Sequential Anarchy

Daredevil #7

2012-01-19T11:23:00.000-08:00

The most recent issue of Daredevil by Mark Waid is a sort of heart warming story we rarely see in comics, nonetheless in Daredevil. There is no villian, or fighting of any kind actually. Daredevil doesn't save anyone. In fact, he gets saved by a group of blind kids. Too often, superheroes are portrayed as supermen, ubermensch keeping watch over sheep that would all die without them. It's a very authoritarian world view.

Here we have a Daredevil getting saved by a group of kids with disabilities. It's refreshing. We get a glimpse of the old Matt, as well. In a moment of brooding, Foggy begins to talk about the "old Matt", the Matt that has literally lost his mind on numerous occasions, has beaten people to a pulp and enjoyed it, crippled the owl and killed Bullseye. Matt responds that he hates that guy.

He then attends an office Christmas party wearing a shirt that says "I'm not Daredevil" on it. It's fun, it has good art, and the specter of Matt's terrible life is lurking in the background to leap out when it's least wanted.

How to defeat the Wall Street Pigmen

2011-10-16T18:24:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this the other day while thinking about the Wall Street protests. It meanders a lot, but I decided to keep the emotional stream of thought thing. This was all typed off of the type of my head, mostly on my phone at work, without access to any references. It is what it is. But I like it.)

How to defeat the Wall Street pigmen

America is at the lowest level of unionization since unions became legal. We might as well start there. We need a union drive in America. These don't need to be the conservative ossified unions that have managed to survive. Like all institutions, there are good unions and bad unions. But the important part of the union is that it is a representative organization. A more informal structure is all that's necessary. This union drive could be focused in one city, at first. Let's just say New York for argument sake. All people would be needed to join. The IWW could fill this role, or a new union. Dues could be small, or non existent. People could join “One Big Union”, or separate unions that agree to cooperate with one another.

The important part is to get people signed up and agree with the program so the super weapon can be used. This super weapon is the general strike. The strikers could do a few things. One option would be to have a sit in strike at the workplace. A sit in could evolve into an occupation or even worker management, depending on the situation. Employees, again, depending on the business, could keep working and fulfill existing orders but distribute the payments more equitably. Or whatever they wanted. But the key is that "they" refers to the employees.

Now when we talk about sit ins and worker appropriation, it should be clear we're not talking about small businesses. The intent isn't for the three employees at a baseball card store to boot the old grampa who owns it into the street. The target of the strike is the state-corporate economy. But I fear we've gotten ahead of ourselves. If we want our general strike to be a revolution, a bloodless revolution, some ground work has to be laid.

There needs to be a recognition that the interests of the ruling class and the overwhelming majority of the country are not the same. If 99% of the country is sharing 65% of the wealth, then there is always going to be people without enough. The structural inequality, and the finite amount of wealth, means that as long there is a super rich class, there will be a super poor class. The one cannot exist without the other.

What we need is a country where 99% of the country owns 99% of the wealth. Or something close. To do this, we need to create a parallel economy. The way our economy works now, passive participation in it strengthens it. We need a parallel or counter economy. One that can outgrow the official economy. This doesn't mean we have to give up computers or high top sneakers, just that we can do better as human beings. There is more than enough wealth in the world for everyone, but that's not the world we live in. We need only organize ourselves differently.

Let's get back to that ground work. We need friendly banks. We need banks that can do something in the vein of the Grameen Bank, lending loans to people to get themselves in a better place. The innovation with Grameen Bank is that it lended to people without collateral, and found that people paid back anyway. Because the amounts we are dealing with in America are larger, and there isn't the same market for cottage industry, lending groups could be used. A group of people could take a loan out together, each responsible for paying off their part of it. If someone is delinquent the loss is much smaller, because everyone else is still paying. It's a risk pool for lending. People could set it up a few different ways. Someone behind on their payments could be covered by someone else, or bought out if they won't be able to make payments anymore. The goal is to let people get loans for economic projects (like starting businesses or installing solar panels on their house) easier.

Some could criticize this, saying excess lending caused the financial collapse. The lending I'm talking about isn't about lowering standards, only setting up a structure so that people can get a loan without explosive interest rates. These loans would be for improving people's lives, not just to snare them in mortgage schemes. Credit unions could be used for this, or new institutions. Proudhon used the term "People's Banks", which sounds right to me, but probably would make too many Americans uncomfortable. Americans are taught to fear anything with the words "People's" or "Liberation" in it's name.

It would be important to transfer money into the new “friendly” banks. If everyone withdraws their money at once, a run on the bank will happen. A “run” could be timed with the strike, the boycotts and everything else for maximum effectiveness.

To coincide with our People's Banks, we need to revive Mutual Aid societies. Mutual Aid societies were largely driven out of existence by the government around the first half of the 1900's. There are still things that can be done though. People with cash can pay a premium, and receive benefits back later. These benefits could be determined by a board, or a management team. They could be chosen, hired, elected or rotated in and out. People without money could access the society for barter service. An unemployed person could do work on someone’s house, and in exchange receive dental work or food. Hours and goods exchanged can be tracked, perhaps with a sharing ratio like Peer2Peer networks. A group of people can volunteer to run a daycare (an enormous expenditure for single moms) in exchange for work on their cars, groceries or what have you. The society could serve as a clearinghouse for simple user run insurance plans and for LETS style transactions. An existing fraternal society like the elks or moose could serve as a base, or a church group or school. Or an entirely new institution could be made. Whichever works best.

To go with our mutual aid societies and our People's Banks we will want a helping of self sufficiency. The more we disconnect from the state corporate economy the weaker we make it, and the stronger the parallel economy can become in comparison. If someone has solar panels on their house, they then don’t have to pay into the power companies. If you have an electric car, running from your solar panels, you can disconnect from the oil and energy industry in two ways.

Gardens and goods production can be quite prosperous on a small scale if well handled. Food produced this way can be used personally, traded at a community store or for labor. This unplugs you from the food and factory farm industry. To take this to an extreme, if someone were to have the necessary capital, a person could probably make all of their goods instead of working a job. If mutual aid societies could provide things like health insurance, communities structured around small self producing family units could be almost entirely self sufficient. Some people won’t want to take it that far. And that’s fine too.

Ok, so when our general strike hits, our parallel economy is already going. We’ve got self sufficient families with their own food and power. We’ve got mutual aid societies providing services, food, or helping people still get things done with out cash. A strike fund can feed and house those on strike who need to be fed or housed. Occupy Wall Street functions largely off of donations as far as I know, which people from the around the world can use to help. That could be a source of supplies.

There are three approaches the strikers can take, each with pros and cons. People can stay in their homes. Their physical presence is not felt on the streets but it is harder for the cops to attack them. A sit in can be used to occupy and appropriate a workplace. This makes it easier for the cops to know where to strike. Expect a SWAT team and flashbangs. There is the classic protest march, which gets the message out. Good for morale. Again though, you are an easy target for the cops. Obviously, different people and different situations can use different approaches.

While we are striking, it’s important to start a boycott. A boycott of all functions of the corporate-state economy. A list could be maintained of services and companies to boycott in turn. Each time a workplace is reclaimed that workplace is added to the list of places to favor over others. As the strike and boycott drives business under, those business can be replaced by comparable services, run in a more equitable fashion and join the parallel economy.

As the parallel economy grows, the issue of currency is raised. It could be beneficial to issue a counter currency. This is illegal under US law. The liberty dollars, based on gold, would have been great for this purpose. The government smashed that operation however. A way around the law is to have local towns issue their own currencies. Town councils are susceptible to local democracy and could be used to issue local counter currencies.

If we add all this up, the pig men won’t stand a chance. Each major city can be tackled with strikes and boycotts, one at time, as the movement slowly grows in the margins across the country.

The enemy is the “corporate-state” economy, though. How do you strike against the state? This one is much harder. The most obvious way is to refuse to pay taxes. A refusal to pay taxes will eventually put someone up against the IRS. A single person against the IRS will always end with the IRS winning. If, however, a huge number of people going up against the IRS together the government will find itself swamped in it’s own legal system. A loss of perceived legitimacy is more of a blow than the lost revenue. Will the government have the resources to send huge numbers of people to jail for non-violent tax protests? Any debate, delay or controversy will weaken the government position. Not everyone would be able to do this. If you have kids at home, you probably shouldn’t risk getting sent to jail. A covert tax protesters insurance society could be started via an Internet listserv. A large group of people pay a modest premium. They then refuse to pay their taxes. Anyone who gets roped in by the IRS would receive a benefit, either to pay off the audit or support their family if they get sent away. The larger the group grows the more powerful the tax protest becomes. This would also allow people who can not refuse to pay their own taxes to support those who do.

Other ways to resist state power are refusal to pay the standard fines, like drivers license tabs, or to serve on jury duty. But again, a single person will always get crushed. In large groups, the system will start to choke. A more direct approach would be to protest in front of government buildings to block the entrance, or use tow trucks to drop of scrapped cars in front of the entrances. Or denial of service attacks against government websites. Denial of service attacks against “bad” corporations could also be used.

All of these ideas are completely non violent. They are also non governmental. There are no candidates or platforms to vote for. It’s not a call for more or less regulation, more or less taxes. This is libertarian socialism. Some of it is illegal. This is true. Some of it might go too far for some people. But it is not dogma or an orthodoxy. Someone who agrees with one part but not others is not a heretic. It’s a living idea. If it is ever tried, and fails, then I will be the first to bury it. The important part is to imagine a better, more equitable, more just world. Then close your eyes. When you open them, you are living in that world. It need only be built.

Books:

Flight from the city by Ralph Borsodi

Community Technology by Karl Hess

sin patron by the Lavaca collective and Horizontalism

The conquest of bread by Peter Kropotkin

Post Scarcity anarchism by Murray Bookchin

Studies in Mutualist political economy by Keven Carson

Articles:

All power to the soviets by Murray Rothbard

Holy Terror

2011-10-10T18:09:00.000-07:00

Frank Miller was once the wunderkind of American comics. While so many top comic writers are British (Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, and Garth Ennis being the most popular writers of the modern era) Miller created a uniquely American style of hard boiled sex, violence and pathos. DKR helped found the Dark Age of comics after all.

Looking at his works chronologically though, Miller's last home run seems to be That Yellow Bastard, written half way through his Sin City period. That was in 1996, fifteen years ago.

So here we have Miller, the American in a field dominated by Brits, over the hill and remixing his old style. The story's two main characters are obvious pastiches for Batman and Catwoman. The art is very reminiscent of Sin City. The content, according to Miller in interviews, is "a piece of propaganda". The reader is left to sort through these seemingly disparate elements.

Holy Terror, on a purely technical level, is very strong. The pounding urban rain has never looked better. Splotches of white amidst the downward lines suggest impressionistic artistic frenzy. Empire City's Lady Liberty strikes an imposing and majestic figure over the landscape. Close ups of the nails and razor blades packed into the terrorist's bombs lend an epic feeling to a scene that is just two people huddling on a rooftop. In fact, I thought the nail motif was a nice artistic touch.

The figures fall into the Frank Miller 2.0 mold, with the exaggerated hands and head from late Sin City and DKSA. For some reason, Miller seems intent to find as many excuses to draw the bottom of people's shoes as possible.

One of the most visually arresting sequences is when the casualties of the terrorist bombing are depicted with a series of grids. When it starts we have a grid with medium sized portraits. The second grid has smaller portraits, therefore more people, but has started to fade out. There is then two pages of increasingly more divided grids, completely empty, on a white background. This is an extremely impressive command of sequential art.

The sparse use of color is used to convey extra information, a green car and red shoe buried in the rubble reminds of the little red dress in Schindler's List. When "Catwoman" goes undercover by stealing a burqua, the audience can tell it's her because her eye's are always colored in green.

There are some technical flaws, though. The character designs feel old. Natalie is Catgirl from DKSA mixed with Gail from Sin City. The Fixer is Batman with a pair of Gats. A pair of girl assassins are Miho crossed with the twins from Sin City. There were honestly one or two panels where I stared at it, trying to figure out what the hell was going on. One remixed element that is improved upon is Miller's famous talking heads. Here, the heads are there, but they offer silent commentary. Miller doesn't waste space or time with political commentary. We know what they will say, he just shows that they are there and lets us fill in their rants.

The actual content is an entirely different matter. The story could be summarized thoroughly on a napkin, with room left for some illustrative doodles. A work can function without story if it has good characters. Holy Terror does not have good characters, though.

The story starts with "Batman" chasing "Catwoman", who has just stole something irrelevant. They take turns punching each other and making out. Then the terrorists strike! From there the plot functions basically like the first Sin City story. Our heroes steal a car to get around and torture bad guys for info. This leads us all the way to the final battle. Again, not much going on story wise.

Thematically, Holy Terror is a far right fantasy about the nigh omniscient threat that evil Muslims pose to Western civilization. The bad guys fortress? It's in a mosque. Truly. The narration tells us that this mosque was built by Saudi Arabia and is basically a sovereign nation inside America. Remember kids, mosques are scary. The first bombing is carried out not by a bearded Taliban looking fellow, but a cute Muslim college girl. A humanities student wearing pink. Second lesson kids, no matter who they are, how they dress or what they seem to believe, they might be a foot soldier in the Evil Muslim Conspiracy. Remember also that terrorists are evil untermensch, so it's totally cool to torture and kill them at will.

Once the bombs start going off, terrorists, bearded guys with ak-47s and burqa clad women with stinger missiles, come out of the woodwork to begin a military assault on the city. (They were probably hiding inside the Park 51 community center!)

This could maybe be dismissed as a fantasy if it wasn't for two things: the opening text is a quote from Muhammad about killing infidels, and the last page tells us the book is dedicated to Theo Van Gogh, who was murdered by extremists. Seemingly Miller wants the audience then to tie this violent paranoid exercise in far right wish fulfilment into reality.

