Best Single Author Storylines using Licensed Characters

In no particular order:

Frank Miller's Daredevil (Collected in Daredevil Visionaries: Frank Miller volumes 1-3, Man without Fear, Elektra Omnibus and Born Again)

Alan Moore's Swamp Thing (Saga of the Swamp Thing volumes 1-5)

Garth Ennis' Punisher (Punisher: Born, Resurrection of Ma Gnucci, Welcome Back Frank, Punisher (marvel Knights) volumes 2-6, Punisher MAX volumes 1-10, From First to Last)

Grant Morrison's Batman (detailed here)

Neil Gaiman's Sandman (Sandman volumes 1-10, Endless Nights, Death Omnibus)

Politics as Usual

I sometimes browse Alternet, Common Dreams, The Nation's website and ZNet for news articles of interest. I can't help but notice many of these sites compare the tea party movement with the rise of fascism. Does the movement contain a lot of nuts? Yeah. And I'm sure 80%+ of it is just angry republicans and all their talk of fiscal responsibility and limited government (pragmatically good things if actually practiced) will turn to smoke if they are elected. But brown shirts? Probably not.

I have seen parts of Glenn Beck's shows, for example, and he does a similar thing. Beck seems to have devised an entire mental complex about the evil "progressives", a nebulous and sinister group that seems to contain everyone to the left of himself, and supposes that if we don't rally behind the candidates he supports it's game over for freedom. Beck is hysterical.

America has a lot of problems. High obesity, child hunger, poverty, unemployment. Highest prison population, highest defense budget, fifth highest number of executions. None of these problems will be helped by voting. And an election probably won't make them much worse either, as they are endemic to our entire economic system, which remains unchanged from election cycle to election cycle. I am far more excited for Batman and Robin #16 coming out on 11/3 then any election prospects from 11/2.

Superheroes as adolescent male wish fulfillment?

I like the character of Green Arrow. He's a modern day Robin Hood, and he has been put through a lot of interesting twists and turns. I am, however, very behind on his adventures. This is the preview for the new Green Arrow and I must say I have zero interest in reading a series that opens with such a thing.

What we basically see is every right wing revenge type fantasy played out yet again. A young pretty girl is chased by a gang of street thugs. They imply they will rape her. Green Arrow swings into rescue her.

It makes me sad people are still buying that kind of lazy pandering story. It's a classic sexist fantasy, the male hero has to swoop into rescue the helpless woman, and the casual use of a gang rape as a plot element feels a bit misogynistic. The only positive thing I can say is that the street thugs aren't black, which is a slight improvement from this scene, which has probably been replayed millions of times in pulp fiction since the beginning of time.

Heartening news items!

$18.6 million of un-employment given to millionaires in 2008!

Chiquita banana sued under anti-terrorism laws for sponsoring Columbian death squads

6 men were executed aboard aid flotilla, 5 Turks and one American citizen

These are the symptoms of a corporatist empire. I hope the people bringing the lawsuit take Chiquita to the cleaners, but I'm not holding out too much hope.

Grant Morrison's Batman

Grant Morrison is currently writing what is, I feel, the definitive post Frank Miller Batman run. Because I have nothing better to do with my life, I made an official looking reading list/chronology if anyone is interested in trying to read it and start at the beginning. I hyper linked the relevant stories to the trade they are collected in, or to the individual issues if more appropriate.

There are number of threads leading into Morrison's Batman. Additionally, a certain familiarity with both Batman and the DCU in general (particularly Kirby's New Gods) will assist in understanding.

Batman Homework:

Year One

The Killing Joke

Dark Knight, Dark City (Batman 452-454)

The Black Casebook

DCU Homework:

Identity Crisis

OMAC Project

Superman: Sacrifice

Infinite Crisis

Fourth World Homework:

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus volumes 1-4

Seven Soldiers of Victory

Batman: The Black Glove Saga: part 1: R.I.P.

(26 issues)

52 # 30 and #47

Batman and Son (Batman 655-658 and Batman 663-666)

Batman: The Black Glove (Batman 667-669 and Batman 672-675)

DC Universe #0

Batman: R.I.P (Batman 676-681)

Optional Further Reading: The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul takes place simultaneously around the middle of the Black Glove storyline. 52 is a great series and a person could do no wrong by reading the whole thing.

Batman: The Black Glove Saga: part 2: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?

(17 issues)

Final Crisis 1-4

Batman 682-683

Final Crisis 5-7

Last Days of Gotham 1-2 (Detective Comics 851 and Batman 684)

Battle for the Cowl 1-3

Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? 1-2 (Batman 686 and Detective Comics 853)

Optional Further Reading: Final Crisis has several spin-offs and one shots, such as the Legion of Three Worlds, Submit, Resist, Requiem, Revelations, and Superman: Beyond (Superman: Beyond is collected in the main Final Crisis trade). Battle for the Cowl has the following one shots: Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive?, Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead?, Commissioner Gordon, Man-Bat, The Network, the Underground as well as a three issue Oracle mini-series and a three issue Azrael mini series. Most of the Battle for the Cowl one shots are collected in one trade. I wouldn't recommend the Battle for the Cowl spin offs, but the Final Crisis minis are pretty good. Revelations continues the Crime Bible storyline from 52 and 52: Five Books of Blood.

