Kirby Dots and Ditko Ribbons

In which Your Obedient Serpent seeks to subvert the corporate agenda

2011-11-26T18:36:00.000-08:00

One of the comic-related blogs that I peruse regularly is also art-related: Superhero of the Month. They have a pretty straightforward shtick: each month, they pick a superhero, and invite the art community to reinterpret that character with new costume designs and, occasionally, revamped backgrounds. The contest is usually sponsored by some comic book shop, and the prizes tend to be graphic novels featuring the character in question.

It's a concept that's produced some really impressive and thoughtful looks at iconic characters, and it's one that depends heavily on fair use, remix culture, and the principles of the transformative works movement.

So what in the world possessed them to shill for a copyright-maximalist marketeer and his hollow, vapid t-shirt logo "superhero"?

Here's the guy who's the subject of the December 2011 contest: NOTES (or possibly N.O.T.E.S.), flagshill for the innovatively-named Superhero Enterprises^TM.

"NOTES" is our most powerful science fiction superhero and a highly-skilled leader in music technology, whose mission is to enhance and transform the experience of making and editing electronic music.

"N.O.T.E.S." distinctively offers solution(s) to the global fight against illicit downloading and counterfeiting, as the consequences of digital piracy online and in the streets....have continued to threaten the U.S. economy, jeopardize public safety, and undermine the livelihood of our domestic entertainment industries.

Comic book superheroes are supposed to provide role models that are potentially used by children in developing self images. N.O.T.E.S. symbolizes these qualities of high moral character, courage, generosity, and honor of a noble spirit.

That's right, kids: he fights those eeeeeeeevil downloaders! He's a valiant defender of the profit margin and traditional distribution models!

The blog also offers a link to the eventless "origin story" for NOTES, in which Our Hero defeats a couple of shoplifters with ... um ... look, all snarkiness aside, but it really reads like his music is so crappy that they go into convulsions. There may be more pages that haven't been posted yet; it certainly reads that way, and the "origin" offers no explanation as to how he got these powers of amazing musical dysentery.

I've perused the rest of the site, and it just gets worse. The fake street 'tide, the obvious memetic targeting toward the metaculturally naive—he's like Joe Camel for anti-downloading. There's nothing about actual story here; he's Pure Product, No By-Product. Sure, Marvel-Disney and DC-Warner exploit their properties mercilessly these days, and yes, Joe and Jerry's concept sketches included sketches of product labels adorned with their mythical muscleman, but NOTES is designed to be merchandised first and foremost. They come right out and say it: he was the logo for their music production company first, then they decided to spin him off into a "superhero". He got t-shirts and sneakers (and an art contest!) before his first comic was ever released. They describe him themselves as "the trendiest superhero in the universe."

Higher praise no mutant could ask.

And what fabulous prizes await the artists who can best capture this Champion of Commercialism?

1st Place: Opportunity to write/illustrate a two-page short story featuring NOTES to be featured on Superhero Enterprises' Tumblr and DeviantArt pages, and a NOTES T-shirt.

Semantic Analysis: Draw us free art to make our IP look cool and popular, and we'll let you do more free art to promote our brand!

Your Obedient Serpent was sore tempted to post a comment along these lines on the SotM blog announcement, but honestly, that's flat-out trolling—especially since the comment list on every SotM entry is headed with a "don't be rude" disclaimer.

I should note, however, that the contest parameters themselves state: "What we'll be looking for is an illustration that best exemplifies what you believe NOTES stands for."

Oh my. Do be careful what you wish for.

My medium of choice, alas, is prose, and thus not appropriate for the contest.

I think it would be a fine thing, however, if the more artistically-inclined provided the blog with entries that showed exactly what they believe NOTES stands for.

As Uncle Howard used to say ... Do Not Call Up What You Cannot Put Down.

In Which No Evil Shall Escape Your Obedient Serpent's Sight

2011-06-12T09:21:00.000-07:00

You know what?

I don't care if it's been over-hyped.

I don't care if parts of the previews might look a little iffy.

I don't care if Ryan Reynolds is playing Hal as a flippant jackass; this is, after all, Hal Frakking Jordan.

Deep down inside, all I care about is that the superhero who's been my very favorite since I was six years old had made it to the big screen in a sweeping special-effects epic.

I realized yesterday that, for the first time in more years than I can remember, I am genuinely excited to the point of impatience for a new movie, a new superhero movie.

It doesn't matter if it's good, bad, or indifferent.

Friday night, I'm taking my six-year-old self to see Green Lantern, and it will be awesome.

Cross-posted to "On The Other Claw ...".

In which Your Obedient Serpent must issue a retraction.

2011-06-05T06:36:00.000-07:00

Oh, jeez.

io9 just published a column looking at the History of the X-Men, and how it becomes even more absurd when you compress it into the decade-and-a-half or so of Marvel's sliding timescale.

When I read the opening line, I was excited: someone invoked the Marvel 1:3 time ratio!

I know I read about that in a Stan's Soapbox from the '60s -- but I've never found any other official reference or verification from the House of Ideas; just that one, off-hand blurb, offered in the blurry sans-serif type of Stan the Man's stentorian prose. When the whole run of those columns was republished, once online and once in trade paperback from Marvel itself, I tried and tried to find that specific entry, to no avail.

It must have been in a letter column or something. I know I saw it.

But, lo! thought I, here's someone else referring to the same thing, as if they'd found the factoid from an authoritative source! Did they see the same Soapbox or lettercol that I did, in a dusty tome of ancient lore? Did Stan or some other Marvel exec ever repeat the proclamation? I hope the article doesn't just mention it in passing and breeze on by. I'll be really happy if they give a ref ...

... oh. Oh, my stars and garters.