Whether it's his intent or not, this and 300 would make a great start to a Neo-Nazi graphic novel reading list. In fact, if Legendary wanted to make coin on this, they should market it en masse to right wing reading lists. It's got all the required elements: Lady Liberty, who gets blown up early on, is wearing a blindfold, telling us society is blind to the terrorist threat. "Batman's" greatest help? A secretive guy named David with a Star of David tattooed on his face. (really) Translated, Israel is our only true ally! The police commissioner is corrupt and the police useless when the chips are down. Translation: Only hard violent men stand between us and the Islamic hordes. Only guys like the Fixer and David have the strength of will to torture and kill their way to victory.

While I still respect Frank Miller for his past work, Sin City, Daredevil, Batman, Ronin, etc etc, he's been in a slump for a long time now, and I don't see it reversing in the near future. The man possesses technical skills, but even his short.dialogue.bursts lack the charm they once had. My hope is that if Frank Miller keeps making comics, he gets someone else to write them.

2/5

Three letter reviews of the nu DC

2011-10-07T18:20:00.001-07:00

Action Comics #1 yay

Animal Man #1 yay

Omac #1 yay

Frankenstein: Agent of Shade #1 yay

Swamp thing #1 meh

Justice League Dark #1 meh

Demon knights #1 meh

Justice League #1 boo

Hellblazer #283

2011-10-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Peter Milligan's run on Hellblazer could be subtitled "The unintentional consequences of being John Constantine." To my pleasant surprise, after being assaulted by Demon Constantine, Gemma remains a supporting character in the title. To his credit, Milligan didn't just hop into the title, dispense rape and injustice to all the established characters and then toss them away for a lark. An unfavourable comparison could be made to the cheap way supporting characters are brutalized for a voyeuristic fix in Identity Crisis.

Speaking again of unintended consequences, our story starts with Epiphany and John waking up in the Thames. Their bed seems to have transported itself there while they were sleeping. A day in the life of John Constantine! The story is actually narrated by John's coat, which seems to have “awakened” after all the mystical jetsam it's been exposed too. The coat seems to exude an arrogant, amoral machismo, an extreme version of the air constantine uses to impress others.

Gemma is still dealing with the aftermath of her attack. She wants to turn to John for help, but she can't forgive him. And John, of course, refuses to admit he did anything wrong.

The stylized cartoony art accentuates the character's best characteristics, John's sneer and Gemma's crumbling innocence, for example. This same art previously gave us a rendering of a bird creature that was thoroughly nonthreatening, making the creature look less like an occult horror then something Superman would throw through a wall. This issue has an all human cast, so that concern is avoided.

On a side note, Epiphany's relationship with her father takes a weird turn when her father surprises her and John in the shower. He mentions that it's nothing he hasn't seen before when they were skinny dipping. I detect an incestous under tone here, something we might see explored in the future.

4/5

Sometimes I want to burn the comic industry to the ground

2011-10-01T10:58:00.000-07:00

There recently has been controversy on the internet about the portrayal of women in the new DCU. Like here. I haven't read either of the issues in question, but assuming the description given of them is accurate, I agree completely with this author. (disclaimer: I am a straight white male)

Comics can do so much better than masturbatory wish fulfillment. As a medium combining pictures and word, studies have shown that information can be understood better than either pictures or words separately. That's why Will Eisner created sequential art army manuals.

Comics also have no budget limitations. We can enjoy stories of cyborg ninja pirates fighting alien spaces whales in the 12th zombie dimension without having to wait for 3 years of production and pay for 3D glasses. The medium is limitless. Think about that. Limitless. Any story can be told.

Comics should be the pre-eminent entertainment medium. But it isn't. Why? Because so much of the industry is caught up in making fan base wish fulfillment. So much of it is caught up making, for lack of a better word, shit.

It's like the industry is dominated by 12 year olds who just discovered breasts and market their products to clones of themselves. This crap has to stop. It's misogynistic, immoral and just plain gross. We can do so much better, and the medium can do better. Comics should be soaring through the sky, not wallowing in a fetid sexual gutter.

Colonizing America

2011-09-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

Since world war 2, the neoliberal program has been pursued fervently by the Western powers, led by America. This economic hegemony is placed above all other concerns. Men are killed, in large quantities, to maintain these arrangements. The goal is to create a colony-empire relationship between the West and developing nations. The target country, under the rule of a sympathetic dictator usually, pursues a regime of business friendly laws, slashing social budgets, and increased control over the native population. Chile under Pinochet, Indonesia under Suharto and many others killed thousands, but were supported by America as long as they kept to the program. The list of countries under these economic regimes spans South and Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and the Pacific Rim.

One of the chief facilitators of the neo-liberal programs is the IMF and the World Bank. These financial organizations each have a controlling interest owned by the United States. They will give loans to developing nations if those nations undergo prescribed economic adjustments. The more loans they take out, the more loans they need. Similiar to NATO, which has abandonded any pretense of it's original anti-communist goals, the IMF and the World Bank were originally formed to help developing nations and stablize global economic markets. The goal of stabilizing markets has been discarded since the Bretton-Woods system was done away with by the Nixon adminstation. World Bank officials have repeatedly admitted that their stated goals of helping developing nations have failed consistently.

Under IMF austerity programs, countries are told to lower trade barriers and end subsidies. In a free world, these would be valid suggestions. In the real world, it's a different story. Third world farmers are forced to compete with heavily subsidized American agribusiness firms, like Archers Daniels Midland or Monsanto. The local farmers go out of business quickly. Instead of growing their own food, they can now find work in a Nike factory.

The perfect arrangement is for people who used to produce things for their own country, to instead work in a factory making shoelaces or soccer balls. In place of growing their own food, they are now forced to import food from the United States. They now import goods from the West and export piece work, the same arrangement that historical Empires used with their colonies.

All these changes have predictable effects wherever they are implemented. Poverty increases, malnutrion increases, life expectancy goes down, literacy goes down. Political violence increases and corporate profits sky rocket. Wealth spikes among the politically connected, while the overwhelming majority of the population find their standards of living drop precipitously. The economy will usually go under a series of escalating depressions, recessions and crisises. Either the cycle continues indefinetly into the future, or at some point the political anger is enough to change the regime. At that point, if it's feasibly to do so, the occupants will find themselves subject to violence from Western backed agents.

Starting with Ronald Reagan, these programs began to be applied to the Empire itself. In America, laws that could interfere with business were done away with. Social programs were cut and control over the population increased under the rubric of the War on Drugs. Unions were brought to their lowest levels, and continue to fall.

Since the Reagan adminstration, the predictable effects of neo-liberalism have been produced in America. Since the 80's, corporate profits and CEO pay have gone up sharply. Poverty has also increased. Emergency rooms report continued increases in child malnutrition. America has health care standards comparable to communist Cuba. American workers work longer hours, are more productive, get paid less and have less vacation time than comparable employees in Western Europe. Union membership continues to fall. America has now the largest per capita prison population in the world, and the increasing militarization of police departments leads to civilian deaths across the country. Since the 80's, America has continued to undergo increased economic shocks and catastrophes.

America now finds itself in the same economic position all other countries who follow the neo-liberal program eventually enter. Unlike other countries, the US has a controlling interest in the IMF and won't have to take humilating loans from the organization. On the other hand, the austerity measures will likely take the same route: slash social programs but keep the same structure.

These government positions: anti-union, pro-business, pro-government interference in the economy, as long as it protects profit, and pro-defense spending finds a precedent in a familiar enemy: fascist itally and Nazi germany. The things we see in America, bail outs, massive defense spending, anti-union laws and subsidies towards politically connected industries would all seem standard fare to citizens of any fascist nation.

The USA is now getting to a point where cheap manufactoring will navigate from China back to the poorest parts of the US. The United States has undertaken a bizarre program to try and turn the interior of the nation into a third world country to enrich the smallest fractions of it's political and business elite. The economy will likely crash again and again, the dollar will sink in value and inflation will rise, but all of these are just hiccups in comparison to the goals of this system. Even if the program hurls the US into another Depression, they very rich will stay very rich, and will emerge from whatever new economy is hobbled together, still very rich. Will they push the program too far and destroy even themselves? Will the political will ever materialize to change course? Impossible to say for certain.

Debt

2011-08-23T21:07:00.001-07:00

I supposed the other day what would happen to the deficit if the government simply cut all the programs and subsides that contribute to the violent and inequitable world we live in.

**2012 defense spending: 1 trillion**

cut by 75%

-$750 billion

**2008 Farm Bill $288 billion**

cut by 50%

-$144 billion

**War on Drugs approx $50 billion**

cut by 100%

-$50 billion

**Foregin Military and Economic Aid approx $12 billion**

cut by 100%

-$12 billion

**Federal Burea of Prisons approx $500 million**

cut by 50% or more by releasing non violent drug offenders and other petty criminals with no felonies or violent offenses

-$250 million

**Medicare Part D approx $70 billion a year**

cut by 100%

-$70 billion

**CIA budget approx $30 billion a year**

cut by 90%

-$27 billion

There are numerous things that could be cut, but that I can't find easy figures for. I came up with this in a couple minutes of internet research. It's possible the savings from the above cuts could be higher, I tried to be conservative whenever possible.

If a tax has to be implemented, the so called "Nader" tax on financial transactions of about 1/2 of a percent would raise a significant amount of revenue while having a small impact on world markets.

Revenue

1/2 of 1% tax on financial market transactions

+approx 350 billion

Total Swing- $1,403,250,000 or approx $1.4 trillion per year

aprox defecit $15 trillion

pay off deficit in approx 11 years

Of course, a person could cut any number of other things. Again, this is all very hasty and preliminary. To get these net savings, automatics increases in spending would have to be frozen, or made even with inflation.

The point is not how to magically fix the deficit (11 years is probably too long to take, although better than forever) but how much the US spends on things that are not only uneconomical, but morally unjustified.

Punisher MAX #15

2011-08-06T14:06:00.000-07:00

Aaron continues to explore previously unknown aspects of the Punisher’s life, with good results. In flashbacks to the period when Frank returns from his last tour of Vietnam but before he loses his family, we see Frank flirting with his dark side. Offered a hit by a mafia boss, Frank asks for the best sniper rifle they can give him and turns the sights on his new employer.

Nick Fury points out something to Frank that is obvious to the reader: that he’s not a normal person and he is going to get his family in trouble. Here, the fault for the death of his family seems to be situated on Frank’s shoulders. His family died because he refused to admit what he really is.

The strength of the last issue was the jumping between the two time periods in the Punisher’s life. In this issue, we don’t see much of the current timeline, it ends only slightly advanced from the last issue. We do meet, however, another of what Ennis has bestowed as Frank’s new legacy: the memorable one-off villain. This time, it’s an evil cop who works for the Kingpin.

Aaron has advanced the MAX version of the Punisher to a point where Frank’s family wasn’t his last chance to be normal, but people who were caught in the cross fire in his inevitable fall into darkness.

Daredevil #1

2011-07-31T16:38:00.001-07:00

Ever since Born Again, Daredevil has been the Job of the Marvel Universe. After his most recent life destroying events, Hornhead has been re-launced, for the second time, from #1. The first time this was done, Kevin Smith deliverd some half warmed leftovers scraped together from Born Again and Kraven's Last Hunt. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Mark Waid has started an exciting new era with a great first issue.

In his last ongoing series, Daredevil lost the love of his life to murder, had his secret indentity outed, got married, was sent to prison, got divorced and then was possessed by a demonic creature and nearly brought about the end of the world. What we have here is fresh start.

Waid's grasp of Daredevil's world is great and the art does an absolutely wonderful job of portraying, in a visual manner, the entirely non visual way Daredevil sees the world. We see Matt struggling with the public knowledge of his secret identity, we see him in court, we are reminded that despite his superpowers he does still have a disability. The pencils by Rivera show beautiful landscapes defined by Murdock's radar senses. At the end, Daredevil is surrounded by anti-radar chaff, blocking his radar senses. So often, Daredevil leaps and bounds like a horned Spider-Man, we forget he really does have a disability. For most people, being surrounded by confetti would be a minor nuisance. It leaves Daredevil helpless.

The back up feature gives us more artistic flourishes showing how Daredevil sees the world. It also addresses the past tragedies that have led the character to this point. Matt tells Foggy straight out, he's decided to live in denial. Which will end in tragedy, of course, it always does. But I'm excited to see how.

5/5

Siege

2011-07-07T11:48:00.000-07:00

At this point I'm two or three events behind with Marvel. In fact, the last event I followed dutifully was Final Crisis, owing to Grant Morrison being the main writer.

Out of curiosity I decided to read Siege. Siege is a four issue mini-series with at least three times that many tie-ins. The tie-ins I read are Dark Avengers #25, the Sentry one shot, and maybe one or two others.

Bluntly put, Siege is a pointless mess. Norman Osborn, head of H.A.M.M.E.R. and the Dark Avengers, decides to invade Asgard. Asgard is now situated in the American Midwest, for reasons I'm not entirely clear on. Norman's stated motive is that having Asgard on Earth is un-natural and dangerous, which is probably true. Osborn's ultimate goals aren't entirely clear, though. Does he just want to level the place and kill all the gods? Or take it over?

Either way, Loki is seen manipulating him into acting. Does that make Osborn a tragic hero? An anti-villain who means well? A power hungry lunatic? Or just some poor sap being played like a fiddle by Loki? The story doesn't really specify. And what is Loki's motive? Presumably taking over Asgard, but again the text doesn't specify.

After the president denies his first request to attack Asgard, Loki tells Osborn he needs a galvanizing incident to turn public opinion , and thus the president, to his side. This is exactly how Civil War started, as Loki helpfully reminds any readers who may have forgotten this. The president remains steadfast after Osborn's manufactored event, however. Osborn basically says "Fuck it," and attacks Asgard anyway, rendering the entire plot point irrelevant.

Ares is wary of Osborn and doesn't want to join the assault. Osborn tells him Loki has taken over Asgard and Ares, who didn't trust him 30 seconds ago, takes Osborn completely at his word on this and takes his place leading Osborn's army.