Batman: The Black Glove Saga: part 3: Batman Reborn

(26 issues)

Batman Reborn (Batman and Robin #1-6)

Time and the Batman (Batman #700)

Batman vs. Robin (Batman and Robin #7-12)

R.I.P. The Lost Chapter (Batman #701-702)

Return of Bruce Wayne #1-6

Batman Must Die! (Batman and Robin #13-16)

Batman: The Return #1

Optional Further Reading: The new Batman starred in the regular Batman series, where he fought Black Mask for control of Gotham. Azrael has an ongoing series spun out of his Battle for the Cowl mini series. Batwoman briefly had control of Detective Comics and had a great storyline called Elegy. After Damian becomes Robin, Tim adopts the identity of Red Robin and has his own ongoing series.

Batman: The Black Glove Saga: Part 4: Batman Inc.

(9+ issues)

Batman Inc (Batman Inc. #1-8, Batman Inc: Leviathan Strikes!)

Batman: Leviathan 1-?

Batman: The Widening Gyre (spoilers)

Kevin Smith is a film-maker and self avowed comic fan. He has written several Clerks comics and some mainstream comic works. As far as I am aware, his mainstream works are a run on Daredevil called Guardian Devil, two story lines for Green Arrow and two Batman mini-series. I've already written a review for Guardian Devil which was under-whelming at best. I recently read all six issues of his new Batman mini-series The Widening Gyre, and I must say I officially have zero respect for Smith as a writer of comics. To put it mildly, Batman: The Widening Gyre is garbage.

To start with, we'll go over the good. Because nothing is all bad. The covers are very evocative. A sort of Gothic Batman image, an invitation to a journey into horror and macabre, especially the cover to the first issue with prominent Goat's head. The "story" itself is completely not anything the cover would imply, but that's probably more the editors fault than anything.

Some of the humor works. There are some genuine funny moments between Bruce and Dick and Bruce and Tim. I liked the artist's depiction of a shirtless Bruce as being gruesomely covered in scars.

Now on to the rest of it. Having read the whole series it is safe to say there really is no story. This is apparently Volume 1, will Volume 2 develop a story? I suppose it's possible, but I'm not holding out much hope. The only purpose of all six issues is seemingly so Smith can take us to his twist ending, up to that point a good 80% of everything is filler. Smith throws in as much random crap as he can think up to try and make us a feel a passage of time, to get that big shocker ending. This fails, utterly, but we'll get to that later.

For an example of a comic consisting almost entirely of filler, we turn to the first issue. We start with a flashback of Dick and Bruce fighting Baron Blitzkreig and the Atomic Skull inside a synagogue. There is some very out of character narration where Batman refers to the Atomic Skull as a loser. To quote: "But Skull is so inept, you almost feel bad for him." I'm not sure what depiction of Batman "almost" feels bad for criminals that don't successfully commit crimes, but it's none that I'm familiar with. This is the same kind of dialog found in Guardian Devil, where self-aware superheroes and supervillians diss on each other for being third stringers and C-grades. In other words, Kevin Smith can't not write like Kevin Smith, even his superheroes talk like self aware comic book nerds.

Anyway, back to the filler. Bruce and Dick defeat the two bad guys, then we flash forward to Bruce and Dick (this time as Nightwing) defeating someone else in the Baron Blitzkreig armor. At this point you might be thinking: A story about Baron Blitzkreig? Batman fights white supremacists? Nope, it's just filler. Keep moving.

Bruce investigates a person who died with sprouts all over themselves by going to check on Poison Ivy. We find that Poison Ivy has covered Arkham with plants to try and barricade herself in, because Etrigan is trying to kill her. Why she thought plants were a good defense against someone who can breathe fire, I have no idea. At this point, a reader might think: A story about Poison Ivy and Etrigan? Nope. The whole thing is to build to Batman being rescued by a new character, the guy with a goat head on the cover. He shows up on the last 3 pages. That's the only thing that any of this contributes to the plot. So why in God's name didn't we just meet the new guy within the first five pages and skip the rest of these heavily narrated random Batman fights? I have no idea. Like I said, it's filler. All but the last three pages.

The rest of the series keeps with the same shtick. There are only two plot elements that go anywhere: the re-introduction of 60's/70's love interest Silver St. Cloud and the new guy with the goat head. Because these are the only two things that consistently appear, we the reader realize this almost immediately. Instead of focusing on these two elements however, we get lots of filler of Batman beating up on random villains in between returns to Silver and Goat-Head. The whole six issues could easily be cut to maybe three issues of story, and even that is a bit generous.

Moving on to what "story" there is, we have Goat-Head and Silver St. Cloud. Batman proposes to Silver. Immediately, two thoughts occur to me: either she dies or turns out to be evil trying to destroy Batman. You and I both know Batman is not really going to get married, period. So instead of falling for Batman and his happy romance, I'm just turning the pages waiting for Silver to report to a shadowy overlord or an anvil to fall on her head. Because that's how bad comics are written. Similarly for Goat-Head, either Smith just thought it would be nifty to come up with a new good guy and throw him into the Bat-family, or, more likely, there is a twist with this character. A mystery to be solved. So again, I keep turning pages, wading through filler waiting for the inevitable answer. (speaking of filler, Smith sees fit to include Fun Land, a serial killer from the serial killer convention from Sandman as a "filler villain." Why? I have no idea, but Neil Gaiman should punch him in the face for it.)

