Christmas is over. I hope yours was nice. Mine was pretty great. Here’s me wearing the stuff my best friend got me.

In return, I got him this pillowcase.

There are a lot of different things that made this holiday season great, most of all being that it’s my first Christmas with my two nephews, Jack and Syd. Being an uncle rules.

A lesser, but still important, factor into what made this season so fantastic was that it’s the first time in nearly 10 years that I haven’t been working holiday retail. I had worked for Barnes and Noble for seven and a half years and with that was there for eight holiday seasons. When I discuss my time there, I tend to tell people, “I worked there for seven and a half years and enjoyed seven of them.” For a long while, I felt very loyal to the company and did my best. That got chipped away as the years went on, mainly towards the end.

There were a lot of things that set me astray, I suppose. I remember finishing off the 2012 holiday season with a feeling of, “Never again,” without putting much thought into it. Shortly after, a managerial miscommunication over a necessary day off I asked for a month in advance soured me pretty badly. Everything was beginning to wear on me and I started feeling like Randy the Ram during his last day at work in the Wrestler. Another big thing was how we got a new, stricter district manager and that led to a big “shit rolls downhill” environment in the store. Everything became more corporate and less fun, even though we were a store that consistently met our goals.

I can bore you with specifics, but one of the big things was selling the membership. Or more importantly, selling new memberships. We had quotas on that and the increased pressure made it unbearable due to the “lead a horse to water” mentality of it all. Even if you had a good week, it didn’t matter because maybe next week you don’t do so well and you get talked down to for your failure. I had my opinions on it and I had my own methods of motivation, which got results. Those got me in trouble to the point of being told I was on thin ice.

Initially, I became emotional. I was afraid for my job and I felt that I was one misstep from being let go. I told myself and my coworkers, “I need this job. Barnes and Noble is all I have.” Then I calmed myself and realized that that wasn’t true at all. I wasn’t happy anymore. I used to be, but not anymore. Even if I didn’t feel like my employment was in danger, what was I working towards? A management position? I’ve been wanting one for years, but with my patience for the more rotten customers wearing incredibly thin, all I’d be doing would be dealing with the negative aspects of my job for a little more pay. Nah, I needed to just secretly find a new job and then give my two weeks.

The moment I made that decision, I felt so free. It was amazing. I was quick in finding a place that wanted me and was able to say my goodbyes and move on. It was a good thing too because while I certainly had my problems with the place’s new direction, I wasn’t the only one. In the month or two surrounding my leaving, there was an exodus of like a dozen employees for a variety of reasons.

Oh, and they changed it so that people can only apply for jobs there via online and that slowed down the process so much that it was like four months before they finally filled my position. Jesus.

This year, I didn’t have to deal with all the holiday madness. Sure, my current job got pretty busy in the last week, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to B&N making $7,000 an hour in sales. I didn’t have to spend hours cleaning up messes of people who decided to take out ten books and leave them in a pile in the café. I didn’t have to endure the impossible parking and extended hours. I didn’t have my Christmas ruined because I’d need to get to sleep early and wake up at 4am because I was scheduled for a 5am shift on the 26th. I also won’t have to deal with two months of assholes wanting cash back for a gift that somebody else bought them with a gift card.

As a way to celebrate, I thought I’d tell some stories. I have a million tales from that establishment and since they most certainly didn’t want me mentioning them while I was on the payroll, I guess I might as well have some fun. These are just some from the top of my head.

– I once gave a piggyback ride to a customer. It was a weeknight and the place was pretty dead. I was at the information desk and a couple showed up to ask me about a book.

“It looks like we have it.”

“Can you show me where it is?”

“Hell, I’ll give you a piggyback ride if you want.”

“Okay.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“All right, then. Let’s do this!”

Then I walked over, had him hop on my back and walked him over. He proceeded to give me a $5 tip. I went back to the info desk, feeling pretty good about myself. Then I saw that the next customer was like 300 pounds and knew that wasn’t going to be a repeat.

