I read a bunch of those new Dark Horse Conans while waiting for an airplane. Becky Cloonan and James Harren drew them, and they look great. My first thought, after I decided to write about them, was that Cloonan brings the sex and Harren brings the violence, so I should call it “Sex & Violence Comix: Conan the Barbarian.” Or something like that.
The rub is figuring out how to talk about both. I’ve talked about violence a lot and James Harren a little, so that half of the equation I can probably knock out in my sleep. Something something Harren shows us the moment of impact at its grisliest, something something harsh hand-lettered sfx, something speedlines first person pov something. Whatever.
The sex half of the equation is harder. (Ooh, is this a metaphor?) Sexiness is so unbelievably subjective to begin with that trying to not just quantify it, but point out the specific aspects of what makes an image and person sexy is a little crazy. It requires a certain level of specificity of language there that I’m not quite confident in just yet, since I’ve rarely tackled the subject in any detail or outside of jokes.
My first thought, in trying to describe Cloonan’s Bêlit, was that “she’s the type of woman you can’t help but objectify at first sight.” Like, you see her, and she is probably a pretty nice lady with great mind and several college degrees, but something about her just flips that animal switch in your brain from “Let’s have a conversation and get to know each other” to “I now know a girl named Nikki, and boy I hope she’s a sex fiend!”
But that’s not quite right, and also kind of stupid, despite being more or less accurate. It doesn’t work for me, it’s not crystal enough. So I’ve let myself think about this off and on over the past week, coming up with new angles of attack. Bêlit is the type of girl you obsess over, she’s nude but the nudity is more of a danger than a tease, she’s the girl your mama warned you about, she’s wicked, she’s scheming, she’s passion, she forces passion out of you, she’s fiery… she’s smoldering.
Smoldering works. A low burn, something that implies pleasure and pain all at the same time, or at least in quick succession. So men are like moths to the flame. There’s the promise of sex in her hips and poison on her lips, but something about her makes you want her anyway. Which is exactly what the story is about, in a way, so it’s perfect.
When I finally sit down to really write this, that’s probably where I’m going to take it.
Becky Cloonan knocked out Bêlit’s design and portrayal. Just thinking about her a little gives you everything you need to know.
The Damon Albarn Appreciation Society is a series of twenty focused observations, conversations, and thoughts about music. This is the final entry. I had a conversation with a friend about Damon Albarn and what I’ve been calling urban ennui. This is me trying to quantify that feeling, and how the music I enjoy the most has reflected or dealt with that feeling. This is more a collection of thoughts than a proper essay, but I hope you underdig it regardless.
-One of my favorite, or maybe my most favorite, songs on the debut album from the Gorillaz is “M1A1.” Listen:
-The first couple minutes of this song are taken almost verbatim from George Romero’s Day of the Dead. The man’s shouts for other people turn the song into something a little creepy. He’s seeking companionship and finding none, but he keeps trying and the music eventually buries him. The implication is that he never finds anyone.
-“M1A1” could mean a lot of things. It’s a type of tank, a flamethrower, and a submachine gun. It’s also the name for a road in England, built toward the end of the ’90s. From wikipedia:
Between 1996 and 1999 the M1 section north of the M62 underwent a major reconstruction and extension to take the M1 on a new route to the A1(M) at Aberford. The new road involved the construction of a series of new junctions, bridges and viaducts to the east of Leeds. When the new section of M1 was completed and opened on 4 February 1999, the Leeds South Eastern Motorway section of the M1 was redesignated as the M621 and the junctions were given new numbers (M621 junctions 4 to 7).
-The song goes from empty loneliness to rapid-fire music and shouts. It’s an interesting balance. It’s not even remotely single-worthy or radio-ready, but it’s still a great song.
-It evokes a specific mood. It sounds like cities feel. You don’t talk to strangers. You don’t make friends. You stay in your bubble until you reach safety, and then you get to go wild — party, drugs, girls, sports, whatever.
-That mood puts me in mind of a Kid Cudi line from one of my favorite songs about depression: “Crush a bit, little bit, roll it up, take a hit. Feeling lit, feeling light, 2 a.m., summer night.” This is how we have fun. Looking out over a city when it’s long past bedtime, enjoying the quiet, the swoosh of cars going by outside or at street level, and the cool winds. But it’s a little futile, too. The song’s called “Pursuit of Happiness.”
I bailed out of my life and went to Los Angeles last week for a few days. No email, no tweets, no nada. I don’t think I even texted that much, beyond getting directions from the LA gang. I spent Saturday night in Santa Monica, and I woke up around 3am. I got something to drink, looked out of a window, and realized that it was bright outside. The city lights made 3am look like 7pm. The weather made it feel the same. An eternal comfortable twilight, the perfect time of day locked in place and preserved. I wanted to take a walk, but instead I just went back to bed.
