“Tune your ear to the frequency of despair, and cross reference by the longitude and latitude of a heart in agony.

Listen.”

Sometimes the newscycle doesn’t go quite how you expected. Wednesday was one of those days. DC announced a big new push for digital comics, which was clearly meant to open the news day and gain a certain amount of buzz, around 9 a.m. PST. Another post went up a few hours later about J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis’s sequel to the smash hit Superman: Earth One. Buried deep in the post was the news that Straczynski is quitting his position as writer of Superman and Wonder Woman, two major flagship DC titles where he launched major stories to much mainstream fanfare. Instead, Chris Roberson will now be writing Superman with issue 707 and Phil Hester is stepping in to script Wonder Woman as of issue 605. JMS will be working on a sequel to Superman: Earth One.

C’mon, son. Who you fooling? How dumb are we supposed to be?

It’s not hard to tell that this a bait and switch. Why hide the actual news to the point where you’re announcing something entirely different and then slip it in at the end? Why bring the Superman: Earth One announcement into it, especially when it isn’t an announcement at all? The release from DC says “It’s too early to talk art, story or release date,” which essentially says nothing, especially since the Earth One graphic novels were already announced as a series of books last year.

Superman: Earth One is a smash hit, and God bless Straczynski and Shane Davis both for getting that book out there to the masses. I even buy the idea that the sequel was fast-tracked due to the success of the first volume. What I don’t buy is the rationale put forth in the press release that Straczynski is just getting a bit busy, so he’s gonna let a couple of up and comers get their shot at the limelight while he works on the next Superman book to sell a kajillion copies.

When you look at Straczynski’s history of late comics, the delays and art troubles on his current comics, his comments regarding how far behind schedule he ended up, the timeline of when the books were announced and when they shipped, and perhaps most tellingly, his wish to take a one to five year sabbatical from monthly comics, there’s a lot more going on than JMS “getting busy” and putting someone else on.

His runs on Superman and Wonder Woman were announced in March 2010 and scheduled for July, on top of a run on The Brave & The Bold that began in Fall 2009 and Superman: Earth One, which had been announced in December 2009. That’s quite a workload for any one writer. Something had to give, and the first thing was The Brave & The Bold. Issue 36 was scheduled to ship in August 2010, but never appeared on store shelves. Its absence was not particularly notable at the time, considering that Superman 701 and Wonder Woman 601 shipped in July to great fanfare, but in hindsight, it was the first hint that something had gone wrong with Straczynski’s time at DC Comics.

Then Superman 703 shipped a month late. And on top of that, when Superman 704 arrived it wasn’t by Straczynski at all, but an unsolicited fill-in story scripted by G. Willow Wilson and Leandro Oliveira, which was announced on September 17 and rushed to stores in October. The artist lineup also hinted at more scheduling issues, as Wonder Woman artist Don Kramer ended up with a bit of pencilling help from Eduardo Pansica and Allan Goldman for his second, third, and fourth issues, despite being a typically timely artist. Having a mixture of artists in a typical comic is fairly rare; it usually means something gone wrong with the scheduling, and suggests that the scripts were late and Kramer had no chance of getting up to speed.

This supposition is bolstered by explanations Straczynski gave in a Robot 6 comments thread in September, shortly before the Wilson fill-in was announced. He mentioned being too sick to write for two months this year, covering San Diego Comic-con 2010 and Fan Expo in Canada. That means the two months were July and August. He admits to falling behind, causing the lateness of Superman 703, and expresses a plan to be “2 full issues ahead by NYCC” in October. It’s fair to assume that the fill-in creative team was solicited for Superman 704 due to his lateness and to give him time to get ahead again. If you put the puzzle pieces together, it appears that Straczynski’s runs were both behind schedule from the outset, and his sickness exacerbated the lateness.

