How I consume comics today is markedly different from how I consumed comics a year ago. Around this time last year, I was probably buying around twenty floppies per month. I don’t remember the exact number, but twenty feels right. A big week would run me around twenty bucks, maybe six comics, and I hit the shop every week. There weren’t a lot of DC comics on my list, I don’t think, but I did buy a gang of Marvels. I didn’t have a huge stack every week, but I got by. I read a lot.

Time passed and a lot of series I liked got canceled. Around the same time, I decided that I was spending too much time on bad comics. Comics have two components — writing and art — and if one side is lacking, the entire product suffers. So I decided to do a better job of only buying comics that clicked on both levels. I’d read Morrison’s Batman-related stuff based on who was drawing it, but I wasn’t applying the rule evenly. Last year, I made the conscious decision to look at everything I was buying and make sure I wasn’t wasting my money on things that would make me grimace. More comics got cut.

Late last year, I made another decision. I wanted to buy more digital comics because I want to use the space in my apartment for something other than stacks of paper. Luckily, Marvel, DC, Image, and Dark Horse were ramping up their day & date digital comics releases. Pow: more floppies gone. I just checked my emails and by January 2012, I was just buying Hulk, Thunderbolts, and Hellblazer in floppy form, with all the other comics going directly to my iPad.

Somewhere around the border between February and March, I quit Marvel and DC and started buying 2000 AD in print. I had the option of going digital with it, but something about reading it in print seemed attractive. There’s a 2000 AD experience, I think, that I wanted to get a taste of. As of this moment, 2000 AD is the only comic on my pull list. Everything else I’m interested in is either available digitally or the sort of book you buy from Amazon on a whim, rather than subscribe to.

On top of all that, and I hope you’re sticking with me through all this preamble, I recently realized that I hate paying 3 and 4 dollars for digital comics. I don’t own them, I don’t get to keep them, and if I’m paying as much as an entire print comic, and two dollars less than an album on Amazon MP3, then I need something more than a permission slip to read a comic in exchange. So I made the decision to stop buying new digital comics. I buy them a month behind now, when the price drops to $1.99. $1.99 is still a bit much for ~20 pages of funnybooks, but it feels better. Easier on the wallet, too. There are a few exceptions — Prophet, and honestly I’m probably going to break on Saga soon because issue 3 was so good and I hear 4 is better — but for the most part, I’m reading new comics a month late.

So, the funny thing about buying 2000 AD in print is that Diamond, the biggest comics distributor in the country, is borderline worthless when it comes to 2000 AD. I started with prog 1765 (they call them progs, roll with me here, it’s not that weird) and picked up prog 2012, an anniversary issue, and progs 1766 and 1767 around the same time or a week later. Cool, right? It’s a solid start. But I’m looking at my stack now and I’ve got 1765-1767, 1768-1772, 1774, 1775, 1777, and 1778. See the gaps? I picked up 1775 before I got 1774, too, and a few other issues came out of order. According to an email I got this week, progs 1779-1781 all came out this week.

2000 AD is a weekly serial anthology. Diamond makes it very hard to read it in order, and you can’t even rely on the shipping lists. I bought 1778 three weeks ago, and 1779 came out this week? Really? As a result, I go to the comics shop around once a month now, hoping against hope that 1776 and the other missing issues have shown up in the interim. Sound aggravating? You have no idea. I’ve been looking forward to reading Al Ewing & Brendan McCarthy’s Zaucer of Zilk for months, and then I couldn’t even do that because the issues progs don’t show up.

The Wednesday comics experience is pretty well broken for me. 2000 AD‘s slipshod schedule got me out of the habit of going to get comics and immediately reading them every week. I stockpile them now, and read them when I have two or three I can pore over. I buy digital comics on Wednesday still, usually while I’m having breakfast, and I’ll read one or two of them at lunch if I’m excited. But usually, I’ll wait until I’m ready to read them over the weekend or the next week. I bought Chaykin’s American Flagg last week, and Xander and Kevin Cannon’s Double Barrel and haven’t touched either, even though I’m really into them. It took me a couple weeks to read Brubaker & Phillips Fatale 5. The only comic I reliably read on release day any more is Viz’s Weekly Shonen Jump Alpha, and that’s because it’s uploaded immediately before lunch on Mondays and has Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece in it.

It’s sorta weird not being plugged into the Wednesday cycle. I was part of that crowd for a long time, and without weekly mainstream comix blogging, 4thletter! definitely wouldn’t be what it is today without being plugged into that cycle. I already watch TV on a delay — which means that Legend of Korra was thoroughly spoiled for me before I got within spitting distance of the finale, thanks Tumblr — and now I read comics on a delay, too.

It’s weird, but it’s also less stressful. I don’t feel compelled to chime in on things. I’ll still throw out a joke if I see some dumb-looking news, but I don’t have to chime in on the latest story about Wonder Woman’s stupid pants any more. I relapsed like an idiot a little bit ago, but for the foreseeable future? That side of reading and talking about comics is dead to me. I just get to read what I like, write about it if the spirit moves me, and enjoy things at my own speed.

There’s this feeling, an impulse, that part of being a good writer about comics means that you have to be timely. I find myself pushing away from that impulse lately, if only because snap judgments are growing increasingly unsatisfying. I want to let something marinate before I try to dig into it. I need that time to sit and just let my mind wander over the folds of a book, rather than reading it and immediately cranking out how I feel about it. I know my writing well enough that I can do either/or, but I vastly prefer the stuff I’ve written that leaves me at the back of the pack, but with a stronger argument than the front-runner.

I’m curious to see where the evolution of how I read comics goes next. I like where I am now, but a significant part of me bristles at the fact that my friends are a book ahead of me. I hate the idea of being behind, even if behind is a fake idea in this situation. I may loosen the $1.99 digital rule at some point, but I’m enjoying my newfound freedom. I don’t miss the Wednesday grind.

I’ve been thinking about DRM again lately, especially Diablo III‘s ridiculous always-on DRM and ComiXology shutting down a script to download comics you’ve purchased. It’s fair to say that I’m pretty much anti-DRM, but I still want to talk this out.

The Diablo III thing is painfully obvious to me. If you buy a single player game, you should be able to play it whenever you want. This has been true all the way back to Nintendo days. It’s basic. You shouldn’t need to be online or communicating with someone else just to get your game on. But, when Diablo launched, the servers went down, and folks who dropped sixty on their shiny new game couldn’t do a thing. As it turns out, the always-on DRM was to protect their auction house. It doesn’t matter if you’re not using it or if you’re just playing alone. You have to be connected, no matter what, and if the servers are down, you’re screwed.

The ComiXology thing is different, but still related. If you buy digital comics, you’re probably paying full retail for those comics every week from ComiXology. You can read those comics in their (pretty crappy) Flash-based web reader, on the (average, but sometimes janky) iPad reader, on iPhone, or on your Android device. You don’t get a file, exactly, so much as access to the files. If you want to read your comics in ComicZeal, which has a remarkably clean and smooth reading experience despite a less-than-feature-rich library section, you’re out of luck. If you want to read your comics on a PC without being online, you’re out of luck. If ComiXology goes out of business, which isn’t a crazy idea at all, you’re super out of luck. You’re locked to what ComiXology chooses to allow you to use.

What I realized is that DRM has a lot of benefits for the publisher, but next to none for the consumer. Blizzard can track exactly who plays Diablo III and when, which is valuable for gathering demographic data, off the top of my head. ComiXology can tell publishers exactly what contexts their comics will appear in and on what devices. DRM is about control, basically, rather than being a value-add. It’s a limiting service, rather than one focused on expansion, and the people most affected by it are consumers who actually want to consume this stuff.

