going to wait a year for them, and I really don't mind waiting a year for them, the same way I don't mind waiting on Woodring, Ware, Clowes & Ryan--I just would prefer to read something that doesn't leave it hanging, the way the super-hero stuff in Volume 1 did.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah, the superhero stuff... maybe Jaime wanted to have a cliffhanger and make you come back for more. It's a serialization mentality. Or maybe the story grew out of proportion? I assume that they both work on whatever type of stories they feel like, regardless of format. Meaning that the format isn't going to dictate the story no matter what. However, I think that for this 3rd installment, this third issue, they may have been aware of the restrictions of new schedule and presentation. Ultimately, I think it's a minor issue for them. I could be wrong.

TFO: The cover for volume 3 really breaks me up, now that i've read it. Whereas the cover for New Stories Volume 1 feels like a pretty simple "let's crack this open and see what's inside" and the cover for Volume 2 seems like a colored page from "Hypnotwist", the cover for number three is just incredibly painful--the adults (authority? safety?) looking off at the distance at a puckered blue anus (maybe, probably not, sorry) while Perla looks right at the reader and Calvin looks off to the side, seemingly unaware of what's coming (and that's probably true, because Perla's rainbow shirt indicates that they just moved in)--this cover is way more involved in what's behind the pages than the first two volumes were.

Fiffe: You see that as an anus?

TFO: I said I was sorry.

Fiffe: Huh. Well, I see your point and agree completely. I don't think every cover has to signify anything too deep. It depends on the story.

TFO: Oh, it doesn't have to at all.

 

Fiffe: Speaking of the impact of the #3 cover reminds me of the cover of # 29, with Beto's rooster, which is one of my favorite covers of all time. It's both iconic and makes more sense after you've read the story. The first "New Stories" cover was pretty and interesting, an iconic first issue cover.

TFO: Fantagraphics really should put together a fancy collection of all of the old Love and Rockets covers. Look, I don't disagree that New Stories #1 has a good cover. But this one here, for #3...that's a GREAT cover.

Fiffe: Yeah, it's completely heartbreaking and expertly composed. Calvin off to the side.... Esther just... standing there with this gaze... it's beautiful. The first two covers were solid and eye catching, but my reading the story didn't enhance my feelings for them, not the way this one does. #3's cover is... is... is perfect too strong a term?

TFO: I don't think perfect is too strong. Look at everything--that background color versus the black line that has the red letters on it, forming the title and then compare it to the covers for volume 1 and 2...This new one pops. It's so strong, it feels fresh.

Fiffe: #2 pops really well I think, especially in today's "stands" so to speak, but #3 really did it for me.

TFO: Yeah, I'm kind of being a little silly. This is a great vs. awesome vs. perfect debate. You want to talk about these stories in order? Or should we jump right to Jamie?

Fiffe: Yes, let's move on. But let's do it in order. It's only fair.

TFO: Okay: "Scarlet by Starlight". This might have my favorite last couple of panels of any Gilbert story I've read since Heartbreak Soup. When the guy says "not any more!" I actually laughed out loud, which is a statement I think I hate more than anything when people use it as a description of praise. But that's what happened!

Fiffe: Yeah, it was good, that line. I thought the whole thing was pretty solid, I don't know... I liked it fine. Beto has this thing, this ability to make his dialogue seem so brisk and natural yet it tells you just enough.

TFO: Pardon me for being uneducated in all of the various strands of history, but this is a Fritz movie they haven't mentioned before, right?

Fiffe: I don't believe so. I honestly lose track of all of the B-movies within the story. And pardon ME, but was that even Fritz? I thought she only appeared in the one pager movie scene in the second story.

TFO: I think it's Fritz, isn't it? That isn't her at the start of "Killer*SadGirl*Star", when all the guys are trying to convince Killer to do a sequel/remake to a Scarlet movie they just watched a clip of?

Fiffe: Yeah, it may be Fritz, but I don't recall her being mentioned or shown without fur on her face. Who knows? Let's not get tangled up in this.

TFO: Of course. There's a lot in "Scarlet by Starlight" that's just straight up funny, which I think is so far getting ignored because of how nasty it gets--I guess kiddie-rape is something that just never works for some people--but when the guy blows his brains out while screaming (with a laser pistol) or when the other guy says "I told the truth about him" after giving a speech praising the molester's "love of all children"--it's a black humor school, to the extreme. When you get near the end, and the main guy is laying on the ground holding himself in the fetal position while the girl drives/flies the two of them home--there's so much here that I thought was hilarious.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah... it's funny as shit. And Beto made me care a little about these characters I've never seen before. Which begs the question, is this issue SO GOOD to us because we're familiar with the characters? I don't think so, but a case could be made.

TFO: Not for me. Calvin was able to break my heart in about 15 ways, and I don't remember him at all. I'm jumping ahead, but that's my feeling on it.

Fiffe: Good point. I didn't remember him either. I also didn't feel the need to rifle through my own back issue to find out so I guess I answered my own question.

TFO: But if we're going to speak of people we're familiar with, maybe it's time to talk about "Love Bunglers Part One"?

Fiffe: Could I say that I really hate dream sequences?

TFO: Go right ahead! I'm no friend of dream sequences.

Fiffe: I hate them, they're cheap plot devices. Having said that, I totally bought into this one. Jaime really captured the horror of that kind of dream.

TFO: I've re-read this volume four times now, and I felt like that dream sequence was a kind of synthesis of the experimental comics that Gilbert is more well-known for. Specifically, reading it again reminded me of "Hypnotwist", Sloth, but not in a way that felt like Jamie was "pulling a Beto", more that he was utilizing a tactic he doesn't resort to as often as Gilbert does. When he wants to go fantastic, he usually does super-heroes and sci-fi, right?

Fiffe: Sure, sure. But Jaime has pulled this kind of thing off recently, with Maggie's nightmares? Those were genuinely creepy. But yeah, it's a sensibility that Jaime doesn't usually apply to his stories.

TFO: Yeah, I don't mean to imply it's his first time or anything like that. But the nudity, the fear on her face when she's sliding--there's something in there that strikes me as a Beto comic.

Fiffe: Oh, yeah, yeah. For me, I just noticed that he rarely pulls this kinda thing. When Maggie gets to the bottom of the stem and realizes she's just as high as she was when she started, that's the kind of detail that you can only find in that kind of nightmare. It's nice to see Jaime pull it off alongside the stuff he's known for... and make it all work well together.

TFO: Oh god, and he totally nails the way it feels to be sinking into something when you're trying to float, like if you're on an inner tube that deflates in the middle of a lake. When she sinks into the middle of the leaf and says "i finally make it over to my stomach"--i'm not scared of heights, but that panel made me feel a little sick. What about the Calvin appearances in Part One? Did you have any inkling of who he was and what he was doing when you read this the first time?

Fiffe: Ha! No way. At that point, I had no idea what to expect from the story. I was surprised at how many points of views Jaime juggled and it never seemed forced.