And then the ending, which Smith has (apparently, I haven't listened to it) said the likes of which have never been seen before in Bat comics. Um, sure. Bruce invited Goat-Head to the Batcave and reveals his secret identity. To some guy he's know for what? A few weeks. When did Batman suffer brain damage? Is any super hero that stupid? Nonetheless the Dark Knight of Serious Logic himself? At this point Goat-Head turns out to be Smith's pet villain Onomatopoeia and slits Silver's throat. *yawn*

After I finished not being impressed by the totally shocking ending, the implications of all this occurred to me. So we're supposed to believe that this pet villain of Smith's constructed a cover story so great the World's Greatest Detective couldn't figure it out? He is such a great actor that the World's Greatest Detective couldn't see his through ruse? No one even suspected? Again, any superhero would have to be stupid to fall for this, but it's even more out of character for Batman, who is consistently been written as some kind of genius. I guess Smith just amuses himself by coming up with Gary Stu villains and having them outsmart more popular characters, and sadly DC editorial indulges him in this.

The ending itself, Silver's throat being graphically slit, doesn't bother me for the blood, but there does seem to be a bothering thread of misogyny. Out of four mainstream comic works, two out of them have the main character's girlfriend's being murdered as a plot point. Is that his only idea for a superhero story? I can imagine the pitch session:

"I've got an idea for a Batman story: get this, Bats gets a girlfriend...and then someone kills her! Oh, don't like that? I've got a great Superman story here. This will blow your mind: someone kills Lois Lane! Awesome, huh? Still not buying? How about someone kills Aquaman's wife? Or Sinestro kills Carol Ferris? Aren't I a genius?"

If DC asked him to write a Wonder Woman story God knows how confused he'd be.

If that were all the bad parts it would be a bad story, but to be truly awful there has to be more terrible, and there is.

His characterization of Catwoman is awful. And I mean, really really awful. Catwoman breaks down into tears twice during her scant three appearances. She comes pawing after Batman like a love sick puppy when she finds out he is seeing someone and then again when he gets engaged. Someone who has hundreds of solo issues to their credit acts like a 14 year old schoolgirl that's going to go home and totally rip up all the Batman posters on their bedroom wall.

There's more. Bad dialog, for example. Stuff like this:

That's Silver St. Cloud making a goofy face. I guess it's supposed to be funny. Hard to say.

If you are truly curious, download it off of a torrent, but please, for the love of god, don't pay your hard earned money for it. There is supposed to be six more issues of this, but after Silver is dead and Batman is face to face with the villain I have no idea what the next six issues are supposed to contain, because, as I said above, there is basically no story.

P.S. I was not familiar with the title and looked it up on wikipedia. The Widening Gyre refers to the coming of a dark apocalyptic event, which as far as I can tell relates not a whit to this mini-series, unless that event is the foregone conclusion of Silver being put in a refrigerator.

Comics for Anarchists

If you're a politically radical young lad or lass who doesn't read comics, well, you're missing out something dreadful. And no, I'm not going to tell you to run out and buy the latest issue of Batman. As much as a I love Batman, I wouldn't expect the average lay person to appreciate it, what with all the back story and history. Most other mainstream comics have the same problem, decades of built up mythos that rewards the veteran but scares and confound the new reader. I am going to give you a trio of recommendation that are all fully self contained works.

All three are written by Alan Moore, an avowed anarchist who happens to be the best living comics writer. All three have also been adapted into movies, but don't let that discourage you. These are hardy intellectual works. Real meat and potatoes for the brain.

The first is Watchmen, and yes it has super heroes. But these are superheroes like they would be if they really existed; psychosis ridden and violent. Murderers and rapists even. The story touches on a great many themes, the meaning of life for example, gets a a very good treatment, but the central message is the danger of allowing anyone power to save or protect you. The title comes from the quote Who Watches the Watchmen? If there are a group of Watchmen who protect us, like the government, who will protect us from them? Another group? Who protects us from the other group? The question is a paradox, ultimately, any group with the power to protect you has the power to abuse you, be it government or superheroes.

Watchmen is also masterfully written, imagines a fully realized sci-fi world and has great characters. Read it now. You can safely skip the movie.

The second work is V for Vendetta, a far more explicit anarchist text. The main character, V, a faceless masked terrorist, is an anarchist fighting against a quasi-Nazi English government headed by the fascist sounding Norsefire party. The work's central political statement and message is un-abashedly anarchist, although it is honest enough to not sugar coat anything. The characters aren't perfect, and the "hero" is both murderer and a freedom fighter, a revolutionary and a terrorist. It's also much more sophisticated than the movie, so read it and skip the movie.

Lastly, is From Hell, a story about Jack the Ripper. Well, kind of about Jack the Ripper. It's really about all kinds of other things too. In fact it's kind of hard to even summarize it. It's about patriarchy, why the 20th century is so fucked up, who really killed those poor girls in White Chapel and the nature of Hell, among other things. Seen the movie? It's a pale shade in comparison, the book, for example, has much more time travel. Read it yesterday.