-I live in San Francisco, and sometimes I take walks at night with my iPod. This city is really nice at night, and I live in a pretty busy part of town. It isn’t quite as bright as Santa Monica was after midnight, but it’s still nice. My only issue is with the weather — I have to bring a jacket when I go out. But, sometimes, you hit that perfect balance and the city is beautiful in all the right ways.
-A couple Sundays ago, I found myself sitting on a bench in Japantown (a district in SF, just a couple blocks from my place), pleasantly faded, reading stories out of a copy of William Gibson’s Burning Chrome that the homey Sean Witzke sent me. It sounds simple, I mean I was just reading outside on a bench, but that’s not an experience I could have back home in Georgia. The people going by, the location, the smell of food from Yakini-Q drifting down the block, the reflections from the New People building… there’s something special there. Something fascinating and appealing.
-One of my favorite images of a city is a Black Star song, “Respiration.” It opens with a woman saying “Escuchela… la ciudad respirando.” I don’t know where that’s from, but here’s the hook and a youtube:
So much on my mind that I can’t recline
Blastin holes in the night til she bled sunshine
Breathe in, inhale vapors from bright stars that shine
Breathe out, weed smoke retrace the skyline
Heard the bass ride out like an ancient mating call
I can’t take it y’all, I can feel the city breathin
Chest heavin, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving
It’s beautiful, yeah? I love “Breathe in: inhale vapors from bright stars that shine/ Breathe out: weed smoke retrace the skyline.” It’s crystal clear, a thousand words worth of imagery packed into two short lines. When I think of what I like about cities, this is what I think of. The city as a living, breathing organism and the citizens as people just trying to get by.
-I loved this song before I moved to a real city. I spent a couple years in Madrid, but that wasn’t quite the same. I wasn’t on my own. When I moved to SF and found myself alone, I finally understood the melancholy aspects of the song. City living is like nothing else, but it will burn you out if you can’t keep up.
-I was trying to explain this to a friend in email, and the only compact term I could come up with for what I’m talking about was “urban ennui.” Urban ennui is that feeling that arises when you’re caught between a city’s majesty and its dungeon. It’s the combination of pretending you’re sober enough to talk to a pretty girl on somebody’s balcony at midnight and curling into a fetal ball in your apartment because the pressure is too much a week later, and then doing it all again because escape is unthinkable and unwanted.
-The feeling isn’t ennui, not really. Ennui is a listlessness, a tiredness. It’s exhaustion. Depression. But that’s the closest feeling I could come up with, even though this is something different.
Urban ennui about the push and the pull between the sacred and the profane, and how both are required if you’re living in the city. It’s how a smile from a stranger can change your day just as fast as a mean mug from another. It’s how a snarl of cars is beautiful from four stories up and a nightmare at street level.
-I can hear traffic from my place late at night, when it’s real quiet. I like how cities sound, and if I’m up late, not sleeping, that quiet motion is comforting, like the ocean. I don’t know why I like it, I doubt if I could quantify it, but I do.
-One of my favorite rappers, a guy whose career has had almost undue influence on my writing style, is El-P. He started with Company Flow, moved to Definitive Jux, and I’ve followed him ever since I first heard CoFlow’s Funcrusher Plus. Here’s his song “For My Upstairs Neighbors (Mums The Word)” off his (very good) Cancer 4 Cure album.
He packs a lot in. Cops as hostile invaders and obstacles, New York attitude, snitching, abuse, but most of all, the unique relationship between neighbors in a city. You hear the noises from other apartments, the arguments and screams and orgasms and heels, and you ignore it. There’s no real common area, so you don’t hang out and become friends. Each apartment is a world unto itself, orbiting the sun of the apartment building but existing almost entirely apart from it, as well.
-I don’t know any of my neighbors. I’ve had conversations and introduced myself to a few, but I wouldn’t call any of them friends. We don’t hang out. We smile as we pass each other and continue on in our lives.
I live directly across from the main elevator and stairs, so I hear everyone. Snatches of conversation. Muttered arguments. Drunken ramblings. But I don’t know anyone. I don’t know faces, only voices, and I barely know those. I have neighbors, but they just live near me. They aren’t neighbors like I had back home.
-El-P is familiar with urban ennui. It bleeds out of his discography, in addition to his songs about abuse, addiction, and depression. It’s one of the things I like most about his work, honestly. That paranoia and pain that oozes out of songs like “Stepfather Factory” and “The Jig Is Up” hit me hard.
-It’s no surprise that whatever it is inside me that loves cities latched onto El-P and his love of the same. The actual surprise, though, was Damon Albarn.
-Blur just released two new songs: “Under the Westway” and “The Puritan.” They’re pretty good.