DRM is a restriction. DRM doesn’t say what you can do. It says what you cannot. That’s the entire point. It’s about controlling information and access. It’s often used for anti-piracy reasons, but the funny thing is that piracy entirely sidesteps DRM, save for one or two steps that the actual pirate has to go through to make something available for downloading. Not being able to download comics directly from ComiXology doesn’t stop people from putting up ComiXology-derived scans. Not even close.

The script ComiXology shut down was called cmxget. The Reddit thread has been wiped clean of instructions and info on it, and I have yet to find a copy, even though I spent quite some time poking around. I’m really curious to see how it works, because a 2kb bash script isn’t a hefty bit of programming, I don’t think. cmxget allowed you to download comics you already own, and presumably you’d have to run it in a Terminal window, which already means that it’s not a viable piracy method. That’s too much work for too little gain when I can hop over to usenet or Rapidshare and get any comic ever in about five seconds.

DRM is meant to limit what you’re allowed to do, but the very nature of the Flash app means that that limitation is, at best, perfunctory. It’s not going to stop anyone who wants to break it, and it’s not even really gonna stop anyone who once half-thought about breaking it. I got curious and figured this out ages ago. It’s like if… Macrovision on VHS tapes was something you could turn off by pressing Volume + and Volume – on your remote at the same time, or if a DVD included an off button for its copy protection. It’s simple. Simpler than the conversion from CD to MP3, even.

But ComiXology still shut down the script, even though the script can’t be used for downloading free comics. You have to have access to the comics legitimately, which means that you paid for those comics. cmxget is probably pretty tedious, and definitely much less efficient than just hitting up a sharing site. You’re essentially downloading things that you already own via an extremely boring route… but that’s not really true, is it?

Here’s section 6 from the ComiXology Terms of Use (which they reserve the right to modify whenever and however they like without warning you beforehand):

Digital Content:
The Service enables you to download, display and use comic books and other digitized electronic content as made available by comiXology from time to time (individually and collectively, “Digital Content”). Upon your payment of the applicable fees (if any) and subject to any further restrictions in the EULA, if applicable, comiXology grants you the non-exclusive right to view, use and display the Digital Content as part of your use of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content is licensed, not sold, to you by comiXology. ComiXology reserves the right to revoke your license to Digital Content at any time for any reason. Unless specifically indicated otherwise, you may not sell, rent, lease, distribute, broadcast, sublicense or otherwise assign any rights to the Digital Content or any portion of it to any third party, and you may not remove any proprietary notices or labels on the Digital Content. In addition, you may not, and you will not encourage, assist or authorize any other person to, bypass, modify, defeat or circumvent security features that protect the Digital Content. You acknowledge and agree that Digital Content may not be available to view, use or display under certain conditions, such as due to restrictions made by licensors of Digital Content or if the publisher of Digital Content no longer retains the rights or other licenses, consents or permissions to that Digital Content. ComiXology reserves the right to modify or discontinue the offering of any Digital Content at any time. If a unit of Digital Content becomes unavailable prior to download but after purchase, your sole and exclusive remedy is the refund of the purchase price paid for such Digital Content.

I’ve bolded the relevant bits, which is a lot of the paragraph, I guess. Forgive me if you’ve heard this before, but I want to reiterate what’s going on here. You’re not buying comics. You’re buying a license to view the comics at ComiXology’s discretion. You may not discuss how to circumvent their copy protection. You may not to let your friends use your account to read a comic. If a publisher associated with ComiXology goes out of business or loses the rights to a comic, you have no remedy. You’re paying for a permission slip, not content, and you are most certainly not paying for comics.

I’ve personally sunk a lot of money into ComiXology. I generally wake up on Wednesday, do morning workout stuff, and then browse for comics while I eat breakfast. I’ll read comics over lunch if I’m really excited about them, and then mop up the rest over the rest of the week. The website says I have 151 separate series in my collection, and that ranges from one-shots to full runs. I dunno how much money that is, but I’ve been buying comics exclusively from these guys (more specifically, through the Isotope affiliate store, since Sime is my dude) for the better part of a year now, and off and on for a couple years, so probably a lot.

What happens when ComiXology goes away? I lose the license and my comics go away, along with my money. ComiXology is emphatic about not giving out refunds. My comics go away because I never actually bought (for example) Azzarello & Chiang’s Wonder Woman. I bought the rights to view it at the discretion of someone else. When they go away, so does their discretion. And that sucks. Companies close all the time. Yahoo! is in the process of running Flickr into the ground. Google Video is gone. All those early ’00s music vendors we thought were great alternatives to Napster? Dead. Blockbuster, Sam Goody, every game store that isn’t GameStop… why should ComiXology be any different? They’re a very big fish in a very small pond. But at one point, Flickr was on top of the world, too.

This isn’t rabid paranoia. It’s simply being careful about where and how you spend your money. Look at what happened to the manga and anime industries. Look at MySpace. Companies close.

The thing that’s particularly odious about ComiXology’s approach to DRM is that ComiXology really is the biggest fish in a small pond. So why not offer DRM-free files? The benefit of being a big fish is that you get to dictate to the market. Always-on DRM for video games is a terrible idea, an idea that definitely hurts consumers, but Blizzard is such a big dog that they got away with it. Why? Because people won’t do without Blizzard. They won’t do without that Diablo III. So Blizzard gets away scot-free. Why would Blizzard introduce always-on DRM? Who knows. (No, we all know: it’s about money. It’s always about money. Everything is about money.)

Why not push that in the other direction? ComiXology’s DRM is about as effective as tissue paper is at stopping bullets. Piracy is happening regardless of the DRM. Savvy programmers figured out how to reliably backup their comics already. The DRM is a smokescreen, a nod in the direction of security. It’s not a locked door. It’s a screen door with the glass up during a storm. Piracy and DRM are clearly two separate issues, so why not flip the script and push something that would please customers?

“Starting today, every file you purchase or have purchased on ComiXology will be available in an optional DRM-free CBR file, which are readable on every major platform.”

Being able to continue to access your files, the comics that you’ve bought, in perpetuity is a big deal for me. Maybe not everyone, but there’s a significant subset of us who feel that way, I’d wager. Making this change, which is minor when you consider the problems with their DRM system, is a goodwill get. It wouldn’t dramatically change the user experience (that’s the point of it being optional), and you could even do it Amazon MP3 style and tag each download with a specific code tied to the downloader’s account for security’s sake. Even with that, fans will go “Wow, these guys really get it!” and feel more comfortable with purchasing, since they know that they’re actually paying for comics and have recourse if ComiXology goes away. It makes ComiXology look smart, and it makes the comics industry look like it’s dodging the same traps and pitfalls that the comics industry fell into.

The music industry avoided DRM-free MP3s for years. It didn’t work. Why not leap ahead of the wave that’s inevitably coming and benefit from that perceived prescience? Obviously it isn’t as simple as flipping a switch and adjusting a TOS, and publishers would need to be convinced… but I think if you’d compare the benefits of DRM, which are entirely on the publisher side, and the benefits of openly shunning DRM, which puts consumers first, you’d find something workable.

This isn’t just about ComiXology, either. They’re just the biggest target. Dark Horse, too, needs to bite the bullet. I liked this post on their forums about DRM and the benefits of ditching it. DRM will not and does not stop piracy. I don’t know any other way to say it. It just inconveniences people who actually pay for things. Pirates sidestep DRM. Downloading comics can’t get easier, and the small number of people who are ripping comics right now will continue to do so.

Why don’t digital comics companies quit it with the fake idea that DRM is good for us, for consumers, and catch up to the music industry? Why don’t the digital comics distributors start selling comics instead of permission slips? Why don’t they at least offer the option of a DRM-free file? Every MP3 I buy from Amazon is stored on the cloud, but I also have the option of downloading it. People are already hyped for digital comics. I can’t see how this would change that any way but for the better.