The reference the article gives is to the Comic Book Time page on the TV Tropes Wiki:

In a "Stan's Soapbox" in the mid-1960s, Stan Lee stated that, as a general rule of thumb, they were trying to keep the then-new Marvel Universe on a one-to-three timeline - every three years that passed in the real world would be a year of Comic Book Time. Deliberately or otherwise, Marvel actually managed to stick pretty close to that right up until the early 1990s when, during one of the X-Men's 30th Anniversary comics, Professor Xavier mused about the things he'd been doing for the past 10 years - starting with the founding of the X-Men.

I know that TV Tropes passage well.

I wrote it.

... I think I need to do some editing. I am certain that I read that blurb about the 1:3 ratio in an old Marvel comic, but I'm no longer certain where.

One shouldn't leave dubious source material scattered 'round the net.

If you can't cite a source, you're just making it up.

Cross-posted to "On the Other Claw ..."

Some of this stuff is just for me.

2011-05-05T05:36:00.000-07:00

... If I say "Morrison's Quintum is one of Kirby's Hairies, all grown up", will anyone get that but me?

Blah Blah Blah hollywood Wah Wah Wah

2011-03-03T06:03:00.001-08:00

"Hollywood Is Lazy, Unoriginal and Risk-Averse", whines yet another critic.

These columns crop up all the time, and nine out of ten of them give the impression that this is some horrible slide into the abyss from some mythical golden age.

The irony, of course, is that they been appearing since the film industry began.¹

These guys forget² that, as I've mentioned before, the classic John Huston/Humphrey Bogart version of The Maltese Falcon was the third film version of the story in the span of a decade, and they were all adapted from a formulaic, low-brow pulp novel.

The smart, arty flicks that this particular critic extols have never been a major component of the studios' output. "Risky" movies have always been "risky". The shitstorm that Welles had to wade through to make Citizen Kane is as epic and as well-known as the movie itself.

When Harris holds up "movies based on comic books" as one of his keynote symptoms of this "new" plague of creative barrenness, I wonder if he's including movies like A History of Violence and Shutter Island?³

Really, it comes down to this:

Hollywood is afraid to make risky movies because movies are expensive.
"Risky", by definition, means "might tank in the box office and lose skillions."
This has always been true. The only difference is in the number of zeroes represented by "skillions".
DUH.

For every Citizen Kane, there is a Waterworld.⁴

I should really sit down and write an Onion-style opinion piece lamenting how derivative and unoriginal film critics have become, how they rehash the same column over and over because it's guaranteed to get attention, and how shopworn remakes like "The Day Movies Died" will never be as good as timeless classics like 1963's "Christ, Yet Another Giant Lizard Flick".

Or maybe I already have.

¹ Really, they predate the film industry. I've heard both some damned funny riffs and serious laments about the stage equivalent of the "generic formulaic blockbuster" in the eras of Gilbert & Sullivan, grand opera, and Elizabethan theater. Frankly, what I've read about the works of Aristophanes suggests that a good bit of his oeuvre involved similar digs at his predecessors and contemporaries.
² I'm being generous here. It would be unseemly to suggest that someone who presents himself as a professional film critic would simply be unschooled in the basic facts of the history of the medium.
³Inexcusable Cheap Shot: while Blaming Everything^TM on Hollywood's desire for "known Brands", Mr. Harris says, Jonah Hex is a brand because it was a comic book. (Here lies one fallacy of putting marketers in charge of everything: Sometimes they forget to ask if it's a good brand.) Just because a lousy movie is made doesn't mean the source material is lousy.
⁴...and an Ishtar, a Cutthroat Island, a Mr. Bug Goes to Town....

Writer's Wreference: Mary Who?

2011-01-31T09:14:00.000-08:00

This is a link to someone else being smart:

Don’t worry guys, everything isn’t a Mary Sue, by Kelly "Coelasquid" Turnbull.

Kelly is a professional animator who also does the invariably-entertaining webcomic, Manly Guys Doing Manly Things. This essay not only deconstructs the currently-hip notion that any protagonist who bears any resemblance to the author is a "Mary Sue", it also discusses at length how to use Maslow's Hierarchy as a tool to write convincing characters and conflicts.

I thought it needed sharing -- and preserving for future reference.

Cross-Posted to LiveJournal: Mary Who?

Steaming Up Some Punks

2010-10-28T14:19:00.000-07:00

Charles Stross explains why he's burned out on "Steampunk".

It boils down to "90% of Steampunk is crud", of course, and over at Futurismic, Paul Raven's commentary applies the inevitable and immortal coda to that clause.

I enjoyed both articles, and my superficial summary should not be construed as a dismissal; both Stross and Raven do provide some analysis of why Sturgeon's Ratio arises.*

Personally, I think that Stross's issues arise because, as a writer, he sees "Steampunk" primarily as a literary movement. In contrast, Cory Doctorow of BoingBoing tends to approach it more as a design aesthetic, applying the craftsmanship, materials and visual motifs of a bygone era to both wardrobe and cutting-edge technology.

I lean toward Doctorow's view: the current "Steampunk Movement" is connected to the Maker Movement. Steampunk's central defining elements are artifacts that imply a backstory. The literature that actually provides a backstory is a secondary effect. Science fiction writers and fans do love to follow such implications reductio ad asburdum, sometimes to good effect—but they often stretch a simple premise to its breaking point.

However, none of that is the main thrust of this post.

You see, inevitably, when discussions of this currently-trendy subgenre arise, there's always someone who fixates on the word used to describe it, insisting that it's neither "steam" (being more often wood, brass, and high-voltage Teslary) nor "punk".**

After reading this tedious protest one too many times, I hereby affix thumb to nose.

Steampunk is Punk because, as a design aesthetic, it's rebelling against mass production and homogenization by reintroducing the idea of hand-crafted artistry to technological artifacts.

