Seldom updated blog is seldom updated

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

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

Yeah, this is totally going somewhere.

Daredevil Review #1: Guardian Devil

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most comical example of State propaganda

Behold; the splendor.

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

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

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

Return of Alan Moore

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

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

Kirby is King

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

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

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

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

DC growing up?

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

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

The new Question is a Hispanic woman and a lesbian.

The new Atom is an Asian man.

The new Blue Beetle is a Mexican teenager.

The new Batwoman is a white lesbian.

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

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

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

Awesomesauce: People giving birth to themselves

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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