The battle starts as Osborn throws an army of super villains at Asgard. Ares realizes he's been tricked about two minutes in, and the Sentry rips him in half. Then Captain America counter attacks with an army of super heroes. The bad guys are defeated and the Sentry loses control and kills Loki. That's about the whole plot, basically some text written to string together the splash pages showing every possible character diving into the fray.

The Sentry has finally succumbed to the Void, his evil half, and in the end of issue #4 Thor kills him to stop that threat. That's pretty much it. The only point of interest is the final fate of the Sentry, a Miracleman clone created by Paul Jenkins.

Remind me in the future to not break my fast of crossover events.

Hellblazer #280

2011-06-23T20:11:00.001-07:00

Gemma has always been a survivor in Hellblazer, managing to avoid the grisly fate of many of Constantine’s other supporting characters, like her father, grandfather and mother. She has always straddled the line between normal person and occult mage, a female Constantine if John hadn’t been quite so screwed up.

Milligan has pushed her over the edge and the results are mostly promising.

Gemma attended John’s wedding, and was sexually assaulted by Demon Constantine. This is classic John. He let Demon Constantine loose as a decoy for himself, knowing Nergal would be gunning for him at his wedding. And in protecting himself, he wasn’t very concerned about letting an evil version of himself run around on Earth for a short period of time. Something bad always happens, and this time it happend to Gemma.

Hellblazer #280 is probably one of the only issues narrated entirely by someone other than John, and Gemma’s internal struggle concerns whether she will become a “Constantine” or stay a normal person.

Milligan does a good job with this monologue, especially considering we already know the outcome. She still seems to care for John, even though she believes he abused her. Notice how she still takes his advice about not making deals with creatures, even when it’s a creature she summoned and is ostensibly in control of. Although at the end, she proclaims she is now Gemma Masters, what she has done is classic Constantine. She wanted revenge, and didn’t consider any of the possible consequences.

My one concern is the conclusion of this storyline. “It was all a big mis-understanding!” seems like a poor conclusion to a story of sexual abuse and attempted murder.

And a part of me is afraid that Gemma will finally bite the dust, leaving Chas the only surviving member of John’s original cast.

The art is servicable, a halfway point between cartoony and the more realistic art we usually see on the title. The bird monster looks unthreatening, but Gemma is wonderfully drawn with her black mascara running down her face. Kudos are deserved to both writer and artist for showing restraint when referencing Gemma’s assault.

This being a Vertigo title we could have seen a graphic depiction of John raping his neice. Thankfully, such shock value was avoided. Overall, Milligan’s run has been good, but not great, and this issue falls pretty squarely into that description.

Punisher MAX #14

2011-06-22T20:48:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, a writer and a character are matched with such precision that the work defines that character permamently. Examples would be Frank Miller writing Daredevil, Alan Moore writing Swamp Thing, and most recently, Garth Ennis writing the Punisher.

Several writers have tried the Punisher MAX comic since Ennis left and so far nobody has been able to move out of Ennis’ shadow. If anyone can make Punisher MAX their own, in the wake of Ennis’ historic run, it’s Jason Aaron.

His first storyline took a bold step to officialy remove the MAX stories from standard Marvel continuity by creating a new backstory, and a new version, of the Kingpin. This first storyline seemed to blend elements of Ennis’ Marvel Knights run on the character with the visceral carnage of the MAX run. The Mennonite assassin was reminiscent of the kind of villain Ennis was so great at creating. The second storyline created a MAX version of Bullseye. Again, Aaron seem to aping Ennis. The stories were good. After all, a poor man’s Garth Ennis can still be worth reading. Steve Dillon’s art is better than his original work on the Marvel Knights run, as his people don’t all seem to have the same facial features, a complaint I sometimes have with Dillon’s art.

It’s in the this third storyline that Aaron is making the Punisher is own. The storyline cuts back and forth between Castle in prison, feeling the weight of his age, and the time after he returned from Veitnam, but before he became the Punisher. Both of these storylines give us glimpses of Frank Castle we rarely see. In prison we see him weighed down with age and regret, and truly vulnerable. In Ennis’ run Frank could seem like a superhuman killing machine. Alone, weak and surrounded by vicious enemies, Frank seems more human. In the flashbacks we see a part of the Punisher that no one (to my knowledge) has ever told before. Here, Frank has come home from Vietnam and has, for all intents and purposes, turned into the Punisher. Only he wants to pretend that he is a normal person again.

At his work he injures a foreman harassing a female coworker, but backs down when he is tempted to kill the man. Instead he moves to a different job.

Whenever he is presented with an oppurtinity to revel in what he has become, he flees. His wife cries because she knows he hasn’t really come home from the war. It’s amazing no one has explored this area of his life before. Punisher: Born showed us Frank going over the edge, but there’s still a gap from then until his family actually dies.

I eagerly wait to see Aaron’s frailer, more human Punisher deal with his tormentors in prison while the mechanical and dark Frank Castle struggles to deny his true self.

Dillon’s art is well known, especially on the Punisher. As usual, the art is simple, there aren’t a lot of shadows or complex actions. Dillon’s art was better suited to the Marvel Knights version of the character, but works in the MAX version well enough. I can’t help but prefer other past MAX artists, however, like Leonardo Manco, for example.

Overall, Aaron and Dillon seem like the first team capable of averting the inevitable collapse of the character after Ennis left, while still moving into new directions.

Occupation Tourism

2011-06-20T23:11:00.000-07:00

There is a tourism industry, for people, largely from the Western First World to tour the occupied West Bank. The ostensible purpose, other than making money, is to cultivate positive press for the settlements there. The article quotes a number of participants in this industry, as well as tourists, praising the entire project. However, even the rudimentary re-statement of the facts by the news article dashes all their assertions apart.

"We are not monsters," Ilana Shimon told a clutch of tourists this week, leading them through Havat Gilad, a small settlement outpost built without Israeli government authorization.

"I'm against violence. All we want is to sit on our land and we want you to be our ambassadors," Shimon told her visitors near her home in Havat Gilad, where she lives with 30 other families, making up about 250 people, most of them children.
The quoted person claims to be "against violence", and yet the settlements exist only due to war. As the article explains:

About 300,000 Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in a 1967 war and home to 2.5 million Palestinians. The World Court has ruled the settlements illegal.

Occupied land is, by definition, land taken and maintained by military force. International law, and common morality, clearly state that territory seized during war is not legitimate. And even though the quoted settler is against violence, and I'm sure he is a perfectly nice person, his choice to live in the militarily occupied West Bank is a voluntary participation in an illegal, and by defintion, violent enterprise.

The tour took the group through several small settlements, some of them built without official permission by settlers who see themselves as pioneers exercising their claim to a Biblical birthright to the land.

How can anyone exercise a "biblical birthright" to land occupied by someone else? To achieve such a birthright requires the removal, or disenfranchisement, of the people who are already there. Why should the current inhabitants respect someone else's religious claim? It's their religion, after all, and not the current inhabitants. The same logic was used by the conquistadors, who politely informed the Natives of South America that the Pope had given their lands to Spain.

Daniel Lippert said he and his wife come to Israel two or three times a year, but this was their first visit to the West Bank. "We donated money to Havat Gilad last year because it is the right thing to do," Daniel said. "God promised the land to the Jews. The Palestinians should become Israeli citizens or leave."

God promised the West Bank to the Jews, we are told. Such a simple explanation. But why did God not announce this promise to all, surely a great deal of confusion could have been avoided. And where is the evidence of this? In a religious book, of course. I could write a religious book that Portugal is promised to the Daoists or Russia to the Rastafarians, and the only rational differences between our claims would be the number of people who believed each.

"There is no other explanation to our success other than divine providence," Ben Saadon said. "We didn't come here to make a business profit, we came here for the love of the land and as the years go by we see God is rewarding us."

Again, the same logic, applied universally leads to absurdities. There is no other explanation for the success of the CEOs of the financial giants who crashed the world economy, and were protected by government largess, than God favors them.

There is no other possible explanation for wealthy Communist bureaucrats in China or child millionaires enriched by their parent's stock options then God! Clearly God is rewarding all those who are successful, and by extension, punishing all who are desolate.

Thus, the entire occupation is a continuous reward by God onto the settlers and a punishment on the Palestinians. Reversing the religions and areas involved could bring to mind all sorts of different historical atrocities, but people seem to be able to convince themselves that in this case, all the absurdities people usually say are actually true. It wasn't true when everyone else throughout history claimed it was their right to occupy such and such or land, that God favored their violent endeavors, but it's correct this time. Even in this fairly benign Reuters piece, the impossible logic of imperialism is exposed.

Full Relaunch List

2011-06-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

DC has now released the full relaunch list, and most of it looks like the same old crap with new numbering. The only things that look interesting, in my opinion are:

Batwoman finally getting released. JH Williams III is a god.

Wonder Woman by Azzarello.

Justice League Dark by Peter Milligan. Milligan writing Shade and Constantine? Worth a shot.

OMAC, for the Kirby nostalgia factor.

Action Comics by Grant Morrison. Morrison's All-Star Superman is one of the best superman stories ever.

Swamp Thing. I love Swamp Thing and Scott Snyder has a lot of positive buzz.

Frankenstein Agent of SHADE. Jeff Lemire's Sweet Tooth is one of the best ongoings right now and Morrison's Frankenstein is an interesting enough character to look into it.

That's seven out of 52 I plan on picking up. There's a few I have some interest in (Animal Man by Jeff Lemire, Red Lantern Corps by Peter Milligan) that I might pick up if they get good buzz. We'll see what happens. Cheers.

Flashpoint!

2011-06-06T09:45:00.000-07:00

I remember reading an interview with Alan Moore where he stated that comic companies will try anything to bring in sales except have good writers and good artists. Flashpoint is a perfect example of this.

Flashpoint is DC's new event, which follows Brightest Day (which followed Blackest Night), and it has over 40 tie in issues. Trying to come up with the biggest marketing blitz in comics history apparently, DC has also decided to cancel all but two of their ongoing series (Green Lantern and Batman Inc are spared) and launch 52 (!) new ongoing series at issue #1. Re-launching a series from #1 with a new creative team isn't new, but nobody's ever done it for an entire line. The more important question to ask, however, is whether any of this will be worth reading. And if the stories will be good, why the re-numbering gimmick?

Not all of the new series have been announced, but a few sound promising. Grant Morrison writing Superman and Brian Azzaerrelo writing Wonder Woman for example. But again, these series would be good regardless of whether they were numbeed #1 or not.

Within three years, most of these new series will probably be cancelled and the old standbys (Action Comics, Detective Comics, etc) will have returned to their original numbering. How much continuity will be altered remains to be seen. Altering continuity is fine if it's in the interest of a good story, but if it's done at the behest of crass editorial policy (Younger! Hipper!) then it tends not to last and be badly received.

DC is trying awfully hard, but so far they haven't gotten me interested enough to buy a single issue of Flashpoint.

Mice Templar #4

2011-05-22T12:43:00.000-07:00

Like many young adults, I consumed the Redwall series of books by Brian Jacques. The stories took place in a quasi medieval setting and featured mice, otters and other critters fighting wars against hordes of rats and other nefarious creatures.

Based on those fond memories, and on the cute title, I bought The Mice Templar #4 on a whim.

I love the art. It manages to be both cartoony and serious at the same time. Floppy eared mice fight to the death and discuss honor and religion. I was a bit lost on the plot, though. Jumping on at this point means I don't know much of what is going on. I'm going to try and follow this one though.

Batman Inc #6

2011-05-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

I love Grant Morrison's run on Batman. It's one of the best stories by a single author on a company owned property in a long time. And as much as I want to love every single issue of Batman Inc, the sixth issue feels like a holding pattern.

We just finished getting introduced to Dr. Daedalus, meeting our main cast and learning a bit about the new enemy, Leviathan in the last five issues. This feels like a bridge issue. A pause while the action starts up again in number seven.

Not that it is bad. The art is great, reminiscent of Frank Quitely's art on Batman and Robin. Cassie is back and in action in Hong Kong. Red Robin joins the Outsiders. And Batman starts assembling his master plan. The reader just doesn't get to know what the plan is. And again, in the overall scheme of things, that's okay. All of Morrison's reveals so far have been great. But it feels like a bridge issue.

If this were any other comic, I would have thought the Average Joes were a cute addition. I would have liked seeing Batman trolling people on an Internet message board. And those are nice touches, but not enough to carry a whole issue.

Morrison has sometimes been accused of writing "for the trade." Having issues that only seem great when you read the whole story line together. Batman Inc #6 suffers from a bit of this. It's still enjoyable, but probably the weakest issue so far of Batman Inc. If you have been following Batman Inc steadily, then by all means pick it up. If you're looking for a jumping on point though, this isn't it.

Free Comic Book Day #3

2011-05-21T20:44:00.001-07:00

Amazing Spider Man- I actually got a couple laughs out of this. The art is fresh and although I have no idea where Spider-Man's current continuity is supposed to be at I enjoyed it. And it has Shang-Chi! Where has that guy been?

Kung-Fu Panda- Cute story, but I didn't really find it funny.

Richie Rich- Lame, no real adult appeal.

Baltimore- Mignola's art is great as always. Vampires feel a bit played out but seeing the story from a civilian's perspective, instead of the hunter, made it interesting. I would pick this up.

Green Lantern Secret Origins: A reprint of a story I've read before, that wasn't that good the first time. Yawn.

Flashpoint: A crossover starring Barry Allen. Something about a messed up timeline. Presumably the end will involve the restoration of the canon timeline. Double yawn.

The Tick: Who doesn't love the Tick? I should really pick up a trade or two of the Tick.

Captain America and Thor: An all ages Cap/Thor book. Shameless summer movie tie in? Odds point to yes.

Super-Dinosaur- This was pretty awesome.