The video for Nelly Furtado’s “Maneater” is basically a back-alley warehouse orgy masterminded by a queen who dominates everyone else with her very presence. The warehouse is set up as this very dangerous place, the type of place an innocent lil lady like Nelly Furtado shouldn’t visit at night. But, like Michael Jackson, whose videos often portrayed dancing as rebellion or violence, Furtado can move, and that means she rules the roost.

That bit in the first verse, the “I wanna see you all on your knees, knees/ either wanna be with me or you wanna be me”? I love that. Her delivery in this song is so plastic that it comes off as the most “Call me Queen, worm” thing ever, especially when combined with her vaguely zombie-esque dance moves. I love how it instantly creates a story, too, because suddenly the warehouse orgy turns from subtext to text. Everyone in there is on their knees, and they all want her in one way or another. She’s the queen bee.

Those two lines front-loads the sex oozing out of the video, too. The only person that’s alone in this video is Furtado. Everyone else is confined (ooh!) in some way or gyrating against someone else (oh my!). It’s a very intimate video, the sort that makes you think about sex without just focusing on somebody’s boobs or butt.

I honestly can’t think of a more appropriate video for “Maneater.” It’s a thematic, rather than literal, translation of the lyrics, which are all about being so obsessed with Furtado that you completely destroy your life. Timbaland’s beat is pretty undeniable, with a solid rhythm and what I’m pretty sure is the sound of a cymbal sliding instead of clanging. The angry buzz of the melody during the verses kicks things up a notch in a really pleasing way, and the reversals sound great. Furtado’s voice is more nasal than I usually expect, kind of like a loose whine, but it fits so well with the beat and it’s great to sing along to, which is pretty much all I ask out of pop music.

I’ve liked Nelly Furtado since her first album, but I think that this song and video were her take on Christina Aguilera’s “Dirrty.” The rap collab, harsh beat, and overtly throbbing sexuality shifted how I thought of both of these sings. That sounds way more filthy than I wanted it to, but what I mean is that “Dirrty” was the point that I noticed that Aguilera shifted from “Genie In A Bottle” passive high school sexiness into “Dirrty” sexy as she wanna be sexiness. I got the same feeling from Furtado’s “Maneater.” This was when I realized she’d shifted from the softer shade of pop on her first album to something with more of an edge. There’s an axis for this thing, it goes Michael Jackson to Prince, and both of them looked around and took a giant step toward Prince and owned it.

I think it’s interesting that both went with the warehouse orgy for a setting, too. It’s not what I’d go to, but it’s a solid visual.

I keep trying to write about this in different ways, but the whole situation seriously, seriously bums me out and I can’t quite find the words. It’s terrifying, in a way. Instead:

-Robert Washington III died on 06/06/12, at the age of 47 years old.
-He wrote the first year and change of Milestone’s Static, a book that is way more near and dear to my heart than I had realized.
-He died poor, having depended on the Hero Initiative for help for a while.
–His final interview is rough.
-He died alone.
-He’s going to be buried in an anonymous grave because he was so broke.

So:
-Please donate to the Hero Initiative in Robert Washington III’s name.
-When you donate, please put his name in the “Add special instructions to the seller” field to make sure that the money is earmarked for his funeral.
-Once his funeral is paid for, I believe that the funds will go to help out other creators in need.
-Tell your friends.

Thanks.

I want there to be some kind of cute narrative behind my discovery of Star*Reach Classics 1 like there is for my introductions to Michelinie and McFarlane’s Amazing Spider-Man 316+317 (my first comics) and Miller’s Sin City: The Big Fat Kill 5 (my first adult comic), but there isn’t one. It was just a book I pulled out of a quarter bin six or seven years ago that I thought was really weird-looking and awkward and therefore must-reading.

I grabbed it for a couple of reasons. I knew and liked Jim Starlin’s work, especially his Adam Warlock-related stuff. I also knew of Neal Adams’s work, though I don’t think I’d had any direct experience with it beyond covers. I’m pretty sure I knew of Dave Sim, too, but I didn’t know that Cerebus was actually an important comic. It looked like a stupid talking animal parody book. So, hey, a quarter? For a book featuring art by one dude I knew I liked, one guy I figured I was supposed to like, and one guy whose name kept popping up? Why not? It turns out that Star*Reach Classics is a weird little time capsule of a comic, some of it great, some of it… strange.

Even though the vast majority of my experience with Starlin comes from reading Marvel comics, even today, I still have this really firm image of what I think his shtick is. There will be a battle between equal numbers, dialogue that’s as much a call-and-response speech as a conversation, amazing starscapes, ankhs, and at some point a close zoom on an eye. Sometimes the eye reveals the universe, sometimes the eye reveals a screaming skull. That’s Starlin in my head. It’s sort of funny how these things build up over the years and we place guys in these boxes. Sometimes it’s wrong. Sometimes it’s right.

“…The Birth of Death!” delivers, in terms of what I expect out of Starlin. “…The Birth of Death!” is a bedtime story delivered by a kid’s Uncle Mort (hey, something about that name…). Starlin remixes the Christian creation story, documenting the creation of angels, humans, immortals, and finally Death. As I was rereading this, I realized that it reminded me of nothing but “Night on Bald Mountain” from Fantasia. They both have that kinda dark and gloomy but still majestic and horrible feel.

I really like how Starlin draws the story. Instead of the bedtime story just being a framing sequence, with Uncle Mort’s words transitioning to captions instead of word balloons, Mort stays in the story every step of the way. His face, or parts of his face at least, is attached to every panel in the story. It’s a technique I don’t think I’ve ever seen before, but very cool. His expressions, from anger to awe, really sell the story, which is heightened in a space opera/high fantasy kind of way. Mort’s sneers and wrinkles elevate a basic story into something else.

I really like how Starlin renders God, too, as a pair of eyes (with ankhs, skulls, and the infinity symbol) floating in crowded space. It’s original and abstract enough to get across the idea of an ever present higher power. Some vague nudity in this one:

I think it’s notable that Starlin’s version of Death hangs out with two topless Conan the Barbarian looking chicks and holds some kind of weird squid-thing that he refers to as “the Dark Thing” in his hand. Starlin’s Death has the same kind of overwrought nobility that Dr Doom bears, but a physicality more fitting for a pulp hero. He’s the kind of villain that would drink wine out of a goblet, throw that goblet against the wall, and then casually bury an axe in a hero’s skull. He looks like he writes poetry about murders between murders, is what I’m saying.

In the end, of course, Uncle Mort is revealed to be Death, and the child he’s reading to is dead. A Longfellow poem and a pale child’s body close out the story.

There’s another story by Starlin in this one, “Death Building.” Was it Matt Fraction who said that the rise of Jim Starlin was the point when nerds discovered acid? Something to that effect, at least. Here’s the bottom two tiers from the first page of “Death Building”:

And here’s the last tier from the last page:

One thing that used to bug me about Starlin was that it seemed like he was always going back to the same well. I eventually got it. It’s not that he was out of ideas or whatever it was I used to think. It was more that he was interested in a specific thing, and working out his feelings about that on the page. Or maybe he was working out the various angles of that specific thing. I don’t want to assume anything about his feelings. Regardless, Starlin has spent a lot of time examining existence, from death to power to destiny and back again.

I like seeing people working out their thoughts in public. I’ve done a lot of it here, obviously. It’s like watching someone rub their chin and mull over a point in person. Starlin married his conundrum to his artwork, and the results are pretty great. It’s not going back to the well at all. It’s trying to solve a puzzle by recreating that puzzle in several different configurations.

There are a few stories in this issue. Starlin has another one-pager called “The Origin of God!” (I love that he uses punctuation in his titles so, so much) that’s just four panels long and pretty solid. Dave Sim supplies the four-page “Cosmix,” which is about suicide, criticism, and art, and still doesn’t manage to be interesting or particularly good. It has a last-minute stinger that isn’t really earned at all. (I just started watching Black Mirror, and the “Welcome To The Twilight Zone” moment in “Cosmix” is similar to a twist in the (pretty solid) second episode, but with a bit less brutal irony, maybe.)