This may seem unfair to Straczynski, and losing work due to sickness is a truly unavoidable and tragic situation, but that’s just part of the story. Longtime followers of Straczynski know that he has a history of being late or outright not finishing series that he’s started. His run on Squadron Supreme ended on a cliffhanger with its seventh issue. His run on Thor shipped 12 issues in its first 18 months and a total of 17 issues over the course of 28 months. Thor, of course, was solicited and advertised as an ongoing monthly comic. His much-hyped Thor Giant-Size Finale was twenty-three pages long, one page longer than your average monthly comic, which makes it definitely not “giant size.” Considering the events in the story, it wasn’t a finale, either.

Finally, Straczynski stopped writing the The Twelve on its eighth issue of a 12-issue run, leaving artist Chris Weston high and dry. Around once a year since he left the series, Straczynski insists that the series will be done soon, or “come hell or high water,” with the clear implication that Weston is at fault for the lateness of the series. Weston, on the other hand, has written a one-shot prequel to The Twelve and helped craft the visual style of the (pretty good!) Denzel Washington film The Book of Eli while waiting on scripts from Straczynski. Straczynski recently took to the press again to talk slick about his collaborator in public, prompting Weston to remark that “The Twelve WILL be finished, apparently.”

What we have here is a pattern of Straczynski beginning projects and wandering off once he gets bored. He’s completed several projects, to be fair, but aside from Amazing Spider-Man, many of his major works (Midnight Nation, Rising Stars, Fantastic Four, Squadron Supreme, Thor) have been punctuated by lateness or simply not being finished.

JMS and DC both prioritized Superman: Earth One over Superman and Wonder Woman’s ongoing series due to the fact that Straczynski fell behind on his ongoing series to the point where maintaining his position became untenable. The reality is that JMS was (again, judging from available evidence) heinously late with his scripts and had already passed the point where the very high profile relaunches of Superman and Wonder Woman were either going to be creatively compromised by the presence of rushed art and scripts or slip from the schedule entirely. These are two launches that got enormous news coverage outside of the comics journalism bubble and managed to galvanize both the comics-reading audience and people who don’t read comics into having opinions about the stories. They are big, people care about them, and they matter in a certain way that a lot of comics stories do not. Something had to be done.

Comics fans aren’t stupid. We know about late comics, we know that sometimes health gets in the way, and we know when someone’s trying to pull one over on us. The problem isn’t JMS being late, sick, or needing help getting his stories done. The problem is the way that this news was announced, which attempted to scrub clearly obvious facts from history in favor of a fairy tale that makes everyone involved look pristine. A little spin is fine, and to be expected. Spinning to this extent, however, is absurd and borderline insulting.

When Chris Claremont got sick and couldn’t complete his work on Exiles and New Excalibur, Marvel straight up said so and brought in writers to tell stories until he could come back. They didn’t try to bait and switch their audience. They kept it honest: this is going to kill the schedule, but rather than compromise our quality and schedule, we’re going to bring in these other guys. The original writer will be back as soon as he’s well again. That’s the sensible choice.

Doing it DC’s way taints the entire story. The response to JMS surrendering his series has been overwhelmingly negative, due in part to the abysmal quality of his Superman work. Fans, journalists, and pros have snarked about his reasons for leaving. Instead of the news being Chris Roberson and Phil Hester getting a shot at the big time, the news is “JMS Quits Series Again, Some Guys Are Gonna Wrap Up His Work, News at 11.”

That’s awful. Roberson and Hester are talented guys and more than deserve their time in the sun. They don’t deserve to have their announcement overshadowed by JMS being up to his old tricks again. Now they’re sandbagged with not only cleaning up his mess, but also dealing with whatever ill will this press is going to generate.

The purpose of PR is to sell comics and to present a certain face for the company. The face you see here is one that’s okay with being intentionally misleading in a really crap way to its fans. It’s not a lie, exactly, but it’s spinning so fast it’d make a politicians head spin. This is a textbook example of what not to do.

I’m back, and I’m still recapping.  Join me for spoilers below the cut.