-The Westway is another road. Albarn sang about it in “For Tomorrow,” from Modern Life Is Rubbish. A video and another quote:
She’s a twentieth century girl,
With her hands on the wheel.
Trying not to be sick again,
Seeing what she can borrow.
London’s so nice back in your seamless rhymes
But we’re lost on the Westway.
So we hold each other tightly,
And we can wait until tomorrow.
“We’re lost on the Westway, so we hold each other tightly, and we can wait until tomorrow.” Terror and love, inseparable.
-I like “Under The Westway” more than I like “The Puritan,” but that’s more due to the fact that “Westway” sounds more like the era of Blur I’m really into, their 13 and Think Tank albums. “The Puritan” sounds more like Modern Life Is Rubbish to me. (Not a complaint, mind.)
“Westway” is properly melancholy and explicitly about cities. Here’s an excerpt:
There were blue skies in my city today
Ev’rything was sinking
Said snow would come on Sunday
The old school was due and the traffic grew
Up on the Westway
Where I stood watching comets on their lonesome trails
Shining up above me the jet fuel it fell
Down to earth where the money always comes first
And the sirens sing
Bring us the day they switch off the machines
Cos men in yellow jackets, putting adverts inside my dreams
An automated song and the whole world gone
Fallen under the spell of the
Distance between us when we communicate
Still picking up shortwave
Somewhere they’re out in space
It depends how you’re wired when the night’s on fire
Under the Westway
Love-horror-love-horror-love-cities. Again and again.
-I got into Gorillaz (who I’d liked since high school) in a major way after I moved to SF. I reconsidered Demon Days, I dug Plastic Beach, and I grabbed all the b-sides I could find. Here’s a snap from my Google Music:
I don’t have everything (I haven’t grabbed the Laika album yet), but I do have most of their stuff.
-I also got into Blur, and Albarn in general. I’ve enjoyed all of his side projects to varying degrees. I haven’t disliked any of them. Some are just more good than others.
The internet makes it easy to binge on an artist’s discography (“damon albarn discography mp3 high quality”), but I don’t usually get into artists like I get into Albarn. I never felt like I needed to get every Joe Budden song ever, or Fabolous. But I did that with Albarn, and I’ve even got three zips of bootlegs and live recordings to go through even still.
-I think I binged so hard because Albarn scratched the same itch that El-P does. They’re both exploring these ideas of love, hunger, fear, and obsession on wax. They have a habit of seeing the beauty in pain — El-P enabling a neighbor to murder her abusive husband, Albarn focusing on the love that keeps us together in hard times — and being honest about who we are and where we live.
They don’t have a lot of common ground, but the common ground they do have is remarkable. I don’t think they’ve come to the same conclusions, either. Albarn seems like he’s made his peace with how things are, while El is much more abrasive and prickly about it. Maybe that’s that New York swagger vs whatever they have in London, I don’t know, but I enjoy thinking about it.
-I wouldn’t be the person or writer I am today without music. Specifically rap music, guys like Nas and El-P and Aesop Rock and Cannibal Ox and Jay-Z and OutKast and Goodie MOb and Backbone and Cool Breeze and Too $hort and Mos Def and Talib Kweli and RA the Rugged Man and dozens more. They all either explored ideas that are near and dear to my heart or explored ideas in a particularly clever way.
The language they used and the ideas they explored are what made the difference. They opened something up to me, whether it was showing that every subject is worthy of consideration or just flipping a hysterical lyrical miracle off a spherical aerial toward the pinnacle, minimal satirical.
The way that I talk, the way I choose to write, is a direct product of a childhood spent listening to music. The books that I read ranged from classics to airport trash, and none of them hit me as hard as, say, “It Ain’t Hard To Tell” or “Find A Way” or “2nd Round KO” or “Uni-4-Orm” or “Fugee-La” or “Scream Phoenix” or “Shadowboxin’/4th Chamber.”
-Music taught me to be willing to find different ways to explore ideas, rather than just being simple and straightforward and boring. If you have to work for something, even just a little, it tastes better.
-I realized that several of my most favorite songs and albums explore city life and urban ennui entirely by accident, but it made a lot of things about me fall into place. It’s like opening a safe. The tumblers fall, click click click click, and then the door slides open and you have that lightbulb moment.
It makes sense. City living is stressful, especially on your own, and why wouldn’t it be explored via music? San Francisco, London, Los Angeles, New York, whatever. There are differences, but I bet the basic foundation of living in those cities is the same. It’s one of those things you have to make your peace with, or else just leave the city entirely.
-I’ve started running in the mornings, since I’m not really biking currently. I know my neighborhood well, or at least maybe a three square block radius. It’s different when you’re up at 6 or 7 and winding your way through the sidewalks, portapotties, and overgrown trees. You look at different things because you can’t run with your head down. It’s easy to find something you never noticed before as you watch the fog burn off.