Seldom updated blog is seldom updated

I see that the US is calling for a new round of peace talks vis a vis Israel and the Palestinians. This will of course, result in nothing positive. First of all, within two weeks Hamas had killed four people and Israeli settlers in the West Bank announced the construction of 53 new buildings, despite an outstanding government ban.

Secondly, there can never really be negotiations between two parties where one party has all the power (Israel) and the other has none (Palestinians). Anything that will come out will be the rubber stamping of an Israeli "wants" list by chosen Palestinians. Speaking of which, the negotiator for the Palestinians is former President Abbas, who was in fact voted out during the last election.

Yeah, this is totally going somewhere.

Daredevil Review #1: Guardian Devil

Daredevil, created by Stan Lee, Bill Everett and Jack Kirby, ran for some 300 issues before, sales being in the toilet, Marvel finally pulled the plug. A re-launch was published the next month, starting over at issue #1 with Kevin Smith, writer/director of Clerks and comic aficionado, as the scribe.

This re-launch eventually led to Bendis, Mack and Brubaker all writing the Man Without Fear, which are all very good things. The issues by Smith that got the ball rolling, not so much.

The art is done by Marvel editor in chief Joe Queseda, and is cartoony to say the least. This contrasts sharply with the tone Smith tries to set; one of pathos. So right off the bat the dissonance is rather jarring. I'm not saying Queseda is a bad artist, just that from page 1 forward his cartoony art style clashes with the attempted seriousness of the text. Guardian Devil has more problems with the tone coming it's way unfortunately. Smith can't help but be cute with his first comic book job, and thus we have Daredevil holding a loaded gun to his head contemplating suicide in the same story that includes references to Smith's own films, other film jokes and various instances of self-aware comic book dialog. To further flush things, the script is just waaaaaay too wordy.

Returning to the inconsistent tone, some examples include Bullseye holding a copy of Catcher in the Rye with quotes from Jay and Silent Bob on the back cover. Is Smith so ego-centric that when writing a serious story he has to include references to himself? Apparently the answer is yes. In the final speech by the surprise mystery villian, Mysterio for some reason, he refers to the most recent Spider-man as not being the real spider-man (Spiderman was going through a continuity shakeup at the time) and says him and Daredevil are second stringers (apparently Mysterio has access to Marvel's sales figures). This doesn't work in a serious story and keeps bringing attention to "Hey! Kevin Smith is the writer!", which is presumably the intent.

The plot of Guardian Devil seems to be simply be: Spiderman villain Mysterio copies what the Kingpin did in Born Again. Smith, of course, brings attention to this by including characters and concepts from Born Again (i.e. Sister Maggie and Matt losing his mind). It's as if he wants us to know he is aping Frank Miller. And why Mysterio? Why should I, the reader, a Daredevil fan, care one iota about a Spiderman villian? It's a horrible concept from the word go. Mysterio then kills himself while referencing Kraven's suicide, another instance Smith copies another more famous storyline and then tells us he's copying it, as if to try and excuse himself.

The difference between Born Again and Guardian Devil is stark and wide, owing to the vast differences between the respective writers' ability. Both involve master plans to destroy Daredevil. In Born Again, the mastermind is the Kingpin, his arch-nemesis, frequent rival and all around epitome of human evil. In Guardian Devil, the villain is Mysterio, a Spiderman villain with an almost non-existent connection to Daredevil. In Born Again, the bad things happen to Murdock. In Guardian Devil, the bad things all seem to pile on Daredevil's supporting cast, a cheap writer's trick to get a shock to the audience. Of particular note is Karen Page, who receives both an AIDS diagnosis (oddly, the thought that she may have infected DD doesn't occur to her until someone else mentions it) and is subsequently murdered/stuffed into a refrigerator. Smith ably maintains DD's abysmal record of women supporting characters being picked apart by writers to get a rise out of him. In Born Again, DD is driven mad by the culmination of so many bad things happening to him. In Guardian Devil, he gets slipped a drug secretly, which Dr. Strange cures him of in a quick cameo.

About the only positive thing I can recommend about Guardian Devil is the fact it delves into Murdock's religious views as a lapsed Catholic, something that is done too rarely. This aspect still has issues, however. For example at the end, Daredevil says "To do my Father's work." as he swings into action. God's work is to beat up street thugs? This strikes me as enormously intellectually shallow. More interesting would be the admission that devoting your entire life to violence is decidedly un-Christian, for example.

Frank Miller is a good enough writer that he successfully pulled off a combination of humor and pathos in his original DD run. In attempting to walk in the steps of giants, Smith stumbles grievously.

Most comical example of State propaganda

Behold; the splendor.

What happened is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said that the US has a contingency plan to invade Iran. In response, Iran announces it is building mass graves to put the bodies of US soldiers in if they should invade. According to Fox News, this is a "provocative action" on the part of Iran, and reminds of the "days of Saddam Hussein", presumably a reference to Saddam's regime digging mass graves and then filling them with the bodies of innocent people.

The guest, a former CIA director, says that Iran's actions are "offensive" and designed to "provoke us." Iran, we are told, is moving inexorably to having "nuclear capability", much like US, Russia, Israel etc. The two men then casually discuss the "window to hit Iran."