Steampunk is STEAM because of a literary device known as synecdoche, in which part of something is used to refer to the whole thing. "Steam" is a concise shorthand for "Victorian Era Technology", because it was, in fact, the dominant and most distinctive technology of the era. Tesla and Edison, fine; Nemo's electric batteries, fine; Cavorite, if you must -- but it was the steam locomotive and the steam engine that reshaped the human landscape. Moreover, it's a technology that has by and large fallen out of use in the present day; by contrast, things like electricity are far more prevalent now than they were then.

Of course, once you discover that the original meaning of "punk" is neither "mohawked rocker" nor "small-time hood", but "prostitute" ... well, then, the whole "transformation of the subgenre into the current trendy cash cow for skeevy publishers looking to milk a quick buck" just makes it all the more appropriate. As Mr. Raven points out, the same thing happened to both the "rock" and the "cyber" variations on the theme.

*A quick look around suggests that the "second artist effect" that Unca Charlie cites may in fact be a new and elegant coinage for a principle that has been stammered about in genre analysis circles for decades. Has anyone else heard that turn of phrase ere now?

**No, it's not just you. Or you. Or any of the many of you who think this is personally aimed in your direction.

Wait, New York is a real city?

2010-08-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

Bully the Little Stuffed Bull lives in New York City, and his recent post about Doctor Strange mentions that real New Yorkers never call for a cab to the airport: they either hail one in the street, or call a "car service".

That got me thinking about the Fictionopolis, and the conceit shared by publishers and many fans that Marvel Comics are more "realistic" for eschewing such constructs.

Perhaps Marvel New York had some verisimilitude back when Stan and Jack and most of the rest of the Marvel creators actually lived in NYC, or were at least from there, tapping into its rhythms, into the lyric cant and jargon of its inhabitants. Once the House of Ideas started casting its net wider, however, employing writers and artists from across the country and the world, it became as much a fiction as Metropolis or Gotham.

Here's a secret: even in the '60s, it never did feel any more authentic to a kid growing up in Southern California. East Coast cities in general, and New York specifically, are entirely different from their West Coast counterparts. The New York of comics and movies and television might as well have been Metropolis.

Or Bespin.

Or Minas Tirith.

Of course, on the other claw, I never thought twice about the palm trees and brush-covered hills surrounding the low-lying sprawl of Adam West's "Gotham". After all, that was what the Real World looked like, right? Native Californians never notice California Doubling until we travel outside the bounds of the Bear Flag Republic: the world on TV looks like the world around us. It never occurs to us that Angela Lansbury's Maine has a whole lot of chaparral scrub along its Mendocino cliffs.

I can understand how Marvel must feel to Easterners and New Yorkers, though -- or how it must have felt at one time. One of my favorite comics as a hatchling in the '70s was Marvel's Werewolf by Night. I enjoyed all of the horror-themed heroes of that era, but Jack Russell's adventures had a special appeal, because it wasn't set in that mythical, far-off land of New York. Jack hailed from Los Angeles, and the wide, open streets, the palm trees, and LAX's iconic Theme Building often graced its pages. The sun-drenched daylight scenes contrasted not only with the moody, broody moonlit nights in which Jack's alter-ego played, but with that strange and claustrophobic city crammed full of capes and costumes, mansions and Baxter Buildings, in which Bakshi's animated Spider-Man could swing and swing for hours without ever running out of Thoroughly Useful Vertical.

As an adult living in San Jose, New York City is still an alien world to me. A couple of years ago, I was watching CSI: New York, and found my attention caught by one of those sweeping camera pans across the Manhattan cityscape. For the first time, I really looked. at what I was seeing, and realized that I simply had no touchstone for it. San Francisco is a tiny peninsula with a distinctive skyline, but most of the tallest buildings are along one of two streets. Oakland and San Diego each have a tight, localized cluster of tallish buildings. Los Angeles has a larger one, rising up out of nowhere in the middle of the eternal suburban plain, but they were largely erected after my move North.

And San Jose? San Jose is cute. It has a burst of the Tall, right there where the freeways meet, no more than half a dozen buildings that are only considered "skyscrapers" by the truncated standards of a seismically active region. It looks like Town, as in "goin' to Town", the local civic center of a far-flung rural community.

Which is exactly what it was, right up to the middle of the last century.

Those sweeping camera pans, though ... New York goes on for blocks and blocks, for miles and miles, with a density that is flat-out incomprehensible for someone from the Sprawlwest. The buildings I consider "tall" are medium-sized in that urbscape. I finally caught a glimpse of the urban archetype that inspired Asimov's Caves of Steel, of planet-wide cities, of the Human Hive.

I was ... intimidated.

It's an appropriate setting for the larger-than-life conflicts of the Pantheon of the Twentieth Century, most assuredly.

But it's still not real to me.

Not yet.

Breeding Contempt

2010-07-08T10:36:00.000-07:00

Over at Mighty God King, MGK just posited that Deathstroke the Terminator was a much better character back when "[h]e showed up every once in a while, was incomparably badass, and then disappeared for a bit."

I submit that, with a few rare exceptions, this is true of every supervillain out there.

This kind of overexposure doesn't just diminish the villains, it diminishes their heroic counterparts, as well.

It's a subset of Follow The Leader that I call the The Show Biz Bugs Syndrome: "It'th a great trick, but you can only do it wunth!"

When Frank Miller made the Kingpin a fixture in Daredevil, it gave Matt Murdock a focus and a direction that previous writers had failed to instill.

When John Byrne reinvented Lex Luthor as the Corrupt Corporate Executive, it just made Superman look ineffectual. By the definition of Luthor's new persona, Superman was not allowed to beat him. Ever.

By far, the hero who's suffered the worst of this has been the Batman. In the last decade or two, adversaries who once appeared every few years have become members of the supporting cast, crime bosses in Gotham who get more monthly panel time than Jim Gordon or Alfred.