The last story is “Flightmare,” with words by Neal Adams and art by Frank Cirocco, who I’m not familiar with at all, though he apparently drew an issue of Power Man and Iron Fist that I undoubtedly have kicking around somewhere.

“Flightmare” is pretty interesting. Its main thrust is about a man feeling frustrated with training women to fly commercial airliners, and yearning for days gone by. He travels through a series of dreamy sequences as he searches for peace. He sheds the woman, first of all, as he pilots a jet, because ladies these days, am I right fellas? But the jet moves “too fast to enjoy the ride,” so he transfers to a World War II-era P-51 Mustang, and then a biplane, and then… a giant naked blue woman? He’s naked, too, and he says that “This is the way flight was meant to be!” But look! Coming out of the sun! There’s that dastardly woman piloting… a giant naked blue man? So they have a big naked dogfight in their big naked airplanes, the lady shoots the male pilot down with hand lasers from her big naked dude, and then we flash back to reality and she gives him the finger guns, a wink, and a “Gotcha!” Sure. Okay.

It’s one of those stories where I can’t quite figure out if it has a certain point to make or if it’s just a fun lark. It’s pretty and fast-moving enough to get wrapped up in, but I don’t know if it’s about women’s lib or the futility of nostalgia or the cruelty of women or just some weird sex dream. But I liked reading it, even if I couldn’t tell you what Adams and Cirocco were trying to express. The craft and storytelling are really entertaining in a way that transcends the ambiguity. (Cirocco also draws nice airplanes.)

I like Star*Reach Classics 1 a lot. It’s the only one I’ve read, even after years of owning it, but it’s an interesting artifact. I say that I like ’70s comics the best, but that’s not really true. I like ’70s Marvels: Amazing Spider-Man, anything Heroes for Hire related, Doug Moench/Paul Gulacy, and Steve Gerber. There’s this whole other world of ’70s comics that I missed out on that — judging by Star*Reach Classics 1 — are probably pretty great.

BACKUP STORY! CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CORSAIR, FEATURING EIJI NONAKA’S CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL! BUY IT USED!

I have an idea. The short version is a conversation with me and comics pros, delivered like a podcast but also transcribed for easy reading. It would be something separate from 4l!, but related. A side project, I guess.

The long version goes: comics industry interviews are kind of a bummer. They never seem to go as in-depth as I’d like on any subject, interviewers handcuff themselves to prevent accidental controversy or maintain relationships, creators are guarded and focused just on the one thing, and worst of all, there’s no room for digression. Interviews tend to hit the release date, something “best work of his career” something, how it relates to other comics if it’s a crossover book, and out. Even John Siuntres’s Word Balloon podcast has kind of a guarded “I don’t want to say the wrong thing” feel to it sometimes.

This really bugs me, because most comics folks I’ve met are pretty garrulous and engaging. The best panels at any con are the creator spotlights or creators in conversation with each other, where they’re allowed to digress, talk trash, and generally run the show. Same with bar-con after the con — I’ve talked comics, movies, porno tumblrs, bar etiquette, romance, basketball, and who knows what else with these folks, and they were always really friendly, wide-ranging conversations. They were also divorced from the stress of being at a con and having to continually pimp your wares and be upbeat.

My idea is to basically bring some of that flavor to comics internet, because I think it’s sorely missing. You can get news about so-and-so’s new run on whatever anywhere, and that doesn’t really interest me right now. I want to talk to comics people about everything. I know a little bit about a lot of things. I’d like to be educated, share jokes, argue opinions, and more. Here’s what I’m contemplating:

Concept: A one-on-one conversation between me and a comics professional (of whatever stripe or type) on a specific subject, with that conversation being allowed to go wherever it leads.
Format: Ideally, a 30-45 minute mp3 and accompanying annotated/hyperlinked transcription, delivered once a week or (much more likely) bi-weekly.
Tone: Informal. Funny. Friendly. Straight talk. I’m a friendly guy, and I’d like to get people who would be willing to open up and have some fun. And that’s not code for “being willing to rake muck with me” or anything, I just like it when people are like “You like WHAT? Why?!” and it ends up being an enlightening conversation instead of an awkward bludgeoning.
Method: I’d trade emails with the pro before we record, of course, and try and check out where their interests and mine intersect. This won’t be “David talks to somebody about stuff he already knows” so much as “David talks to someone about stuff that he has at least the bare minimum of knowledge on in order to keep up.” I want to be educated, I want to be thrilled, I want a chance to be like “Are you serious right now?” when someone is explaining old ’70s underground comix.
Subjects: Anything. If someone wants to talk about ’70s Marvels, sure. If they want to do a heavy post-mortem or analysis of their own work (I guess I’d be doing the analysis, but whatevs), we can do that. If they want to talk about how amazing the lighting is in Ridley Scott movies? Let’s get it. ’90s Britpop vs ’90s rap? Sure, that’s weird, but okay. Anything goes.

I have a couple caveats/rules to keep this thing interesting to me. Hopefully they aren’t deal breakers. I want to do it outside of the Big Two PR machine, if I’m talking to a Big Two creator. I want to do it outside of the usual marketing calendar, too. I’m up for interviewing someone around when their book comes out, but I don’t want pimping the new ish to be the focus. I just want a cool conversation and to learn something new. I’d also like to somehow make money off this, because I’m going to need to buy a Skype/phone recording app and a decent USB headset. Plus, transcription is excruciating, and if I’m putting that much work in, then I should definitely be getting paid for it. I’ve thought about pitching it to a few different sites, but I’m pretty sure doing it solo is the way to go, just for the control, freedom, and lack of hassle. Except lack of hassle means lack of cash soooooooo… I’ll work this out maybe.

I don’t know exactly how to get high-quality Skype recordings, and I’m definitely lost when it comes to recording a phone call in a way that doesn’t sound like total crap. I have a mixer I could probably use to make sure the volume sounds balanced, since I always come up low on mics. Anyway, all of that just takes time, research, and money, though. Friends have suggested a Kickstarter to get quality equipment, if needed. But I figure even if I buy the nicest things ever, it’d just cost like 100, 200 bucks, and hosting isn’t a big deal at all, unless it somehow blows up bigger than everything I’ve ever done to date. As far as problems to solve go, the logistics pale in the face of getting creators on the show, transcribing, etc.

My question to you: is this something you’d be interested in? Do you think it has a place or could find an audience in comics internet? Does it sound like a worthwhile endeavor?

When I think of exploitation entertainment, my thoughts immediately go to the ’70s, specifically blaxploitation, sexploitation, and rape&revenge films. I usually lump kung fu movies in there, too, but that wasn’t exploitation entertainment so much as exploitation of how cheap it was to buy and translate kung fu flicks. There are a few exploitative kung fu flicks, but the general thrust of those movies is different. But blaxploitation and sexploitation? Absolutely at the top of my list.

I think of stuff like I Spit on Your Grave, Shaft, Foxy Brown, and The Mack. They’re all varying levels of sleazy or offensive, but it’s interesting how long they’ve survived in our collective consciousness since then. Why did we latch onto them? Part of it is the shocking subject matter, but that can’t be the entire story. Plenty of things are shocking and aren’t half as revered as these exploitation flicks. So there must be some purpose or theme that’s made these movies indelible.

Purpose makes me think of “serving a purpose,” which makes me look at what niche those movies serve. When I think of the stars of exploitation flicks, I think of two groups in particular: black people and women. Sometimes black dudes, sometimes black ladies, sometimes white ladies. I also think of aggressive roles (black dudes knocking the man down a peg, a trio of ladies machinegunning huts full of soldiers in the “jungle”) and sexy situations (sex scenes in soft focus, women in prison taking showers, unbridled masculinity laying waste to everything in sight).