TFO: I was a little bit lost the first time reading through it--I couldn't remember where Maggie was at with the guys in the course of All Love and Rockets Stories Ever--but I really wanted to know what was going on with that guy, why he was skulking around like that, bugging the tenants, hiding his face. The first time through, I thought he must be another wanna-be suitor, just one of a nastier variety. I liked it fine, but I think it gets most of its power (outside of the dream sequence) from when you've finished the whole book and gone back to it. How about you?

Fiffe: Well, yeah, that's the thing. Calvin isn't even called out by name until the end. I thought he was just a creep or a stalker, like bad news was definitely gonna happen. But there's NO WAY we could've known who he was, and Jaime played that up perfectly. And then when Maggie confronts him at the end of Part 1, that was so telling... but we didn't know WHY. All we knew is that Maggie knew SOMEBODY was there. Was he a regular stalker, was he just a homeless person she felt bad for?

TFO: Yeah, the way he hides his face could go a bunch of different ways when you read it the first time. There's no specific indication of who he is, how he knows her. He could just be the regular homeless guy that she's tasked with running off the property. It's genius, makes the part where his identity is revealed in "Part Two" that much more painful. It's just a throwaway moment where his idea of what life is like for Maggie is presented as a sad little fantasy (because he assumes she's dating the one guy who "treated her right"). That part hurts so fucking bad.

Fiffe: I gotta say, Jaime has the same mastery over dialogue as his brother. That old argument of "Jamie draws better and Beto is the better writer" is a bunch of horsheshit that exposes the cretins that don't really "get" "comics" "storytelling".

TFO: I have zero patience or interest in the lets-compare-the-Brothers game. Self-indulgence is a lot of fun when you're talking about shitty comics, but when you're talking about these two guys, you should probably get out of your own fucking way and just look at the panels for a while. They're brilliant, I wouldn't ask them to change a thing. Sorry, I'm ranting.

Fiffe: Rant away. No, don't! Let's no waste any more time on that shitty, archaic, ass backwards argument. Those people probably hate comics.

TFO: Let's get "Killer*Sad Girl*Star" out of the way. I kind of didn't care that much about it? I felt like it was a bit of Speak of the Devil (murder in the sand dunes!). It was just okay.

Fiffe: Beto has this weird expression that he gives his characters, like a glossed over look. Almost like models in a jeans commercial or something, one of those "pensive in the wind" looks. So that "pensive" look made me misread the murder scenes in the story, which was purposeful, I think. I haven't fallen for Killer the way I have for Fritz, Petra, or especially Pipo. They're such great characters.

TFO: Your pensive weirdness really shows up in the beach cop's face. Such a strange looking character. Is it weird that I couldn't tell if the cop was a girl or a guy?

Fiffe: It had boobs! They call her "she"!

TFO: I just keep waiting on Killer to WANT something. She seems to bounce around like a pinball, no real personality beyond an affected disinterest.

Fiffe: Killer's a kid. That's no excuse AT ALL (especially considering "Browntown"), but I dunno...Maybe she's that kind of character, like an open kind of thing. Lots of people are like that, aloof with a lot of mystery and promise. Usually, their act fails. I hope Killer's doesn't. In this case, I think Beto's material may work best once read all at once. As opposed to his NEW LOVE stuff, these broader human dramas should be read as a whole, not as chapters.

Man, I barely recognized Hector! He didn't age well.

TFO: I think my favorite panel in this one is the part where the ugly school girl says "Few actors win awards for playing retards any more." The looks on their faces are so fucking strange.

Fiffe: I take that back, Hector aged fine. He looks good. Usually frizzy hair and stubble means moral bankruptcy. Hector's always had stubble. Why am I talking about this?

TFO: Because Hector is awesome and fun to think about.

Fiffe: Or it's just a weird drawing. You know, Beto's new art kinda reminds me of late 70s/80s Ditko. He's locked into this strict language of showing things. It's VERY strict.

TFO: Is that the Creeper stuff? I can't place what you're connecting there. Shade the Changing Man?

Fiffe: No, further. Sorta like Shade... more like all the horror stuff he did for DC, his Captain Universe stuff, his Renegade Press stuff...It's not stiff at all, I don't believe. But there's this really "set in their ways" kind of approach to drawing.

TFO: Okay, I don't know that stuff that well. The most Ditko-y thing I've seen recently is that DJ Bryant guy in MOME. That panel where the guy is screaming about hating his wife and there's all those half-faces and angles drawn into it.

Fiffe: Yeah, that's more like 70's Warren, even Charlton Ditko.

TFO: I'll trust you on this one. It does seem like Gilbert is really locked in when he's drawing Killer. Almost every drawing of her has her posing, which could go both ways--she could just be doing that because she's a vain kid, a wanna-be model/actress who is imitating what she believes she's supposed to look like. Or it could just be that locked-in language is something Gilbert wants to use for this story.

Fiffe: I usually notice that trait in Beto's work when he draws his Palomar material. His other stuff can be very fluid and bizarre and experimental. I know that a "wonky" style wouldn't work for Palomar, but that's not what I mean. "Duck Feet" was much looser than say... the High Soft Lisp material.

TFO: Are we ready for this thing? This "Browntown"?

Fiffe: You mean the Best Story in the Universe? Sure.

TFO: Here's me on my mountain: this is my favorite thing I've ever read by Jamie Hernandez, and when I read it together with "Love Bunglers", I think it's the best thing I've read by Jamie Hernandez. At the same time, there's some serious gaps in my reading experience with Jamie Hernandez, so I'm kind of dependent on you to make an argument for why that's true--I can only back it up by pointing at things like "Death of Speedy" (which I love) and saying that this had more panels that made my jaw drop, and that I felt a more keen sense of emotional pain and unbearable sadness in this than his prior stuff.

Fiffe: OK, let's see... He's had some exemplary stories out there. Recently, too. "Browntown" does have panel after panel of heartbreak. I think the level of remorse and sympathy we may feel during this story, we may have felt in varying degrees in reading his other highlights. "Flies on the Ceiling" is one. "Everybody Loves Me, Baby" is another [Penny Century #7]. Those were my top 2. "Browntown" is just more complex, more involved, more ambitious, and structurally tighter. This is not to say that those previous works AREN'T, I'm just saying that Jaime's just gotten better at it. Here's an artist at the top of his form, telling some of the most mature and compelling stories in ANY medium... and the thing is, I could've said that 5 years ago, I could have said that 10 years ago. This new one is a masterpiece, and although I feel biased saying that because I like the Bros.' work so much, I think it will hold up as a work of art forever. I hate to sound like I'm a soapbox or something, but this medium is tremendously lucky to have this kind of story in existence. It's an example of not only "Pure" comics, but "Perfect" comics. Let's deconstruct it further! I have a few things to say about drawing, but it can wait. Have at it...