And, as a result, as Batman's wealth and technology and planning ability has increased to ridiculous levels, he's become pretty much useless. except when he's fighting other heroes. The argument that "Batman should just kill the Joker" didn't have as much impact when the Joker got tossed into Arkham (or jail) and we didn't see him again for a couple of years.

For all the silliness of the "Sci Fi Batman" of the late '50s and early '60s, he was far, far more effective than the Grim And Gritty Vigilante of the post-Miller days. When he put someone away, they stayed away, and often even served their full sentence (as I mentioned in passing in Fine Feathered Felony the other day). Late Golden Age Gotham was often touted as a model city for law enforcement, and civilian characters would, on occasion, mention that they'd moved there because it was so safe, thanks to The Batman.

The writers of the Golden Age and Silver Age knew that there were only so many good stories you could tell with a given antagonist, and used them sparingly. There were also much more willing to whip up a new adversary and, well, "throw it against the wall to see what sticks." There's more reluctance to devise new foes in this day and age (Grant Morrison being a notable exception), and I think that, too, is a detriment to both characters and creators.

Fine Feathered Felony

2010-07-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

As I've mentioned elsewhere, my favorite Batman adversary is The Penguin.

The depictions we've seen in recent years, alas, don't quite get him.

I don't disapprove of the depiction of Oswald as smart, savvy crime boss, pulling strings behind the scenes while he poses as a Legitimate Businessman; the role suits him like a well-tailored tuxedo. Unfortunately, as the Batman titles move away from Theme Villains who treat Crime as Performance Art, there's a tendency to sweep that period under the rug entirely. Cobblepot is now a Clever, Devious Gangster, and one gets the impression that he has always been a Clever, Devious Gangster.

Fiction, however, suffers no lack of Clever, Devious Gangsters, nor does Real Life. Everyone knows they're Connected. Everyone knows they've got their Fingers in the Pies. Nobody can get any hard evidence, or pierce their thin veneer of Legitimate Business to bring their nefarious deeds to light.

It's a complex and multifaceted character archetype, admittedly, but it's a common one—and if there's one thing that Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot strives never to be, it's common.

Without her career as Batgirl behind her, Oracle is just another hacker. Without his career as a Theme Villain, Oswald "The Penguin" Cobblepot is just another Made Man, differing from Rupert Thorne or Tony Zucco only in his nom de guerre—and his real-life peers include such notables as "Baby Face" Nelson.

To me, the Theme Villain and the Clever Devious Gangster are two sides of the same Penguin coin.

Golden Age Oswald had one of the best origins in comics: he got no respect because he was, frankly, a funny-looking little fat guy with mildly eccentric habits. He deliberately constructed the Penguin persona, exploiting and accentuating his comical appearance, encouraging people to underestimate him.

He pulled off big, flashy, ridiculous stunt crimes, deliberately provoking
the local costumed vigilante, because that's how it's done in Gotham.

And it worked.

He made his rep as the one Flashy Theme Villain who was Smarter Than He Was Crazy.

When he walked into a room, people no longer thought, "what a funny little man!"

They thought, Holy crap, it's the Penguin! ~~Get in the car!~~"

His "Crime as Performance Art" routine paid off. He got respect.

And he parleyed that into the criminal empire we see today, in the Aluminum Age.

Now, there's a unique character.

I'd love to see a Penguin graphic novel that shows his evolution from Performance Artist Gimmick Villain to Criminal Mastermind. He slowly and quietly builds up his organization—and every time the Bat starts getting too close to his real operations, he puts on the tux and the top hat, grabs a bumbershooter, and pulls off some big, flashy, incredibly distracting Stunt Crime.

He's thwarted, captured, tossed into prison, and uses his prison time to make more contacts and connections. He serves a short sentence, since he studiously avoids injuring or killing anyone in his big stunt crimes, and might even get time shaved off his sentence for "good behavior": he keeps his prominent nose clean when he's inside.

Eventually, he "goes straight", opening the Iceberg Lounge and putting himself on display as Supervillain Chic. He writes his memoirs, and does the talk show circuit, openly talking about his "misspent youth", freely admitting that his "Fine Feathered Felony" was, in essence, a publicity stunt to garner the respect and recognition that he so craved. He's witty and charming and funny and a great draw.

And in the background, though layers of front companies, bribes, and shady connections, he runs a good chunk of the Gotham City underground.

*Aren't these Thornes and the Zuccos of the world the ones that the Batman is supposed to focus on? Isn't he the Great Detective who can get the goods when nobody else can? They used to be disposable mooks, soundly defeated and sent up the river; nowadays, they seem even more untouchable in Gotham than their real-world counterparts. I need to do a post about the "Batman is Useless" trope, and how it really only emerged Post-Silver Age.

Release the Hoard Potato!!

2010-04-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, my wife and I saw the new version of Clash of the Titans. We both enjoyed it: it was fun and exciting, and we both appreciated the nods to Harryhausen's original.

That said, the Fire of my Heart still liked the original more.

Heretic that I am, I prefer the remake.

I've heard a few people ask why they felt a need to remake the original. It's a question that comes up whenever a remake of anything hits the screen, but one questioner asked a much more cogent version: why, of all of Harryhausen's films, would they remake that one?

Answer: Because it's the one that needed it the most.

Please understand: when Clash came out in 1981, I was a 17-year-old Dungeons & Dragons player who'd grown up on Bulfinch's Mythology and Harryhausen's classics. I was the target market for that movie.

I liked it. I enjoyed it a great deal.

But it didn't quite click.