Later on, I was reading my horoscope and it said that I’d make a small fortune in an unorthodox way. Swear to God.

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Triple 2s! Neat! And with a Two-Face comic in there also!

Huge, huge week this update, breaking forty images, which may be a ThWiP record. Helps that I have Matlock, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa and Was Taters backing me up.

My time’s been eaten up by a lot of personal things, but I have some stuff coming up in the next couple days. A really nice guest article and a little something different. In the meantime, here’s a review I wrote for Den of Geek US on a comic called Rainbow in the Dark. It’s the Matrix meets Pleasantville meets They Live as a rock opera with Sam Elliot as the wise mentor character.

Animal Man #26 (Gavin’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Animal Man #26 (Matlock’s pick)
Jeff Lemire and Cully Hamner

Avengers Assemble #22
Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis, Matteo Buffagni and Paco Diaz

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There’s a Village Voice piece on R Kelly going around. Voice writer Jessica Hopper interviews Jim DeRogatis, a journalist who helped break the story of R Kelly being a sexual predator years ago. It’s a good read, very thorough and timely, and it looks like it’s getting the reaction the writer (presumably) hoped for: people are reading and talking about it. Which is good.

I’ve been watching it spread over Twitter since I first saw a link this morning. My black friends have met it with a “yep :/” or whatever whatever, acknowledgement that it’s real, true, and that they’ve been known that fact. My non-black friends and followers, though, are coming with surprise, shock, “I can’t believe it,” that kind of thing.

The reactions from non-blacks tend toward the sympathetic and horrified almost universally, which is entirely appropriate and (for lack of a better word,) welcome, but—and you’ll have to pardon me if this is too flowery, but I’m trying to choose my words very carefully—the reactions feel like what happens when someone is initially dragged from ignorance toward knowledge. That combo of shock and acceptance, horror and belief…

I remember when the George Zimmerman thing happened, and myself and several other black people spoke out like, “Hey, this is real life, this happens all the time, our mothers constantly live in fear.” The reaction from black folks, men and women, then was “Right on, I’ve been there, keep your head up, stay safe.” A lot of us had shared stories or tips, too, like driving to a well-lit area when you’re being pulled over because you should never be alone with a cop. From non-blacks? “Holy crap are you for real? You have to live with this? I’m so sorry, I had no idea,” and so on.

I can’t fault somebody for not knowing, and I try to avoid treating people who don’t know the things I know differently. There’s a lot I don’t know, and there are some things I definitely should know that I don’t. Learning is part of being alive, possibly the best part of being alive. I think it’s important to educate, to put people up on game, before you condemn them for not having had the privilege—no matter how painful or ugly—of knowing what you do.

And part of me knows this is unfair, but the other part of me just watched a group of black women take part in a wide-ranging Twitter conversation on R Kelly with first-person accounts not two weeks ago. The other part of me knew about him messing with girls in the ’90s, despite living in Virginia and Georgia, away from the girls he preyed on. The other part of me has a mom who told him how to stay safe when dealing with the police before he was a teenager. The other part of me knows men who got beaten up, stabbed, and kidnapped for garbage reasons. The other part of me spent forever pulling teeth to write about race and comics and watched white people eat while I got stuck with the beef. That part of me says “Fuck fair.”

There is a gap, a gulf, between us. Between me and you, between black and white, between Latino and Japanese, between everyone. Every time one of those “This is what racism is” things roll down tumblr, and it’s somebody getting dragged behind a truck or beaten up on account of their skin or left in poverty because it’s economically convenient, I want to roll my eyes, which is a terrible reaction to sympathy. But I have that reaction because sure, this over-the-top and horrible example is racism, and that’s bad! But so is you calling your butt a “ghetto booty,” so is what motivates that dude at parties (literally every party I’ve been to with strangers as an adult) asking me stupid questions about my hair, like if I can store things in my afro. Racism is the Klan, but racism is in us, too. Racism is a lot of things. It’s the death of a thousand minor humiliations.