So there’s definitely a sensational interest. People getting their whole head blown off or Pam Grier running around topless is pretty entertaining, I think we all agree. But at the same time, it can’t just be the booze, broads, and bullets. Exploitation flicks served an audience that clearly wasn’t being served by mainstream cinema, which I think is a big reason why the idea of Shaft and Pam Grier are such icons now. They are icons because they blazed trails and opened doors, even if they did it with a lot of violence and sex.

It follows from there that exploitation isn’t just empty, salacious entertainment. It speaks to something inside us that square movies don’t, besides the titillation aspect. For me personally, seeing black men and women fighting back against the man went a long way. It’s sort of a time-shifted revenge thing, I guess, and an example that life isn’t just misery. Learning that there are strong black people who do good and bad things is vital, but the glee you get from seeing a sleazy slumlord get it in the neck is thrilling. It’s catharsis.

Catharsis: My mom sat me down to watch Running Scared, a so-so Paul Walker movie, a few years back. I thought it was wack, but there was one part that was fantastic. This kid gets kidnapped by pedophiles (no, stay with me, the ending is great), and a lady comes to get him. The pedophiles talk her and try to talk her into leaving. She pulls a gun on them. She forces them to talk. They tell her where the kid is. She finds him wrapped in plastic. The lady looks around. She discovers some terrible things. She discovers proof of past sins. She thinks. She looks at the pedophiles. She calls the cops. She reports a shooting at that address. She raises her gun. She ignores their pleas for mercy. She kills both of them. She leaves.

Right after that scene, my mom said, “I wanted to do that every day when I was a social worker.”

Which is a really messed-up thing for a mom to say, I think, yeah? But I’ve seen my mom swing on an old man who pushed my little brother in a store before so it’s not a huge deal. She meant it when she said it, and that’s stuck with me longer than any other detail from that stupid movie has. There’s something deeply true inside that statement. There are rules we have to follow, even when everything inside of us screams for us to break those rules.

We try to be civilized. Don’t drink. Don’t curse. Don’t hit people. Don’t be impolite. But at the same time, there is a significant part of us that is what we’d think of as a baser nature. It’s the part that wants to smash the face of people who disagree with you, the part that wants to light someone on fire because you believe they deserve it. My favorite Richard Pryor bit ties into this feeling:

I wonder how it would be though if niggas was taking over? See, if niggas take over tomorrow, not only would white people be in trouble, a lot of niggas would be in trouble. Be in court for lot different shit, though. A motherfucker’d be in court for…

“What’re you here for?”

“Trying to get someone to murder him.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, he was fucking with me your honor, so I tried to kill the motherfucker.”

“Come here. Why did you make this man angry at you? Twenty years.”

There oughtta be some shit like that, you know? It oughtta be against the law to make a motherfucker want to kill you. I think that would be a good law, ‘cause a lot of people are in jail for killing good people… that needed to die at that particular moment.

That last line is killer, and totally true. I think that exploitation flicks allow us to experience that thrill of seeing someone who deserves it at that particular moment get it, and the thrill is doubled by the taboo nature of what we’re seeing. Nazi and nun fetish movies kinda creep me out, but I get it. There’s this saucy taboo lurking around both of those fetishes that makes it hotter because it’s so forbidden. Sex is great, but sex you aren’t supposed to be having? Fantastic. It’s like — you know how some dudes are really fixated on panties or lingerie or whatever? That’s because panties are hiding something, and the fact that it’s hidden makes it even more valuable. That kind of thing.

The forbidden is really interesting to me, especially in comedy. Lynching is one of those things where the jokes are mostly limited to stupid boasts about how you’d knock the entire Klan flat and wipe your butt with their hoods and escape or whatever. We treat it with a certain reverence, or avoid it altogether, I guess because it’s such a source of pain. But there’s also this, from The Boondocks:

And, yeah, Roscoe Patterson’s lynching was pretty funny up to a point, but the joke is that we don’t joke about lynchings, and it’s one of the best jokes in The Boondocks. It’s forbidden, which made this joke super funny.

I feel like I’m drifting. Statement: Exploitation movies provide a voice to those who may not have one, gives us a chance to indulge our baser natures, and turns the forbidden into entertainment fodder.

Things that are forbidden are usually forbidden for a reason. They make us uncomfortable, they don’t conform with societal norms, and sometimes we just don’t like it. So we remove these things from our sight and promise to never mention them in polite company.

The lynching thing reminds me that everyone’s got different limits. I think The Boondocks is one of the funniest shows on TV. When it’s on, my grandmom makes that noise she makes when she disapproves of things but doesn’t want to be a buzzkill by telling us to turn it off. We have different limits as a result of being different people who grew up and became people at different times, which is natural.

My line for enjoyable exploitation is probably that point where the violence and sex mix a little too much. I’ve never really been one for rape/revenge movies, but when the villain got pulled in half in Super Ninjas, I cheered. My introduction to anime was Akira and Fist of the North Star, and I love Ninja Scroll, but High School of the Dead creeps me out in a pervert loser sorta way.

I emailed a draft of this to my bro Sean Witzke and he pointed out something interesting. Part of the appeal of exploitation flicks is that they would put things to film that had never, or rarely, been put to film before. This is as true of the authentic black leads as it is of ladies taking gratuitous showers in prison. And all of that bleeds back into the culture. Exploitation laid down a foundation for these things to be acceptable, just by virtue of existing, and aspects of exploitation flicks became normalized, which in turn made exploitation even more extreme.

That normalization also led to things like John Singleton’s Four Brothers, which is a great blaxploitation movie but totally unexceptional today. Human Centipede is the new exploitation, and that was almost immediately diluted by the culture and turned into nothing more than a gross joke. (A Serbian Film probably hasn’t, though. Don’t google that.) It’s not a coarsening of culture so much as a… broadening.

Exploitation: provides a voice to those who may not have one, gives us a chance to indulge our baser natures, turns the forbidden into entertainment fodder, and serves as raw material or cheap R&D for the culture at large.

Shotaro Ishinomori’s Cyborg 009 (ultra-cheap DVD, used book) has one of my favorite concepts for any story ever. Nine humans are kidnapped by the Black Ghost, a terror organization, and turned into combat robots. Each person gets a specific powerset — some can fly, others are telepathic — and a swanky new costume. Instead of being used to wreak havoc all over the world, though, the nine robots manage to escape from the Black Ghost, thanks to a helpful scientist, and decide to fight back against their masters. (The Skull Man is a pretty great look at the origins of the Black Ghost organization.)

It’s a simple concept, but a good one, nonetheless. The cyborgs go up against spies, terrorists, armies, other cyborgs, giant robots, and monsters. Cyborg 009 has a lot of super sentai appeal, but I like how easy it is to update the concept to the modern day. The series dates from the ’60s, of course, and features fears and anxiety that’s rooted in that time period. But the concept is just loose enough that as long as you have the Black Ghost eager to upset the status quo and nine humans who are upset at how they’ve been treated, you can apply it to almost any time period. Later this year, Kenji Kamiyama’s 009 RE:CYBORG drops, which brings the series fully into the modern day. There’s a trailer here, which I think does a great job of showing off how cool these cats are.

Part of the fun of the series is that each cyborg has a certain power. Joe Shimamura, Cyborg 009, is the hero (more or less) and can move at super-speed by activating a circuit. 001, Ivan Whisky, is telepathic, and also a baby. Jet Link is 002, an American that has been given the power of flight. Each of the nine cyborgs has a specialty, so they all have their chances to shine. They’re a team, and they have to figure out how to work together and battle the Black Ghost at the same time.