The original Clash of the Titans didn't quite know what it wanted to be. It was Harryhausen's last film, and the only film he made in the post-Star Wars era. Hollywood still hadn't quite figured out the transformation of High Adventure SF/Fantasy from B Movie to Blockbuster. Clash demonstrated that, even when you throw a Star Wars-sized budget, big names like Lawrence Olivier, and a blatant R2-D2 clone at a B movie, it remains a B movie in its heart and soul.*

As I said, Your Teenaged Serpent enjoyed and appreciated the art of the "B" in those bygone days. Broadcast TV was full of them, and I didn't watch Movie Macabre just because of Cassandra Peterson's wardrobe

When I went to see Clash, though, I confess I was hoping for something more—and last weekend, I finally got it.

The remake is the movie I wanted to see when I was 17.

*It wasn't the first movie to demonstrate this, and it was far from the last.

Here Come Blackest Night Spoilers!

2010-02-25T22:37:00.000-08:00

The climax of Blackest Night #7 made perfect sense to Your Obedient Serpent.

Sure, everyone's been anticipating that BN would climax with some kind of "White Lantern" moment, but most everyone -- including Your Obedient Serpent -- has assumed Geoff was grooming Happy Hal for the role, what with his sampling ring after ring.

Of course, each successive sampling demonstrated that Hal simply wasn't SUITED to wielding anything but Will. His big moment of Avarice? Two hamburgers. His greatest Hope? "I hope you'll stop asking me." Carol's whole arc in Blackest Night has been the essentially unrequited nature of her love for Hal.

Hal's got drive and focus and determination, but he doesn't have a lot of passion. He's just too narcissistic. And Johns has been highlighting that by having him Taste the Rainbow.

At the same time Johns has been distracting us by decorating Hal's digits with different neon colors, though, he's been establishing those passions as part and parcel of Sinestro's character. Fear and Will were always there, but we've also seen his lost and secret Love, his Rage at the Guardians, his Hope for a "better", more orderly world, and his Compassion for those who suffer because of "chaos".

And he Wants. He Craves. He Covets. He wants the respect and honor that was once his, and is now Hal's. He wants Power. He wants to be the Greatest Of All Lanterns -- and this, too, has been part of his for as long as Fear and Will.

Hal is simply too pure. He's a Green Laser, a single frequency of Ego and Drive and Will.

Sinestro can wield the White, and should, because, of all the ringslingers we've met, he and he alone has mastered all of the emotional spectrum.

Though Guy has almost as strong a claim, come to think of it.

For the last time ...

2009-12-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Power Girl is Kryptonian.

She can casually lift an aircraft carrier.

She is not going to have "back trouble".

Disney Buys Marvel.

2009-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

That headline again:

Disney. Buys. Marvel.

Tempting as it is to just follow that with "'Nuff said", I have to wonder....

How will this affect Marvel Sudios and their ambitious "Avengers Cycle" movie plans?
Will Disney cancel the Gemstone Comics license, and start releasing Disney titles using Marvel's production and banner?
Conversely, will that matter if both companies continue to ignore newstand and grocery store distribution in favor of the hard-core fandom's boutique market?
What does this mean for Kingdom Hearts and Capcom vs. Marvel?
Will there be an even more vigorous crackdown on Marvel fanfic and games with "Character Creators" that let you "duplicate Marvel intellectual property", like City of Heroes and Champions Online?
Will Howard return to his original character design? Will he turn out to hail from Duckburg? Will he lose his pants?

If this doesn't fall through, it'll bring a symmetry to the comics world: both major comics companies will be owned by massive global media juggernauts.

Strange days indeed.

Initial reaction to this news shows a lot of people are worried about Marvel getting "Disneyfied". Funny, that hadn't really occurred to me.

I'd hate to see the intelligent, thoughtful storytelling of recent years compromised by a company who didn't respect the years of development and history of these characters. I'm not sure the store where I work could survive without merchandise aimed at the mature, sophisticated sensibilities of the modern comics audience.

I know, I know, when people hear "Disney", they still automatically think of the "wholesome" Mouse Factory of fifty years ago, as if the company had no idea how to tell exciting, entertaining action-adventure tales. But, seriously, folks: the modern Disney megalopoly has its tentacles in a lot more than happy, sappy, saccharine kiddie stuff. When I hear "Disney", I don't hear "Cartoon Company" anymore. I hear "Entertainment Powerhouse".

When I mentioned the effect this might have on the Marvel Studios movie series, it was almost entirely wondering if that side of the business would see a cash infusion that would re-accelerate the filming schedule (which has been pushed back a couple of times from the original plan of two big-name superhero pictures a year for three or four years). Word is that Marvel owes its recent barrage of movies to "complex financing", and that this may have something to do with the acquisition deal. Ike Perlmutter's $1.4 billion net from the deal lends some credence to that hypothesis.

A lot of folks, on the other claw, are worried about them somehow compromising the integrity of the properties.

Personally? I think that the megacorp that gave us movies like No Country for Old Men and Miracle at St. Anna won't bat an eye at Tony Stark's antics.

It's a positive-sum game: the architect of Marvel's revival gets filthy rich, and the company gets a measure of financial stability that it honestly hasn't had since New World Cinema (hardly a financial powerhouse) sold it off in the '80s.

It's good for Disney, it's good for Marvel, it's good for Perlmutter. Yay!

On the other claw, is it good for us? One of the worst offenders in the copyright wars has suddenly gained control of yet another chunk of modern folklore, much of which would already be in the public domain if the Mouse hadn't repeated pushed Congress to enact ever-more-damaging Copyright Extensions.

But that's a whole 'nother topic.

Edited and cross-posted from Your Obedient Serpent's LiveJournal. I've incorporated material from some threads that originated there; thanks to my loyal readers for contributing!

In Brightest Day....

2009-08-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

This made me laugh out loud:

I may have to print it out and post it at work.