There is a difference between my experience and yours, is what I’m getting at. I don’t know the fullness of your experience, and you don’t know mine. I figure if you aren’t in it, you aren’t in it, so it’s unfair of me to expect you to know. I know that intellectually, as someone who makes a little bit of money spitting words for profit on occasion. But it still sucks to see your reality treated as a source of surprise. “It’s like that?” hurts when it’s been like that, when it’s never not been like that.

The gap in our experiences is real and the reasons for the gap are complicated. Sometimes it’s down to happenstance. Sometimes it’s thanks to the white supremacist standards that this country was founded on and which still infests a significant part of it today. “Black” news is special interest news. “White” news is the punchline to a joke. There’s a reason for that. And for situations like this, where R Kelly raped a lot of girls or a lot of boys live in fear of the police, that’s painfully relevant. The girls and boys are black, which makes it a “black problem.”

Knowledge is key and spreading that knowledge is vital. But at the same time, it’s draining to see people demonstrating their ignorance of something that is very plain to you, something you took for granted as being a capital T Truth, something you’ve lived with so long you can’t imagine life without that weight on your back. So you feel triple-bad. You’re frustrated at the situation and the country that let it happen due to malicious negligence, you’re frustrated at your friends for not realizing how much it matters to you, and you’re frustrated at yourself for being frustrated at your fam for matters beyond their control.

Y’all really shoulda known about him and Aaliyah, though. That’s on wikipedia.

Welcome to This Week in Panels. This week, we see the return of Matlock, who has sent a bunch of Marvel panels. This includes Mighty Avengers, which frustrates me. Not only is it supposedly really well-written and fun, but the latest issue just brought back Luke Cage’s old sidekick DW Griffith. I would LOVE to go read it, but… Greg Land is drawing it. Damn it.

Also with us are Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa. Jawa pointed out to me this video of Lego Venom going on a rampage and God bless him for that.

At Den of Geek US, I did an article on 10 Marvel What If Concepts That Actually Happened. Unfortunately, I totally forgot about Sentinel until after the fact.

Oh, and this week’s Batman ’66 is pretty interesting. It’s a King Tut storyline, but it’s also an origin of a Batman villain who never got a chance to be on that show. That little insignia should be a big hint.

Avengers A.I. #7
Sam Humphries and Andre Lima Araujo

Avengers Plus X-Men #15
Jai Nitz, Gerry Duggan, Greg Smallwood, David Yardin and Cam Smith

Batman #26
Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo

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I’m a simple man who enjoys simple pleasures, like this clip from Trisha Goddard’s tv show.

The woman in red’s laughter is the sound of the pain of centuries of oppression finally finding an outlet. It reminds me of a moment from Howard Chaykin’s issue of SOLO, when a Neo-Nazi finds out that he’s part Jewish.

It’s not a victory. That would be overselling it. This guy is still walking around North Dakota and actively trying to turn a town all-white using terrorism.

But it still feels really, really good. I laughed until I cried watching this video. It was one of those things that can totally make a night. It’s worth hooping and hollering.

Sic semper tyrannis.

I didn’t have a name for it until I read music critic Andrew Nosnitsky talking about Vince Staples, but I got into dead-eyed rap and Vince Staples in a big way this year. When it comes to threats, rap’s usual mode is like something out of John Woo’s heroic bloodshed films. The threats are amped up past the point of believability and into the realm of myth. I love 50’s “If you was smart, you’d be shook of me/’cause I’d get tired of lookin for you, spray your mama crib, and let your ass look for me.” It’s a threat, but there’s a playfulness, an exuberance, that makes it great. It’s showing off and showing out, a threat that’s a boast simultaneously.

Vince Staples goes in the other direction. I first really noticed dude on Earl Sweatshirt’s “Hive” from Doris, though he’d made appearance on a few other projects I’ve dug. But his verse there made me sit up and take notice. Doris is full of fallen world music, and Staples absolutely nailed the mood Earl was going for. It’s more fatalistic than braggy, more flat than simple posturing. Which isn’t to say that it isn’t a pose, but it’s a pose that Staples performs very well.