Daredevil Reborn #4

2011-05-18T20:29:00.001-07:00

Andy Diggle burnt Matt Murdock's life to the ground in Shadowland, and now he wraps up the four issue mini-series meant to transition the character into a new ongoing series. Daredevil Reborn #4 intentionally parallels Frank Miller's origin story in Man Without Fear. Matt dons a block costume and a wields a baton, using it to deflect an enemies bullet at the climax of the story. It is pretty undeniable that Miller's influence is more stark than probably any other writer's take on a character they didn't create themselves, and most Daredevil fiction always ends up aping Miller at some point.

The standard arc for poor Murdock, post Born Again, is for the writer to torture him relentlessly, drive him to the brink of madness and let him crawl on his fingernails back to a functioning human being. Kevin Smith copied it studiously to ill results in Guardian Devil, Bendis inverted it a bit by having Murdock declare himself Kingpin in his moment of rage, and Brubaker broke his marriage up to pitch him into a massive depression. Andy Diggle, deciding that our intrepid hero hadn't suffered enough, turned him evil, had him get possessed by a demon and utterly ruined his life. At the end of Shadowland, Murdock packs his bags and leaves Hell's Kitchen in disgrace.

Throughout Reborn, the reader keeps waiting for something climatic and life affirming to happen. Matt confronts some backwoods arms dealers and only when he meets their super powered crime boss, Calavera does the story start to show potential. Striking an iconic pose as a white skinned dealer of evil, Calavera forces Matt to confront his inner demons, shoots him in the head and pushes him off of a cliff. That's where issue four opens up.

Matt has inexplicably survived. He's a superhero so we knew he was going to survive. The interesting part of the scenario is trying to figure out how Matt will get out of this. The answer remains a mystery. Matt pulls himself out of a river, bleeding from his head, and wonders how he is still alive. So does the reader. Is this the "rebirth" we've been waiting for? Mysterious is one thing, but this feels lazy.

Calavera has the power to bring out the darkness in people's souls. His use of this power on Matt lasts only a single panel. Murdock easily defeats his enemies and is back in Foggy's apartment by the end, promising that they will get their practice back, presumably bringing everything back to the status quo.

The whole series was disappointing, and the last issue lands with a wet thud.

Hal Boredom

2011-05-17T17:24:00.000-07:00

Hal Jordan is played by Ryan Reynolds in the Green Lantern movie, and there is a new set of Green Lantern animated shorts coming out featuring him prominently. I, for one, find Hal Jordan to be an insufferably boring character. I read all of Geoff Johns' run on Green Lantern up through the end of Blackest Night before finally realizing that nothing interesting about the title had anything to do with Jordan.

Having never read the original John Broome stories, I couldn't say whether they are sublimely awesome or not. Maybe they are are work of art comporable to the 7 Seven Wonders of the World.

What I have read leaves me yawning enthusiastically. Jordan is a courageous hero who plays by his own rules and always gets the girl. He never seems to suffer any personal or emotional trauma. In other words, he is the same as every character in every action movie and pretty much every superhero that was never re-tooled for the Modern Age.

DC seems to struggle with what to do with Jordan, who has a paradoxical combination of ultimate power and a total lack of personality. Dennis O'Neil teamed him up with Green Arrow quite extensively, Jordan playing the straight man to Green Arrow's radicalism. O'Neil also created John Stewart, intended to be Jordan's back up in the Corps.

Deciding that a Green Lantern with recognizable character traits would appeal to a younger audience, DC had Hal try and blow up the universe, murdering the entirety of the Green Lantern Corps in the process. Kyle Rayner stepped in to the black and green spandex.

In another failed attempt to make Jordan interesting, he became the new Spectre, on a mission of redemption after trying to kill everyone and become God. This petered out a little after two years.

Geoff Johns decided that the world need Hal again, because straight white men with type A personalities were becoming a rare commodity in the comics industry. It turns out murdering all of his comrades and trying to erase existence only happened because he was possessed by an evil space entity. Apparently, someone forget to tell God, who let him become the Spectre to redeem himself. Or maybe God thought that was funny, Hal redeeming himself for things that weren't his fault.

As all characters and situations in continuity must revert to some arbitrarily chosen point in the status quo, so too did Green Lantern. Hal came back to life, was forgiven by everyone, become a fighter pilot again and started dating attractive women without missing a beat.

So it goes in the comics industry.

Free Comic Book Day #2: Witches and Wizards

2011-05-16T18:22:00.000-07:00

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up Witches and Wizards. It appears to be an anime, written by some one named James Patterson, who apparently writes young adult. It's drawn and styled like mange, but created to read left to right. The plot seems to involve Nazis hunting down magic users, and our heroes are a family of witches targeted by the "New Order".

The purpose of the free preview is to get a person to buy more of that series. I don't plan on checking this one out, although I didn't have any real problem with it. It just seemed very conventional.

Free Comic Book Day #1: The Darkness

2011-05-15T20:22:00.000-07:00

Never read any of the Darkness before, though I am vaguely aware of the concept. The Darkness free preview was fairly interesting. My impressions from afar of the Darkness was a humorless 90's "demons, guns and tits" type of character. That feeling was entirely dispelled, but I find myself tempted to buy a trade or two and see if further interest develops.

Jennifer Blood

2011-05-09T21:03:00.000-07:00

After having read the first three issues of Jennifer Blood, I am disappointed to report it as thoroughly second tier Ennis work. The concept comes across as a one joke premise, a joke we already get after the first page of the first issue. While reading Jennifer Blood, I can't help but imagine the story as a series of re-tooled Punisher scripts.

The "woman we all thought was dead" concept reminds of the Punisher: Widowmaker storyline. The disembowelment by automobile brings to mind the Punisher disemboweling a gangster in The Slavers. The villains, mobsters from the "Old Country" remind again, of the Slavers and every other Punisher story. While doing reconnaissance, she accidentally catches a disgusting display of public sex between an old man and his porn star wife. The Punisher ruefully admits he wishes he hadn't seen "the money shot" while spying on a gangster cheating with his boss's girlfriend in the MAX series. Drowning her enemies aboard their yacht brings to mind the Punisher sinking the cruise ship full of evil shareholders in Barracuda.

The harmless doap of a husband recalls Soap from the Marvel Knights run, and Jennifer imagining how she could kill the philandering husband has shades of Frank Castle attacking a man who left his wife in In the Beginning. And so it goes. Some interesting threads seem in the work. Just what did happen to her? Will the no good husband across the street try to blackmail her? But ultimately it feels like Ennis has done this material before, and better, in every imaginable configuration in his lengthy run on the Punisher.

Deus Ex

2011-05-08T20:20:00.001-07:00

Deus Ex was recently listed as the best game of all time by PC Gamer. What makes it so great? Part of it is the interactivity. Each level gives oppurtunities for stealth, action, or some combination of the two. Do I sneak through the air vents? Stun my enemies unconscious? Or just rush in and aim for the head? A door is locked. Do I blow it up with explosives, or pick the lock? A computer... do I hack it or find the log in?

A player could complete each level with speed if desired, or instead spend hours exploring every nook and cranny. But what really seperates Deus Ex from other great games is the actual content of it. Most video games are meaningless. At the end of the day, they are ultimately about nothing. Deus Ex is different.

The player is presented with a world that has the same problems as ours, only exagerated. A ruling elite, a violent underclass, terrorism, national security. The ending of the game allows one to make a choice. Do I compromise with the system and try to improve it from within? Should I conquer the system and force peace and prosperity with my gentle, yet iron, hand? Or blow it all to hell, destroying civilization but ensuring human freedom?

I natually chose the latter, but the beauty of the game's three endings is each choice has it's ups and downs. Joining the system, as your in game brother warns you, will lead to a return of "20th Century capitalism" a system of monied elites protected by the tax code and the like. But it is the safest option. You know what will happen.

Installing a worldwide ruler is a scary, off putting idea. And yet, if I were that ruler, couldn't I make it work? And preserving human freedom by destroying civilization en masse sounds good, but would likely cause death and suffering on a massive scale in the short term.

If our main moral principle is to do no harm, the "Anarchist Ending" is out. Too many people would be inevitably hurt. Trying to do the most good for the most people would likely lead us to the benevolent dictator route, as most people suffer deprivation and worse under "20th century capitalism". Respect for autonomy means we would have to refuse to make a choice, because all options involve affecting others without their permission.

But which is the just option? An argument could be made for each ending. And that is an amazing thing for a video game.

Prospects

2011-05-08T19:31:00.000-07:00

Currently Reading: Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

Just Finished Reading: Year 501: The Conquest Continues by Noam Chomsky

Watching: Mushi-shi

Mad Men Season 4

Comics I'm Following:

Hellblazer

Batman Inc.

Daredevil: Reborn

Game: Jade Empire

Just Finished Playing: Deus Ex

Collecting:
Legend of the Burning Sands CCG

Goldstein is dead

2011-05-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

On Sunday, U.S. special forces stormed a compound in Pakistan where bin Laden was staying. Bin Laden and several of his cohorts went down fighting, and the body was washed and buried at sea, apparently Muslim custom for a corpse that cannot be received by family.

Celebrations erupted around America, as people crowded the front of the White House and set off fireworks. Where does this leave us?

Osama was obviously a rat fucker of the highest order. The terrorist attack on 9/11 killed 2,750 people, including his various bombings and the thousands of civilians massacred by the bin Laden headed 055 Brigade after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan, the total death toll for this one man's endeavours could approach 10,000.

The unfortunate part of his death is it won't change much. Al Queada was loosely organized, using a sort of franchise model. Bin Laden was largely a symbolic leader and his death is a symbolic victory only. His goal was to draw America into a larger world conflict, get new recruits and make us spend huge amounts of money to fight against hastily trained fanatics with old AK-47s.

Considering the tens of billions, if not hundreds of billions, spent in the war in Afghanistan, the 15-30,000 dead civilians and the ten years of growing terrorist activity it took to catch him, bin Laden may be having the last laugh in Hell. The US military complex and American Nationalists play right into the hands of bin Laden and the people like him.

Kryptonians steal our jobs

2011-05-01T21:08:00.000-07:00

In a recent issue of Action Comics, Superman threatens to renounce his US citizen ship. I won't comment on the story in any way, I don't follow Superman very closely and don't plan to do so in the near future. The interesting part for me is the reaction by American nationalists. Apparently, people who otherwise have no interest in comic books or Superman in general find the idea absurd.

From the article: "Does he believe in British interventionism or Swiss neutrality?" Last wrote. "You see where I'm going with this: If Superman doesn't believe in America, then he doesn't believe in anything."

Nationalists seem to ascribe to a curious and unspoken notion that popular culture owes some kind of allegiance to the nation it originates from. That Superman, who is an alien, would not be a diligent representation of American values (whatever those are) seems to break some kind of unwritten agreement. Of course, Superman must be a icon of America's benevolence! He is after all, written by Americans and published in America. That someone could write a story of an alien super being with god like powers, created by two Jewish writers, one from Canada and one from America, without having him bow obediently to the flag is an apparent violation of cultural loyalty.

Nationalist writers can be pictured scouring fiction for any deviances from the party line, so as to publicize and denounce things they otherwise don't care about. Not entirely dissimilar, perhaps, in attitude from Soviet censors.

Another example would be blog posts and message board discussion of Wonder Woman's costume change. She has lost her star and stripes themed swimsuit for a pair of pants and a leather jacket. Again, that a character who is culturally Greek and from a fictional matriarchal utopia should stop dressing like a Miss America contestant is seen as a grave affront.

I can't think of any reasons for those who don't read comics to get outraged by such things other than a thin skinned cultural sensibility that all things must ultimately came second to America, the nation, the state, the culture or whatever institution the term "America" is considered synonymous with. This sensibility is based in deluded nationalism and is entirely without merit.

Moto Sahir

2011-04-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

(homebrew new path for Legend of the Five Rings pen and paper role playing game)

Moto Sahir (Unicorn) (Shugenja)

There are some few Unicorn shugenja whose ancestry owes more to the lands beyond Rokugan than the Empire itself. The blood of djinn and demons runs in their veins, giving them the ability to command the elements in such a way that seems bizarre and even blasphemous to normal shugenja. The number of such individuals has increased slightly since the Moto joined the Unicorn clan. When casting magic in such a fashion, the Sahir must use care to avoid drawing scrutiny from samurai outside the Unicorn clan, traditional shugenja may even accuse the character of heresy.

Technique Rank: 1

Path of Entry: None. This is an entry level path

Path of Egress: Iuchi or Horiuchi Shugenja 1

Benefit: +1 Willpower

Skills: Horsemanship, Lore (Burning Sands), Meditation, Spellcraft, Theology, any one Skill

Honor: 1.0

Outfit: wakizashi, gaijin riding horse, kimono and sandals, scroll satchel and traveling pack, 5 koku

Technique: The Blood of Djinn

The Moto Sahir's unique outlook on magic allows them feats other shugenja would envy. You have no Elemental Affinity or Deficiency. You may choose to cast any spell of Mastery Level 3 or lower (4 or lower of your Elemental Affinity) in one round without the need for raises to reduce casting time. In fact, you can not make raises of any kind when casting a spell in this manner, although you may use any Free Raises or other benefits that are applicable.

Casting a spell in such a manner does not require any scrolls or other objects. Using a scroll, or having an innate ability, provides no additional benefit.

Affinity/Deficiency: none

Feudalism Chic

2011-03-31T11:25:00.000-07:00

The 2003 Tom Cruise film The Last Samurai shares a title with a Japanese film from 1977 directed by Kenji Misumi. The titular coincidence is due to the similar subject matter: both films deal with the end of the samurai era following the Meiji Restoration.

In the 2003 film, directed by Edward Zwick, the American protagonist (Nathan Algren) travels to Japan and is enlisted as an advisor to the Imperial government. They require his help to destroy the last hold outs of the old ways, who do not wish to surrender their traditional lifestyles. They "no longer dishonor themselves with the use of firearms," he is told.

The main character ends up joining the samurai and fighting alongside them. We are to believe their cause is noble and pure. In fact, the samurai were noblemen in a strict feudal system who lived off of a stipend from the rulers. The overwhelming majority of the population did the labor required for society to function and enjoyed little privileges in return. The samurai heroes apparently want to hold onto this system, to keep their government stipend and all expenses paid living arrangements. Given solely the context of the film, the samurai are unequivocally the bad guys.