It’s another angle on the city, basically, something new to love and fear.
-Urban ennui isn’t a concrete concept, or like a dominant one or something like that. It’s part of a spectrum of things: depression, relationships, adulthood, son-hood, and whatever else. But this feels significant to me, it’s something that matters. It’s something that’s real.
Fans & critics seeking better representation in comics for women/blacks/gays/asians/etc has been a Thing the past few years. Just between you, me, and the wall, I’ve dabbled in it myself, just a little.
That’s the preamble. Here’s the meat. Don’t do this, in part because it is a huge pet peeve of mine and I am the center of the universe, and in part because it’s bad marketing:
CAPTAIN MARVEL #1 by @kellysue is out THIS Weds! You SAY you want books w/ strong female leads. You SAY you want books by top female creators. Time to put your money where your mouth is.
This is going to be the start of a GREAT run– not just of a great “girl” comic– of a great comic for EVERYONE. This one’s got a LOT of talent and heart in it. Give it a go!
This is from Amazing Spider-Man writer Dan Slott’s Twitter feed. It is good intentioned, and I appreciate the sentiment behind it. Kelly Sue DeConnick is a pretty dope writer (Osborn: Evil Incarcerated with Emma Rios and I think Becky Cloonan for a bit is great comics, the best Normie since Jenkins/Ramos on Peter Parker, and her Slam Dunk adaptations are A+) and I get why they want this series to be a success. But.
1. Guilt is a crap motivator. I come from a family of guilt trippers, and as a result, there’s not much I hate more than a guilt trip. This is a guilt trip that also implies dishonesty on the part of the guilt tripped. “You SAY you want books w/ strong female leads. You SAY you want books by top female creators.” The suggestion is that you have to buy it, because otherwise, heh, guess you didn’t mean it, eh?
2. People say a lot of things about a lot of things, and there is always an unspoken caveat after the phrase. I want more comics by and about black people… that are good comics. I want more comics by and about black people… that don’t involve them being all sad about being black or fighting racism. The “you” here is a wide mass of people, each with their own wishes and peeves. “I want more comics by and about women… [that fit my criteria for things I enjoy].” Captain Marvel certainly seems to be eagerly awaited, judging by the stuff I see daily on my tumblr, and that’s cool. (Actually, tumblr being so energized is really cool in a grass roots sort of way, but that’s not this post.) But that doesn’t mean that it is the lynchpin on which future comics about women revolve. I mean, I hope it isn’t, because, wow, that would be a tremendous dick move and also pretty unlikely. But Captain Marvel It is just one comic. A comic with a lady lead, female writer, a cool mohawk, and a good amount of buzz, but still just one comic. Some people who want more lady-orientated funnybooks might not dig it. Others might. And that’s okay. If you keep making those books, they’ll like something else, and all of us can argue over which one is the best. (The obvious answer is the Jubilee: Firecracker twelve issue maxiseries I just made up, aka “The New Watchmen That Is Also Better Than Watchmen“)
3. This is a huge pet peeve of mine, basically, and I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again. “Buy this book or we’ll shoot this dog” is funny on a cover. It’s less funny when it’s someone actually telling you that. It’s bad marketing, it’s annoying, it’s insulting, blah blah blah. Y’all know the drill. Your mileage may vary.
4. Have I done this? I’ve probably done this. Sorry. I think a lot about this stuff, both this “I want more comics by/about blacks” stuff and “I love/hate to talk about wanting more comics by/about blacks” stuff. My thoughts are evolving. How I approach this stuff is evolving. I’m evolving.
One interesting thing about intentionally expanding the types of music I listen to is finding shared ground between genres and the people who make them, no matter how much time or how many miles separate them.
I’ve been listening to The Clash’s London Calling and Killer Mike & El-P’s RAP Music over the past few days. No reason why, I don’t think — I just felt like it. I had a light bulb moment while listening to “Guns of Brixton.” A youtube and a quote:
When the law break in, how you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement or waiting in death row?
You can crush us, you can bruise us
But you’ll have to answer to
Ohhhhhh
Guns of Brixton
I like it. It’s easy to understand. It positions the law as amoral and the authorities as a possible danger, not a source of safety.
The song was written a couple years before the 1981 riot in Brixton. I never heard about it growing up, but in reading about it, it sounds like a pretty familiar story. “Guns of Brixton” is a fight song, a warning. “Do what you want, but don’t think you can get away with this. You’ll answer for this.”