It’s the fatalism that gets me. 2012 was tough, and 2013 has been tough in an entirely different way. Things I took for granted aren’t there any more, habits I used to have don’t work, and things are complicated. I can be mad and feel bad about it, or I can accept that it is what it is and still feel bad about it. “It is what it is,” like its sisters “that’s life” and “that’s just the way it is,” is inherently fatalistic. They indicate acceptance of the fact that you can’t fix or control everything because it’s bigger than you. It’s an indicator that since you can’t win, you’re gonna make do.

Staples does a lot of making do. On “102,” he says, “Never could be rich enough/’cause I grew up broke as fuck.” “Trigga Witta Heart:” “Rap ain’t never did shit for a nigga with no options/ You want some positivity go listen to some Common.” “Versace Rap:” “I asked my mama what’s the key to life, she told me she ain’t know/ She just try to take it day to day, and pray I make it home.”

He talks about his mom a lot. She plays a variety of roles in his songs, but rarely hope. She’s reality, responsibility, love, missed opportunity, better, and worse. A few examples:

“Stuck In My Ways:”

Mama trying to figure what the fuck my problem is
And why I gotta live this way
I know my path ain’t straight
But in the field, don’t nothing but grit matter
Just get it how you live, and figure the shit after
Nigga, gotta get it before I die out here
Don’t wanna see my momma cry out tears

“Beeper King Exclusive:”

Hit a couple hundred licks, stash the money at the crib
Mama going through my shit, had to pass it off to Nick

“Fantoms:”

Watch the shit that you talkin’, promise it’s with me often
I got to stop with the trigger talking, I promised mama

“102:”

My momma told me I’m living crazy
I’m just being what she made me
Dealing with the luck she gave me

“Thought About You:”

Just found God and I still don’t pray
’cause Satan prey on the weak, swear I can do it myself
Soul stuck in the beats, it’s like I’m crying for help
Still my expression is bleak, because my mama ain’t raised no bitch
Never take no shit from no nigga unless he want to see the black four-fifth

“Winter in Prague:”

Now, back to the story at hand:
They handed me nothing, I took it in stride
Take a shot at your head for taking shots at my pride
The only son my mama got that she can talk to…
So you don’t want no problems. That’s never been a smart move.

There’s a lot going on here, a lot to chew on, and all of it’s dark. It’s not music to feel sad to. It doesn’t have the uplifting punch of songs that are meant to get you hype when you’re blue, nor the “You’re not alone” message the blues has. There’s no glory, no joy, and no hope, just expressionless faces and dead eyes that hide dark thoughts. It’s music to feel bad to, flat and hopeless raps.

Staples hasn’t had a proper album release yet, but he’s got three mixtapes I enjoyed a lot. Shyne Coldchain is good, and Winter in Prague (a collab with Michael Uzowuru) is a lot of fun, too. But the one that stole the show for me, upsetting expectations and surprising me with how solid it is, was Stolen Youth. It was produced by Mac Miller under his Larry Fisherman alias and features a fistful of entertaining rappers. This one made me go back and re-evaluate Mac Miller, because I’d honestly written him off before 2013. But his verses are good and his beats are a great foundation for Staples to show out on. “Guns and Roses” is fantastic and totally unexpected.

Ahoy, friends. Welcome to another edition of ThWiP. I have my usual backup in Gaijin Dan and Space Jawa with me today. This week gave us a goofball story in Avengers Annual, some great closure in Young Avengers and the stupidest, most amazing reveal in DC Universe vs. Masters of the Universe. I think Keith Giffen must have been watching the Scooby Doo movie when writing this one.

Also, Deadpool visited 1960’s Marvel and that was a good time.