The Japanese film of the same name, although dealing with the same time period, is much more nuanced. The films's title character, Sugi, starts out seemingly as the standard samurai hero, a stoic, lone wolf killing machine. Throughout the film he is humanized more and more, for example we learn of a childhood suicide attempt, his father/son like relationship with his sensei and so on. This happens with the Meiji Restoration as it's backdrop. When the Shogun's forces are defeated, Sugi's sensei, killed in the struggle, makes him promise to not avenge his death.

The film's other characters, all connected to Sugi with one night of drinking in which they bonded, remain attached to one faction or another and refuse to quit fighting.

Misumi's Last Samurai shows the samurai for what they were, a violent pre-modern culture. It also clearly illustrates that the conflicts of the time period, in contrast to the impression the 2003 films gives, owed just as much to the struggle between the Tokugawa Shogunate (as well as it's holdouts) and the Imperial Government, than modernism versus tradition.

So, why are modern people fascinated with pre-modern warrior cultures? From the Spartans in 300, the samurai in The Last Samurai to the Vikings of Scandinavia, warrior cultures make for great fiction. But there is more to it than that. Hitler claimed that Sparta was the ideal state. In Sparta, after all, a pampered warrior class went about conquering and warring on it's neighbors while the labor to make society function was done by a massive slave population. Sparta had a slave to free citizen ration of 10 to 1. Nazi Germany infamously used millions of slaves to support it's war machine, which they sent out in self defense of Western Civilization from Jewish Bolshevism.

Taking the movie 300 as an example, the Spartans ask their fellow Greeks what their professions are. They list mundane jobs in Ancient Greece. The Spartans reply that they are soldiers. The reason so many Spartans are free to devote themselves fully to studying war is because all the labor in their city-state is done by slaves. The Persian Empire is arguably more free than Sparta, so ultimately the war comes down to Western Civilization versus Eastern Civilization, not free versus oppressive societies. Seeing themselves as defenders of Western Civilization is common verbiage among far right groups and fascists in Europe and America.

It's not a coincidence that Norwegian fascists and the Imperial Japanese steeped themselves in Viking and Samurai verbiage. Nationalist groups, including the far right and fascists, subscribe to a pre-modern world view where doing good is helping the nation and doing bad is helping the nation's enemies. And of course adoration of soldiers and war is common among nationalist, far right and fascist groups as well. Taken together, these pre-modern warrior cultures are tailor made to provide these deplorable groups with inspiration.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with enjoying fiction from these time periods. In fact, many samurai movies are actually anti-samurai, where the characters are social outcasts challenging the strict hierarchy of the era. Compare the samurai, fighting for tradition over modernism, from Zwick's Last Samurai to Zatoichi, the star of the longest running film series of all time. Zatoichi, although a sword wielding warrior, is not even a samurai. As a blind peasant he falls near the bottom of the established order. His opponents are often corrupt samurai and yakuza preying on the lower classes. "There is nothing worse than a samurai," Zatoichi remarks in one of his many films.

What a person should ponder when seeing celebrations of these violent cultures is who is creating this? What are they trying to say? What is invested in seeing these people as heroes? Again I'm not subscribing ulterior motives to Zwick's Last Samurai or 300, only attempting to point out where the lines of thought they bring can lead people. The truth is, in history there are few heroes, and often those attempting to make heroes out of villains reveal themselves as modern day villains.

Autistic History

2011-03-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

People on the autistic spectrum often have trouble distinguishing people's intentions. Apparently, John Stossel, Fox News' libertarian on retainer, has an autistic view of history. On Fox and Friends he made the rather dubious claim that no one has been helped more by the government than the American Indian. His point was that government aid damages people and communities and that Indian reservations today are not well off.

Stossel seems to believe that these programs and efforts aimed at Indian reservations are designed to help the Indians, a fundamental misunderstanding. Stossel also claims that this unprecedented help has been continuing for the last "200 years". 200 years ago from this year would be 1811, and a cursory understanding of American History would place the Plains Wars, at the very least, in the post-Civil War era. The infamous Wounded Knee massacre happened in 1890 and the government only legalized Indian religious practices in the 1960's. As recently as a few years ago an Indian reservation was taken by the government for unpaid taxes.

Stossel's misunderstanding is due to the Randian view of welfare programs as the actions of do gooder liberals who just don't know any better. In truth, welfare, in the case of the Indians, was created specifically to foster a dependent relationship with the federal government. Stossel's strange viewpoint actually excuses the federal government. It's not that the government was trying to impoverish and destroy Indian communities, he apparently believes the government honestly wanted to help but couldn't figure out how to do so.

Anarchists for Imperalism

2011-03-22T20:23:00.000-07:00

I am a staunch anti-imperalist. And yet I find myself a little torn at the American/French/English intervention in Libya. Speaking from an American perspective, the intervention was a violation of the War Powers Act, which in and of itself is probably unconstitutional. So legally, it was wrong.

The US has a tremendous deficit, and it will probably end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars to fight a third war. Financially, it was wrong. Morally, the US has ignored human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Yemen and various other nations. Granted, the fighting in Libya right now is worse than those other countries, but to completely ignore the other situations shows a lack of concern for human rights (the supposed motive).

So what is the US's interest in Libya? After initially criticizing Kaddafi, the Libyan leader (who looks like an alien) vowed to never sell oil to the west again. Bad move on his part. The US must figure if the rebels win, their support will buy them access to the Libyan oil fields again.

Still, with all of that said, I find myself glad that the Libyan rebels weren't crushed and slaughtered by Kaddafi, who was even hiring mercenaries from other countries. And it would certainly be a good thing if Kaddafi was sent to the ash bin of history, or held trial for his crimes.

But will this turn out good? Will the intervention inflame the situation and lead to more loss of life? It's hard to say. I am cautiously optimistic.

Adapation Anxiety

2011-03-21T09:00:00.000-07:00

If there is a medium reknowned for it's failures in adaptation it would have to be videogames. Both adaptation of movies and comics into videogames and videogames turned into movies and comics tend to be low quality. Recently a six issue series started fromDC adapting the Deus Ex franchise into a comic.

Deus Ex is usually listed among the best PC games of all time, and justifiably so. The gamecombined a deep conspiracy laden plot inspired by the X-Files with an astonishing amount of first person interaction. There was a sequel, Deus Ex Invisible War, that felt more like a lackluster expansion pack and then the franchise went into hibernation. A new sequel, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, is due out in August. The new game has a completely different design team, but so far impressions have been good.

It was with great trepidation, driven by fond memories of the original game, that I picked up Deus Ex Human Revolution #2. What I found was surprisingly good. The art was passable without being notable. The plot concerned Bio-Med companies competing with each other and trying to avoid regulation, while being targeted by a terrorst group. Meanwhile, a group called The Humanity Front is trying to rally public opinion against the human modifications industry. The main character is a cyborg, rebuilt after being mortally wounded, who works for the security department of Seriff Industries.
Who is behind the terrorist attack? The Humanity Front? A business competitor? I, to great surprise, was interested enough to try another issue or two.

Is the Deus Ex franchise being revived? Here's hoping.

Unicorn Doomseeker

2011-03-20T18:25:00.000-07:00

(Advanced School for Legend of the Five Rings pen and paper roleplaying game)

Doomseeker (Shugenja) (Unicorn Clan)

The Doomseeker is a strange and powerful tradition known only to certain members of the Unicorn clan. The origins of the Doomseeker are twisted and macabre: the school is founded on techniques created by Asahina Yajinden, imparted to the Ki-Rin when they wandered through the Burning Sands, as part of a long term plot to have his master Iuchiban killed. Only two people are known to ever mastered these powers: Iuchi Karasu, who used them to hunt down his former friend Kuni Yori when Yori became a powerful maho-tsuaki, and Iuchi Katamari, who learned them to fight Iuchiban.

Doomseekers specialize in achieving a contradictory goal: killing those who have made themselves unkillable. Whether through maho, the rituals of the khadi or other unknown arts and powers, there are those who haunt Ningen-do who defy all normal attempts to be destroyed. It is these powerful and insidious threats the Doomseekers make their enemies.

Learning these techniques requires one to become an apprentice to an existing Doomseeker, or alternatively, any Unicorn shugenja who meets the requirements and engages in extensive research into the forbidden lore of his clan may master these powers.

Requirements

Rings/Traits: Void 5, One Ring at 4 (must be Ring of Elemental Affinity)

Skills: Lore: Burning Sands 5, Lore: Shadowlands 5, Spellcraft 5, Lore: Spirit Realms 3

Other: Death Trance, either Great Destiny or Dark Fate

Techniques

Rank 1: Embracing Destruction

A Doomseeker must designate an enemy whose destruction he is dedicated to bringing about. The shugenja thinks of killing his foe with every thought he has, and contemplates his enemy's death with every breath he exhales. You gain Sworn Enemy for your chosen opponent, as well as the Driven disadvantage. Eligible opponents could be a Shapeshifter Spirit, an Oni Lord, a powerful Bloodspeaker, a khadi or any extremely high powered opponent (GM’s discretion). Generally a bushi, no matter how strong, would not be an eligible opponent unless he possessed Shadowlands powers or other supernatural abilities.

Whenever facing this enemy in battle, or an opponent who works for the enemy, you may use the benefits of this school's Techniques. If your enemy is defeated and you still live, you must choose a new enemy and begin your crusade anew. There is no retirement for a Doomseeker.

The Doomseeker knows that when facing such an opponent of awesome and horrible power, the longer the fight lasts the more likely he is to lose. Thus, he must strike as hard and as brutally as possible. When attacking an eligible opponent either with a melee/ranged attack or a spell, you may sacrifice spell slots to gain a bonus to damage. Each spell slot sacrificed adds +5 to the total of the applicable damage roll. If this is used to increase the damage of a spell, the spell slots must come from the element being used to cast the spell (Void spell slots can be sacrificed to grant +5 to damage of a spell of any element).

Alternatively, if you receive damage from an attack by an eligible enemy, you may sacrifice spell slots to reduce the amount of damage received by five per slot sacrificed. If the damage is from a spell, you must sacrifice spell slots from the Element of that spell (again, Void spell slots can be sacrificed regardless of the spell’s element).

Either way, you may not sacrifice more spell slots than you have Void Points remaining.

This Technique counts as a rank in your current shugenja school. You retain all previous Affinities and Deficiencies.

Rank 2: Chasing Death

The Doomseeker must be willing to sacrifice his life, his honor and his very self to defeat his opponent. Whenever facing your enemy in battle you may sacrifice parts of your soul to deal additional damage.

When striking an appropriate enemy, either with a melee/ranged attack or a spell, you may permanently lower one of your School skills by 1 rank (you cannot lower a skill below rank 2 in this manner), lower your honor by 5 points or remove one of your innate abilities to gain a 3k3 bonus to your attack/spellcasting roll. If this strike kills the opponent, your sacrificed rank/innate ability/honor returns to you after a full night's rest. This ability may be used simultaneously with your Rank 1 power.

This Technique counts as a rank in your current shugenja school. You retain all previous Affinities and Deficiencies.

Rank 3: Seeking Doom

The Doomseeker knows no victory unless his foe is dead, and knows no contentment until he is victorious. If successfully striking an eligible opponent, either with a melee/ranged attack or a spell, you may spend five void points to nullify the target's powers and abilities. For a number of minutes equal to your Insight rank, the target loses all benefits of, and ability to use, Carapace, Invulnerability, Shadowlands Powers, Spirit Powers, Shadow Points or Shadow powers, any Unique Abilities or supernatural School Techniques (GM's Discretion), Khadi abilities, Maho or Kiho. The target may still use School Techniques that do not require the Shadowlands Taint or Shadow Points and are not supernatural in nature, and may still cast Elemental Magic (or Name or Pearl magic if used against a Nezumi or Naga).

Alternatively, if you give your life to cast a damage dealing spell, as per the rules for Sacrificial Magic on page 127 of The Vacant Throne, you may choose to have anyone reduced to 0 wounds by your spell be permanently trapped inside a gem, diamond, pearl or similar object (GM’s discretion) you have on your person. Your soul is similarly trapped, and the two of you will continue to fight for all eternity. The Kharma spell cannot be cast in regards to a character who sacrifices himself in this way. If someone finds and breaks the object, both you and your enemy are released into the afterlife.

This Technique counts as a rank in your current shugenja school. You retain all previous Affinities and Deficiencies.

The Great Regression

2011-03-20T18:04:00.001-07:00

If there's one thing that all authoritarian movements seem to have in common, it could very well be a hostile stand against unions. The Soviet Union outlawed all independent labor unions and then created government managed unions to take their place. Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany took similar tacts, mandating membership in government created unions headed by political appointees and banning all others. In fact, the brownshirts and blackshirts, before seizing power, had fought in the streets with striking workers.

Labor history in America is one of opposition and then co-opting. Until the New Deal, unions were illegal and presidents would send in the National Guard to shoot at striking workers. Following after the New Deal was the Taft-Hartely act, which outlawed sympathetic strikes, political strikes, general strikes and closed shops among other things. By this point the IWW, the most radical union arguably, had been decimated by the Palmer raids and Woodrow Wilson seizing control of the lumber industry when there was a labor dispute.

Most of the unions that remained were large conservative organizations, and combined with the anti union legislation (right to work laws for example) union membership dwindled steadily over time. Now, a new wave of Republican legislators is intent on attacking a weakened foe, perhaps hoping to finish unions once and for all. In Wisconsin, public employees would be forbidden to collectively bargain for anything other than wages, and in Michigan a proposed law that seems set to pass would allow a governor appointed "emergency manager" to void union contracts at will.