TFO: My favorite panels are the one where Maggie is finishing her first letter while her little brother is showing her his toy car and the panel where Calvin is crawling out of the cave and crying, and--well. There's other ones, but those are the two that I fell in love with the most. Those panels reached up and grabbed me by the throat. My only concern when going through this is that I think it's going to be easy for some readers to get trapped in treating it as a story about rape, when I think it's a lot more nuanced in the way it handles the situation. I mainly feel that nuance in the way Calvin, because he's a little boy, honestly believes that he has to keep suffering the way he does so that he can "protect" his sister from the same kind of assault. It isn't until the very end of the story that he finally snaps and does something completely for himself--killing his rapist--that the magnitude of what he's suffered is made totally clear. It's built up for a while, slowly, in the two panels where we see his age change during between assaults, or when we see how the kids are all at a movie and he's the only one not looking at the screen (that's a fucking drawing right there, how difficult it must be to have that kind of distinction between what the eyes of four black and white characters are focused on), and it all builds to the violence. And that violence is horrifying, it's not a satisfying moment in the slightest. And it shouldn't be, because this isn't a rape/revenge story about a kid who gets justice. It takes one panel transition for him to start crying. There's no satisfaction to be had.

Fiffe: Yeah, the handling of his point of view is done very respectfully, and in a very sobering way. There's is nothing romantic about his revenge at all. I didn't get off at his revenge. It was a really moving scene, totally unpredictable and yet, it made perfect sense.

TFO: I don't want to ignore the stuff with Maggie either, but it's hard not to go right to the Calvin story. I think there's something kind of magnificent about that part where she starts to climb on her dad's lap, only for him to respond with such venom--he may be cheating on his wife, but he has an ideal of purity for his children. It makes it that much worse, him having that, while being completely ignorant of what's happening to his son. And yet, when he shows up at the end and says "You have to come right now"--I can't help but forgive him immediately. Calvin could've come back from what he'd suffered so far, but it's impossible to be optimistic about him coming back from the kind of violence he unleashes on his tormentor, no matter how young he is.

Fiffe: Maggie's father was awesomely portrayed. Everyone was, even the bus driver in the one panel picking Maggie up for school. But I don't think anyone could've noticed Calvin's predicament. He bottled it up completely. I predict that you're right, and that some people, even die hard L&R fans, won't be able to see past a rape story, no matter how it's handled. Which is a shame becasue it's SO NOT about that. It's a major part of the story, but it's not in After School Special mode either, which most comics seems to fall into.

TFO: That's exactly what i'd worry about with it. We're so inured at this point to expect stories dealing with this subject matter to be either rape/revenge exploitation or to be an after-school-special sort of warning stories. The expectation for this subject matter to be handled poorly is totally understandable, especially when you're talking about comic books. But this isn't one of those at all! It's not a story about rape motivating some kind of badass vengeance, it's not a story for perverts to get off on, it's not a story that pretends that sexual violence of this sort will somehow result in a codified response shared by all victims--I finish reading "Browntown" and don't have feel any sense of surety of where Calvin's life will go next. I feel confused about his future, and that's far more mature an outcome than I'd ever have if someone said "this story has a bunch of molestation at the core".

Fiffe: The Bros. really handle that kind of stuff well. Things that everyone else exploits to further whatever agenda they may have, such as suicide, date rape, spousal abuse, the Bros. handle all of it extremely well. That's hardly the case for any sort of media, y'know? It's all taglines and topic of the week. Look at Jaime and Beto's respective contributions to the STRIP AIDS benefit anthology from the 80s--they're the only ones that don't even mention AIDS. As a result, their stories make a much stronger impact that the others. It may seem petty to nitpick that particular anthology, but I'm just referencing it as an example.

TFO: I'd attribute some of his success here to the fact that it's a one-man-show--when you're dealing with this kind of subject matter for television, film, even mainstream-y comics, you've got more people in the room, and everybody is going to have some kind of point of view on it, and they're all going to feel the need to make it something they're comfortable with. Jamie only has to achieve his own goals, and he's not trying to tell a story "about rape", he's trying to tell a story about one specific character: Calvin. This isn't a story about what happens to boys who suffer this kind of violence. It's about ONE BOY, his family. It doesn't have an agenda beyond that. I think that's part of why it isn't "offensive" in the way that it is whenever a super-heroes girlfriend gets assaulted.

Fiffe: Even when a super hero's girlfriend gets assaulted, it's not to make a point, it's to titillate the audience. But this comic isn't for that audience anyway. It's almost a moot point. It's kind of like when presumably adult comic book readers dismiss Love & Rockets as "that lesbian" comic. No amount of great storytelling is gonna burst that moronic bubble.

TFO: Can you talk a little bit more about what you meant by "pure" and "perfect" comics?

Fiffe: Sure. "Pure" comics use the elements inherent in comics, right? That's not an easy thing to pull off, being that most comics don't really utilize the advantages of the form. "Pure" comics don't necessarily mean good comics, either; there are plenty of "pure" comics that can have thin stories, idiotic stories, artwork that falls against the story, and yet they still appropriate the things that make comics unique... and even if "pure" is difficult to achieve, that's not enough. However, If you have a story that's mature and compelling, funny, heartbreaking--all the things we've been talking about here--and it's all handled in a masterful way that never talks down to the reader or disrespects the reader's intelligence, AND it utilizes "pure" comics trait? That's "perfect".

TFO: Can you nail down for me what it is that makes this one "pure"?

Fiffe: Ok, what makes this "pure" is the timing of it, the specific "beats" of the story and the way it leads the reader. It's deceptively simple, you don't notice it, but you're not supposed to. A lot of it has to do with the drawing. The kind of emotion you can't get from an actor, or prose, or any other cartoonist whether it be "cartoony" or "photo-realistic". Jaime's drawings aren't just pretty pictures, they're components of the comic. Of comics. It's in the page design, it's the shift between styles within a scene or even a panel, it's freezing the perfect moments to amplify what he's trying to say. He draws that. He draws those perfect moments, even with all the imperfections they sometimes imply.

TFO: What you're describing reminds me of how I felt reading Weathercraft, that sense that Jim Woodring is concerned with the rate at which the reader moves through the page. There's a definite sense that he must have thought about how the eye is going to move, and since he didn't use dialog as a crutch to dictate how much time you spend on the panel, he had to determine pacing with the layouts, with the parts of the action he's stopping to capture. Sorry to interrupt.

Fiffe: S'cool. You don't get that "pure" kind of involved mastery anywhere else, I mean in any other form. And a large part of this achievement is in Jaime's drawing, in his actual skill as an artist. If this were drawn any differently, it would be completely different, obviously. It's all in his skill, his old school loyalty to "Good" drawing. I don't want to define "good", so maybe let's use another word without watering down my meaning. How's "well crafted"?

TFO: That works, and acknowledging the fact that Jamie is committed to being a great craftsman is always worth the time. I'm sure he has to rush stuff at times, but his line never really seems to suffer. I can't think of "unfinished" work that he's put out before its time.