I can't help but wonder what the correct response of a foreign nation should be when they learn that the US has plans to attack them laid out? Gratitude? Love? Adoration? Obedience?

Return of Alan Moore

Alan Moore, probably the best creator of the Modern Age, hasn't written much in a while. He's written, poetry, prose and publishes a magazine called Dodge'em Logic. But as for comics he pretty much just works on LXG. Until now.

Avatar Press is putting out a miniseries called Neonomicon, written by Alan Moore. It's a heavily Lovecraft inspired mystery. The thing that impressed me is that Moore writes it like a young man. Without looking at the credits I would assume the author was a twenty-something. The dialog is casual and conversational. The kind of thing we see in movies more than comics. Although only the first issue is out, he does seem to be twisting the usual "Lovecraft" story in that one of the characters seems to notice all of the literary references, of which there are many. Expectations aren't too high, as it seems like a pretty low concept series, but a person still can't help but be excited.

Kirby is King

When Jack Kirby, co-creator of Fantastic Four, X-Men, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and others moved to DC comics they proudly displayed "Kirby's Here!" on the covers. A bold proclamation, and one of historical interest at least. However, sometimes things that are historically important aren't all that thrilling to experience. D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation was a ground breaking work of editing and story telling, but is also enormously racist and not exactly something a person watches with a bowl of popcorn on a cold winter night.

That's not what Kirby's work is like. Reading it today still lights the imagination afire, even though the material is over 30 years old. Having read the Fourth World Omnibuses vols 1-4, OMAC omnibus, and 2001: A Space Odyssey 1-10, I can say Kirby really was a king.

He presents a world view of optimism, where idealistic young people are fighting the struggle for freedom against ossified power centers: crooked billionaires, war-mongers and politicians struggling to wipe out free will. His heroes are super-powered hippies (the Forever People) or corporate drones snatched from obscurity to fight against tyranny (OMAC).

The list properties created by Kirby, either as sole creator or co-creator is absolutely enormous. I would have to put him down as my favorite Silver Age creator.

DC growing up?

DC comics has earned some respect from me for seeming to make an editorial decision to move comics away from white teenage fan boy wankery.

Whenever a new character needs to get introduced, they make an effort to have it not be another "Straight White Male", which is what 99% of all superheroes are.

The new Question is a Hispanic woman and a lesbian.

The new Atom is an Asian man.

The new Blue Beetle is a Mexican teenager.

The new Batwoman is a white lesbian.

Furthermore, DC decided that Supergirl will no longer incessantly flash her panties at everyone and everything, as was her normal custom.

And now Wonder Woman is putting on some pants! Now the Wonder Woman costume change will probably get changed back. Drastic costume changes rarely take. However, I think she really needed a change. Something less drastic might have been to have her bottom come down to halfway to the knee, and give her some tall boots. Then have her top cover her whole chest and her shoulders. Her bracelets can then cover her entire forearm, and give her a sort of Spartan cape.

Anyway, I give DC props for trying to grow comics up a little bit at a time.

Awesomesauce: People giving birth to themselves

I've decided that the best comic book storyline is when characters who are ostensibly either male or masculine give birth to themselves. Surprisingly, I am aware of three separate examples of this happening.

The first I'm quoting from a list I found:

3) Spider-man Mutates Into a Giant Pregnant Spider, Spectacular Spider-man #17–20

I’m pretty sure a lot of people who recoil in disgust from The Other, a big Spider-man crossover written primarily by Peter David, Reginald Hudlin, and JMS, are in fact confusing it with this particular story. Changes was written by Paul Jenkins, a writer well on his way to becoming the Howard Mackie of the new millennium, and ran in Spectacular Spider-man nearly a year before The Other crossover started running in Amazing Spider-man, Friendly Neighborhood Spider-man, and Marvel Knights Spider-man.

Both stories use the basic premise of Spider-man acquiring primordial “insect” and “bug” powers through a weird quasi-mystical rebirth experience. Both stories make the rebirth stupidly literal, featuring scenes where Spider-man gives birth to himself by dying and then having a new body explode out of his own corpse. Changes gives Spider-man the movie’s organic web-shooters and a frankly bizarre ability to talk to ants, while The Other built on that to give Spider-man a host of other powers like night vision. All of these powers, incidentally, have since been abandoned and ignored.

The main difference between the two stories is that The Other is fucking Shakespeare compared to Changes. Even if you don’t take a passionate stance on the status of Spider-man’s web-shooters, Changes is still a ball of fucktarded idiocy. The plot hinges on the mind-blowingly ridiculous notion of roughly one in every three people having a latent “insect gene” that makes them susceptible to the mind control super-powers possessed by a new villainess called The Queen. Lest you accidentally not comprehend her importance instantly, she has complicated backstory that ties her in with Captain American and Nick Fury in World War II, and involves making her one of the super-bestest fighters and spies evar. She is of course presented as one of the most dangerous forces on Earth by story’s end, and gets hold of a bomb that could easily let her destroy New York.

Anyway, the Queen’s super-contrived power over the “insect gene” somehow means that, upon kissing Spider-man, she was somehow able to infect him with a something-or-other that makes him slowly start mutating into a giant bug.