Speaking as a long-time fan of the Green Lanterns, who's read the book(s) through all the ups and downs since 1970 or so, this multi-year arc that Geoff Johns has been writing is the Best Damned Run Of Green Lantern ever, one of the best things DC has done in the last decade, and Blackest Night is shaping up to be the "Final Crisis" that Final Crisis wasn't.

Honestly, it's a big part of why I still bother with superhero comics.

After, what, five years of non-stop Big Events and Red Skies Crossovers from both major companies, after a year of working in a comic store, and after my Fanfic Epiphany from a couple of years ago, I've come very close to burning out on commercialized adolescent power fantasies.

But Johns is good, and Blackest Night is not so much an Editorially-Mandated MegaCrossover as it is the logical climax of the story he's been telling for the last five years.

Still and nonetheless... "They turned Green Lanterns into Care Bears" is spit-take-worthy.

The Boy Wonder and the Last Pulp Hero

2009-07-31T20:36:00.000-07:00

The other day, working at the comic shop, I had a conversation with one of my teenaged customers about the early years of Batman. and he reiterated something I've heard for decades. Jules Feiffer groused about it in The Great Comic Book Heroes, insisting that he'd felt this way since childhood, so the complaint's been around pretty much as long as the character.

It's the idea that the introduction of Robin the Boy Wonder was a Bad Idea and Ruined The Whole Batman Concept.

After reading the first few volumes of The Batman Chronicles, however, I think it's just the opposite.

Before Robin, "The Bat-Man" was just another pulp character.

Oh, those early stories are nice, tight little packages of action and suspense, just like the pulps that inspired them -- but there's the key. They were just like the pulps that inspired them; a bit more compressed, perhaps, and with the exotic appeal of the new medium, but the protagonist was interchangeable with any of the lesser mystery men of the Street & Smith line.

Unoriginal, undistinguished; a guy in a bat costume with (eventually) boomerang. He didn't have the intricate network and multifarious identities of The Shadow; he didn't have the small army of geniuses that followed Doc Savage; he didn't even have the exotic Old California setting of Zorro, the character he really most resembled in those early years.

It was only after the introduction of Robin that Batman really started to come into his own, started to develop his own distinctive motif and theme, started to evolve what could rightfully be known as a mythology. Even Miller recognized that, when The Dark Knight Returns has Bruce reminiscing that Dick named The Batmobile -- "a kid's name."

Before Robin, he was just Zorro in New York. Not The Shadow, mind you; despite what the revisionists of the latter day would have you think, the obsessed devotion to the War On Crime wasn't a major part of the character in those pre-Robin days. Bruce Wayne's effete disaffection with everything around him was misdirection, no doubt, but nonetheless, those early stories convey the impression that, on some level, he put on the costume to fight crime because he was bored.¹

It's tempting to assume that Robin just happened to be introduced at the same time as the elements that make Batman so distinctly Batman, but I don't think so. I think that the new character dynamic of the duo was a key factor that shaped a truly mythic character.

Before Robin, Bruce had a social life. Bruce had a fiancée. The Batman was something Bruce Wayne did. It wasn't yet who he was... until he took on a partner.

With a confidante, someone who knew both sides of his life, Robinson, Finger and Kane could let Bruce Wayne immerse himself in the role of Batman.

The conventional interpretation is that the introduction of the brightly-clad wise-cracking kid sidekick was a distraction that pulled the Batman away from his Holy Mission. If you really sit down and read the stories, though, the opposite is more the case. The idea that everything Bruce Wayne does is really just to serve the needs and goals of his alter-ego only emerges post-Robin.

The modern Batman, the revisionist Batman, the grim, obsessed avenger, lurking in the shadows, devoting his entire life to his personal War, is intriguing today only because he's an anachronistic example of a once-profligate phylum. In that time, in that place, he would never have stood out enough become the iconic archetype that we know today -- if he had ever really existed in that form back then.

It's not Superman who's the last survivor of a lost race.

¹This is not, in itself, an unacceptable motivation for a fictional crimefighter; Sherlock Holmes got a great deal of mileage from it.

A Fable of the Atomic Age

2008-06-24T09:54:00.000-07:00

Back in 1997, I took an anthropology class. One of our first assignments was to pick a children's story from our childhood, one that had a "significant influence" on us, and try to wring out the cultural assumptions it contained, the lessons it tried to teach, and the lessons it actually taught.

After pondering the usual array of fables and fairy tales, I realized that those weren't really my culture, and that those stories hadn't had nearly the influence on me that comics and television had. (No big surprise, there: depending on your demographic preferences, I'm either a last-year Boomer or early Gen-X -- two generations pretty well defined by the subsumption of folk culture by pop culture.)

Early on in my youth, Jack Kirby asserted unequivocally that comics were flat-out modern mythology, that they were the Folklore of Our Times, and had that emblazoned right on the covers of his quintessential work. I briefly considered writing about the Fourth World, about the ideas of Life and Anti-Life that even today shape the core of my personal ethos, but the saga of the New Gods was both two obscure and too inchoate to discuss briefly. I settled, instead, on an earlier Lee and Kirby creation...

Once Upon A Time, there was a brilliant scientist. Bruce Banner was a quiet, unassuming man who designed weapons for the United States Government. He had designed a new kind of bomb called a Gamma Bomb, and, one day, this new weapon was about to be tested. Minutes before the bomb was supposed to go off, however, a teenager drove out to the testing range. Young Rick had driven out there on a dare, having no idea that a test was scheduled for that day. Dr. Banner saw Rick's car on the testing range, and, shouting to his assistant to halt the countdown, drove out to the range himself. Dr. Banner didn't know that his assistant was actually a Soviet spy, however, who saw this as an opportunity to dispose of an important American scientist. The countdown continued.