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“Hello, everyone and Happy Thanksgiving. We are pleased to present to you one of the most prestigious events ever put together in the history of professional wrestling. Now, I know that you’re all full of it – Thanksgiving turkey, the dressing, the cranberry sauce, the apple pie – so just settle back in your favorite chair, because for the next three hours, you’ll be royally entertained by the superstars of the World Wrestling Federation.” – Gorilla Monsoon, November 26, 1987

Of the four big wrestling pay-per-views from the times before the WWE began putting on a show every third week, Survivor Series is always seen as being the runt of the litter. Wrestlemania is the grandest stage of them all. The Royal Rumble is the year’s most unpredictable and fun match, setting the course for the Road to Wrestlemania. Summerslam is considered to be the secondary Wrestlemania, taking place on the other side of the year. But Survivor Series? It’s just a gimmick show and only sometimes. It isn’t the place for the big closure-based showdowns. It isn’t where you’d usually choose to show off the climax to the biggest storyline of the year. There was even talk of ending the show completely for a while because the WWE brass consider it obsolete.

I decided to entertain the idea of doing a Survivor Series list the same way I covered the Royal Rumble matches and Wrestlemanias. It was an idea at first that I figured I would go with on a trial basis. If I wasn’t feeling it, I’d stop. The opposite happened. I really started to find that, yes, Survivor Series really does have its place in the WWE PPV pantheon. There are distinct advantages to the whole elimination match concept that really adds to the overall product that shouldn’t be discarded for the sake of another basic list of single matches that you can get at any generic PPV.

For the next eleven days, I’ll be counting down from the worst to the best. I’ll explain how I figured out the rankings in tomorrow’s update. I did find the research of this list more enjoyable than the Wrestlemania one. Wrestlemanias are so iconic and memorable that watching the shows gives you nothing new, as everything is written in stone by its importance. Survivor Series doesn’t have that to me. I’ve seen a good amount of these shows before, but there were some years where I flat-out skipped it and only read the results.

It really brings a level of fun surprise mixed with nostalgia when the shows start up. Whether it’s a show I’ve only heard about or haven’t seen in fifteen years, there’s a fun feeling when you go, “Oh, man! This is the Survivor Series with Chuck Norris doing absolutely nothing!” or, “This is the one where Orton’s team and Triple H’s team fight over who gets to control Raw for a month!”

Even with the lesser shows, I had a blast checking them out.

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and yeah, ain’t nobody as true as us
-Comic books? Did you know that they let people other than Grant Morrison write Damian Wayne? Whose bright idea was that?

-What have we learned?

-Kanye’s record leaked a week ahead of schedule. As expected, it’s good. I’m not sure how good just yet–I’ve only listened a few times–but good enough that I listened to it a few times in a row.

-It opens with Nicki Minaj, which is whatever, but the production and rhymes are solid.

-He does a lot of really interesting stuff musically this time around. He’s much more willing to let tracks breathe, or go on long past their running time, which is something I enjoy. There’s a breakdown on “Devil In A New Dress” before Rick Ross’s verse that’s tremendous, the 9 minute version of “Runaway” is heat, and there’s one track in particular that feels kind of like 808s & Heartbreak in miniature. I can’t wait for the official release, as long as I can get the cover art with the dude with the sword in his head and not that ugly painting.

-It’s been a good year for music, hasn’t it?

you ain’t gotta like me
created: I’ve got something big cooking that will hopefully land with both feet right in the small of someone’s back, but in the meantime, I put some words on comic book covers (protip: they’re there for a reason) and Thor comics (protip: don’t read all of them, or even most of them). Soon, though, I think I’ll have something you’ll love/hate.

consumed: I watched George Clooney in The American the other night. It was pretty good. It was kind of the anti-Bourne, and not really how the trailers made it out to be. It was a very quiet movie, though it opens on an effective bit of violence, which had the effect of making almost every scene very tense. You’re waiting for the explosion. It’s like Unforgiven, but instead of fighting against type like Eastwood did then, Clooney is stuck in a movie you expect to go one way but insists on going another. It indulges in cliché a few times, but it doesn’t really hurt the movie. I liked it, I’ll probably watch it again.