Fiffe: I was fortunate enough to chat a little bit with Jaime at the last Mocca. He thought it was funny that it's always the guys that can't draw that rail against good drawing. Sorry... "well crafted" drawing.

TFO: My general anecdote about that was when my dad looked at some of JH Williams work in Detective, read an issue, and then said that the story was pretty predictable and not very interesting. I waited for him to mention the art, and when he didn't, I told him that the art was the big draw on this one. He said "isn't it the artist's job to draw it well? Why would you read one of these things that wasn't drawn well?"

Fiffe: HA! Yeah, seriously. But "drawing it well" ...I dunno, it's gonna get ugly defining that. I define good drawing by the specific strengths of the artists, generally.

TFO: I just define "good art" as what I like. I know that's not at all the right way to do it, but I've got other hobbies that interest me more than figuring out some codified rules of aesthetic "bestness". Plenty of other people are more interested in that than I am, they're better at it too. They can have it.

Fiffe: Here's the rub: "Browntown" would NOT be as effective with an artist of lesser caliber. With Jaime...look, there are artists that are undeniable. You can't say SHIT about them. Toth is another one. But Jaime tells relevant, poignant, and hilarious stories. He's left, as you noted, to create on his own, without being held back by a committee. He's the best example of a true modern artist creating on his own terms and benefiting from such freedom. What it comes down to is this: there's a subtlety and naturalism to every single line that defines every single character in his stories. Calvin looking off while the movie plays, the little brother's hand while Perla is writing a letter, Maggie's face when she discovers her dad cheating... it all exists because of Jaime's unparalleled draftsmanship. I tell you, nothing has humbled me and inspired me as much as this story. It aims high and we all gotta catch up.

TFO: I totally agree. Jamie's always been a giant talent, and I think it's worth noting how much of what we consider "comics" to be seems tied up in the kind of work he's produced. It's incredible to see him still accelerating to a higher level, considering how great he's been already.

Fiffe: Yeah, it's actually kind of unbelievable. People at Mocca kept saying how humble he is, how nice... "what a nice, humble guy". Sure he's nice, but he knows he's good. He knows he can run circles around all of us. That's besides the point here, I know... but he ain't humble, and why should he be? He's the best.

TFO: Humility is just a personality trait. It doesn't have anything to do with being an artist. It's nice if you just want to talk to somebody, I guess. But the current popularity in comics of figuring out "who the nice guys are" is a fucking joke. It's supposed to be an artform, not a social club. Know your role.

Fiffe: No, it doesn't, you're right, but I'm putting it in the context of the conversations I had with folks that met him. They've probably met legendary artists who were total dicks, so they equate good manners with being artistically humble. Jaime may feel humbled at times, I'm sure...Wait, it's not a social club? I've been going to the wrong parties. Anyway, how about that ending, huh?

TFO: The ending is just another level of pain in a lot of ways--besides the thing that came up above, where Calvin is still worried about Maggie after all these years, there's also the bludgeoning gut-punch when you find out that Maggie never found out what happened to Calvin, that he didn't really grow up with her, that his life fell apart before he could have a chance to really have one. But it's also another mash-up of brilliant, subtle art--the way that Jamie uses the narration to tell you what Maggie & Ray talked about (and they talk about a bunch of important stuff, stuff like "i don't want to date you" and "my life is a trainwreck") while just showing all these coy little facial tics that degenerate into Maggie looking hollowed out by life--that's a brilliant ending. So amazing, like she's accessed all the pain she has for Calvin without knowing why, without even knowing that he's right outside, watching over her in his own sad little way.

Fiffe: Right, we're wrapped up with Maggie and Ray's relationship and all of its complexities, but it's signed off with Calvin's presence. I have to say, the last page made me cry. I wasn't bawling, but I had to stand up and open my eyes really wide and pace around my living room for a few minutes. It took me a while to really absorb what was happening. When was the last time a comic made you do that? If ever?

TFO: Don't Go Where I Can't Follow tore me apart. I didn't really go to that place when this ended, but I'll own up to a disconnect on my part, as I was caught up in thinking "what a perfect ending".

Fiffe: Well, it was the reveal that got me. I totally didn't see it coming.

TFO: Oh, I didn't see it coming either!

Fiffe: Calvin's slouch alone is telling. Such a life he's had. I read it in one shot. And only once with a few scenes that I re-read. I was completely immersed. Kat thought I was reading porn from the other room.

TFO: I envy you a bit for going into it so deeply. I feel like I was reading this a bit analytically the first time through. Oh, I've got something to say, but let me put in perspective first: I trust Jamie to do the right thing by his art, his creations, characters, completely. But I really hope that he doesn't unleash a bunch of "untold Calvin stories" the next time one of these books comes out. This was just so perfect.

Fiffe: I don't think he will. He never really does that. I think the characters couldn't be in better hands.

TFO: I'm thinking we're reaching a good endpoint ourselves. Would you be willing to tell me what kind of impact you think this comic might have on your own work?

Fiffe: Well, I'm at this weird point in trying to tell the stories I want to tell. I can't think in slick high concept terms, and that's just the way the culture is right now, no matter where you go. So I just create the comics that I'd like to read. I want to tell stories that ring true, that aren't cliched log lines. Jaime is the best example of doing just that, of just creating his own thing... have you read his Art of Book?

TFO: No, I haven't.

Fiffe: The part that resonated with me was around the time period right before he started Love & Rockets. He felt like he was trying to fit into the comics biz, trying to belong, and trying to find his place in the comics world...and he just couldn't fit in. Reading about this Master of Comics going through that was a little heartbreaking. But he then went on to create his own thing, on his own terms, and he hasn't looked back since. It's THAT kind of drive that made "Browntown" possible, and I truly believe this story has raised the bar. I'm actually going through a creatively frustrating period, and reading this story, reading how good comics can be, how brilliant and beautiful they can be, really cuts through all of the bullshit and all of the nonsense.

TFO: The quickest way to forget about mediocrity is to experience the form at its best. That's what this was. It's a gift.

Fiffe: Yeah, and I don't mean to sound as if I have difficulty in talking about my work, it's just that... I'm up against THAT story. We're ALL up against it. So what I meant when I said I'm not good at high concepts, well then, that's gonna have to be fine! There are far more important concerns at work here. I can't reduce my output to a quick pitch--so what? I don't think Jaime does. None of the artists I profoundly respect and admire have to do that. That's not their business as artists, as comic book storytellers.

They just create, and that's all I want to do. And Jaime always reminds me of that.

-Michel Fiffe & Tucker Stone, 2010

Ditko image one from Marvel Spotlight #11, March, 1981. Property of Steve Ditko

Ditko image two from Unexpected # 189, Feb.1979. Property of Steve Ditko

DJ Bryant image from Mome #19. Property of DJ Bryant
All other art from Love & Rockets New Stories #3. Property of Jaime & Gilbert Hernandez

 

 

 

 

 

Things That Belong On Tumblr: Warehousing It 9/19

Hit the monthly sale at Joe Koch's place, and while the haul was smaller than trips made previously, it was solid nonetheless and in no way reflects on the epic finds left behind. Thusly:

The Rundown

Doctor Strange # 64: First Tony Salmons pencils? Seems likely.