Dr. Banner reached Rick in time to get him to the safety of a trench, but, before he could take cover himself, the bomb detonated, bathing him in mysterious Gamma radiation. He survived - but ever after, whenever he became frightened or angry, he transformed into a huge, destructive creature of immense power and unbridled rage.

He did not live happily ever after.

The psychological stresses imposed upon society by the Cold War and the even colder realizations of the extent of humanity's destructive potential spawned a rich vein of mythology, folklore, and urban legend. Written in 1962, the story of the Incredible Hulk is an enduring icon of that era, familiar to many children who have discovered it though comic books or television. Stan Lee, co-creator of the Hulk, has written that his primary inspirations were Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He sought to combine the two into the tragic figure of a man who had created his own curse. The narrative that emerged, however, is something more than a simple re-hashing of classic stories. It is a tale rich in the culture of its day, reflecting both the values and the fears of the Atomic Age.

Comic books are often condemned for being populated by "cardboard stereotypes." In more traditional forms of children's literature, however, such figures are considered "mythic archetypes". While later writers contributed depth and dimension to this serial myth, in its earliest form, the tale of the Hulk is no exception. General "Thunderbolt" Ross, commander of Gamma Base, is the blustering, foul-tempered soldier - a "Man's Man." His daughter, Betty, is quiet and passive - and portrayed as desirable. She never voices more than a passing attraction for the quiet Dr. Banner, knowing that her father would disapprove, and eventually marries the vain, arrogant Major Talbot, who, whatever his flaws, meets her father's standards of machismo. Rick Jones, an orphan, is a reckless, irresponsible teenager - who immediately reforms after finding a surrogate father in the unlikely person of Dr. Banner. Banner's assistant is a ruthless, backstabbing, Communist spy. Bruce Banner himself is the stereotypical intellectual: quiet, pacifistic, physically weak, a social maladroit; Ross, on several occasions, refers to him as a "milksop", while his raging, green, gamma-spawned alter-ego would express his unflagging contempt for "Puny Banner."

And yet, he builds atomic bombs.

When scientist Robert Oppenheimer witnessed the very first atomic detonation, it is said that he murmured a line from Hindu scripture: "I am become Death, Shatterer of Worlds." Bruce Banner's tale is the literal manifestation of that event: he has become an iconic incarnation of atomic destruction, mindless and raging, dropping from the sky unpredictably, without warning, without reason. The fact that the Hulk frequently battles and defeats other monstrosities and even more destructive threats mirrors the anxiety caused by the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction: we are protected by that which can destroy us.

Banner's transformation also reflects a subconscious attitude toward science and toward scientists, one closely tied to the undercurrent of anti-intellectualism that has always been a subtext of American culture. The Manhattan Project cast a new light on the scientific community: these quiet, unassuming men, rational and logical, often amusingly eccentric, frequently pacifists, could rip matter itself asunder and raze entire cities to the ground.

Buried inside each court wizard might be a monster.

Banner himself does not realize the enormity of his actions until he sees a hapless teenager about to be vaporized. Then and only then does it become clear to him that he has created something which will slaughter children. His willingness to sacrifice himself for Rick does not wholly redeem his transgressions, however. His transformation into the Hulk is wholly suited to his contradictory actions: he has been granted vast power, but it is beyond his control - an ironic parallel to the very nature of atomic science.

Rick Jones, too, must face the consequences of his actions. His irresponsibility has destroyed Banner's career and any possibility of a normal life. However, his subsequent loyalty to both Banner and to the Hulk has earned him something of a surrogate father in the one case, and the status of (in the creature's own words) "Hulk's only friend." Of course, having the strongest person in the world as one's best friend may seem like every child's dream, but when the behemoth in question has the intellect and emotional maturity of an ill-tempered three-year-old, it becomes something of a mixed blessing. A tantrum, after all, can level a city.

Serial fiction such as the comic book is an unusual art-form. Its tales never really end - they continue to grow and develop and evolve from month to month, issue to issue. Different writers bring different emphases and different styles to a saga. The story of the Hulk is no exception. While it is more unitary than, for example, the innumerable variations of the Batman, it has still garnered layers of detail and complexity over the years. No matter the baroque elaborations of the latest monthly tribulations of Bruce and Betty Banner, however, they still have at their core that central kernel of Atomic Age Myth: the tale of the scientist who discovers, beneath his veneer of intellect, the Shatterer of Worlds.

I Am Not A Number!

2007-11-21T08:35:00.000-08:00

Last week, the scans_daily community on LiveJournal posted the extant pages of Jack Kirby's unpublished version of The Prisoner.

I love the opening on the first page:

In this age, when the individual can find himself at the mercy of advanced technology welded by an organized and ruthless enemy, THIS BOOK BECOMES IMPORTANT TO ALL OF US!!!

That's something Your Obedient Serpent has said for decades, now: McGoohan's eccentric experiment is an invaluable survival guide to anyone living in the (post)modern world. And Jack just comes right out and says it: this comic book is important. No "subtle themes" or "hidden messages" for Kirby. If he thought something was important, he'd SHOUT IT TO THE HEAVENS, in boldfaced italics.

Somehow, he made it work. Which is why we call him "The King".

And this, dear reader, is why it stokes Your Obedient Serpent's ire to hear Starlin and his sycophants expound on how Jack "never really said" what the Anti-Life Equation was. What they MEAN is, "we never read The Forever People." Kirby wasn't at all mysterious about the Equation: he explicitly spells it out (and yes, in boldfaced italics) over and over -- but he does it in the pages of what too many people consider the goofiest, most dated, most embarrassing installment of the Fourth World saga.

Your Obedient Serpent, on the other claw, read Jimmy Olsen, Mister Miracle, and The Forever People when they came out. New Gods, however, didn't cross my path until almost a decade later, thanks to a friend who dragged me to his college library's restricted-access collection of classic comics, specifically so I could catch up on those chapters of the Fourth World that I'd missed.