From Killer Mike’s “Don’t Die”, second verse:
Now the dirty cop’s looking at me
Talking ’bout he kill a nigga if I try to flee
Shit, I’m about to lose it, so he gon’ have to prove it
All because the government hate rap music
I’ve been labeled outlaw, renegade, villain
So was Martin King, so the system had to kill him
A nigga with an attitude, the world gotta feel him
Educated villain, intent on living
If I gotta kill a cop just to get out the building
That motherfucker gettin’ left dead, no feelings
Yelling “Fuck him!” as I buck a .45 at his fillings
Trying to knock his brains through the motherfucking ceiling
This is different, but not that different. Mike’s playing the role of a rapper who’s about to be assassinated by cops, and this is his reaction. It’s a song about self-defense, about protecting yourself and your family from anyone who would do them harm, up to and including the people who are meant to protect them.
I don’t think it’s a stretch or insulting to say that the police are often used to enforce oppression in poor and black neighborhoods. Not in a shadowed men in a dark room plotting to rid the world of the untermenschen sort of way, I mean. More in a “these policies are predatory, meant to disenfranchise people, and often built on suspect evidence” kind of way. The war on drugs as a war on poor and brown people, racial profiling, all that stuff. On top of that, disruptive community leaders, your Martin Luther Kings and Malcolm Xs and Black Panthers, are targeted for political and personal destruction by police organizations via extralegal and obsessive surveillance.
A cop stands at the door and knocks. When you hear his voice, how do you feel? What’s the first thought that goes through your head?
Paul Simonon and Killer Mike’s distrust of authority is separated by over thirty years and a couple thousand miles, but it’s rooted in the same history, the same ideas. Protect yourself and your family, via armed resistance if you have to, because you can’t depend on anyone else to do so. There’s something really resonant about that idea. Mike’s is a little more swaggery than Simonon’s version (the delivery on “Yelling ‘Fuck him!’ as I buck a .45 at his fillings/Trying to knock his brains through the motherfucking ceiling” is nuts), but they’re both coming from the same place.
There’s this element of music that I cherish. It’s the fact that, if you’re open to it, there is a ton of history encoded into the songs. It can be anything from trying to identify a half second sample to looking up someone’s name. Stuff like “Y’out there?” being quickly followed by “Louder!” screaming out from the past. Or “Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for star time?” or how Biggie flipped Schooly D’s “PSK” into a serious black/rap history joint. If you dig a little, just a little, and let your mind make the connections that are already there, you’ll find a lot more to enjoy, and that uncovers even more.
Here’s a quote Billy Tucci is using to promote his new comic, which is all about (and sponsored by) private military company Blackwater:
Like most people, all I had heard or read concerning private security contractors was that they were reckless cowboys whose actions in Iraq and Afghanistan were considered almost criminal by the media who weren’t there.
Mmmm. Here’s the key phrase: “by the media who weren’t there.” It’s a dog whistle. It’s meant to discredit any naysayers by painting them as lying liars. It’s a variant on the old “You can’t judge it if you haven’t tried to do it” thing people use to silence critics. This one is just specific to soldiering. Which, okay, I’ll believe that. I’m from a military family. My granddad served in Vietnam, my father in Gulf War I. I get it, I respect the sentiment. But I respect it when it’s an honest sentiment, not something being used to protect a company that raped and murdered its fair share of people in Iraq and Afghanistan.
One of the “almost criminal” things the lying media reported on was the time the company murdered seventeen innocent Iraqi civilians. Or the time that someone in the employ of Blackwater checked out 200 AK-47s from an armory in Afghanistan and signed his name “Eric Cartman.” Or the time that a Blackwater got drunk, wandered outside, and shot a bodyguard of Iraq’s vice president dead and was then spirited out of Iraq, avoiding being charged by the Iraqi government. Or the time they shot and killed a family traveling to Bagdhad, including a nine-year old boy. Oh wait, my bad. What actually happened is that they opened fire on the minivan, killing the boy. They shot his mother in her back as she bent to shield her 3 month old daughter. The 3 month old caught a bullet to the face. Or the times that Blackwater kidnapped Iraqi nationals for “extraordinary rendition.” That’s code for torture, if you aren’t aware. Ooh, or the fact that they probably kidnapped Iraqi girls, brought them to the Green Zone, and made them give blowjobs to the contractors. Ohhhh, hang on, here’s a video of Blackwater contractors running over an Iraqi woman and then gunning it to get away. Go to around 2:30 to see the impact.
Whoops! Ha ha. Guess you had to be there? Like the media wasn’t, those lying scumbags.
Tucci’s comic, The Blackwater Chronicles, is yet another attempt by this raping, murdering, horrible company to rehabilitate its image and erase the past. A prior effort included an Xbox 360 video game where you play a set of heroic (white, of course) contractors in Fake Arabia. The game was awful, of course, and former Blackwater top dog Erik Prince described it as being “along the lines of kids running around their neighborhood playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians.” My favorite of their efforts is changing their name from Blackwater to Xe and now to Academi. Two name changes since 2005? Nice one, bro. That fills me with trust and forgiveness.