Crisis #2 & #12: Contains "Third World War" and "New Statesmen". The former is awesome, the latter an unknown.

Moebius 5 "The Gardens of Adena": The massive stack of Moebius 5 seems to be dwindling, meaning us hungry comics wolves have found the scent. Blueberry remains in abundance.

Old Comics Journals: That's Jaime Hernandez on cover details there, but the real finds in that little stack of Journals is Kenneth "I used to make sense" Smith blistering multiple pages to yap about the brilliance of The Incal. Dig even deeper and you'll find Ed "Secret Daredevils" Brubaker tossing the word "hack" in Jim Lee's direction while talking about his summer reading list. Ouch!

Psycho Comics: Uh, that's Daniel Clowes, in 1981, doing crime/horror comics. Yep.

Too Many Movies: We Tore Down Our Gods When We Realized What Our Hands Can Do

This week, Joe McCulloch brings to you his long-awaited thoughts about American movies with George Clooney in them, and Tucker goes on and on and on about The Mechanic, White Line Fever, Defiance, The Outfit and Rolling Thunder.

The American
Oh, I guess there’s a political aspect too, 2010
Joe McCulloch

This is an okay, quiet, methodical super-assassin suspense picture concerned with struggles between the earthly and the divine; it is considerably better at evoking the former. Beginning in dead silence, closing in on a cabin in the woods and cutting inside to George Clooney sitting at one side of a woman’s naked body, the film quickly establishes a small library of tactile, bodily signifiers: ominous landscapes; hot-cold bedrooms; nude (female) flesh. Within minutes Clooney has shot the woman down, and sexual, human beauty is glazed over with paranoia - there will not be another character in this movie, least of all a lovely woman, who isn’t a potential betrayer of this Sensitive Man’s Golgo 13.

Or, really, Clooney is the weapons dealer G13 pops in on in ‘79 en route to popping skulls in Iran, the guy Studio Assistant B4 bedecks with fat sweat droplets to contrast him with Our Man. There actually is a cooler, meaner assassin in this movie - a gorgeous, vaguely flirtatious woman, of course, tapping into a little old fashioned Catholic temptation appropriate to all that lush Italian scenery. But Clooney’s a crack shot too, nervous as he might be; we hear every drop of a stone, we jump along with each backfiring scooter, and we sit along in some limited state of grace as a mighty customized gun is slowly built, metal lusciously rolling and clacking into an efficient whole. These are the sounds of Clooney’s human life, his fallen, ruined life. His boredom kissed with horror. Inevitably, the scooter’s presence recurs at a moment of real gunfire - this livin’ stuff’ll kill ya!

Still, as nice as it is with Earth -- or Hell, as an obligatory conversation with a local priest portentously establishes -- the movie can’t escape the altogether more mawkish temptation of Heavenly aesthetics. Of course Clooney finds a secret forest with a lovely pond! Yes, his bullets -- the sour seeds of his material life! -- despoil this Eden, and do check how a shell casing spent in an encounter with the Cool Hitwoman comes back to cut the flesh of the Good Lady our Clooney yearns to romance (a prostitute, because aren’t we all despoiled in this tangible realm?), foreshadowing which of the ladies is truthful and right. A statue of the Virgin Mother is hauled out for the pulse-pounding-climax-set-in-a-crowded-place, and Clooney balefully glares at the priest as his violent nature is revealed; it’s less revelatory than presumed, frankly just more metal parts snapping into place. It’s the kind of movie where the opening titles are preceded by the brooding hero driving through a dark corridor and the whole screen slooowly fading to pure white.

Like I said, I was okay with this thing -- the action bits are short and harsh, the observational scenes occasionally hypnotic, and the sound design is stellar -- but given its propensity for ham-fisted shorthand- of-divinity, the finale can perhaps only feature assassins pulling the trigger on various targets and director Anton Corbijin pulling the trigger on a fluttering butterfly symbolizing the escape of the human soul, soaring through the Garden as blood and tears flow below, and literally ascending to the top of the frame. That’s the image we’re left with, which is no surprise, as it’s all a film can do then to roll over and die.

The Mechanic
Charles Bronson Used To Walk Around On The Same Planet As You, 1972
 
They're remaking this one, with Jason Statham and Ben Foster. It's kind of an odd choice for the remake mill--The Mechanic's plot isn't markedly different from most of the "hitman near the end" stories you've ever seen--but that's a pretty solid cast, and Ben Foster is rapidly turning into someone I really enjoy watching. I suspect, Prop 8 notwithstanding, that the remake will scrub clean the glorious homoeroticism that laces the relationship between Chuck Bronson and Jan-Michael Vincent. If there's one thing that today's filmmakers have forgotten, it's the ballsy willingness to say "we'll do what we like" to everybody that the 70's paranoia classics had in spades. I'm happy to be wrong, but something tells me that Foster's character won't be introduced the way Vincent's is above, with a saucy focus on that stainless steel ass.

At the same time, another take of this thing might not be such a bad idea--its loose, a bit slow going in the middle, and its one of those old school movies where the star forced the producers to give his current squeeze a tacked-on scene that's embarrassing to watch. But the beginning of the film is as legendary as you might have heard, with 15 dialog free minutes in study of Bronson's assassination of a target, a man that Chuck dispenses with by destroying an entire floor of urban real estate without ever showing the slightest tinge of emotion. While the "men at work" tone is similar to something you might see in Michael Mann's heist movies (Heat or Thief especially), Bronson's initial scenes won't be mistaken for the sexed up clean lines of suits and color-coded hockey masks. The Mechanic, despite the tawdry suds between youthful ambition and lecherous need, isn't a very sexy movie. In keeping with the times that produced it, it's cynical, angry work, the study of a man who expends his life expending the lives of others, only to end up in a place where his storied efficiency becomes the ticket that others have to punch. Take away the guns, the glory, and the violence, and you're right back here: another American man, humiliated when his power leaves him and the cost of decades comes due.

White Line Fever
Jan-Michael Vincent Rode The Devil Down, 1975
(part of the William Lustig Presents series)

"You don't need to think for this one", Lustig said, "This is a total popcorn movie."

White Line Fever opens with a faked newscast, where what seems to be a real news anchor interviews what the credits make clear is a real non-union trucker. While the conflict that he describes won't actually come up until late in the film's final minutes, it pretty much sets up the exact theme of what you're about to see, sans the action: a movie about men so obsessed with their independence that they prioritize it far beyond their self-preservation. Like some kind of military cliche, these characters--stock stereotypes the lot, some offensively so--will die, horribly, before they let any motherfucker tell them what to do. They will also kill you, or at the very least beat the shit out of you, if you don't allow them the freedom to do so.