Avengers Annual #1
Kathryn Immonen and David Lafuente

Batwing #26
Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Eduardo Pansica

Bleach #559
Tite Kubo

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Recently, in a thread at Something Awful’s wrestling subforum, discussion led to a survey about how we each got into wrestling. Some started during the Attitude Era in the late 90’s. Some during the Hogan Era. Some during the early 2000’s, when things weren’t as good as they used to be. I think it’s a pretty good idea for a discussion and deserves better than being hidden in a massive forum thread that moves several pages a day. So while I’ll answer the questions myself, I suggest you guys answer it as well. Toss it in the comments or even reblog it if you have a blog to call home. Even if you stopped watching wrestling years ago, give it a shot.

The questions:

1. What is the first wrestling match you remember watching? What year did you watch it?

5. Who are your top three wrestlers today?

Here’s my take.

1. What is the first wrestling match you remember watching? What year did you watch it?

I have a vague memory of being there with my brothers to watch Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant on Saturday Night’s Main Event in early 1988. It might not have even been that night it aired, but the replay of the events on another show. The match itself was lead-up to Wrestlemania 4. Andre defeated Hogan for the WWF Championship thanks to a crooked referee and while the WWF brass let that stand, they put their foot down when Andre immediately sold the belt to Ted Dibiase. The championship was suddenly vacated with the champion to be recrowned in a one-night, 14-man tournament to take place at the following Wrestlemania.

The first match that I recall watching for reals was “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka vs. some jobber on WWF Challenge in early January, 1991. Challenge was on Sundays at noon for me, so I was already awake and active from having to deal with Sunday School. I channel-surfed into seeing Snuka walking to the ring to face a generic victim, who he proceeded to annihilate within three minutes, culminating in a Superfly Splash off the top. Some research led me to discover that the guy’s name was Spike Jones. I found the match online, which of course included commentator Bobby Heenan discussing how much he used to love his music, much to Gorilla Monsoon’s chagrin.

Monsoon also made a rather funny line in retrospect, where he said that Spike wasn’t likely the man’s real name, but it sounds a lot cooler than something like “Dwayne.” This would prove to be more true than Monsoon would ever realize.

I was a fan of Godzilla movies at that age and watching the match made me wonder why I wasn’t watching this stuff to begin with. It was choreographed, but at least everyone moved a lot better and I didn’t have to deal with hours of drama from non-fighting characters who I didn’t give a shit about. Shortly after that match, they hyped up the upcoming Royal Rumble with a look at all 30 wrestlers involved. I loved the outlandish and diverse designs and found myself immediately hooked in.

2. What is the first angle you remember? What year?

The first major angle I can recall is Jake “The Snake” Roberts vs. Rick “The Model” Martel in 1990 stretching into 1991. It started before I was watching, but they did a good job of showing the highlights. It all started when they were each guests on the interview segment hosted by Brother Love. Jake was talking about whatever with his massive python Damien around his shoulders. Martel, a smug narcissist constantly peddling his own brand of perfume called Arrogance, found himself disgusted by the snake. He kept trying to spray Damien with some Arrogance, which he always distributed with a big atomizer can. Eventually, Jake got in his face over it and Martel accidentally-on-purpose sprayed him right in the eye with the perfume. Medical personnel scrambled and Martel snuck off.

In a later installment, Jake and Martel were brought back. Jake was wearing sunglasses and carried a walking stick to show that he was blind. Martel proceeded to make fun of him and antagonize him even further. Soon, Jake got close enough to grab at him, but reached Brother Love instead. He dropped Brother Love with a DDT (it’s okay, he was a jerk anyway) and Jake’s sunglasses came off to reveal a gross-ass, milky eye. It was awesome.

The feud was stretched out over months because WWF had the patience to do that back then. Martel was constantly ducking Jake. It wasn’t even about having them see if Jake could beat Martel, but seeing if Jake was capable of getting his hands on Martel. They captained their own teams at Survivor Series, leading to Martel’s side getting the first clean sweep in that show’s history. Jake was the last member of his team and rather than go out fighting, he grabbed Damien and chased Martel to the back. Jake was legal and Martel wasn’t so Jake got counted out. They tangled again at the Royal Rumble, but Martel was there before and after Jake’s tenure in the ring.