Mary Jane contributes by bitching at him and making him go to a Klingon nerd-wedding. Eventually Peter mutates completely into an eight-foot-tall giant spider that immediately joins the Queen in the underground lair where she intends to ride out the detonation of the bullshit bomb. After much pointless dicking around, a scientist reveals that Peter isn’t just a giant spider that the Queen intends to fuck later, he’s also a giantpregnant spider. Eventually he dies and in the process “gives birth” to himself just as looked before he began mutating from human form into spider-form. Spider-man uses his new powers to get a hilariously easy defeat over the Queen, and there are many shots of Peter’s organic webshooters that make him look like he’s jizzing out his wrists.
Someone, at some point, seriously believed Changes would be acceptable as a story that changed Spider-man forever. Think about that for a minute. Let it soak into your brain. Changes was full of the sort of fucking idiocy that readers always want to forget as quickly as possible, from an overpowered new villain to really poorly-done characterizations. As a way to sell comics die-hards on the movie-style organic webshooters, it couldn’t have fucking failed harder.

Numbers two and three I mentioned earlier. In Jamie Delano's run on Animal Man, the storyline starts with Animal Man getting killed off. His life force latches onto a bacterium or something and he keeps getting eaten by bigger and bigger stuff and then possessing those things. Through this process he works his way up the food chain until eaten by his daughter's pet triceratops. The triceratops then gives birth to an egg out of which Animal Man hatches. In case you were afraid it got normal from there, Animal Man then turns into a gargoyle like creature by having crazy animal sex and then commands hordes of misc. animals to eat him, thus dying at the beginning and end of the storyline.

Swamp Thing, written by Rick Veitch turns into a visibly female version of himself, complete with breasts, and then births out a new copy of himself, while the old female degrades into dirt. I don't remember exactly how Swamp Thing turned into a woman or why this was essential to the plot, but it definitely needs to be on the "People who gave birth to themselves" list.

Words most abused

If we were to take a look at the words most abused in political discourse, three contenders for top honors might be: fascism, welfare and regulation.

Three great books give us the final word on all three.

Fascism and Big Business by Daniel Guerin explains the policies of the two primary fascist parties (Italian Fascist Party and German Nazi Party) in the way that they differ from other totalitarian states, i.e. their economic policies. Reading it is a bit disconcerting to the American reader, who finds many things that mirror post WW2 economic policies that are accepted in the mainstream without question. These include, but are not limited to: bailing out big business, massive spending and inflation, anti-unionism and a defense budget that could build a bridge made out of gold to the moon and back. Guerin also traces the origins of the fascist parties in various violent militias that grew out of the world depression of the 20's and 30's.

Regulating the Poor, by Piven and Cloward, gives us the real word on welfare in America. Hint: it's not a plot by lazy do nothing liberals to destroy the Protestant work ethic nor is it a plan to alleviate the suffering of the poor. Rather, welfare, so the authors share with us, exists as a means of social control. The two main welfare explosions grew out of the Great Depression and the turbulence of the Vietnam era. In the Great Depression, the more welfare that was handed out the less cry there was for communism or socialism, the less masses of men migrated around the country, the less rioting and protesting there was. And, this is something a lot of people miss, FDR started to phase most of his programs out before he died, their purpose having been met.

For example, when people were calling for a massive old age pension to be supplied by the government FDR instead instituted Social Security, a skeletal system compared to what many were calling for. But it was enough to peter out most political fire and the strident calls for more exhaustive programs died out. If FDR's ghost were here, he might tell us that welfare saved capitalism.

The story in the Vietnam era is similar. LBJ's Great Society was concentrated almost entirely in urban areas, despite masses of poverty in comparable rural areas, and was concentrated doubly in areas of rioting and social unrest. The authors predict a cycle of welfare benefits rising and falling as the economy grows and shrinks. This was proved correct by Reagan slashing welfare dramatically in the 80's and Clinton following suit in the roaring 90's. With the recent economic downturn we've seen Obama expand some programs as well. And after everyone forgets about this current downturn, welfare will inevitably be slashed again.

Furthermore, the intentional effects of the programs are to never provide more income than someone could make by working at the lowest paying most degrading employment available. It may extend the time people spend looking for a job, but it is designed to never permanently keep people out of the labor force.

The third book is Triumph of Conservatism, which I posted about earlier: The ghetto in our hearts 1 and 2

What I'm saying isn't that these are the best books ever written, but I think they will give anyone a basic foundation of anarchist thought. In summation:

Anarcho-Syndicalism by Rudolf Rocker

Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin

The Conquest of Bread and Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin

Essential Anarchist Texts

Mutual Aid by Peter Kropotkin

Kropotkin, the Crown Prince of Anarchy, posits that mutual aid is just as an important part of the evolution of both species and human society as competition. Whether this makes any sense re: the animal kingdom I'll leave to the biologists. But where Kropotkin shines is tracing mutual aid from "primitive" man, through barbarians to the medieval city and modern times. Kropotkin shows us that mutual aid is a more important element for the growth of human society than competition, and I believe him.

Kropotkin again presents a deeply moving portrait of humanity as holding the genesis of their own liberation within themselves.