I love the costumes, too. The giant buttons that Ishinomori gave them are fantastic. They’re straight out of Walt Disney, and lend the whole affair a cartoony, child-like feel. The golden scarves are the perfect example of “too much” actually being “just enough.” The scarves are a great visual, especially when the characters are in motion, and are an iconic touch at this point. A certain class of hero needs a cape to project majesty, and the scarves do that while also being distinctive. The cyborgs look decidedly sci-fi, and actually pretty retro sci-fi. They’re from the future of 1966.

I like all the cyborgs, but 008 has a special place in my heart. He’s the black dude, called Pyunma, and the only actual soldier in the crew. His power is that he’s able to function extremely well underwater, both in terms of surviving indefinitely and deploying sea-based ordnance. Also, he’s drawn like this:

WHOA.

I hate this stuff. It’s racist and ugly, and stupid on top of that. Ebony White and that one Tintin story just make me angry, in part because that sort of racism is inexcusable but mostly because comics scholars are like “oh, listen, Will Eisner was a legend, how can he be racist? It was the ~times~!” Yes, the times when black people were demonized and dehumanized, ha ha, what a time! Mad Men!

But 008 is a little strange. For one, even though Ishinomori is using explicitly racist iconography, he isn’t bringing the same baggage to it that Eisner or others did. 008 isn’t a Stepin Fetchit type, and there’s not a hint of the “yassuh boss, we’s sick!” garbage that makes Ebony White such a Strong Black Character. He’s just a regular dude, and he acts like it. It’s like Ishinomori adopted the art style but missed out on the baggage that goes along with it.

I can’t help but wonder if part of the reason why 008 is more acceptable to me, and more normal than Ebony, is the subtext of Ishinomori’s story. The cyborg team is international, with members from China, France, the UK, the United States, Russia, Germany, and Japan. They vary racially among that mix, too. 009 is half-Japanese and half-American, which suggests that he’s the son of a military man and a Japanese woman to me, considering the time period. 005 is a Native American. Some of them are broad stereotypes, which varies depending on which incarnation of the series you’re reading, but they’re intentionally from all over the world.

Ishinomori’s exploring the idea of weapons run rampant and what it’ll take to put the world on the brink of war. It’s about money, and how chasing money can make people evil. He brings in an international cast, like Hideo Kojima did in Metal Gear Solid 4, because he wants to illustrate that war ruins everyone and everything. No one is safe, no matter whether you’re a rich ballerina in Paris or a poor farmer out in China.

Something about 008 and his attitude made me more willing to accept him than I would Ebony White or whatever that Tintin comic is. There’s a certain tension between 008’s looks, which have evolved over the years toward “actual human being” instead of stereotype, and the fact that Ishinomori is trying to show us how war affects all of us. I’m interested in that intersection. I don’t know how much contact Ishinomori had with black people, or where he first saw the racist iconography he employed. But I do think it is fair to assume that he employed that same iconography without the same cultural baggage as Eisner or Herge, who did it while reinforcing a very poisonous power structure. It looks like a duck but it quacks like a goose — what is it? It’s infuriating and interesting all at once, and if anything, makes me want to know more about the origins of the series and why Ishinomori made the choices he did. In a later series, produced after Ishinomori died, reinvented 008 as a guerilla soldier, instead of a refugee, which fits in even better with Ishinomori’s simultaneously global and personal focus.

I can see that Ishinomori was trying to tell a story that’s still progressive to this day, one that incorporates warmongering, weapons dealing, and the effects of war on a society. It’s about how war screws over all of us, from the people getting blown up on the front line to the people who don’t realize how often war is used in support of business interests. It’s about weapons possibly being used to prevent that outcome, and the importance of making humane decisions, rather than business-oriented ones, during the course of war. The cyborgs are weapons with free will and minds, and they make choices according to their own morality. That’s impossible with a nuclear bomb or drone. There’s a point there about where warfare and personal actions meet, but I can’t quite grasp it. Are the cyborgs us? Are they the leaders of the world? Just a cool superhero team? Something else?

It sorta bums me out to read a kids’ comic from the ’60s that gets that fact better than a lot of modern pop culture. The new Splinter Cell demo opens with Sam Fisher, American black-ops expert, torturing and murdering a terrorist on the Iraq/Iran border. Sam, if you aren’t familiar with the series, is a hero. The new Call of Duty features Oliver North as an advisor. Ollie North, the same man who funneled weapons to death squads and was involved in narcotics trafficking in order to fund his little hit squads and operations. You know where those drugs ended up? The inner city. He’s the guy consulting on a series that is increasingly less interested in showing the horrors of war, which it kinda sorta almost did at one point, and more interested in showing “AW YEAH!” moments. I mean, the news out of Iraq right now is that they’re pumping out enough oil to possibly make sanctioning Iran in the future easier without disrupting oil markets. I realize that holding up a children’s comic as a great example of social consciousness is stupid… but Ishinomori got it. It’s about money, and then men who control that money and want more of it, no matter what the cost.

It is what it is, I guess. Cyborg 009 is great, and I think Ishinomori has a strong message at the heart of the series. I hope the upcoming movie lives up to it, and I hope people keep reinventing it as time goes on. It’s a timeless idea, which is kind of sad, actually.

BACKUP STORY! CURSE OF THE CRIMSON CORSAIR, FEATURING EIJI NONAKA’S CROMARTIE HIGH SCHOOL! BUY IT USED!

I saw and liked Prometheus (directed by Ridley Scott, written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof). I found a lot of meat on its bones, so I spent a lot of the weekend having discussions with friends about the quality of the movie, some of the script choices, and generally everything about the flick, save for maybe how great all the posing that Rafe Spall’s Millburn was doing for the first half of the movie. (Seriously, go back and look at that guy and his dumb hoodie. Great body language.) Anyway, here’s another loose collection of thoughts masquerading as blog content. Maybe half of these were written the night I saw the movie, and the other half came about over the last couple days. These are cleaned up (hopefully) from what I sent my friends, so let me apologize to them in advance for forcing them to read this twice (or else we are no longer friends). Let’s talk it out:

-The major theme of Prometheus is parenthood. There are several living fathers in the movie (Weyland, the Engineers, Shaw’s father, Charlie, maybe one or two more if you’re willing to stretch), but only one living mother: Shaw. The balance is interesting. It pushes the focus entirely onto the men, but Shaw becomes even more significant, being the only mother, because of that focus.

-Probably goes without saying, but Ellen Ripley/Elizabeth Shaw. ER->ES. Probably nothing, but it’s cute. There’s also probably an interesting contrast to be found between Ripley’s underclothes (t-shirt and panties, no adina howard) and Shaw’s underclothes (more of a medical wrap kind of thing, and bloodstained by the end). Ripley’s represented her safe feeling (which makes the Alien into the intruder in the night, breaker of peace). What’s Shaw’s represent?

-Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw goes through the traditional fears/horrors of pregnancy in fast motion. She has an actual alien parasite, not a technical one, inside her. It will definitely kill her dead unless she acts to save herself. Later on, her progeny attempts to impregnate (and thereby kill) her.

– There’s this running theme of parenthood being a savage, thankless existence wrought with pain. For mothers, it ends in death (see also Shaw’s mother and her unexplained death). For fathers, they deal out the savagery. Other than Shaw’s father, who falls to disease, all the other fathers are corrupt. The Engineers want their children dead for whatever reason.

-There’s an explicit Christian (I’m not sure which specific sect, in part because I can’t place Shaw’s cross, which might just be a regular generic cross with a weird hook) riff in Prometheus. The engineers killed themselves 2000 years ago from 2093,which was the time of Jesus, give or take 60 years. I think Doctor Shaw even says “give or take” during the scene where she dates the corpse.

-Two thousand years prior to Prometheus was also close to the death of John of Patmos, writer of Revelation. “Apocalypse” didn’t always mean “end of the world.” It meant “unveiling,” as in the unveiling of truths, the unveiling of glory, and so on.