Finally, Martel signed a contract to take on Jake at Wrestlemania. He didn’t realize the fine print until it was too late: it would be a Blindfold Match. The two men would be blindfolded, which added to the idea that the drama wasn’t about Jake winning, but Jake even getting to him in the first place. On an episode of Saturday Night’s Main Event, Martel would get his own test version of the bout by doing a Blindfold Match against Koko B. Ware. Rather than humor it, Martel instead waited for Koko to put on the blindfold first before beating the everloving crap out of him and laughing it off. It was kind of sad to watch and made Martel that much more of a guy you wanted to see destroyed.

Their match at Wrestlemania 7 is one of the most hated matches in the show’s 3-decade history, but I’m willing to defend it up to a point. It certainly could have stood to lose about five minutes, but there were some definite fun spots and it was satisfying to see Jake finally drop Martel with the DDT, pin him and drape Damien over his body.

3. What match or angle first got you following wrestling closely? What year?

That would be the Ultimate Warrior vs. “Macho King” Randy Savage, also in 1991. When I started watching, Warrior was in the last month of his 9 month long WWF Championship reign. Years later I’d discover that it was a business failure and later after that, I’d realize that he was basically set up to fail. Warrior beat Hogan for the title at Wrestlemania 6 and they immediately said that there would be no rematch. That meant Warrior had to deal with the top heels of the time and there were a couple to play around with. Earthquake was a big deal and even made his debut months earlier by crushing Warrior. Randy Savage was a big main eventer and Warrior vs. Savage sounded like a fresh match. It didn’t hurt that the guys genuinely liked each other in real life and wanted to make each other look good.

Instead, Warrior fell to the waysides, allowing Hogan to take the spotlight despite not being the champ. Hogan got to be the one to fight Earthquake during all this time and Warrior was given feuds with guys like Mr. Perfect and Rick Rude. Guys who nobody could buy as being on his level, especially since he’s destroyed them already. Warrior even spent a while in a feud alongside Legion of Doom against the three members of Demolition. That’s not the worst idea for a feud until you remember that he’s the champion and has no reason to be there as long as he holds the belt.

And what of Savage? WWF decided to finally get around to this feud in a way that didn’t make much sense to me. WWF was finally building up some new contenders with the returning Sgt. Slaughter (now an Iraqi sympathizer) and the newcomer the Undertaker. Warrior was slated to defend against Slaughter at the 1991 Royal Rumble and earlier in the show, Savage’s manager Queen Sherri asked him via seduction whether Savage could get a title shot down the line. Seduction or not, that should be a no-brainer. By the very definition of his name, Ultimate Warrior should be a fighting champion who takes all comers. Despite the many problems with John Cena’s character, he’s at least a guy who will never back down from a challenge.

So of course Warrior screams, “NNnnnnNNnnNnNNNOOoOOOOOOooOoooooOOOOOO!!” in her face. This caused Savage to come out during Warrior’s match with Slaughter and break a scepter over Warrior’s skull. Warrior got pinned and had a reason to want a match with Savage. Savage, coincidentally, no-showed the Royal Rumble match itself because there was a berserk dude with facepaint trying to outright murder him.

Their match at Wrestlemania 7 was a Career-Ending Match and the lead-up was nothing but insane promos by both men. The match itself is entirely worth watching as it’s easily one of Warrior’s top three bouts. Warrior won, Savage was fired, Sherri screamed abuse at him and then his old manager Elizabeth showed up to drive her off and reunite with her old love.

Savage was back as a wrestler eight months later.

4. As a kid, who were your top three favorite wrestlers?

#1 was probably “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. I loved the guy’s “take no shit” attitude both as a commentator and a wrestler. Dude wasn’t built like a house and didn’t do any crazy flips, but he just had this defiant, insane energy that made him so likeable. One of the moments that always sticks out is a tag match of him and Hogan against Ric Flair and Sid Justice. Piper’s in the ring with Justice and you wonder what he’s even supposed to do to a guy that big. When Justice is taken down, Piper proceeds to strangle him and then angrily bob his head up and down the mat while sort of dragging him around the ring.