Essential Anarchist Texts

Post Scarcity Anarchism

by Murray Bookchin

Less of a cohesive work than a series of essays, the main thought is very compelling. We live in a world where there is no reason why everyone on the planet should not have everything they need, and a few things they want to boot. The only problem is organization. Bookchin focuses on the technological advancement, which steadily increases the amount of product that can be created with a decrease in labor. The real specific parts are a bit outdated, considering the year it was published, but the idea is even more sound now. He goes over some different green technologies as well, heat pumps, solar panels etc.

Disappointment

I read The Alcoholic.

Despite the blurbs on the covers I did not find the Alcoholic to be that funny, it was overly wordy and the art wasn't too good. Bit of a waste, that one.

Cool cover, though.

Jamie Delano: Under-rated as fuck

Jamie Delano is perhaps one of the more under rated comics writers out there. A radical critic of States and Capitalism, his output is less prolific than the other British Masters (Ennis, Morrison, Moore, Gaiman) but still profound.

Of special note is is influential run on Hellblazer, hand picked by Alan Moore to write the spin off he more or less created the character of John Constantine we have today, the best anti-hero in comics.

His run on Animal Man, while less well known than Grant Morrison's third wall breaking run, is superior I think. He takes the character to a series of deaths, rebirths, into a new human form and the character even founds a new religion and threatens to have the animals overrun America. And Animal Man becomes one of only two characters I'm aware of that gives birth to himself (the other being Swamp Thing.)

Rawbone, a blood thirsty pirate comic is a recent gem, as is the original graphic novel Hellblazer: Pandemonium. Delano's series Outlaw Nation features a wide cast of characters, part of a long lived family struggling against their centuries old patriarch who rules the country from the shadows. The protagonist is a Vietnam Vet whose main talent in life is the ability to write schlocky Westerns that have a profound influence on reality.

Jamie Delano: under-rated as fuck.

Essential Anarchist Texts

Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice

by Rudolf Rocker

Not a very contemporary theory, the move from industrialism to customer service economy largely took the bite out of it, I think. Noam Chomsky claims to be an Anarcho-Syndicalist, although the anarchist writer he references most is Bakunin.

Anyway, AS is a fairly economically simplistic system, sort of a half brother of Anarcho-Communism, stating that the workers should seize control of the means of productions by expropriation. By controlling the means of production, profits would be proportional to the amount of wealth created by the firm, as opposed to the wage, the smallest amount anyone is willing to accept for the equivalent amount of work. Rocker specifically deals with Industrial and Agricultural work, and the IWW was probably the largest organization with explicitly syndicalist sympathies in the history of the USA.

Unlike a gift economy, currency would still be used. Rocker never seems to get into explicit detail how this would affect other non employment aspects of our lives. Still, to be a well rounded bomb-thrower I think everyone should give it a read.

V for Vendetta: random thoughts

Here are some random thoughts I had about V for Vendetta, the premier anarchist comic book, written by Alan Moore, comic's best writer/avowed anarchist. I wrote this several years ago and when I found it again I wasn't too embarrassed by it.

The Man
V, is, in even the loosest definition of the word a terrorist. Is one man's terrorist another's freedom fighter? I would normally say no. The two are different. A terrorist targets civilian targets to create un-rest in support of an idelogical goal. A freedom fighter has a specific greivance and often seeks to gain land or territory, some tangible, usually feasible, goal. So which is V? V is, in fact, both a terrorist and a freedom fighter.

We never see V's face. Why? By all acounts he is a normal, even beautiful looking man. Delia seems awestruck by his beauty when she glimpses his face. It is stated that the drugs he was given did not affect him physically. All other targets were horribly mutated, but V was seemingly un-affected. Un-affected physically, that is. Mentally is a different question. He was thought to be quite insane. I do not believe he is insane, however. His actions are for a definite purpose, with definite goals and specific affects.

But back to his face. We never see V's face. This is very important, as Evey realizes at the end. She can remove his mask, if she chooses. Indeed, part of her wants. But she chooses not to. Why? She realizes that to remove his mask would be to humanize him. V is not a human. He is an idea. This is key. As he states, "Ideas are bullet-proof." An idea cannot be killed, it can only be replaced by a better idea.

What idea is V? What does he stand for? He values culture, the arts, the films and the music. When Evey says that she is nobody, he corrects her. Everyone is somebody. So he values human life. Yet, he takes it so callously. How is this possible? Because V values certain things more than even human life. Namely, Freedom and Truth. These are his ideas.

The Vendetta
V, at first, appears to be on a personal vendetta against those that wronged him. The suffering he endured in the concentration camp. Yet, we know of no atrocites committed upon V himself. He was seemingly un-affected by the drugs. He escaped. He seeks vengenance on the principle of the thing, the idea. So, he sets out to kill those that wronged him. Then, he proceeds to dismantle their governemt. Has he changed his goals? No. His vendetta is not against his personal villains, it is against them, their ideas, their symbols, and the institutions that supports them. It is a vendetta, a personal one, against an entire idea.

To complete his goals, he murders those that have wronged him. He blows up their buildings, their symbols. He destroys their institutions, and ultimately, he replaces their ideas with his. All of these must be completed, even after the leader is dead, he still destroys Downing Street, for example.