These people are war criminals. They aren’t subject to the same rules and regulations as the actual US military, and they are free to do whatever they want, apparently, and get bailed out by their political friends. Y’all hear that John Ashcroft is on the board of directors for Academi? Ha ha, that can’t possibly be significant. Ex-Blackwater vice chairman Cofer Black is Mitt Romney’s “special advisor” on foreign policy issues.
Blackwater is what happens when you turn war from an evil into a business enterprise.
Thank goodness we have a brave soul willing to tell us the TRUE story about how Blackwater is actually a hero to millions, the force we need in these fallen times, a strong bastion against the forces of terror. Thank goodness we’re going to get an action-packed, exciting comic book about these boys, the boys who do what we can’t because it’s the right thing to do.
There’s definitely a vital and harrowing story to be told — a true history, not a eulogy/corrective/hagiography sponsored by Blackwater and its goons — lurking around Blackwater. I like reading about war. I like war comics, too. One of my favorites, one of the hands down best, are the Sgt Rock comics by Joe Kubert and Bob Kanigher. There was this little tag they put in the comics. It said “Make war no more.” I first saw it as a kid in the tattered Sgt Rock comics my uncle gave me. I didn’t get it then. But I grew up. And I read.
The point was that even when war is necessary, or you are forced into action, it isn’t something to celebrate or glamorize. It’s something awful. It’s something unforgivable. It’s something that causes untold levels of misery for everyone involved. It saps the innocence from young boys and turns them into something else. It destroys families, both on the front lines and back home. It makes an entire country complicit in war crimes. The only people it benefits are the people who make money off misery.
Did y’all see Oliver North pimping the new Call of Duty at E3 this year?
This is the world we live in. This is the stuff we expect to entertain us. We have to do better. We owe it to ourselves and our children to do better. Blackwater literally got away with murder, and now they’re trying to paint themselves as heroes, a roving band of do-gooders. The Merry Men, who are unfairly maligned by the media and haven’t left a trail of broken, raped, wounded, and murdered bodies — American, Iraq, Afhgani, and otherwise — across the Middle East.
We’re America, right? We’re supposed to be better than these scumbags. We’re supposed to be the ones in the right. But here we are. And here they are, selling their own story to us using code words like “controversial and dangerous lifestyle.” We keep enabling monsters to get away scot-free and make a fortune. We keep letting these bastards win.
Do you know why Blackwater is controversial? They’re controversial because they murdered people whose only crime was being near Blackwater when their people were drunk and trigger-happy. Not because the media lies about them. Don’t fall for their okey-doke.
Kiyohiko Azuma kills me sometimes, especially his Yotsuba&! strip. Blogfriend Amy K called Yotsuba a manic pixie dream daughter once, which I think is a pretty fair assessment of the series. But as delightfully and unrealistically precocious as Yotsuba is, the comic wouldn’t work at all if not for Azuma’s cartooning chops. Two pages from volume 10:
The timing on that first page is so good. The transition from panel two (curiosity) to three (shock) to four (horror) is deadly, and then he throws the punchline at the top of the next page.
But what really gets me is Fuuka’s posture in page two, panel two. I’m used to a couple different signifiers for laughter in comics, like a lady bent over gripping her belly or a guy leaning back with the back of his hand pressed against his forehead and his mouth wide open. But this is something even better. It’s the perfect picture of what happens when something is so funny you lose control of your body and make stupid poses. That arm thing she’s doing, that uncontrollable spasm — I’ve seen that before, I’ve done that before.
from Dave Gibbons & Alan Moore’s Watchmen, chapter 11
“The [seven screens idea] is related to a post–Steve Jobs, post-Windows era of where we’re always on a BlackBerry or a phone at a ballgame, at the movies, and you’re looking at seven windows when you’re online. And I’ve found myself even falling asleep at the theater unless I’m talking to somebody or I’m on the phone, and it’s because of the amount of information that we have at once. … I was very particular about having the screens be separate and having it where your mind puts the screens back together the way you can put memories together, the way that happens throughout the day and it all links back up.”
I don’t know why it took me so long to realize it, but the one thing that runs through all of Nelly Furtado’s singles are that they’re fun. They’re upbeat smiley face music, whether she’s doing fun anthems or throwing bedroom eyes at you.
One thing that’s always interesting about R&B and rap collabs, which I generally think of as being lady singer + dude rapper, is how the two musicians are portrayed in the video. Meth & Mary’s “All I Need” portrays the two as musicians solely, since Meth already has a lady in the video. Nelly Furtado’s “No Hay Igual” is the other one, as it suggests that Furtado and Residente of Puerto Rican group Calle 13 are in some type of flirty relationship.