Next would be Mr. Perfect. He was one of the first heels that I genuinely liked and it made it that much better when he went face at the end of 1992. Everything from his finisher to his gun-swatting to his ridiculous high-level confidence made him the coolest guy in wrestling. His own Career-Ending Match with Ric Flair in early 93 is one of the most exciting matches I’ve ever watched and had me standing the entire time. It’s a shame they didn’t do much with him other than feeding him to Lex Luger and Shawn Michaels afterwards.

Similarly, Earthquake was another heel wrestler I thought was cool and hoped he’d turn face. He wasn’t the tallest guy, but he was definitely my favorite big man wrestler as a kid. He’d always present himself as a tense, yet quiet monster that would flatten you if given the chance, yet his promos had him angrily yelling through a soft-spoken voice. Turning him into a tag team wrestler with Typhoon was a fun twist and I was pumped when they were building up to a huge feud against Yokozuna post-Wrestlemania 10. Then he simply vanished and snuck off to WCW.

5. Who are your top three wrestlers today?

Right now it would be Daniel Bryan, CM Punk and El Generico/Sami Zayn. Wrestlers moving from the indies to the WWE has become like translating a comic book into a movie. Changing stuff is going to happen, but sometimes they change so much you wonder why they even bothered. Let them be what made them so special. It’s refreshing when CM Punk got to play on stuff that made him popular in the indies on a bigger scale in WWE.

I’m hoping it works out in that sense for Sami Zayn. As El Generico, there was never a time when he was on screen that I wasn’t entertained. So far they’ve taken away his mask and have chided him for climbing onto the ropes to get cheers, but the guy has what it takes to become a popular name if given the chance.

So what are your thoughts?

To Infinity Gauntlet and Beyonder! It’s This Week in Panels! Strong week across the board and I’m helped with it by Space Jawa and Gaijin Dan. Unfortunately, while Sinister Carnage was really strong for the first four issues, the last issue is a big step down that only succeeds in bringing things back to the status quo. The worst part being how they made a big deal out of Cletus Kasady being brain dead because the symbiote is supposedly worse than him on its own… so they fix his brain at the end.

They never did explain how his legs came back.

But who cares about that? Infinity stuck the landing and I can’t wait for the next chapter in Hickman’s Avengers/New Avengers epic. Hopefully we get more Maximus. Hickman’s writing the fuck out of that guy.

In other news, I wrote a review of Christmas Bounty starring WWE wrestler the Miz for Den of Geek US. It’s worse than you’d think!

All-Star Western #25
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray and Moritat

Aquaman #25
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Batman ’66 #22
Jeff Parker and Ruben Procopio

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I’m a few episodes into Sleepy Hollow, starring Nicole Beharie as Lt. Abbie Mills and Tom Mison as Ichabod Crane, who has rip van winkled his way to the modern day after being nearly killed around the time of the Revolutionary War. I like it. It’s cast from the same mold as Elementary with Lucy Liu and Jonny Lee Miller, that kind of cute antagonistic buddy cop wave. (Almost Human is on that, too.) It reminds me of a Kamen Rider show in a lot of ways (stakes, approach to conflict, lighting, plot, more), only instead of a bug-dude riding a motorcycle you have a time-lost British guy.

I’m also a few hours into Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, which is much less good than Sleepy Hollow, but a comfortably familiar sandbox murder simulator in a setting I’ve rarely paid any attention to. The fun isn’t where it needs to be, but the new is on-point enough that I keep messing with it.

Both works have a character type I only recently realized is fairly common. Ichabod Crane, upon meeting a black woman in 2013, excitedly asks her if she’s been emancipated and gets offended when he feels that she insinuates he supports slavery. “I’ll have you know I was a proponent of the Abolitionist Act before the New York Assembly,” he says. “Congratulations,” Abbie replies. “Slavery has been abolished 150 years. It’s a whole new day in America.”

Edward Kenway, rakish pirate captain and lead character of Black Flag, is similarly progressive. He frees slaves at will, forces his men to work alongside them despite their prejudices, and is generally a good and honorable guy, despite the theft and murdering.