As the lead, Jan-Michael's character plays about fifteen different roles, some better than others. At one point or another, he's the suffering beacon of integrity who refuses to sneak cigarettes across state lines (and is beaten and rolled in manure because of it), he's the lionhearted bridge of racial tolerance that re-unites the black and white truckers through the power of his smile and a shared thirst for violence, he's the martyr for a thousand man movement towards self-determination, and, because the seats that are filled must stay filled, he's a tight-jawed, dick-swinging force for revenge.

It's that last one that you stick around for. Sure, it's nice to get a little taste of 70's trucker history, but it's the moment after they burn down Jan's house with him and his pregnant wife inside it, that moment after the buckets of tears, snot and blood are cleaned off his face just so the doctor can tell him that she lost the baby, where you feel yourself silently promising that you'll piss down your leg before you stop to take a break. There's killing to do, and a giant truck called the "Blue Mule" to do it with. Slick hucksters with baggy silk shirts and caterpillar crawling mustaches take heed: danger's on the way.

Defiance
Danny Aiello Has Always Been That Irritating, 1980
*Number Three In John Flynn's Revenge Trilogy
(part of the William Lustig Presents series, there was a Jan-Michael focus)

And then there's this, and yes, it's dated in a way that the rest of these films can't touch: the one that has that American film staple, the multi-cultural New York City gang. The Hispanic guys with ornate cross necklaces and a taste for raping! The white guys with bandanna and jean jackets who can't get enough of beating on children! The slick, leather-jacketed black guys who never found a night that clashed with the sunglasses they must always wear!

Of course, that's not all you've got here. You've also got Jan-Michael preparing to finish out the peak of his physical prowess, one of the last films he made where he still wore the musclebound chassis that cocaine and alcohol eventually absconded with, you've got the Soprano's Paulie Walnuts without a single grey streak, and you've got violence, lots of it. Everybody faces a fresher, meaner hell this time out. The bingo game is robbed. The nice old man who stands up for truth gets his face turned into pizza. Lenny Montana (the Godfather's Luca Brasi) helps the bad guys figure out the answer to a thought experiment regarding the results of chucking fat people off of rooftops. And eventually, long after they've beaten him senseless in one of those thankfully extinct subway bathrooms, after they've destroyed his home and broken the local waif's arm, Jan-Michael decides to bring the fight home. While everything plays out the way one would expect, there's enough of John Flynn's fevered commitment to making you feel the heat to make this one canonical. While it's nowhere near Rolling Thunder's diamondlike perfection and it lacks the wit of the Outfit, the final multiple staircase fistfight between Vincent and Rudy Ramos predates the deceptive "this is how a fight feels" choreography of Greengrass by 25 years, and its refusal to give either actors a clear upper hand is thrilling. For three odd minutes that feels like forever, two men try as hard as they can to hurt the other, and as their breath goes ragged and their clawing hands slide across bloodied faces, the outcome remains forever in doubt, until Flynn's final hammer drops: left to their own devices, two men can kill each other forever.

The Outfit
That Ain't My Parker, 1973
*Number One In John Flynn's Revenge Trilogy

Whereas Point Blank was too artsy for the Westlake name, the Outfit is just too damn emotional: if you love the books, and you can't stomach the changes, wait for Darwyn Cooke. But if you just want to watch Robert Duvall drive around and threaten people, beat people up, and eventually decide to shoot some of them in the head, then you'll be just fine. Flynn doesn't go as far with the bloodshed as he does in his later installments in this made up by me trilogy, but the threat always hangs. Watching Joe Don Baker (who actually does perfectly embody Westlake's Handy McKay character) dangle a gigantic knife in his meathook hand while responding to death threats with wisecracks, one holds their breath the entire time: he's going to kill them all, isn't he?

He doesn't, or at least, he doesn't at that moment, and that's the way the Outfit works: bargaining, sidestepping, but always plowing forward, towards the moment when Robert Ryan stands in his bedroom and tries to bargain his way out, only to find out that there's some people you should never, ever cross.

Rolling Thunder
And Ammunition Shall Show Their True Face, 1977
*Number Two in John Flynn's Revenge Trilogy 

Rolling Thunder was written by Paul Schrader, directed by John Flynn, and pawned off on the grindhouse circuit due to the producer's disgust for its blood-soaked conclusion. Like the other two John Flynn movies described above, it has never received an American DVD release, is only played on television occasionally, and is currently only purchasable as a used VHS copy, a Spanish DVD, or a DVD-R rip from underground movie websites. It's not an unseen film, like the original cut of All The Pretty Horses or Erich Von Stroheim's Greed--Quentin Tarantino went so far as to name his cult redistribution line after it, thus ensuring a geek cred demand that rises and falls on his fortunes--but it is a film that survives more as footnote than fulcrum.

It is extraordinary.

There are lots and lots and lots and lots of movies about badass men who don't talk very often and express emotions even less, and quite a few of those movies feature those characters going out to get revenge against one-note stereotypes.

This is one of those movies.

It is about a guy who comes home after spending seven years in a Vietnamese POW camp, where he was tortured every single day, and who finds himself without a family or a right hand within a few days. It ends with him and one of his fellow ex-POWs killing lots of people, some of whom had nothing to do with the hand/family thing. It's a pure, uncut form of vigilante exploitation, the kind of movie that asks you to think and care about the fact that this guy suffered an impossible amount of pain, but also making it clear that all that pain is awesome, because it made him a hardcore motherfucker. It's a movie that needs you to shrug your shoulders and pretend you give a shit about the part where his wife and son are shot in the face, even though it's blatantly obvious that he was starting to think of killing them himself, because the movie needs a reason for him to kill for it to exist.

The way I see it, the main difference between the way they make these sorts of Badass Ice Cold Killer movies now, and the way they made them in the 70's, is that nowadays, the filmmakers seem to have decided that everybody wants to be these guys. It's part of the fallout of switching from Predator to Die Hard--except for a bare minimum, few people watched an Arnold movie and said "that could be me, and I wish it was", but that's exactly what happened after John McClane. First it was "he's just like you, but more determined", and now it's "if you have the money to buy expensive clothes and can hide your gut within them, you can probably be just like these guys."

But when you watch old 70's violence--even quiet stuff, like The Conversation--it's always about how fucked up and horrible everything is, and how the main characters are pretty fucked up and horrible as well, which is why they can only relate to the world around them by marching right through its degradation and creating some havoc of their own. It's about killing people immediately, without an ironic quip, it's about hurting people and laying waste. It's about not having a future, or hope, or even fantasy. And unless you're completely fucking batshit crazy, you don't watch Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder smiling like a maniac while he guns down every single person he can find and think to yourself "this is so cool, I wish I dressed like that and could move like that and had that haircut", and yet those cravings are an actual foundation of Matt Damon's physical appearance in the Bourne movies. You watch Tommy Lee and think "this is probably what Dylan Klebold looked like", and that's not cool, it isn't sexy. But compare it to that moment in Heat when Val Kilmer leaps over a chair and makes the threat of spousal abuse a sexual come-on, and ask yourself: which makes more sense?