I’m in the middle of a reread of Grant Morrison’s run on Batman & Robin. I picked up Batman Reborn and Batman vs. Robin the other day in prep for an upcoming post. It’s wildly uneven, with Philip Tan not even doing the bare minimum in terms of storytelling or quality being the nadir and Cameron Stewart’s arc being the height. I’m massively frustrated by Morrison lately, and by the fact that what should have been a good story has been marred by crap art. I’m gonna try to work that out on the page, though, so stay tuned.

i like me enough for the two of us
David: Amazing Spider-Man 648
Esther: Batgirl 15, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne 6, Birds of Prey 6, Knight & Squire 2, maybe Red Robin 17
Gavin: Batman Return Of Bruce Wayne 6, Booster Gold 38, Justice League Generation Lost 13, Knight & Squire 2, Welcome To Tranquility One Foot Grave 5, Avengers Prime 4, Chaos War Thor 1, Incredible Hulks 616, New Avengers 6, Ultimate Comics Thor 2

I’ve been pretty well obsessed with the Gorillaz lately.

I rediscovered them earlier this year when “Stylo” leaked, and I thought it was pretty okay. Later, after buying Plastic Beach late, I got into the habit of listening to all three of their proper albums every couple of weeks. I’ve been through the wikipedia pages explaining the meta-story, watched the videos on Youtube, and spent a lot of time thinking about the band.

It all comes down to fiction, I think. Telling stories and how you tell them. Each album is accompanied by a series of videos, background pieces, and text explaining its story. Each album, then, represents, or is part of, a story. The characters begin in one place and end up in another, for good or for ill, and each album evokes a specific mood or style. The narrative isn’t always clear just by listening to the album, the way the narrative in a comic isn’t crystal clear if you just have the art, but when you add in the other media, the picture becomes more filled in.

It’s modular storytelling, isn’t it? You can enjoy the Gorillaz on their own, just listening to the music and buying the albums every few years, and stop there. That’s how I did it until earlier this year. Gorillaz hit while I was in high school and got a lot of spins. I liked the joint with Del on it, even though I wasn’t even really a Del fan, because there was rapping. Demon Days was college, and I think I gave it short shrift at the time. I forget what song I bumped on that one… these days, it’s “Feel Good, Inc.” I feel like I dug “Dare,” but I can’t call it. Regardless, I love it now. But that’s how you consume music, isn’t it? I listened, I liked the tracks I liked, and I kept it moving on to the next one.

You can also begin absorbing the other media info–the DVDs, music videos, website info, and so on. They fill in the picture around the album, expanding upon the mood and vague hints found on the albums. Why does Demon Days sound so dark? What is a “Plastic Beach?” If you wanted just the story, not the music, you could use Wikipedia, Youtube, and fan sites to get the job done. I think the music is an integral part of the narrative, personally, but whatever floats your boat.

Together, all the parts make one whole. You don’t need all of it to get the job done. Each individual piece has merit on its own, whether it’s as marketing or art. But together, you have something really interesting. You have a genuine narrative. It’s told in a fractured way, but you can track forward motion.

The Gorillaz themselves are fictional, the product of Damon Albarn, Jamie Hewlett, and whichever musicians they’re working with at the time. In the world of the Gorillaz, those musicians are used as in-story personalities. Del the Funkee Homosapien is turned into one of the spirits inside Russel’s head. De La Soul are malevolent forces in “Feel Good, Inc.” Shaun Ryder is a giant severed head turned music box.

Even their live band features other, standalone musicians operating under the umbrella of Gorillaz. Everything is subordinate to the story. Sure, we know that Albarn or members of The Clash are there, but while they’re on stage, they’re Gorillaz, which suggests a certain style or sound.

Look at the group, too. A young Japanese girl (20 years old this year). A black guy from the US. Two Brits. They don’t exist. They’re fake. And yet, they have detailed histories on Wikipedia. You can point out what they were doing on specific dates. They aren’t real, and yet, they are. Just like Batman.