-The Engineers created their children and then decided that the children were… corrupt? Fallen? Which leads to another idea: Engineers as Angels? Shaw asks “Who created them?” at one point during the movie. There’s always a higher power. Anyway: the Engineers hate their progeny and abandoned it, which is basically the worst thing for fathers to do.

-The Engineers-as-Angels remark, when combined with the fact that the Engineer DNA “pre-dates” ours, makes me wonder if the Engineers aren’t just intermediaries. God creates the angels, some angels rebel, and then God creates humans. Though I don’t think there’s anything about angels being Humans v1.0 in the Bible, which makes this line of thought partially moot.

-Back on the corrupt fatherhood train: Weyland is a father who sets his children against one another while simultaneously planning for his own immortality. He doesn’t recognize Charlize Theron’s Meredith Vickers at all (Vickers, last name meaning son of the vicar) and he openly mocks David (David, “beloved,” notoriously selfish but still righteous king who also wrote half the Psalms and played music, he also won his kingdom through the death of the rulers by another actor, rather than being born to it) as being less than human, but still the closest thing he has to a son. Weyland rejects his children, both of them, in favor of himself, and for him, “there is nothing.”

-Logan Marshall-Green’s Charlie Holloway, after being infected, is delusional and off-center. I haven’t quite figured him out yet, but he’s got poisonous seed and he’s keeping secrets when he shouldn’t be. He looks before he leaps, but not out of any malicious intent. He wants to know the truth, he desperately wants to believe.

-The last Engineer rejects humanity and is later infected by a giant facehugger–a product of his own creation. Hoist by his own petard, impregnated by his own bastard child.

-David says, “Who doesn’t want to kill their father?” (or something to that effect) to Shaw. Shaw replies, paraphrased, “I didn’t.”

-Shaw consciously rejects fire very early in the movie. “This is a scientific expedition, not a military one,” she says. Metaphorical fire represents knowledge, doubly so in the story of Prometheus, and here it is realized in the form of protection, more specifically, a weapon.

-I’m not sure about the rest of the cast, particularly Janek (a twist on the Hebrew John meaning: God is Good). Janek is assuredly righteous, as he refuses to let the Earth be destroyed no matter the cost, and he attempts to protect his crew/children when he can. He only screws up when he sleeps with Vickers and two of his crew die. He was a cool cat though. Playful father? I dunno. Maybe a reach.

-Meredith Vickers is cold, standoffish, and distant. She’s mirroring her father’s reaction to her. She’s becoming the old man on several different levels, and it’s all because she wants his throne.

-The caesarian section is used when natural childbirth would put the mother or child’s life at risk. Natural here, of course, is the squid bursting through her stomach and destroying her body. It’s also used in certain types of abortions. At first I thought she didn’t destroy the squid, but the contaminant process is almost definitely intended to destroy organic life. She’s broken and in danger and terrified, and man, Rapace sold that scene so well. She got across the fact that fight-or-flight was pinging hard on flight and not at all on fight.

-The Engineers using music as user interface: Lucifer was the angel of music, and angels spend most of their time singing hymns to and about God. Music, to David, is just another language.

-Shaw said the cave paintings were an invitation. They clearly weren’t, so what were they? A warning? Simple homage? Something else? I honestly don’t know. But leaping to an invitation seems very… optimistic? It might’ve just been a family album.

-My first thought was that the 3D didn’t seem that big a deal to me? There were some cool bits, but it was sorta like Tintin where it was so prevalent and well done it didn’t really add to the experience in a noticeable way like it does in more gimmicky movies, if that makes sense/isn’t stupid. But in thinking about it deeper, the 3D was spot-on. It was exactly how 3D should be done. It wasn’t a gimmick, and they did some pretty great depth of field effects with it, on top of all the UI pop-ups. The video streams looked especially good.

-I don’t get the first scene. I’ve seen people suggest that it’s an Engineer seeding life on Earth, but in looking at it, that doesn’t quite track. The black fluid destroyed the Engineer, to the point that it decreated him at the DNA level. He isn’t creating humanity or life at all. He’s killing himself, and I’m not sure why. His very DNA unravels as his body decays, leaving nothing behind, but the fade from the DNA destruction to cell division (death to life, for the record) makes me unsure exactly what happened.

-The black fluid always has a vile effect on organic life. It destroyed the Engineer early on. When the worms in the tomb full of murder urns encountered the liquid, they transformed into aggressive, anti-life variations on their own original form. Fifield did the same after being exposed, actually. He turned ape-like and savage. That beating in the hangar was right out of 2001.

-What causes the black fluid to react? One urn reacts to David, while another doesn’t. Is it proximity to organic life? The worms didn’t activate the leaking, so it takes more than just being alive. My thought is that it has to do with the temperature. The ship was minus 12º inside, and maybe that was for preservation. Therefore, the humans coming in there breathing all hot warmed up the fluid, causing it to leak? I think that tracks. David even freezes a canister to preserve it with no leakage. I liked that two different people were told to not touch the stuff.

-When David sits in the throne-like pilot’s chair, he grins like a child. It’s shot from kind of a distance, but I’m 99% sure I saw that. Then, when the playback begins, he hurriedly gets out of the way like a child caught with his hand in the cookie jar. David pretends to be cold and emotionless, but he definitely, definitely has emotions.

-The lifeboat, Vickers’s room, is Weyland’s. Vickers is just using it, once again emulating her father and desiring his things. Weyland is just as selfish as she is, since the medical device is set for men only.

-The jokes, and most of the situational humor, are almost all gallows or sarcastic humor, and most of them come from David. “I didn’t know you had it in you.” The way he announced the pregnancy. The dialogue with Charlie Holloway at the pool table. He’s cruel, and he definitely showers humans in scorn. I loved the bit where Millburn and Fifield were like “nah, we’re finna go back to the ship.”

-The only people with real jokes are Charlie (sorta, but I can’t remember what exactly), Janek, Chance, and Ravel. They remind me of Yaphet Kotto as Parker and Harry Dean Stanton as Brett in Alien, in that they were both voices of reason and sources of entertainment, casual dialogue, and the voice of the audience.

-I really liked Rafe Spall’s Millburn, no matter how little screen time he had. There was something about his body language that was unbelievably interesting. He came across as kind of a socially awkward dude who doesn’t think he’s awkward, he thinks he’s the smartest guy in the room and the most charming, too. He really sold his role. The fidgeting with the hoodie, the crossed legs and tilt whenever he sits down, that goofy grin… I’m hoping there’s a bunch of deleted scenes with him. “Ship would be good right now” or whatever inside the dome was pretty good, as was the decision to go east instead of west.

-Sean Harris’s Fifield was a nice twist on the usual thing in these flicks, where the rugged looking soldier dude is just another rude jerk. The only actual soldier-type guy we see is Jackson, and he just looks like a regular dude.

-David watching other people’s dreams is super messed up. There’s something very important lurking around there that I can’t quite put my finger on. He’s definitely a malevolent entity in the context of the movie, acting against the wishes of the people we want to stay alive and for the wishes of a selfish old man. Watching someone sleep or resting your hand on their bed is a parental thing to do, but when David does it, it’s like he’s feeding off their dreams.

-The biggest question for me is that yes, a military installation was destroyed by some mysterious factor. But who did it? And more than that, why did no one check up on the Engineers and then go ahead and destroy Earth anyway? That suggests a third party to me, some type of invasion or regime change.

-Best performances in order: Michael Fassbender as David, Rafe Spall as Millburn, Noomi Rapace as Shaw, Charlize Theron as Vickers, Idris Elba as Janek + his two crewdudes, and then Logan Marshall-Green as Charlie Holloway. Theron really surprised me, because I didn’t particularly rate her before, but she kills. So distant but still sypmathetic. Fassbender’s motions were just awkward and mechanical enough to sell that he was a really, really advanced android, but also contemptuous of humans. Something about the precision with which he picked up that mote of dust early in the film…

-And, seriously man, look at Millburn’s posture and body language during that first briefing with Weyland. I don’t know why he tickled me so much, but he did. Rafe Spall is so great. You should watch Shadow Line.