The mistake here would be to argue that all this nihilism makes Rolling Thunder more honest a film, which it doesn't. (But if you're interested in "honest films", than you really pretty much have to give up on action entirely, because honest is never their point.) Rolling Thunder is a Paul Schrader movie, which means it's a film that does have a point, but that point is going to be buried under so much nastiness and rage that you have to really dig to get at it, and even then, the nastiness will probably overpower the experience anyway. All of what it's doing--being ugly, being scary, being about fucked up horrorshow people--is his method of screaming at America for the way it expects conversation to replicate understanding, the way it tries to sublimate the individual experience in bullshit uniform terminology, the way it says "well, we're establishing a dialog" and considers things on the road to solution. Throughout Rolling Thunder, all of the secondary characters--except Tommy Lee Jones--try to convince William Devane that they understand what he's going through, even though not a single one of them has a single fucking clue, and none of these characters think they're lying. His wife really believes that three weeks of struggling to pick out which haircut works for his welcome home party is a comparable form of suffering to the six months he spent rationing a piece of candy. The man who has taken his place as father to his son (and lover to his wife) truly thinks that "having a beer together" and asking about "the torture" honestly thinks that this will somehow help them establish a rapport. The lover whose incessant come-ons are eventually acquiesced to constantly compares his lack of conversational skills with the drunk ex-boyfriends she's had, consistently failing to acknowledge his blunt explanation that he no longer considers himself to be a living human being, that everything inside him "is gone". His hometown rewards him with applause and the high school band. Degenerate criminals reward him with a half-ass version of torture and empty threats. Everywhere he turns, people scream that they know him, that he's something they can understand. After his years of suffering, they demand he return to them relatively unchanged. He lies to them so they can sleep comfortably, saying that he bore what he did to make him a "better American", and they still won't let it go, sneering that he live up to a bullshit story, fabricated for their comfort.

Eventually, to all of them, he offers silence. And after they finally walk away, a response is formulated. At first, his attempt to get some revenge is blunted and scattershot--he relies on a girl he barely knows and a location he doesn't understand, and he's almost killed as a result. Then, realizing what he must do, he collects Tommy Lee (in what has now become the most famous scene in the film) and the two of them go out to "clean 'em up".

Viewed under the contemporary lens, the final scene of Rolling Thunder--and by final, I mean that the credits begin rolling over the survivors of the whorehouse massacre the second it ends--is more reminiscent of Gus Van Sant's mostly horrible Elephant than it is the Tarantino violence its claimed to inspire. Even more so than the faux "artless" executions that conclude Taxi Driver, the massacre consists almost completely of two men walking around and shooting everyone they can find, and the only moment that recalls a Peckinpah showdown is when they sit reloading at the top of a staircase. It's that moment when Tommy Lee Jones makes clear the hand that the film has subtly implied throughout.

He loves only this. He craves it, this violence, as he has nothing left inside him; so exhausted and empty of any sliver of humanity--and he is here not because of brotherly connection, not out of obligation, but because all that made him whole is long dead, extinguished, and only the horror remains. Unlike Devane, who treats revenge as a defined justice-in-action, Jones is here because this is what he would have eventually done to the family that is trying to contain him with nonsensical discussions of patriotism and home-cooked meals. It's Schrader beating Michael Haneke to the point long before, and saying to the audience that this--unboiled, unvarnished and dead-eyed--is what it would take to give movie violence a true reality. At the brutal core, Rolling Thunder was Schrader's primal scream for what Vietnam did to us--to those it destroyed, yes, but to the rest of us as well, embittered to the point where we jeered at the bones of sorrow it returned. Under the cloak of sleaze, with Flynn's conciseness as his weapon, Rolling Thunder was his epic poem: the last great roar for the tomb we decided to ignore.

-Joe McCulloch & Tucker Stone, 2010

No Pictures: If You Ain't Smokey, Then This Ain't Your Message

The Pregnant Widow
By Martin Amis, 2010

Martin Amis gets more shit than he probably deserves, but I wouldn't attempt to mount a defense for the man's work--it would be impossible, as the only thing I remember about Night Train and Yellow Dog (the only books I've read of his besides this one) is that I didn't like them. This one came highly recommended though, by somebody who often strikes me as a singularly perfect human being made flesh by the Hebrew God of old, and after diving into it, I have to say: this is excellent.

Franzen's new book sure is getting a lot of high praise, right? That's got to be in part because its For Adults with capital letters, that it concerns itself less with meeting the nostalgia and kitsch audiences on their level--I could, of course, be totally wrong, as I'm only guessing at it, having not cracked it myself. And yet, I have to wonder if it's going to go so far as something like what Amis does here, something that's so immediately concerned with the shaping of what makes memory into something falsely reliable (if you're looking for truth) and still so important (if you want to know why we do the things we do, the way we wished we'd live then, as the memory of it determines how we do it now). Because this is a book about sex, fucking, women, men, boys, hate, and even more so, again, sex. It's about fucking each other for too long, and then fucking somebody else on the side, it's about the way sex has become ad copy, but when it actually occurs--with the sweat, and the bodies, and the eye contact, and the furtive, sneaking lies that lust creates through lack of love--it thoroughly annihilates the way we talk about it.

This isn't making a lot of sense to me, I'm not even sure how to say what I'm trying to say--but that's The Pregnant Widow itself, a book that probably deserves every single negative thing one might level about its structure and style. It's not going to kick its way into the stacks of "confusing" books, nobody should go that far, but it's still brilliantly manipulating and maddeningly obnoxious at times. You find yourself forced to count occasional streams of dialog into couplets to determine who is saying what, re-reading paragraphs of convoluted monologues just to figure out which parts are the lies, and at the end--when the entirety of its preceding structure of obsessively detailed chronology is rejected so that decades of time can be presented in greatest hits of fucking--you can't help but question whether the book should've been 500 pages longer, or 300 pages shorter.

Of course, that's probably the joke. Sex wants perfect, but it also wants unique. And when you hit the engine room, all the planning ends up in the floor with the mess our bodies leave behind. 

Shop Class as Soulcraft
By Matthew Crawford, 2009

Praised as a testament to human excellence, derided as a manifesto of middle class macho posturing, Crawford's semi-auto-biographical study in the glories of knowing what you own struck me as a bit of both and ultimately neither. This is a book about the way one spends one time and what one spends it on: if it makes you want to learn about the engines and mechanical nature of the objects that rest amongst even the most luddite of lives, it's only achieved the smallest of its goals. See, what it's about is more like this, wrapped up in an inoffensive play on self-help jargon: what are you doing with your time, and why?