There seems to be a perception that unions are strangling the economy or exerting a corrupt influence on society. These are just the rantings of extremely authoritarian figures who are afraid of voluntary associations. When legislation was proposed to legalize card check commercials were aired comparing card check legalization (an increase in economic freedom) with mandatory unionization or outlawing secret elections. What we're talking about is voluntary groups, heavily restricted by the government already, getting targeted by legislators claiming an interest in freedom.

I can't imagine anything more beneficial for freedom in the United States than repealing the Taft-Hartely act, right to work laws and an increase in the membership in radical class oriented unions (like the IWW).

Dune Cast wish list

2011-03-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

Paul- ??

Leto- Liam Neeson

Gurney- Edward James Olmos

Thufir- Lance Henriksen

Jessica- January Jones, Noomi Rapace, Charlize Theron

Duncan Idaho- Dominic West

Yueh- James Callis

Stilgar- ??

Baron- Willem Dafoe in a fat suit

Chani- ??

Dr. Kynes- ??

Rabban- ??

Feyd-Reutha- Doesn't have many lines, could have a hot shot UFC fighter type play him

Irulan-??

Shaddam- Christopher Lee

Dune

2011-03-20T13:46:00.000-07:00

Dune blog

http://iareduneblog.blogspot.com/

Blog I started devoted to the science fiction series Dune. I am officially at a total lack of material and am just linking to it from here. I will just use this blog for any of my interests, which includes comics, sci fi, politics and gaming.

The Ghost of Thomas Paine

2011-01-19T19:35:00.000-08:00

I like Thomas Paine. No, he's not an Anarchist. I consider him a proto-Anarchist, since he predates Proudhon. He embodies the unique echelon of people who all Americans love even though they know nothing about them. Martin Luther King Jr is another member of this club.

Thomas Paine's two most exemplary works are Rights of Man and Age of Reason. Most people in America can name Common Sense as one of his works, but nothing else. If asked what his political beliefs are, most people would draw a blank. Others seem to think he would align with themselves, which is a common position for ignorant people and historical figures they know nothing about.

Paine was a radical. He was an abolitionist and promoted universal human rights. Paine denounced Christianity and organized religion as tools of oppression. The essay Agrarian Justice advocated for what is essentially Social Security, as well as a one time grant for everyone who turned eighteen. Paine advocated a progressive income tax to break up the aristocracy. He theorized that international conflicts could be solved by an organization like the UN. These positions would make him a left-Democrat today, but it was profoundly out of the box thinking for his time period. I think radicals need to reclaim Paine from the Tea Bagger crowd.

Best Single Author Storylines using Licensed Characters

2010-12-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-29T18:53:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-10-02T18:51:00.001-07:00

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!

2010-10-02T16:12:00.000-07:00

$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

2010-10-01T13:07:00.000-07:00

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)

DCU Homework:

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)

2010-09-26T23:48:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-26T14:17:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-16T17:22:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-21T13:52:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-14T19:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-13T11:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-07-03T12:27:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-26T15:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-29T18:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-23T20:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T18:42:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T17:29:00.001-07:00

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

2010-03-25T17:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-25T17:44:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-20T13:13:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-14T19:13:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-11T17:01:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-06T22:27:00.001-08:00

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

2010-02-06T22:15:00.001-08:00

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.

Degrading shitwork

2009-11-25T19:41:00.000-08:00

If we assume a person sleeps 8 hours a night and works a full time job, 40 hours a week, that person would nearly half their waking hours at some place of employment. And for what?

The con of wages is that by definition you are being paid less than what you have earned. If you are creating 15$ an hour of goods or services, you will be paid less than this. Otherwise how would an employer not spend everything on labor costs? The actual value, the full value of what you have created flows up the pyramid to those who own or manage the work you are doing.

Most people go to a job they don't like to make other people rich in exchange for not having to sleep in a dumpster.

Essential Anarchist Texts

2009-11-16T18:25:00.000-08:00

The Conquest of Bread

by Peter Kropotkin

The definitive work of anarcho-communism, Kropotkin's profoundly idealistic work envisions a society founded on unceasing cooperation between all people. His intense love of mankind glows from behind the pages. Is it naive? Probably. Will the whole world ever follow what Kropotkin proposes as the best system? Probably not. But still, one of the oldest and most venerable of anarchists should be read by anyone seeking a full view of libertarian economics.

Blackest Night

2009-11-16T18:04:00.000-08:00

*spoilers*

As much as the cynic in me recognizes the inherent con of a never ending series of massive company crossovers, the sucker in me can't help but read them.

Blackest Night is DC's current ongoing event. So far I respect it for a number of things. The first is explicitly dealing with the concept of comic book death. Why is death a revolving door for certain people? So far the question has only been raised, but I hope it will be dealt with. Blackest Night: Batman was good. It had both Tim and Dick trying to deal with the fact they will never see their parents again. And a guest appearance from the ever lovable Deadman!

The main series has so far chewed through characters like a lawnmower through a stack of baseball cards. So far the dead include: Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Kyle Rayner, Aqualad, Hawk and half of Firestorm. Why am I impressed with killing characters off? What's the difference between cheap stunts and good writing? It's a fine line, but with comic universes being static any shake up is a positive.

And who wouldn't love armies of flying zombies?

And pray for a resurrection...

2009-10-18T13:58:00.001-07:00

Martian Manhunter

Who he is: A standard of the Justice League for many many years. Never really successfully carried his own series, so that sort of puts him on the top of the B list.

How he died: In the first issue of Final Crisis, Libra, a harbinger of Darkseid stabs Martian Manhunter to death. A funeral is held and everyone is very sad. :(

How long has he been dead: About a year and counting.

Chances of coming back to life: Medium. He was never really all that popular as a stand alone character, and as far as I'm aware there's no cry for him to come back. That said, as a member of Justice League, he should not be counted out completely.

Batman

Who he is: Probably the most popular comic book character, second only to Superman in terms being instantly recognizable.

How he died: Also during Final Crisis, Darkseid shot him with the "Omega Sanction", the death that is life. His body is fried to a crisp and he is buried in the ground. In the last issue of Final Crisis we see him stranded in the past, back in caveman days. This is due to the nature of the Omega Sanction, which traps someone in an endless cycle of death and rebirth, with each life being worse than the last. Basically, a Hell tailored to each individual person that Darkseid shoots out of his eyes. Mr. Miracle escaped from it before, and now it's Batman's turn.

Time spent dead: About a year and counting

Probability of coming back: Certain. Grant Morrison says he was never meant to "die", just be out of the picture for a while as part of an overall story line.

Various people's families and girlfriends

This groups contains the parents of Tim Drake, Hal Jordan, Batman, Captain Marvel, The Question, Dick Grayson, and Superman. Also included are Superman's adopted father, Kyle Rayner's parents and various girl friends, as well Spiderman's Uncle Ben. Those are the big ones, there are others too numerous to mention.

How they usually die: One of two ways. Either as part of the character's origin, in which we never really see them alive. Or, a villain kills them, and in the case of Kyle Rayner's girlfriend Alex, stuffs them in an appliance.

Possibility of coming back: Nil. As characters either created as corpses or killed to provoke an emotional response, their purpose has been served.

The Question

Who he is: An Objectivist superhero created by Steve Ditko. He then got turned into a vaguely Zen inspired introspective fellow by Dennis O'Neil, and then into an urban shaman by Rick Veitch.

How he died: Of cancer. After hand picking and training his replacement, Question expired from lung cancer on the side of a snowy mountain. His last words: "Time to change...like a butterfly..."

Time spent dead: About three years so far.

Possibility of coming back: Low. Rucka, the writer that killed him off, is currently writing his replacement. It was a well written death and his new replacement is a good character. Furthermore, he never really hit the A-list to begin with, so there's no massive outcry for him to come back.

The New Gods

Who are they: Jack Kirby created an entire mythology of Superheroes/Gods that lived in a separate dimension (called the Fourth World) in the DCU. The good Gods of New Genesis battle endlessly against Darkseid, the God of Evil.

How they died: During DC's Countdown series, a spin-off called (appropriately) Death of the New Gods killed them all off. Their creator, the Source, found them to be a failed creation and destroyed them all, in preparation for creating a Fifth World.

The continuity got a bit messy. In Countdown, the planet Apokolips is last seen taken over by Brother Eye and the OMACs. There is no mention of this in the Death of the New Gods series, which was published concurrently. At the end of Death of the New Gods, all of them are dead except Darkseid and Orion, and the story then segue ways into the last few issues of Countdown. Orion rips out Darkseid's heart, and then walks off, severely injured, as the last surviving New God.

Immediately following Countdown starts Final Crisis. We find Orion dead in the first issue, but Darkseid's soul has possessed an avatar of his that lives on Earth, Boss Darkside, whom we saw in Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers of Victory. He then, somehow, summons the spirits of his various sidekicks, who all possess Earth inhabitants as well. Darkseid takes over the Earth and defeats goodness, erases free will and just generally makes a mess of things.

In the end, even the God of Evil can't stand against a pissed of Superman and Batman's infinite supply of bad ass. First, Batman shoots him with a bullet that can kill Gods. His body is poisoned. Then both Flashes cause Darkseid to get struck by the Black Racer, a sort of Grim Reaper character. This separates his soul from his body. Wonder Woman lassos his body, breaking the hold he had established over the people of Earth. Last, but not least, Superman completely obliterates his soul by...(wait for it)..singing. ("Darkseid always hated music," Superman quips.)

Possibility of coming back: Certain. It's just a matter of time before someone gets around to it. Grant Morrison seems a likely candidate, but it probably won't happen until, at the very last, DC's current big event Blackest Night finishes up. I would like to thank they'll leave Darkseid dead considering how utterly destroyed he ended up getting, but I guess we'll see.

Alan Moore's trash is another man's treasure?

2009-10-18T13:35:00.001-07:00

In a recent interview comics guru and cranky old grandpa figure Alan Moore said the following:

" It’s the paucity of imagination. I was noticing that DC seems to have based one of its latest crossovers [Blackest Night] in Green Lantern based on a couple of eight-page stories that I did 25 or 30 years ago. I would have thought that would seem kind of desperate and humiliating, When I have said in interviews that it doesn't look like the American comic book industry has had an idea of its own in the past 20 or 30 years, I was just being mean. I didn’t expect the companies concerned to more or less say, “Yeah, he’s right. Let’s see if we can find another one of his stories from 30 years ago to turn into some spectacular saga.” It’s tragic. The comics that I read as a kid that inspired me were full of ideas. They didn’t need some upstart from England to come over there and tell them how to do comics. They’d got plenty of ideas of their own. But these days, I increasingly get a sense of the comics industry going through my trashcan like raccoons in the dead of the night."

So what should be made of this? I submit for evidence two scans, one from an issue of the current ongoing series Green Lantern Corps and one from a short story written by Alan Moore many many years ago called Tygers.

Anyway, this is from Moore's story:

And this is from Green Lantern Corps:

Ok, so the one borrows from the other. How many specific elements from Moore's short story are incorporated into the current ongoing Green Lantern stories?

-Demon Plant Ysmault

-The character Quill

-The group Quill references he is a member of, "The Five Inversions"

-Children of the White Lobe

-Sentient city of Ranx as an enemy of the GL Corps

-Evildoers attempting to detonate blink bombs in the core of Mogo

-The greatest Lantern, Sodam Yat

-The prophecy given to Abin Sur is a major plot point, and is quoted from directly one other occasion other than the above

-A major plot point is that Abin Sur was driven mad by the the prophecy, which we also see in the short story, and that it indirectly lead to his death

So, does that mean that "Blackest Night" is a rip-off of Tygers? I wouldn't say so. But it would be dishonest to say they aren't intentionally borrowing almost every facet of this short story.

No good superhero stays dead.

2009-10-18T11:11:00.001-07:00

I love comics. I really do. I believe as a medium "sequential art" has an almost unsurpassed ability to display both information, emotion and ideas with no limit on imagination or ingenuity. That said, almost all of comics is dominated by two companies: DC and Marvel. And the overwhelming majority of their output is part of one genre: superhero comics. And I like superheros. I do. But there are issues with the genre. Case in point: death. Superheroes die, and they have an annoying habit of coming back to life. If you're going to kill someone off, at least let them stay dead. It really stretches suspension of disbelief to the breaking point and beyond. Anyway, here are some thoughts on specific people.

Superman

Who He Is: Probably the most iconic and recognizable super hero of all time.

Death: Beaten to death by newly created villain Doomsday. The world mourns, people crap money buying comics.

Time Spent Dead: About a year.

Resurrection: As Superman is basically a solar battery, judicious application of Kryptonian technology is able to recharge him to life, albeit without most of his power. He later gets his powers back while fighting against Cyborg Superman near the end of the storyline. The Death and Return of Superman story is sort of the classic example of a big marketing gimmick. The same storyline that killed him off in the beginning brought him back at the end.

A number of characters were introduced, however, that are still with us: Steel, Superboy, Doomsday and Cyborg Superman.

Rating: I'd give it a C-. It has had a lasting impact, creating a number of new characters, (which comics sorely needs) both heroes and villains. At the end of the day, it was basically a massive marketing ploy.

Green Lantern (Hal Jordan)

Who He Is: A staple of the DCU, a Justice League member, with hundreds of issues of his own various titles under his belt.

Death: After his home city of Coast City was completely destroyed by Cyborg Superman during the Death of Superman saga, Hal kinda lost his marbles for a while. Determined to undo the murder of 7 million people by any means necessary, he betrays the Green Lantern Corps in an attempt to obtain enough power to rewrite history. Becomes super villian known as Parralax and kills various Green Lanterns and Guardians of the Universe in his new found mania. Later, in a moment of self sacrifice, dies to save the Earth from a creature (a Sun-Eater) that was, as you might imagine from the name, eating the Sun.

Time Spent Dead: Hard to explain. (Basically three years) (But also eight years)

Resurrection: After dying, Hal was chosen to become the new Spectre, a supernatural spirit of vengeance. So, at this point Hal as a person is still dead, but we can consider him alive as he is still an active character. About five years after this, it was retconned that Hal had not gone insane per-se, but had been possessed by an entity known as Parallax. After being purged of this entity Hal is freed from The Spectre and returns to life. Through a second series of retcons we find out that the Green Lanterns he killed are, like, still alive and stuff. And then he rescues them, thereby resolving him of a great deal of moral responsibility. Batman seems to be the only one that remembers Hal trying to blow up the Universe.