Django Is Off The Chain
Here’s the trailer to Quentin Tarantino flick, starring Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Cristoph Waltz, and a bunch of other folks besides:

Here’s a few loose thoughts on the trailer & culture, which have been fought through to varying levels of coherence:

It ain’t reparations, but it’ll do
My first though on seeing this trailer was that it was the bomb. I go back and forth on Tarantino, but come down pretty steadily on the side of “he’s good.” I hated Inglourious Basterds the first time I saw it, but I got it the second time. Jackie Brown is a delight. For a long time, my biggest beef with Tarantino was that it seemed like we liked all the same things (Silver Surfer, music, blaxploitation, stylized violence, smart writing) but for entirely opposite reasons.

But here, it looks like our tastes coalesce right off the bat. The music choices are perfect and make me hope for a modern score. There’s a lot of little touches I love, like Django’s haircut, DiCaprio’s “rambunctious sort,” the blood on the cotton… anyway, I have some thoughts I’m going to attempt to crystallize. Follow along:

white man’z world

One thing that struck me while watching the trailer was how it makes a point of Django being a victim of white supremacy. It’s littered with racially-charged imagery and dialogue. Waltz refers to Django as “the one I’m looking for,” not “the man.” There’s a shot of Django seen through a noose. He’s being trained by a white man who will give him his freedom. He’s barefoot and being led by a white man on a horse. The slaves are referred to as inventory and specimens.

It’s subtle, but it very clearly paints a picture of Django being subordinate to the white man. It’s an interesting choice, and I think an honest one. It also highlights the fact that the movie is a slave revenge picture. Django’s moments of agency are explicitly about murdering slave owners and traders. He whips one man, he quips about how killing white folks is nice, kills a guy… this is a movie about an underdog, someone who isn’t considered human asserting his humanity through violence.

But it’s still really interesting to me that he doesn’t get his freedom until a white man says so. He’s being used, just like the other slaves. The only difference is that the way he’s being used and his wishes coincide.

(My buddy David Uzumeri pointed out the coincidence between Django and the bounty hunter’s wishes coinciding relates in a way to me and Tarantino’s tastes finally coinciding. He’s right. I’ve got a weakness for these kinds of stories, whether we’re talking “slave revenge” or “black folks doing cool/violent stuff.” Ha.)

don algodon
I love that shot of blood splashing on the cotton. America may have been founded on the blood of patriots, but it was fueled by the blood of slaves. It’s an obvious visual metaphor, but I can’t help but love it.

lady antebellum
I grew up in Georgia, and the south of the 1800s was positively romanticized beyond all belief. Overt stuff like the Confederate flag flying over the Georgia dome, yeah, but also smaller things like mint juleps, landed gentry, balls, and fainting couches. The antebellum south feels like the closest thing we’ve got to American nobility, and people like to cling to it to the point where criticizing it is practically verboten. It was a Golden Age, you see, and if only we could go back to it…

What I’m dancing around is that we tend to dance around when we talk about slaves, the south, and whether or not slave owners needed an axe to the face. There’s a good reason for that. Slave owners are us, meaning Americans and our great-great-great-grandfathers or whatever, in a way that Nazis are not. It’s cool to say that Nazis get what they deserve because they’re way over there across the water, and their story ended cleanly enough that we’re totally okay with using them for cheap pop. When you’re talking about Joey’s great-great-great-grandfather, though, and the source of his family’s money, things are a little different. You want to excuse the past with phrases like “oh it was just the times” or “it was an unenlightened time.”

Which makes me very happy with how Leonardo DiCaprio is playing his character. He seems like a slime ball. He feels positively decadent, and I imagine that his infatuation with black women will be depicted as aberrant behavior for landed whites, rather than something progressive. There’s also an air of condescension about him, something I associate with people who are so rich that they’re not like us. That line “He is… a rambunctious sort, ain’t he?” and that trailing laughter… there’s a lot in that. He’s not the Nice White Sympathzier Who Is So Progressive He Likes Colored Girls. He’s rich and corrupt.

You can still go on cotton-picking tours in Georgia, last I checked. Probably tour a few plantations, too. I went to Jefferson Davis Middle School in Virginia. Heritage, not hate, baby!

no pigeons

All the ladies in this are black, which is cool, but they’re all also silent and objects of lust (or love, I figure) or victims of anger. I briefly thought that Django’s wife had shacked up with DiCaprio’s character.

It made me think about how Tarantino’s gonna approach women in the movie. Blaxploitation, and the idea of a slave rebellion or getback, is generally testosterone-fueled. Women are usually depicted as wives or conductors on the underground railroad, not the people putting bullets where they need to go.

I saw Zoe Bell on imdb, credited as a tracker, so I know there’ll be at least one protracted fight scene. I’m hoping Kerry Washington gets to get it in, too.

i can’t catch all of ya, but i can make an example out of some of you

“Kill white folks and they pay you for it? What’s there not to like?” is the sort of thing I’ve been waiting to hear in a movie for years. Not out of any deep-seated racism or anything, but because black revenge movies basically died off with the end of blaxploitation. I’ve been hoping for a movie where thinly veiled versions of Ronald Reagan and Ollie North were kidnapped and forced to smoke crack, or like Bernie Madoff getting robbed at gunpoint.

I think those kinds of stories, cultural revenge tales, are important. They’re not healing but they are… comforting? “At least THAT guy didn’t get away scot-free.” The video game industry has made billions avenging World War II over the past thirteen or fourteen years, the comics industry even longer, and we won that war.

Now imagine if a group of people destroyed your entire culture, forced you to work on pain of death, and had no problem obliterating your family structure. The country fights a war that results in your freedom, and the bad guys don’t become the victim of unending scorn. Instead, they’re celebrated in movies like Gone with the Wind and become the prototype of American nobility. Plus, instead of getting pure freedom, you’re given a half-existence, held back by state-sponsored terrorism perpetrated by the exact people who just lost a war and laws that prevent you from exercising your right as a citizen.

Nazis to slave-owners is not a 1:1 comparison, obviously, but roll with me. Can you imagine a romance flick like Gone with the Wind set in Berlin, circa 1941? A sympathetic portrayal like that? We’ve learned about good and sympathetic slave owners. (Hi, Founding Fathers!) There are no good Nazis.

I dunno, but I feel like slavery is a situation that deserves no small measure of fictional getback. It’s a way to wring some cheap joy from something that’s long past. It cannot, and will not, replace actual amends, but I think it makes for fun stories to tell and a good time at the movies. There’s some type of… I can’t find the word right now, but a pleasing feeling deep inside to see oppressors get done in. It doesn’t matter whether they’re Nazis, slum lords, slave owners, aliens, whatever. It strikes a very pleasant switch.

It’s this Malcolm X quote, in other words:

Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it.

This doesn’t quite stack up when faced with the horrors of realpolitik, but as a rallying cry, as something to instill a sense of right and wrong, as a self esteem boost, as something to settle deep in your heart and tell you are worthy of basic justice and equality and honor, it’s amazing.

I think Django Unchained, even down to the title, is going to be about Django taking his freedom. I hope so, anyway. I’ve got high hopes. If I can’t have Grand Theft Auto: The Nat Turner Rebellion, then I’m willing to settle for Django Unchained. Especially with that ill bit where Django shrugs off his cloak to the tune of James Brown. Perfect.

But if Tarantino shoehorns in another dead nigger storage speech, word is bond, our newfound best friends forever status is o-v-e-r like the Bridge.

Other thoughts: Ta-Nehisi Coates, raythedestroyer