I can’t find it now, but a few years back, 2008 or 2009 I think, there was an R&B girl group, maybe a duo, that released a single. It was pretty okay, and the rap feature was solid. It was probably Fabolous, but I think Maino or Pusha T might have been the dude. I don’t know. I swear I’m not making this up. Anyway, it came out on rap blogs, and then it went. A few weeks later, a different version of the same song came out with a different MC. It was an earlier cut, one that was leaked from the studio, and it was grimey. It was easy to see why it was shelved. Dude spent his whole time talking about how much he wanted to do the singers, which was kind of on-topic, but it was a bit much.
I only mention that too-long story because my favorite part of this song explicitly addresses the tension that comes along with these types of videos. You see a lot of Furtado and Residente dancing and flirting, and then you hit the bridge at the end of the song:
“Te vo’ a sacar a pasear (¡Wey!)”
You wanna take a walk? Cool.
“En una nave espacial (¡Wey!)”
In a space ship? Hm, aight. Kinda weird, but let’s roll.
“Cosmodrogado yo quiero surfiar (¡Wey!)”
Okay, so there’s a space-drug thing he just made up, but surfing is cool. This is getting weirder though.
“Por tu órgano genital (¡¿Qué?!)”
¡¿Que?! Even I know, judging from the wreckage of my Spanish knowledge, that you don’t need to be talking about any part of a lady’s ladyparts!
But this part is my favorite because Furtado’s response, and the reaction in the video, are so perfect. “Bro, you crossed a line and you’re about to kill a fun thing.”
It also gets at another fun part of these videos, which is that if they’re big enough, if they turn into real deal anthems, then the singers become audience stand-ins. There’s a reason why TLC’s “No Scrubs” blew up so huge, and why Sporty Thievez felt like they had to answer back with “No Pigeons.” Especially in songs with a lot of call and response, the singer is her and the rapper is me. I love that stuff. Something like Missy’s “One Minute Man” with Luda and Trina got a lot of play because it has both that raw girl power flavor and whatever the guy equivalent of girl power is. It sets up this competition, kinda like Furtado’s “Promiscuous,” between the sexes, that’s a lot of fun. Everybody gets a chance to be brash and dirty. Everybody’s got something they can scream at the boils and ghouls across the room.
In thinking about it, Trina’s done more than a few of these songs. “Five Star Chick”, the wild scandalous and NSFW “Look Back At Me” with Killer Mike, and of course the unforgettable “Nann Nigga” with Trick Daddy Dollars. Do you know how many girls I heard yelling “You don’t know nann hoe!” on the bus to and from school? It’s not just songs that are boys vs girls, tee hee. There’s a competitive aspect that’s gotta be there. That’s what makes it fun.
This is the last page of Amazing Spider-Man 122, the issue after Gwen Stacy dies. It’s right in the middle of one of my most favorite runs on any comic ever. Gerry Conway on words, Gil Kane on pencils, John Romita & Tony Mortellaro on inks, and Dave Hunt on colors.
The first 140 or so (I’ve never done a real count, but around there) issues of Amazing Spider-Man are my Lee/Kirby Fantastic Four, and this is one of my favorite single pages out of that entire run.
Steve Ditko gave Spider-Man a creepy outsider feel. When Ditko left and Jazzy Johnny Romita became the principal artist, the tone changed to something more influenced by romance comics and soap opera. Peter became a lot more handsome, the clothes were swinging, and the girls turned from pretty to supa dupa fly. The comic got a lot sexier, is what I’m saying, and Mary Jane Watson had a lot to do with that.
The usual line is that Mary Jane was the party girl, while Gwen was the wholesome girl next door. I don’t know if that’s actually true, but it’s a fair enough starting point if you want to branch out into a deeper understanding of the characters. MJ was definitely a popular girl, the type you’d describe as “hot” instead of “pretty.” Lesser writers took that to mean that she was an airhead or vapid, but that was never true. But she definitely represented a somewhat edgier kind of excitement than Gwen did.
Part of the mythos of Spider-Man is that Peter Parker is an extraordinarily selfish person. Or maybe just regular selfish — it’s hard to tell when everything in cape comics is so heightened. But he takes everything personally, and he tries to walk around with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He snaps and buckles under pressure before regaining his strength, but that snapping is the important part. Peter Parker needs support. He needs someone to tell him things are okay or to have his back in a pinch. Spider-Man is a role Peter Parker plays, not Peter Parker himself.
What I love about this page is how it shows the quiet strength and determination that Mary Jane always had underneath her party girl exterior. She’s been waiting at Peter and Harry’s pad for hours, praying for someone to talk to. The problem is that it’s dumb ol’ Petey, a guy who never met a problem that wasn’t his fault. He lashes out at her in his grief, ignoring her own grief, and instead of doing what anyone else would do, MJ turns to leave, pauses, and chooses to stay.