Rating: This one is really absurd, even by comic book standards. Well intentioned, but completely all over the place. Johns continued presence in the Green Lantern Universe is great, though, once he got this out of his system. I'll give it a C for good intentions.

Superboy

Who he was: A clone of Superman and Lex Luthor created during the Death of Superman saga. Bounced around in his own series for a while, went through a number of costume changes before settling into the Titans.

Death: Killed by Superboy Prime during the Infinite Crisis storyline. Died a hero fighting against impossible odds. The kind of death Superheroes envy.

Time Spent Dead: Four years

Resurrection: Superheroes from the future, the Legion of Super-Heroes, are locked in a struggle against Superboy Prime, who is basically unstoppable. At this point he has survived a release of energy equivalent to the Big Bang and an explosion capable of destroying the entire Milky Way galaxy. They send one of their number back in time, who then retrieves Superboy's body and places him in the same chamber that was able to recharge Superman back to life. Back in the future, after being recharged for 1,000 years, Superboy pops back up and keeps on fighting Superboy Prime. After Superboy Prime is (finally?) defeated, Superboy Regular is then sent back in time to a year after he died.

Rating: Considering the same author killed him, and then later brought him back, the phrase "cheap stunt" comes to mind. And time travel is kind of the ultimate escape hatch for a comic book writer. I'll give it another C-.

Green Arrow (Oliver Queen)

Who he was: A staple of the DCU, he kinda fluctuated in purpose. His first big break was as a costar of Green Lantern. He later joined the "grim and gritty" trend with his own Mature Audiences ongoing series. Green Arrow transitioned away from that and become more of a standard superhero. One of the most socially conscious characters in mainstream comics, he routinely rails against "fat cats" and "The Man."

Death: Blown up by a group of eco-terrorists while aboard an airplane.

Time Spent dead: About six years.

Resurrection: Hoo boy...His old friend Hal Jordan, who had gone insane and become almost God like in power, before sacrificing himself to save the Earth, resurrected Green Arrow. To make things more complicated, he did not bring him back to life from when he died, but from an earlier time in his life when they were both at the height of their friendship. He then later had to re-unite with his soul to become a whole person, and is now a mainstay of the DCU.

Rating: Preposterous levels are very high. It was, however, very well written by Kevin Smith. The time he spent dead showed it wasn't just a cheap stunt. I'll give Green Arrow's resurrection a B.

The Spoiler (Stephanie Brown)

Who She Was: A sort of C-grade Batman supporting character. Her big claim to fame was that she was Robin's (Tim Drake) girlfriend.

Death: Murdered by Black Mask, a twisted, sadistic, nihilist gangster.

Time spent dead: about four years (sort of)

Resurrection: Pulled the whole "I wasn't really dead" trick. She was nursed back to health by a friend, cruelly let all her former loved ones believe she was dead for reasons best known to herself. She just recently premiered as the new Batgirl. Oddly, she had been seen as a ghost during the time period she was thought to be dead.

Rating: Considering how much of a minor character she was, bringing her back seems rather pointless in comparison for just creating a new character to fill whatever her role as the new Batgirl is going to be. D.

Jason Todd (aka Red Hood, aka Robin 2 aka "Batman")

Who he was: After the first Robin grew up and became Nightwing, Jason Todd become the new Robin. He was a fairly unpopular character, and when DC later held a poll to decide whether he would live or die, the fans gave him the thumbs down. This paved the way for the new/popular Robin of Tim Drake.

Death: The Joker beat him to a pulp with a crowbar, and then tied him up and set off a bomb. Batman rushed to the scene only to find Jason's lifeless body.

Resurrection: During the Hush storyline, where all of the A list Batman villains united with new villain Hush to (totally) get rid of Batman once and for all (we swear it will work this time), Batman fights what appears to be an adult Jason Todd. In the next issue we find this was just shape shifting Clayface trying to mess with Batman's head.

It was then retconned that it was Jason Todd the first time, and subsequent encounters were actually Clayface. How did Jason come back? Well, after the Crisis on Infinite Earths, Superboy Prime is trapped in a pocket dimension. Everytime he beats agains the walls of his pocket dimension, ripples cause disturbances and shifts throughout the universe. One of these disturbances brought Jason Todd back to life, albeit without most of his faculties. A quick bath in a Lazarus Pit brought him back to 100%. He then became a villian known as Red Hood, had extra-dimensional adventures, tried to become the new Batman and then became Red Hood again.

Rating: The "Superboy Prime punching reality in the face" trick is now derivesly called a "retcon punch." With good reason, the words "really super fucking lazy writing" come to mind. F.

Bucky

Who he was: Captain America's sidekick. Cap's origin story introducing him to post WW2 comics includes Bucky dying whereupon immidaetely after Cap is frozen in ice for twenty years.

Death: In the final days of WW2, a super secret Nazi unmanned plane carrying explosives is launched from an airfield with both Captain America and Bucky hanging on for the ride. Cap falls off into the Arctic ocean as the plan detonates, killing Bucky.

Time Spent Dead: Almost 40 years

Resurrection: Turns out he wasn't really dead. He was frozen in the ice similar to Cap, where the Russians found him and brainwashed him into a living weapon called the Winter Soldier. As the Winter Soldier, Bucky would perform assassinations and secret missions, and then get frozen between missions, causing him to have aged very little in the intervening years. Cap helps free up his mind from the evil Russians' influence and he becomes the new Captain America when Steve Rogers bites the bullet.

Rating: I'll be honest, I haven't been following this one real closely. But bringing Bucky back seems about as necessary as bringing Uncle Ben back. I'm leaving this one rating-less, but my initial thoughts are not good.

Police force as a subsidy to Landlords

2009-09-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

What happens in a traditional rental/land-lord relationship when the renter stops paying rent? The landlord will call the police, and eventually the police will come and evict you. The police do not charge for this service, they are, after all, benevolent enough to stop both poor men and rich men from sleeping under bridges.

If a landlord does not live up to his obligations, what choices does the renter have? He may move out, most commonly with the option of either breaking his lease, forfeiting the deposit, or wait for his lease to run out, paying for services that are not satisfactory. In other words, the landlord has no immediate incentive to fulfill his obligations satisfactorily, at worst he can receive bad word of mouth. If the renter does not fulfill his obligations, i.e. stops paying rent, the landlord can have him evicted for free by the police.

If the police were not here to fulfill this role, the landlord would have to pay a security force to play this function. This would increase the cost of doing business, and all landlords would have to charge higher rents. Cooperative housing would thus be more efficient, and be able to compete successfully against, traditional landlord/renter housing, not having this additional cost.

In other words, traditional landlord/renter relationships are a byproduct of The State.

Democracy is coming to the USA...

2009-09-03T18:53:00.001-07:00

The Health Care debate is interesting to watch from the perspective of seeing so many interest groups collide against each other.

Radical Democrats rail against the Health Insurance companies, harnessing (justifiable) populist anger and channeling it into political support. Meanwhile Radical Republicans are violently opposing it, with murmurs of Hitler comparisons and violence bubbling up amongst their supporters.

Both of these positions aren't based on anything principled, merely attempts to harness populist anger into political support. My statement that these statements are not principled is that most of the Radical opposition is based on fanciful claims and that the Health Care reform that the Radical anti-health insurance industry Democrats supports is basically a bail-out for the insurance companies, excepting only the "Public option."

The Health insurance industry is enthusiastically for "health care reform", as long the public option is nixed. This extremely corporate friendly reform is billed by some as a blow against Big Business and by others as a Marxist take over. It is neither.

I think this article illustrates the true nature of Health care reform: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-healthcare-insurers24-2009aug24,0,6925890.story

Describe a revolution while standing on one leg...

2009-08-18T18:22:00.000-07:00

One Big Union. General Strike. Community Technology. LETS. Private Currency. Microcredit. Mutual Aid Societies. Permanent Autonomous Zones. Voluntary Socialism!

Community Technology

2009-08-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

Community technology by Karl Hess is one of the most inspiring books I've read in a long time. Hess is (extremely) light on theory and heavy on both hope and cold hard ideas. His basic supposition is a call to local autonomy of communities. This fits extremely well, in my mind at least, with the Anarchist idea of a counter economy. Imagine a community functioning without any connection or reliance on the Corporate-State economy. The three things that struck me most were the things they were able to successfully pull off in the run down Adam-Morgans neighborhood.

Food.

Hess shows how a community, even an entirely urban community, can supply large portions of it's own food by using un-used space. Roof-tops or unused warehouse space, basements, or abandoned lots can be converted to green house hydroponics, yielding high volume of fruits or vegetables considering the amount of labor/space. People themselves can grow "victory gardens" and collaborate their yields in local "farmer's markets", or simply supplement their own diets. As far as protein goes, Hess outlines how aquaculture can, again using unused space, generate an enormous amount of a simply raised fish, rainbow trout in the book. Again, using un-used space a moderate amount of labor can have an enormous yield compared to the market needed to fulfill.

Energy.

Even more so than when the book was written, solar should allow complete energy independence for a given community. Covering rooftops with solar panels would create a local energy grid, shifting power where it's needed in the community. Electric cars would be run off of the solar generated electricity and easily provide the transportation needs of the overwhelming majority of a city's residents.

Other things he mentions is saving up money for renters to buy the apartment buildings they live in. Adding a few Anarchist ideas like a People's Bank and a general strike to drive out the remnants of the Corporate-State economy, which would then be appropriated according to Rothbard's confiscation principle, and you're looking at a beautiful thing. A revolution without firing a shot.

Say you want a revolution?

2009-08-11T17:59:00.000-07:00

Lately, one can't help but notice the word revolution enter the lexicon. On message boards, youtube videos and statements to the press I keep hearing this country might be headed for a revolution. And, as an anarchist, as much as I oppose our current corrupt murderous system, an amry of gun-stockpiling conspiracy theorists, white supremacists, angry white men all, is more frightening than anything we're likely (fingers crossed) to see from the Obama administration.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

2009-08-03T12:18:00.000-07:00

(part 2)

As the Gilded Age winded down, the great business empires were continually frustrtated by their failure to achieve either monopoly or industry cartels. US Steel, Standard Oil and their ilk were enormously wealthy, but unceasing competition were starting to contract profits of these unwieldy behemoths. And they did what every good businessman in trouble does: ask the government for help. And although there was much dis-agreement between business leaders, regulators and the Presidents, the major continuity remained clear: to cartelize each industry to provide "stability". Competition is war, after all, and war is Hell.

A good example is Teddy Roosevelt's Pure Food and Drug Laws. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair had created a furor for clean food laws. No one seemed to notice that this wasn't the point of the novel, nor (as Sinclair points out in the novels) was the industry opposed to it. The Meat Trust couldn't sell their disgusting products in foregin markets, they had been entirely blocked, and The Jungle was giving them a ton of bad PR. So the Bull-Moose himself stepped in. With the new FDA seal of approval, foregin markets allowed American meat in again, and the public's disgust began to subside. Was there in any improvment in the quality of the meat? In some cases, marginal improvements, more often than not though the regulators worked at the discretion of the Meat Trust.

And so it goes. When Populist outrage (justifiably) grew against the "Money Trust", the handful of super banks running the economy, when recessions followed recession without sight in end, business people began writing proposals to "stabilize" the banking industry. Legislation first drafted by Chambers of Commerce would end up getting proposed in Congress. And that's where the Federal Reserve came from. And so it goes, again and again. The public is outraged, as they usually should be, but any attempt at "reform" is drafted and supervised by the very people who are being "reformed", conforming to very narrow lines of thought, and although concessions to the public are usually made, the winners are always the same.

The Ghetto in our Hearts

2009-08-03T10:51:00.000-07:00

Discussions of the American economy are so rife with mis-charectorization and outright falsehoods, a person needs a sword to cut through all the cobwebs. Or, short of a sword, a book.

Two such books are The Triumph of Conservatism and Regulating the Poor. Both books deal with two areas of the American economy most commonly mis-understood: regulation and welfare.

Triumph of Conservatism by Gabriel Kolko is a revionist look at the "Progressive Era", the period at the tail end of the Gilded Age whereupon the modern regulatory apparatus was born. The book traces the Roosevelt administration and the two subsequent presidencies, Taft and Wilson.

The common myth of regulation has two sides, either the government is filled with naive do gooder liberals who attempt to fiddle with economy, to the detriment of everyone involved, out of either a misguided and quixotic quest for equality, a hatred for the wealthy, or perhaps a deep seated love of Karl Marx; or, the government is simply trying to mitigate the excesses of the market place. Both these views are completely false. They contain a fundamental mis-understanding, a beleif that Big Business and Big Government are opposed. A cursory understanding of history shows the relationship to not be one of either antagonism or even parasitism, but of a symbiosis. Big Business and Big Government feed off and support each other to rob cheat and steal from the rest of the country.

(end of part 1)

The Strange Death of American Freedom?

2009-07-26T17:43:00.000-07:00

There seems to be a popular meme floating around, both right and left, in the mainstream of political discourse. Something to the effect of: America has fallen from it's lofty perch. America's founding was a great and noble, but the government has fallen into corruption since then. The wisdom of the Founding Father's has left us. Our freedoms are being taken away.

And yet, any objective look at history shows that America is exponentially more free now then when it was founded. The Founding Father's spoke of self determination and freedom. And founded a country with a massive slave based feudalism. They talked of "taxation without representation", and yet the only people who were represented were wealthy white landowners. And while striking a blow against Imperialism, they wiped out the Native Americans. The slaves are free, the franchise is universal and domestic populations are no longer being ethnically cleansed. America is more free than it ever has been. Which isn't to give any credit to the government, nor to deny they are trying to take our freedoms away.