This is a type of character I’ve seen elsewhere, too. They are generally men who have been removed from their time and placed in ours, though the character type appears in period pieces, too. Despite the time they come from, when horrific misogyny and racism were perfectly fine and accepted pastimes for men to indulge in at their leisure, they are staunch abolitionists or totally okay with giving women the vote or drinking from the same fountain as a…you know. One of those.

Captain America’s a great example of this, I think. I don’t mind it when it comes to him, since my favorite aspect of that character is how he represents everything America often isn’t, and that kind of dissonance makes the character a lot of fun for me. It’s elsewhere, too—Batman’s ancestors helped smuggle slaves to freedom, which is more than a little ridiculous. Even Jonah Hex, veteran of the Confederacy that betrayed their country because they thought chattel slavery was totally cool, has been updated to “hate everyone equally.”

Everybody’s a Schindler, nobody’s a Nazi.

I’ve been thinking about this pretty much ever since I saw Mison-as-Crane get offended that someone thought he’d be okay with slavery. Abolitionists existed, of course. Good, kind, loving people existed who rejected the mores of their time. But at this point, I feel like every guy we see from Not-Now comes off exactly like your average open, accepting, 2013-model White Guy. Sleepy Hollow likes to use Crane to complain about taxes, Starbucks, and bottled water. Kenway’s bootstraps-y “I’ll have any man, if he’s able and willing” philosophy feels like it doesn’t take into account the prevailing attitudes of the time at all. The average is off, tilted in favor of the suspiciously progressive and accepting hero instead of reality.

The characters in our stories, the sassy black women, inexplicably pan-Asian ninja, the gay BFF, nerdy hacker, sad white guy who just needs the love of a good woman, whatever whatever, are stories unto themselves. Whether directly or indirectly, these characters tell us things about ourself and how we view the world we live in. They don’t evolve out of nothing. They represent something.

I think the prevalence of this character type largely comes down to the shifting definition of what we consider a hero. In the past, this kind of anachronistic hero character wasn’t really necessary. I once picked up a James Bond novel by Ian Fleming that was casually and hatefully racist within the first paragraph. World War II was full of government-supported hateful art and propaganda. I have a joke book from the ’50s a friend gave me, and a few books of period pin-up art, and half the punchlines are “haha, women sure are whores, stupid, or both!” It was the times! You can find all types of racial stereotype sidekicks from back in the day, but that number is markedly lower now. Racial and sexual harassment aren’t dead, but we aren’t supposed to enjoy it any more, or as much as we used to, so it’s relegated to the villains, the bad guys, not our heroes.

Lois Lane can never have that moment where she clutches her purse on an elevator because a black dude got on. Being a bigot isn’t in the cool guy repertoire any more. We’re past that, even though there are plenty of good, moral people who are also secretly afraid of black people or occasionally slip and say something untoward about Asian people. Sometimes it’s unconscious, sometimes it’s learned behavior, and sometimes it’s just a slip, but we view good and bad as a binary, not a spectrum, so just one drop of bad taints you. As a result, we avoid and eschew it.

Funnily enough, this extends to the stories we tell about real people, too. The prevailing narrative around the Founding Fathers is that they were saints looking out for truth, justice, and the soon-to-be American Way. In reality, Thomas Jefferson had sex with his slaves and Benjamin Franklin, upon being asked for sex advice from a young friend, told that friend to go after older women and provided a list of eight reasons why, ending on “They are so grateful!”

So you get Edward Kenways and Ichabod Cranes, men who came from a time when you could rape and murder people at your leisure, as long as they were inferior to you, being colored or of the fairer sex, but instead choose to be accepting and cool about everything. No awkward slip-ups, no uncomfortable conversations about why you can’t say things, just a lot of truth and justice. It doesn’t feel very true to me, exactly, it doesn’t feel very real, but I do know that if it were more real, I’d hate the characters for being human garbage.

The struggle continues.