Perhaps that skews my perceptions of the Great Unfinished Work. Through the '80s, New Gods was reprinted several times, but the other threads of the saga were neglected until their black-and-white collections from a few years back and the wonderful, wonderful Fourth World Omnibus volumes currently being released. New Gods is grand, sweeping, epic, and bombastic -- but I think it's also the Fourth World title that explains the least about the actual philosophical struggles involved.

Viva Oracle!

2007-11-18T17:23:00.000-08:00

This was originally posted as a response to Ragnell's post about Booster Gold #4, which ends with the surprise reveal that Barbara Gordon's crippling and subsequent career as Oracle happened because of the Bad Guy Time Travellers and their plot to thwart the origins of the whole Justice League -- including their "rightful" leader, Batgirl.

I love this idea, and I can't wait to see how it plays out... but until I read the comments in Ragnell's post, it never occurred to me that DC would actually have Booster and Rip succeed in "fixing" that one.

Frankly, I think they'd be damned foolish to consider it.

I can't consider Oracle a "mistake" on DC's part. Barbara Gordon as Oracle is a far more interesting, original character than Barbara Gordon ever was as the Earth-One Betty Kane, introduced to bolster the sagging ratings of a campy TV show that most fans would rather forget.

She's a more successful character, too. Her tenure as Oracle (1989-2007) is just three years shy of her tenure as Batgirl (1967-1988). At this stage, her Batgirl career was faltering; one reason Moore was allowed to treat her so cavalierly was because the character has simply failed to find a niche. She had never broken out of back-up series and Special Guest Sidekick appearances. The closest thing she'd gotten to a "team" was as a tagger-on to the Dynamic Duo. In the stories, Barbara was wondering if she was really making a difference as a crime-fighter, if she might do more good by directing her talents elsewhere.

At least one person has said that they want to see Barbara resume the Batgirl role because Oracle, the "Superhero OnStar", "makes things too easy" for other DCU characters, and writers tend to use her as a crutch. To Your Obedient Serpent, this almost qualifies for the Women in Refrigerators List: impose a major life change to a female character to produce a desired effect on a male character.

I keep hearing people object to the creation of Oracle because of the Fridge Listing of Barbara Gordon in The Killing Joke. Sure, Babs's crippling is classic Fridge List material. That was Alan Moore's script -- and while it set the stage for the introduction of Oracle, it was NOT her origin.

Barbara Gordon's recreation of herself as the Oracle was the work of John Ostrander, and it was as far from the Fridge List as you can get. It pulled the character out of the shadows of the Established Male Dynastic Centerpiece, and made her a unique, exotic figure in her own right. It gave her her own story, in her own way.

Barbara Gordon was always a highly-intelligent character with a photographic memory. That was there from her introduction. Ostrander's genius was in using the crippling injury imposed by another writer to refocus the character on that intellect.

As a front-line fighter, Barbara was a B-List character, and her chosen nom de guerre insured that she'd remain there, as "Batman's Girl Sidekick". As Oracle, she's A-List. The idea of Barbara Gordon leading the Justice League only makes sense after 20 years of seeing her as Oracle. Batgirl was no leader, and showed no signs of developing into one. As a kick-fighter, she was playing catch-up to people with more training, more motivation, and more special "edges" than she would ever have. It took Ostrander's re-emphasis of the character according to her unique strengths that allowed her to become the formidable presence she is today.

Taking that away from her would be crippling the character. Frankly, if Barbara got the use of her legs back (without time-travel trickery), I'd be utterly disappointed if she gave up being Oracle. She's done far more good that way that she ever would as one more high-heeled boot to a bad guy's face.

(Okay, if she got healed and put the costume on again strictly because she was offered leadership of the JLA, I could buy it.)

And you know what? "Oracle" only works as an ex-crimefighter. Putting some random person hospitalized by violence into the chair and behind the keyboard just doesn't have the emotional impact.

Finally... I'm hardly a fan of the school that insists that a superhero has to have some driving trauma, but I've got to admit, Oracle has a lot more solid motivation than the librarian who took a few judo classes and started crimefighting for fun.

And now, a moment of perspective.

2006-08-23T13:49:00.000-07:00

If Internet Fandom had been around in the '50s, the Silver Age of Comics never would have happened.

"Have you heard about what they're doing to Green Lantern? They're ditching Alan Scott and replacing him with some test pilot! And instead of a unique magic ring and an ancient lantern, they're making him one of THOUSANDS of space-cops with some kind of technological gizmo! Hell-OOO? National? It's been DONE!"

Grampa's Got A Brand New Blog

2006-06-17T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well, after months of posting comments in other people's comics blogs, I've finally gotten a Blogger account of my very own.

This is where Your Obedient Serpent will post his musings on comic books, cartoons, and on occasion, other mass media. Goodness knows, I prattle on about such things often enough; I should certainly be able to muster an occasional column on sundry circumstances.

The title might require some explanation. Almost anyone involved with this particular subculture is familiar with Kirby Dots, the psychadelic pop-art effect that the late, great Jack Kirby developed to indicate vast, incomprehensible cosmic forces that would beggar "Doc" Smith's vocabulary.

A less-celebrated stylistic affectation that I have always considered at least as significant are the swooping trails and pathways that wove through Steve Ditko's otherworldly tales -- not only those crafted for Marvel's Master of the Mystic Arts, but in his excursions into the arcane for the cereal-box presses of Charlton. The Dark Dimension, the Astral Realms, all were permeated by strangely-angled curvilinear ribbons. It is no accident that subsequent creators have invoked the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak as the most distinctive signature spell of the good doctor.

Thus, while my aesthetics and philosophical sentiments hew more closely toward Mr. Kirby's, I thought it fitting to also honor his Objectivist colleague.