The supposed act that represented America's long fall into slavery is debated, some say the creation of the Federal Reserve, some the New Deal. And yet the hidden assumption seems to be that the freedom of blacks, the poor, women or Indians doesn't matter. The only freedom to be concerned with is Middle class white America.

We need to recognize that the Founding Father's weren't saints, that America's founding wasn't special, and that society is slowly improving. We just need to find out how to help it along, and stop the occasional reactionary back slides.

P.S. to Thoughts on Healthcare

2009-06-21T11:50:00.000-07:00

In addition to the below information, I think it is also likely that Americans would be more overall healthy without the continuous government interference in the market. One of the largest ongoing welfare programs is the Farm Subsidy program, where the government pays huge sums of money for people (and multi-million dollar international companies) to grow enormous quantities of inedible corn. This corn is either used as animal feed, leading to corn fed beef, which has a higher fat content than grass fed beef, and highly processed food pumped full of High Fructose Corn Syrup. Both of these are cheaper than they would otherwise be due to their reliance on a subsidized crop. It's damn near impossible to not eat High Fructose Corn Syrup and it's prevalence coincides with a drop in price, and thus rise in consumption, of highly processed pseudo-food.

Without all of this, it's safe to assume that people would be healthier and require less health care overall.

Musings on Health Care

2009-05-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

The Pharmaceutical industry is often a target of populist scorn, but rarely is it mentioned in mainstream conversation that one of their main sources of power is a government created monopoly: a patent. With the elimination of the patent system the cost of all patented products would decrease dramatically as competition exploded. Medicine would become cheaper, health care costs would go down.

It sounds absurd (to some) to say it aloud, but our government has taken direct action, through regulation, to increase doctor's pay by creating an artificial shortage of providers. Largely done at the behest of the AMA, these regulations, if removed, would allow qualified professionals from other countries to practice in the US, as well as more people being able to become doctors. The number of providers would go up, the cost of health care would go down.

Under the current tax code, under an apparent attempt to stave off socialism (boo! hiss!), employers are given tax incentives to offer health care to the employees. This ties people to their employer for health insurance. Health insurance is then a commodity where the person who actually uses it is not involved in the choosing of the finer details. An agreement is reached between the employer and a health insurance carrier, and the employee is given some options, A B or C, for example. Removal of these incentives would give more consumer choice for health insurance, and the decreased cost of health care would decrease entry cost into health insurance, leading to more companies. All of this together would lead to a more de-centralized health care industry, as well as a more equitable one.

It goes without saying this is a very complex topic, and these are simply some brief thoughts on the matter.

Legacy

2009-05-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

John Ostrander, the writer who brought us the best work ever done on the Spectre, is currently offering an ongoing series in the Star Wars universe, set over a hundred years after the film and thus taking place long after all other stories. What an intriguing concept. Upon reading, one must struggle mightily to keep down the disappointment, as the plot is mostly rehashes of previous stories.

A Sith Lord takes over the Galaxy and is hunthing down the Jedi! Wow, what an original plot twist. An alliance of Rebel fighters, striking from secret bases, fights against the new Imperial power. Hmmm....that seems familiar, too. There are strong points, a frontlines view of an Imperial civil war, the story of the new Sith Lord and the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong among others...but overall it seems like such a waste. This could have been an oppurtinity to create something entirely original and so far Ostrander doesn't seem to have even tried.

The Empire Strikes Back

2009-04-14T11:48:00.000-07:00

Recent, within the last decades, advances in the way Americans relate to the past and the world around them has long provoked a reactionary backlash. A better example could not be found than a history book released fairly recently. The book attempts to be a response to Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States, which committed the heinous sin, in some people's mind, of presenting a historical perspective focusing on 99% of the population, instead of the 1% that makes up the generals/leaders/wealthy. (I'm paraphrasing Zinn there.)

Hence we now have a massive tome entitled A Patriot's History of the United States: from Columbus's Great Discovery to the War on Terror. The title tells us everything we need to know about this book, presumably the author's intent. What are we to make of this, and how worried should we be that some people want to go back to a 1950's worldview: the Indians were savages, America is the greatest country that has ever existed and we should believe whatever our leaders tell us?

The real kicker is that subtitle, though. What exactly did Columbus discover and what was so great about it? We know now that Columbus wasn't the first European to make his way to North America, viking explorers can claim that title. Which ignores the the larger question: how can someone discover something millions of people already knew since the day they were born? It's like saying I discovered blogs when I first started one. In which the discovery is personal only, and of no historical value, obviously not the intent. The only way we can keep Columbus' discovery great is by denying that the original inhabitants of America were even people. Hence, Columbus discovered an un-inhabitated wilderness. In which case, the title of the book is inherently racist and ethnocentric. As for the greatness of this supposed "discovery", it doesn't seem to have been so great for the Indians, who would spend the next 500+ years being slaughtered by colonial powers and their proxies.

Sadly, I don't see the "Columbus' Great Discovery" meme going anywhere. Until, we all just need to preserve and spread the truth about history: the heroes weren't always the winners and the winners weren't always the heroes.

Gift economy

2009-04-05T15:35:00.000-07:00

There was a pot luck (sp?) at work last Friday, and it got me thinking about a gift economy. (an economy with no exchange) The pot luck being a perfect example: entry into the system requires you bring one thing, it doesn't a certain type, shape or minimum value. Once in the system, you can take as much as you want from everything that was brought.

The equivalent would be some kind of community store, and bringing in an item would give you access to the store. If the communal store were to have enough item's to satisfy people's needs, we would need many more people contributing than a simple pot luck. And what stops a handful of bad apples from abusing the system? Once you start trying to figure out this nugget things get hairy fast. Employees would be needed to monitor the community store and to make sure people weren't just bringing in garbage. Who would the employees be? Anyone in the community could volunteer, perhaps, and maybe working a shift would count as a contribution to the store. How often would a person need to contribute? Once a week? Once a month? Once in their lifetime?

Perhaps there could be a share/use ratio, like p2p sites. And anyone who's ratio is within certain bounds is trusted to use the system to it's full extent. Anyone who hasn't contributed much in a while needs to contribute x number of goods to get back in good standing. Again more regulation, more problems arise. Maybe people are good enough that no such rules would be needed at all? It's hard to say.

Judging a comic by it's cover

2009-03-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

After having read the first two issues of the new Vigilante series, I can say that many times you can judge a comic by it's cover. Case in point: is there a non descript character spraying seven pounds of shell-casings out of his weapons, as if carrying some kind of ammunition fountain? If yes, peruse inside: is there large amounts of sanitized violence and %$#@ed words? If so, you are holding an extremely pointless comic striving to capture some kind of dangerous bad-ass mystique. And for some reason I bought the second issue before learning my lesson.

Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth

2009-03-26T17:20:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Corrigan, an oddly shaped, bizarrely structured comic by a writer/artist that's never done mainstream work, is probably one of the best comics ever published. It can be hard to get through, I admit to two failed attempts before completing it in one day. When it was finished, my faith in humanity had been thoroughly destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed and rebuilt again.

The "story" concerns a 39 year old man, the title character, with seemingly no friends and no ability to socialize, who's only point of contact with humanity is his Mom, living in a nursing home, who calls him several times a day. Jimmy has a severe crush on a co-worker, but can't say more than ten words to her. He has never met his father, and when he gets a letter from dear old pop asking to meet he feels a compulsion to meet the odd old man. The unfolding story then stars, Jimmy, his father and his grandfather, all named Jimmy Corrigan as far as I can ascertain. All are lonely, the youngest is a perpetual bachelor, the older two are widowers. Loneliness pervades the book, dripping off ever panel, of which there are sometimes 30+ of on a single page. As we cut back and forth between Jimmy's grandfather growing up as a 9 year old circa the first World's Fair, all three Jimmy's daydreams, nightmares and random musings and modern day Jimmy's self hatred and total lack of assertiveness, a heartbreaking, but all too realistic portrayal of fractured modern life emerges. The effect is hard to describe, but is undeniable. Echoing a comment on the inside jacket, it seems like an intense act of either bravery or masochism on the author's part to even publish this quasi-autobiographical document.

My original interest came about due to Neil Gaiman mentioning Jimmy Corrigan on the inside cover of Blankets. Blankets being the best comic since Jimmy Corrigan, supposedly. Jimmy Corrigan is the better work however, a kind of artifact reminiscent perhaps of what would result if a human heart was cut open, and the jumble of thoughts and feelings that poured out were transformed via alchemy into a work of fiction.

Thoughts on property...

2009-03-25T20:18:00.000-07:00

I would like to comment on a news story from a month ago. Quoted sections are below

"Welcome to the revolution," Rosemary said, greeting a homeless couple looking for housing.

....

Lonnetta and Dwayne took a seat on Rosemary's couch. Dwayne, 52, walking on crutches from a series of recent foot surgeries, explained that he lost his janitorial job in June when he broke his foot. The married couple asked that their last name not be used.

"Welcome to the Revolution!"

Forced to survive on Lonnetta's $637 a month Social Security check, the couple soon became homeless. Social service providers told them to stay at Harbor Light, a homeless shelter in downtown Minneapolis, where the couple would be housed on different floors. Lonnetta, 48, feared being separated from her sick husband who she said needs frequent reminders to take his medication. Instead, the couple started living out of their truck.

A relative put Lonnetta and Dwayne in contact with the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, a national anti-poverty organization based in Minneapolis.

....

Meanwhile, Honkala grabbed several documents left on the downstairs kitchen counter, including paperwork stating that HUD owns the house. One document indicated that the home was last inspected on February 3rd.

full story

Here we have people actually doing something about the current economic situation. There are those who would question the legitimacy of this action, however. For example, a comment on the original story:

Poverty rights?

Hey, how about property rights? If that property doesn’t belong to you, you have no business there!

Talk about a sense of entitlement. Not that I don’t feel sorry for people down on their luck…but that doesn’t give people the right to trespass or steal!

The first two sentences present a good point: What about property rights? And they people involved certainly did not own the house before they took it for their own. So who did own the house? The article states the Housing and Urban Development Department was the current owner. From their website:

What is a HUD Home?
A HUD home is a 1 to 4 unit residential property acquired by HUD as a result of a foreclosure action on an FHA-insured mortgage. HUD becomes the property owner and offers it for sale to recover the loss on the foreclosure claim

What is the Federal Housing Administration?

The Federal Housing Administration, generally known as "FHA", provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the United States and its territories. FHA insures mortgages on single family and multifamily homes including manufactured homes and hospitals. It is the largest insurer of mortgages in the world, insuring over 34 million properties since its inception in 1934.

What is FHA Mortgage Insurance?

FHA mortgage insurance provides lenders with protection against losses as the result of homeowners defaulting on their mortgage loans. The lenders bear less risk because FHA will pay a claim to the lender in the event of ahomeowner's default. Loans must meet certain requirements established by FHA to qualify for insurance.

Why does FHA Mortgage Insurance exist?

Unlike conventional loans that adhere to strict underwriting guidelines, FHA-insured loans require very little cash investment to close a loan. There is more flexibility in calculating household income and payment ratios. The cost of the mortgage insurance is passed along to the homeowner and typically is included in the monthly payment.

So, long story short, the government helps lenders, at the cost of the borrower, reduce their risk. When the home was foreclosed, as so many were when the economic house of cards tumbled down, the HUD took over the home. And promptly let it fill with cob webs. With the housing markets down, it could be a while before the HUD finds buyers, and thus the home-owners are driven out by the police so their house can gather dust. What theory of property rights is this? By what right does the government lay claim to empty property? And property rights theories that protect vacant government lots while families sleep in their cars leads to a question: whence did this theory come? And it seems to have quite the emotion behind it: witness other comments on the original article that express more anger than the quoted section.

Without attempting to trace the origin of the theory that the State has the right to hold property vacant, while children sleep under bridges, through history, we ask ourselves? Who benefits? The first beneficiary is the government, who can turn a profit by participating in the real estate market. As their website explains:

Are there any special programs?
Properties in designated areas are available at a reduced sales price to law enforcement officers, teachers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, nonprofits and local governments. ... Although HUD does not offer financing directly, some of our homes qualify for FHA-insured loans.

How is FHA funded?

FHA is the only government agency that operates entirely from its self-generated income and costs the taxpayers nothing. The proceeds from the mortgage insurance paid by the homeowners are captured in an account that is used to operate the program entirely.

While exceptions might be made for government employees and charity cases, this system is clearly not run to benefit the population at large. Who else benefits? The banks who have FHA mortgage insurance and real estate agents who get commission selling the homes. And lastly, regular people, sometimes, possibly, maybe. By what right should a homeless couple accept a definition of property rights that benefits everyone but themselves? It is clear that the view of property rights they are running afoul of was likely propagated and/or created by either the State or it's direct beneficiaries.

Property rights were not handed to man, from God, on a stone tablet. They should be part of a functioning society, not an impediment. Property should be some kind of social consensus, not an iron clad rule enforced by those who benefit from it.

If a property is not being used, and the owner, the State, has never used it for anything, why should not someone use it themselves? Have they not abandoned it by letting it lay dormant for so long? Why shouldn't a person be able to appropriate it for themselves, improve in it and live there? The point of all this is that the action taken in the above story is an encouraging action that fits into a world view that emphasizes property rights that benefit society, not narrow parts of it.

These thoughts are obviously fairly brief, but I think a valid point is buried in there.

Hellboy: the Crooked Man issues 1&2

2009-03-23T15:03:00.000-07:00

If I could pick any artist to draw Hellboy other than series creater Mike Mignola, Richard Corben is the guy I hope I'd be smart enough to think of. Mignola and Corben are perfect for each other. While Hellboy started out as (really) short stories, Mignola seems to have grown as a writer and brings us a three issue mini-series featuring his title creation. Hellboy, however, is not really the main charector. A mountain man who dabbles in the occult, a sort of hill billy John Constantine, drives the action. I loved this story, I think it's some of the best Hellboy Mignola has written and Corben is a match made in heaven for the material. Eagerly await the third and final issue