Crawford's story is pretty simple to blurb: he's a college educated ex-corporate think tanker who rejected the "life of the mind" and turned his lifelong hobby (repairing motorcycles) into a career. His book was spurred the desire to condemn a mythological glorification of blue collar efforts (and in doing so, lambast the popularity of faked "authenticity") while acknowledging the satisfactions of those efforts. Opening by pointing out that the vastly popular myth of "our digital employed future" has yet to produce the widespread financial or intellectual rewards its ever-distancing horizon continually promises, he then punchily dismisses the wholesale rejection of outsourcing fears with the simple truth that overseas wage-slaves can't build your deck any more than they can plumb your toilet.

While Shop Class doesn't allow enough of an alternate perspective for it to be the philosophical argument that the book is most popularly marketed as, it would be dishonest to pretend that its goals aren't more in line with the library of personal manifestos. It's not a book designed to create mechanics, just a book about one man who took that path. The questions he came up with on the way--why we care so much about college educations when employers view it primarily as a box to check, why intellectual work is valued so poorly financial while the men and women who fix our things are valued so poorly as intellectuals--are designed to work within the reader, not as a mob's battle cry. Is it macho, and does the posture irritate at times? Of course it does. But to expect that it would be otherwise is to layer an obligation that has more to say about the reader than it does, as it were, the work. 

Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics, and Culture
By David Hajdu, 2009

Here's the problem with this collection: the music articles are, for the most part, well written and informative. When Hajdu goes vicious--mostly when he goes after the lazy, the self-promotional, or the trend-followers--he's usually pretty funny, even when he's painting himself into the corner of the know-it-all-white-rich-guy playing at Authentic Real Man Upbringings. His stuff on blogging and Myspace is all ridiculous as all of that stuff always sounds, but that's more a symptom of the inherent difficulty that everybody has when they're trying to issue blanket criticisms (or praise, although Hadju doesn't have much of that) for something as amorphous and schizophrenic as blogs. There's good writing here, even if he's clearly overly used to a writing format that seems stuck in college (opening anecdote, brief rundown of thesis, followed by a biographical portion that almost always starts with "John Smith was born in 1963, in Cheseapeake, Wyoming...").

But the comics stuff ruins the whole thing. I'm not Dan Nadel, Jeet Heer, Gary Groth, Donald Phelps; I don't have the historical background to take apart everything Hajdu writes here, and yet, even with the tiny bit of comics history I've got running through my brain (most of which comes from reading guys like Nadel, McCulloch and Spurgeon), I can tell you that this statement "it has become commonplace for comics artists to generate complete stories, leaving empty word balloons in the panels; only when the art is finished does the 'writer' come in, filling in the blanks with dialogue to accommodate the imagery" is complete bullshit, I can tell you that Will Eisner's time spent on PS Magazine wasn't "wasted", and if I know that shit, then David Hajdu should really, really know that shit. I'm a guy interested primarily in documenting my own interests on a temporal basis for my own personal entertainment both now and at a later date, someone who knows just enough about comics to know that I know absolutely fucking dick about comic books, and guys like Hajdu--someone who doesn't make comics, and has no apparent ambition to make comics--should be somebody that people like me can look up to, because he seems to be actively working towards dealing with this stuff outside of the normal, jerk-each-other-off channels. But his reasoning in his comics pieces, whether they're about Persopelis, the Spirit, Joe Sacco, or Ghost World is completely crap, his research is unreliable in a way that makes my head hurt, and the fact that he gets away with it--and despite the various places where people go after this dude for reasons just like these, he gets away with it all the time--is fucking disgusting. I'm a huge, huge fan of reading people I disagree with about comics, as long as they aren't sycophantic promote-the-industry-and-my-friends-in-the-face-of-all-reason apologists, but Hajdu isn't one of those people. Instead, he's a guy that simply doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, and yet he has a forum where far more people are going to engage with him--and believe his skillfully written essays--than just about any of the people that you might name if you were to write up your favorite comics critics.

Barbarians At The Gate
By Bryan Burrough & John Helyar, 1990

Barbarians At The Gate may or may not be one of the most influential business books of all time, but it's certainly an influence on the last twenty years of business books. While lacking in the charismatic corporate sociopath characters that populate the far more entertaining books of Steve Coll or Michael Lewis, it follows their format exactly, leading one to wonder who exactly pioneered this style of writing. Whoever did deserves a prize, because the style alone--a to-the-minute dead run through closed door billion dollar negotiations--is enough to propel interest all the way to the final chapter, which is always the one where the writer (or in this case, writers) throws out the laundry list of Where These People Are Now. Age hasn't served this book well, and you're probably better off with Coll's work if your tolerance for these kinds of books is limited, but this is still a far, far better way to spend one's time than the horrible movie they made out of it.

The Bay of Noon
By Shirley Hazzard, 1970

It takes a good quarter of the book to get used to Hazzard's faux-declarative style, but when it clicks into place, the story opens up into something that's quite pretty. The story of an Englishwoman who accepts assignment in Naples in a considered effort to escape one-sided emotionally incestuous feelings for her brother, Bay of Noon never seems concerned that the reader won't stay on board through the cold, unbending ending. And considering the brevity of the book, its rapid pacing and relatively compelling supporting cast of emotion-addicted loons, Hazzard probably isn't far off base. Still, this ended up being one of those stories that's more about what-happened-at-the-end and who-fucked-who, and she doesn't seem that interested in dealing out those pleasures in anything more than perfunctory fashion.

Dune
By Frank Herbert, 1965

I can count, on one hand, the number of science fiction books I've actually read. It's a pure kind of disinterest, one that isn't tied into any specific ill will or critical sarcasm--I've just never had an interest in the shelves that contain these books. The copy of Dune that I read has been sitting, gathering actual dust (which I cleaned off with a paper towel), ever since I purchased it, which was right after I read what I remember being a pretty fascinating article in the Believer regarding the series' political philosophy. The book came up in conversation a few months ago with a comic book artist, and it was mentioned again to me by yet another comic book artist about two weeks ago, and it seemed like it might fit the bill as a plane trip book. And so, over the course of a couple of back and forth jaunts in a coach seat between my sleeping wife and an elderly man who smelled like decaying flowers, I finally read Dune.

It's pretty fucking good! It's interesting to see that Herbert has a flat zero of interest in describing the appearances of almost all of his characters--he barely gets into what the worms look like, obsessing mostly over mentioning their length and diameter--and you'll go the entire book without finding out what almost every character looks like, except for when they have a scar that he likes to mention. God bless him for doing more than the role-playing-game style structure that dominates so many comics of this particular genre--Dune never reads like a book created to display All This Great Shit I Made Up; instead, it's a story, a pretty engrossing one about the birth of tyrants and the cruelty of guerilla warfare, the building of a cult from the inside out. Dune starts like a million other revenge epics, but by the end of the book, when the downtrodden unleash a blitzkrieg of scorched earth violence, its gone somewhere much different. I hear these don't stay good for long, and that's fine: for now, I'm good right here, with the Guild receding in junkie withdrawal on the outskirts of Arrakis, praying that the Kwisatz Haderach doesn't decide to eviscerate them as well.

-Tucker Stone, 2010