This kind of thing is really interesting to me. I think most of what I’ve written about on 4l! is all about fiction and narrative. You can even look at the race stuff as pointing out things where storytelling got it right or wrong. It’s all about the telling of stories.

Everything is. That’s why I read comics, play games, watch movies, listen to music, and everything else. The rappers I like, the ones I come back to, paint pictures with their words. Sometimes it’s an entire story in one song, sometimes it’s evocative of a certain mood or emotion, or something it’s just a song about how they’re the best ever. It’s all creating something new, whether from the ashes of something old or entirely from scratch. Create and innovate.

I like the multimedia approach of Gorillaz a lot. It’s 2010, and I have more information available to me after a five second Google search than probably every person combined two hundred years ago. Coincidentally, my attention span is exponentially shorter than what people were working with two hundred years ago. I need a lot of information in varied formats and styles and I need it two weeks ago. The Gorillaz fulfills that need in some way by giving me a lot to absorb, and most importantly, whenever I want to absorb it.

Honestly, though, I’d kill for a Gorillaz comic. I need more Jamie Hewlett in my life.

(There’s this strange connection in my head between the Gorillaz and Jet Set Radio Future, the classic Xbox joint. I’m not sure if it’s because they share Miho Hatori [and maybe Dan the Automator?] or if they both were working in a similar flat kind of art style around the same time or what. They’re both fairly global in scope, too. JSRF and the Gorillaz have a multi-ethnic that synthesizes myriad and sometimes obscure influences to create something fresh.)

Welcome to another great week of ThWiP! Lot of fun comic stuff this week. Bruce Wayne made a major announcement that’s going to shake up the DC status quo. Frank Castle met up with a woman whose unmasking is likely to piss off SO MANY hardcore Punisher fans, more so than the Frankenstein fiasco. And panel contributor Was Taters believes the Red Hood image shows that it’s only a matter of time before some crap writer tries to retcon Damian Wayne’s heritage even further.

Amazing Spider-Man #647
Fred Van Lente, Max Fiumara and Various

Avengers Academy #6
Christos Gage and Mike McKone

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Cliff Chiang: Blog, Lambiek, Twitter
Books: Doctor 13: Architecture and Morality, Neil Young’s Greendale, Crisis Aftermath: The Spectre, Green Arrow/Black Canary: Family Business
Why? The fashion is a big part of what makes his work so crucial. He not only draws clothes like what you might actually see somebody wearing on the street, but they actually fit and have those little details that keep them from being plain. Folds, curves, wrinkles, whatever whatever.

What I like best (well not best best, but best at this specific moment in time) about Chiang’s work isn’t specifically lady-related, but it plays a role in why his ladies look so good. He’s got an absolutely fantastic sense of design. He uses blacks like the best of them, on par with people like Eduardo Risso. The lighting in cliffchiang-Justice_League_Generation_Lost_9.jpg is fantastic, especially Max Lord’s figure in the background. In cliffchiang-sadie.jpg, the crowd is rendered in both black and white, but it isn’t confusing at all.

Lady-wise, Chiang has a very classic approach to faces that I like. Same kind of classy dame/good girl that Darwyn Cooke and Jordi Bernet work with sometimes, right? You can see it in cliffchiang-scarlett.jpg, but cliffchiang-sadie.jpg and cliffchiang-sun.jpg shows that a classy dame can easily be turned into something more modern with a couple of tweaks. Versatility counts.

touch me
-How do I feel about comics right now?

-It’ll pass. I just need to read something that’ll knock my socks off.

-Music, though. Yezzir. Specifically Kanye Tudda.

-Kanye West has given away the equivalent of a really solid album for free. Eleven joints, all of them heat rocks, for free. The weakest of them is probably Power (Remix), and considering how hard that beat goes, that’s saying a lot.

-Kanye’s cut “Monster” from the list for some reason. That’s the song with that super hot Nicki Minaj verse. She’ll never go in like that again.