The Fascists
Our antagonists are un-abashed fascists. The are Nazis with a different symbol. The Nordic party, for god's sake. The Fascists value two things: Order and Survival. The Order of their society and the Survival of their society. They, unlike V, have no value of human life. They believe the ends justify the means. Thus, to ensure the survival of their society they wipe out all dissidents and all elements that might oppose them with concentration camps and secret police. Susan, the leader, has one love: Fate. We can assume then, that V might represent the opposite of Fate-Free Will.

The Death of an Idea
V must kill their idea with his own. How? This was perhaps the most startling part to re-discover upon a re-read. V captures Evey and tortures her and beats her and locks her up. Why? To set her free. Freedom has nothing to do with a physical body. She becomes free when she decides that she values her personal identity over her own life. When she refuses to betray V, she becomes free. The change happens only in her own head, to be free is entirely a state of mind. The people willingly put themselves in cages out of ignorance. The people are in charge, always. If the government can cow them into thinking that they are oppressed, then so shall they be. When V shuts down the cameras, when the people begin to riot and over-throw, V has simply shown them that they are free. Now, when the government tries to subdue them, it will likely fail. They are free now, or at least on the path to it.

Evey
Or as she is more commonly refered to as Eve, aka the first woman, the woman to give birth to the rest of society. The Mother of us all. When we first meet Eve, she is meek and childlike. She attempts prostitution, for the money. (her job in the factory doesn't pay much) This tells us something, in the beginning her main concern is on survival and money, but mainly survival, as money is simply a means to that end. Similiar to the fascists, she believes the most important part of a person's life is to stay alive at all costs. V takes her under his wing. To be honest, Eve is a confused young woman. At first, Eve expects V to want to have sex with her, and because he doesn't, part of her wants him to be her father. She is looking for a male figure in her life. After V leads her out and lets her go, as one would an animal or a small child, she becomes attached to a middle aged man. A nice man who lets her stay at his place. Here, she finds something closer to what she thinks she needs. He is at first a father figure, someone to replace her father she lost when she was young. They become lovers briefly, and then he is killed.
Eve plans on killing his murderers then. Why? She had previously stated that she would never help V kill. She is upset that she alone again in the world, and that someone cut his survival short. Before he dies, they two briefly ponder the police state they live in, if only life was better.... I do not personally think she would have killed her lover's murderer, she is simply at the end of her rope, raging against the fact that her life is bad and so (seemingly) out of her control. That he had to die. And then V captures her. And sets her free.
Now, Evey at the end of the novel is very different. When V dies, she is imagining the face under the mask. Her father? Her lover? No. Her face. She realizes she doesn't need the support or help of any male figures in her life. With V gone, she finally becomes a fully self-sufficient person, and assumes the creator portion of anarchy, as V intended all along. As this creator figure, she has no concerns for money or survival as she did at the beginning.

"By the power of Truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe"

As V has this quote engraved on his hide-out, it is apparently extremely important to him. This fits with his two ideas, Freedom and Truth. If one were to believe in this saying, it would follow that with nothing but Truth, one can conquer any obstacle. Remember V's destruction of the fascist's ideas with his own.
The second part of this section is to whom he attributes the quote to. A certain Dr. Faust. Dr. Faust, who sold his soul for knowledge. As V seems to support this quote, he apparently believes that Truth is more important than even one's own soul.
And finally, we consider the allusion to Faust V makes to the deal Evey wanted to make with him. Is V comparing himself to the devil, and Evey to Faust? This would fit with V's earlier description of himself as the villian of the story.

Undercover Boss

I've watched this show twice and something that happened both times is amusing as all hell. On both shows, the CEO of the company goes undercover at an entry level position and gets fired on their first day for being incompetent. I feel like this says something relevant about CEOs but I'm not sure how to articulate it.

Commercials are very commercial

I saw a TV commercial for Office Depot that uses a "Corporations are crooks" meme to advertise itself, a giant corporation.

Some mom and pop barber shop is frightened by the opening of a giant chain, "Nitro Cuts". Due to some clever re-design help from Office Depot, the small business defeats the evil corporate chain. This is coming from Office Depot, an enormous chain store. I wonder if the advertisers who made this are so far into the matrix they don't even realize how absurd it is.

It's interesting to note that the meme "Giant chain corporations are bad," is so pervasive that it can be used by advertising and everyone watching understands the convention.

Well written blog is well written

I feel like I should print out a couple of copies of this to hand out to anyone I engage in a political conversation with.

http://c4ss.org/content/1821

Asterios Polyp

So I just finished Asterios Polyp, and it's clearly one of the best comics I've ever read. I literally just finished it a minute or so ago, so my mind is still in a whir.

The whole book follows dream logic, jumping from connected topic to connected topic. Narration by the protagonist's dead-in-the-womb twin brother, philosophical tangents, scenes from a deteriorating marriage, a picnic next to a giant crater, an enormously pompous person trying to put on a production of Orpheus.

The main emotion the book managed to summon from me seems to be pity. I pitied Asterious, moving through life with an air of superiority. His wife seemed too good for him. And yet, his intelligence and clarity make him seem noble. Ancient greek hubris. Felled by his own flaws. Or maybe random acts from the Gods?

The art veers from one style to another, sometimes in the same panel. Simple cartoon people, or geometrically mapped out block figures. Chapters interspersed with mostly blank pages occupied by one simple image.

Read Asterios Polyp.

Now.