There’s something about the choice she makes between panels here that really, really sticks with me. MJ isn’t just a supporting character, a prop for someone else’s grief. Not when she’s written well, anyway. This choice feels significant, for both her and Peter. It’s one of my absolutely favorite scenes in Spider-Man comics, and I don’t know that I could tell you exactly why. There’s just tremendous emotional resonance there, and a certain finality and acceptance, that I really appreciate. She chooses to share her grief, whether Peter wants her to or not.
It’s like — does she recognize something in Peter? Is it something she also recognizes in herself? Why does she choose to forgive him for his anger? I think she recognizes how people run away from love and support, in part because she herself is also guilty of that.
There’s something deep lurking around here, right below the surface, and I love it. It’s like Spider-Man is shifting (or continuing its shift, really) from childhood to adulthood, transforming directly on the page, and making permanent decisions that other comics wouldn’t, and modern comics don’t. Part of the fun of the first 140 issues of Amazing Spider-Man grow from a 15 year old kid to a college-age adult, and this scene is a milestone moment.
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I was watching Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” a few weeks back and jotting down notes. I wrote that I might like pop crossover Timbaland more than I like rappity-rap Timbaland. You know what I mean — Nelly Furtado versus Jay-Z, with Missy Elliott being the only person to successfully split the difference. I haven’t done any hard research but that idea feels right to me. Timbaland’s greatest strengths are making catchy and weird tunes, these sort of things that are great pop songs until he layers in baby noises or frog croaks and then they’re memorably great pop songs. In “Promiscuous,” Timbaland doesn’t have a dog barking or anything, but those synths that come in over the chorus are amazing. I thought that it was maybe a sample or something, but knowing Timbaland, he probably just hammered them out on a keyboard one day. But they’re the perfect ’80s touch, trading on the same nostalgia as the soundtrack to Drive, and they elevate a pretty good song into a memorable one. And I don’t think all of this could add up to a great rap song, going by my preferred definition of “good rap song,” as well as it adds up to a good pop song. So yeah: probably indefensible because the boundaries are so vague, but Pop Timbo > Rap Timbo. Argue that.
The video’s cute, too. Where “Maneater” was about submitting to your queen, oooooohohohohoho, “Promiscuous” is a tease. It’s dancing and flirting, and it’s actually a little funny. Furtado and Timbaland trade drum and vocal duties in some scenes, which I think is funny. My sense of humor is stupid though. But overall, the video’s really about getting as close to somebody as possible and teasing them all the way. It’s sexy, but it’s not… explicitly sexy. It’s a love spell. It gets across the erotic urgency of dancing, I guess is the best way to put it, in a cool way. There’s this bit at 2:40 or so, where the guy tries to kiss her? And then it comes back after flashing to another couple of scenes and he tries to kiss her again, and then it flashes away and back and one more time, this time his kiss attempt is a lunge. When it comes back around, Furtado is on him, instead of vice versa, and he’s holding back. That’s nuts, and it’s totally perfect as an example of what I mean. There’s a back and forth tease, a wanting, that comes alongside dancing with someone else, and I like how this guy’s wanting spills over before he has to rein it back in.
The conversational structure of the song is great, too. It sells the song as a booty call negotiation anthem. It’s not catchy so much as undeniable. You don’t really need to sing along with it to know it, barring a few money lines (that Steve Nash line, “How you doin’ young lady?, and I really really like “Chivalry is dead but you’re still kinda cute”). The weird thing is that something about Furtado’s delivery on the verses reminds me of Hot 97’s Angie Martinez, especially her style on “Live At Jimmy’s”. I don’t know what it means, exactly, but the comparison won’t go away. Furtado sells it, though, even if she isn’t from Brooklyn. There’s a playfulness to it, a flirtiness, that enhances the song.
I also love the weird harmonizing she does on this weird beat at the end of the song, but I don’t even have anything to say about that but “Yes, more please.”
is “M1A1.” Listen:
. The man’s shouts for other people turn the song into something a little creepy. He’s seeking companionship and finding none, but he keeps trying and the music eventually buries him. The implication is that he never finds anyone.
that the homey 
album.
” and “The Puritan.” They’re pretty good.
and 
albums. “The Puritan” sounds more like 
to me. (Not a complaint, mind.)
, I dug 
, and I grabbed all the b-sides I could find. Here’s a snap from my Google Music:
with Emma Rios and I think Becky Cloonan for a bit is great comics, the best Normie since Jenkins/Ramos on Peter Parker, and her Slam Dunk adaptations are A+) and I get why they want this series to be a success. But.
and Killer Mike & El-P’s 
over the past few days. No reason why, I don’t think — I just felt like it. I had a light bulb moment while listening to “Guns of Brixton.” A youtube and a quote:
:
, chapter 11
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