-“Pull up in the monster automobile, gangster/ With a bad bitch that came from Sri Lanka/ Yeah, I’m in that Tonka color of Willy Wonka/ You could be the King but watch the Queen conquer/ Okay, first things first I’ll eat your brains/ Then I’ma start rocking gold teeth and fangs/ Cause that’s what a motherfucking monster do/ Hairdresser from Milan, that’s a monster ‘do/ Monster Giuseppe heel, that’s the monster shoe/ Young Money is the roster and the monster crew.”

-Shame Eminem rhymed circles around her doing backflips and cartwheels on “Roman’s Revenge.”

-My favorite is probably “Christian Dior Denim Flow,” with “So Appalled” second and “Monster” third.

-Pusha is by far the stand out. He dances on every single beat, but CyHi the Prince is tight, too. I’m always impressed by that dude, and his Royal Flush mixtape is pretty straight.

-GOOD Music’s lineup is just absurd, is what I’m saying. A lot of creativity sitting in one place.

-I like Kanye a whole lot. He has made some questionable choices (808s needed no autotune and more John Legend, but it was also intensely personal and very Kanye), but his talent is undeniable. He can make bangers, he knows good when he sees it, and he’s done a lot of growing up in public. I respect dude, and I think his album is going to be nuts.

-Even more than that, though, Kanye is confident. Just like a lot of black dudes you’ll meet, he’s got that post-Ali confidence. “My presence is a present, kiss my ass” is one of those lines that’s slick, but most of all, true. If you don’t believe it for yourself… well, if you don’t love yourself, ain’t nobody gonna love you, man.

riders on the storm
Created: Not much.

Consumed: Even less. Seven Samurai looks fantastic, though. Kid CuDi’s Man On The Moon II: The Legend Of Mr. Rager leaked as expected and it’s… good. I like it. I don’t like it as much as I like Man On The Moon: The End Of Day yet, but it took me a couple months to really feel that record. I figure two weeks from now and I’ll really really be into it. You know how that goes. If you want a taste, cop the single, Erase Me or watch this Youtube:

(This is what us colored people look and sound like when we play Rock Band. I’ve got a fake British accent, too, mate. HMMM!)

It grew on me. I really like songs that not only make the beat drop (a classic rap move) but also drop out the vocals. There was a joint on a Roots album that did that, and it was positively haunting. “You know you on your own, right?” Anyway, that CuDi is definitely a day one purchase. Hope Amazon gets a version with the bonus tracks, too.

love her madly
David: Amazing Spider-Man 647, Bullseye: Perfect Game 1, Iron Man/Thor 1, Superboy 1, Unknown Soldier 25
Esther: Secret Six 27, Batman and Robin 16. Maybe Batman Confidential 50 and Superboy 1.
Gavin: Batman and Robin 16, Secret Six 27, Invincible 75, Avengers Academy 6, Chaos War 3, Hawkeye & Mockingbird 6, Namor First Mutant 3, Ozma Of Oz 1, Punisher In Blood 1, Taskmaster 3, Young Allies 6, Irredeemable 19

Recently a friend of mine got into a conversation about how to get more women into comics. I’m beginning to wonder if such conversations are necessary, considering the plethora of women into comics right now. From the moment I got into comics, I went online and was neck deep in female and feminist comics discussion. It was everywhere. With the overall superhero comics market shrinking, though, I guess everyone is looking for a potentially untapped market.

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Verisimilitude is what makes stories go. Blah blah blah, you know this already. I talked about it a while back, pay attention. In short, getting close to the truth makes your story feel real. One way you can get close to the truth is by including little details and touches that hint at real life. They’re shortcuts, things meant to make you imagine a world beyond what you’re reading or buy into the world of the book in your hands.

Two examples.

Antony Johnston, Wellinton Alves, Shadowland: Blood on the Streets

Jeff Parker, Declan Shalvey, Thunderbolts 148

These two scenes have a lot in common. More than I realized when I picked them as examples, honestly. (I was just going for two that stuck out in my head as being fairly recent.) They’re both written by white dudes, though I think Johnston is British. Both scenes are set during Marvel’s Shadowland event, which features a Daredevil who has been possessed by the Beast from Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz’s Elektra Assassin. They both feature black characters who rose to fame, or at least not-obscurity, by hanging out in the same general area. Misty and Luke are probably also the foremost street level black characters in the Marvel Universe, too, come to think of it. I mean, I like Nightshade and Shades & Comanche, but they couldn’t heat up the sales charts with a lighter and a can of gasoline. I’m not 100%, but both scenes came out in the same calendar month, too. September, yeah?

(The artists are Brazilian and Irish, respectively. I don’t think that’s the same at all, unless I massively misunderstood World History.)

One of these scenes is crap. One of them is pretty straight. I’ll get there, though. (It’s the Misty Knight one, spoilers.)

Another thing that the scenes share is that they’re trading on race for the purposes of a punchline. The Blood on the Streets punchline is about how effective the (nonexistent) race card is. Misty knows it, and consciously uses it. She flips on her Loud Black Woman switch, her dialogue drops out of the Queen’s English and into some flavor of black vernacular (“black woman can’t have no degree now, can she?”) and the awkward white guy has the stereotypical response, which is to give whoever is yelling about how racist you are whatever they want so that they shut up and go away. She doesn’t mean it, though, it’s just that it’s an effective tool. Ha ha ha!

The Cage scene plays around with racial politics for a bit of (honestly facile) wordplay. A ninja is impersonating his friend in an attempt to gain some intelligence. Cage’s response? “Ninja, please.” It’s a play on “nigga, please,” a bit of classic black slang (one, two, three, pause) that’s got a number of uses. Scorn, disbelief, whatever whatever. It’s flexible, and the joke here is the substitution of ninja for nigga. They look kind of similar, same number of syllables, and as used here, they are functionally the same. That’s the joke. Cage is always cool and collected, and this is just him showing that he saw right through the ninja. Two words that say a lot. Not funny ha ha, but funny heh.

Okay, so why is the Misty scene crap? I don’t have any science to explain why. I flipped through it in the store and put it back on the shelf. I saw the Cage scene in one of the online previews, went “heh” and continued purchasing the series. Both hit me in more or less the same spot. It’s fair to call that spot whatever part of me that likes racial jokes, I figure.

It goes back to verisimilitude, I think. Both of these scenes are hinting at some sort of truth. Misty Knight is using racial history to get her way. Cage is using a reclaimed racial slur to show how cool he is under fire. Both of these scenes depict theoretically black things. A kind of ownership of a very specific facet of American culture, or a freedom to express yourself about race in a certain way. Step back a level and Johnston and Parker are both depicting a culture that isn’t necessarily their own, which definitely requires at least a little bit of research and hoping for the best.

The truth they depict is the difference, though. Luke’s truth is simple and short. Two words and out. Rather than reminding you of a specific thing (“Boy, I sure do love listening to music on my Apple™ iPod MP3 Player!”), it reminds you of a general thing (“black guy you know that says nigga sometimes.”). Misty’s scene is much more specific, and therefore much more likely to be not-truth. Honestly, the race card as depicted always felt like a myth to me. Like, sure, ask somebody if something is because you’re black, and maybe, just maybe, in very specific situations you’ll get the results you want and be sent on your way. Any other situation, including basically anything between professionals, will get you scorned, mocked, and dismissed. In this situation, you’ll get noticed, which is a pretty crap thing to do when you’re illegally infiltrating a building.

And if I know this… Misty should know this. She’s ex-NYPD, currently a private eye, and most of all, a black woman in her late ’20s. I mean… c’mon. It works in movies, not in real life. Everybody knows that.

So the truth that the Misty scene is portraying felt false to me, and false in a way that actively conflicted with my ability to enjoy the story, or even take it on its own terms. It popped my suspension of disbelief like a balloon. The Cage scene felt right. It felt natural. I read it, kinda laughed at how corny it is, and kept it moving.

There’s no science, no hard and fast rules, no nothing. You have to swing for the fences and hope your details make the grade. It’s just like anything else to do with writing, I guess.