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Guide to the Injustice Roster: Explaining Comics to People Who Don’t Read Comics Part 4

April 5th, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , , , , ,

THE JOKER

Alias: Red Hood, Jack Napier, Joseph Kerr, Oberon Sexton
First Appearance: Batman #1 (1940)
Powers: Genius in both planning and improvisation, master chemist, completely unpredictable, unmatched tolerance for pain
Other Media: Yeah, pretty much.

“Frighteningly sick in the head… yet strangely compelling company.” – Lex Luthor when asked about the Joker

Despite all those above aliases, there’s never been a true name to go with the Joker’s pale face. His origin has always been up in the air and he rather likes it that way. The most famous non-movie take on the Joker’s backstory is the classic 80’s tale Killing Joke, where Joker spent time reminiscing about being a failed stand-up comedian who in one day senselessly lost his wife and unborn child and then got knocked into a vat of chemicals by Batman. Joker later admitted to Batman and the reader that he always remembered the actions that led up to him becoming the Joker differently every time and no longer truly knew who he was. All he could tell was that – much like Batman – he had one bad day and it caused him to snap. The difference was that while Batman had dedicated himself to making sense of the world, Joker dedicated himself to knocking down the whole house of cards and reveling in it.

Joker’s appearance was based on actor Conrad Veidt’s creepy portrayal of Gwynplaine from the 1928 film the Man Who Laughs. In his initial appearances, Joker was just as creepy and violent as he was in the movies. It wasn’t until the Comics Code Authority stepped in that he became more like Cesar Romero in the 60’s Batman TV show. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that one time in the 50’s that Joker dedicated his time and energy to committing crimes based on colossal mistakes. That led to a comic where they mentioned the word “boner” like a hundred times and it STILL makes me laugh like an idiot.

“And I’m worried about the boner he’s readying for YOU!” – Commissioner Gordon to Batman

Remarkably enough, Joker appears to be the one character who was never affected by any of the DC reboots. He always just kept being the Joker and any different depictions fell into the idea that he’s just a versatile nutjob who is as likely to poison a troop of boyscouts as he is to steal a child’s straight A report card and call it a day. Even Batman scribe Grant Morrison explained that his boner crime days were just another step in the psycho’s evolution.

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Guide to the Injustice Roster: Explaining Comics to People Who Don’t Read Comics Part 3

April 3rd, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , , , ,

THE FLASH

Alias: Barry Allen?
First Appearance: Showcase #4 (1956)
Powers: Fastest dude ever, heals quickly, can vibrate himself through matter, can vibrate into different realities, with the assistance of the Cosmic Treadmill he can travel through time, is able to lend his powers to others
Other Media: Appeared on many cartoons, had his own live-action TV series in the 90’s, appeared on Legend of the Superheroes (a failed Justice League spinoff of the 60’s Batman show) and the live-action Justice League of America TV movie, was kind of a big deal in Daddy Day Care

Warning: the history of the Flashes involves some time travel fuckery and in a lot of these cases, I’m just as confused as you are.

The Golden Age Flash was Jay Garrick. Maybe five people care about him and they’re all mad I just said this. Moving on.

Barry Allen (you know, from Catch Me If You Can) became the Flash in the 50’s. He was a forensic scientist who got splashed with chemicals while being shocked by lightning. That gave him the powers to run super fast and he decided to be altruistic with it, naming himself the Flash after his favorite comic book hero. He garnered one of the best rogues galleries in comics, got himself a sidekick in Kid Flash (his nephew Wally West, who got his powers in a similar way) and a fiancé in Iris West.

One of his villains was Professor Zoom, who looked identical to Flash except for having a reverse color scheme. Zoom was from the future and had powers and an appearance that were just like Barry’s because he was a huge Flash fanboy who went insane. Jealous of Flash’s relationship with Iris, Zoom killed her by vibrating his hand through her head. Barry tried to move on and later got engaged to another woman, but when Zoom attempted to meddle in that, a threatened Flash ended up breaking his neck and killing him. Flash was put on trial for murder and it got really weird because it turns out Iris was really from the same future era as Zoom and she was alive there somehow, so he ran to the future and spent some time with her.

Flash returned to the present during the big Crisis on Infinite Earths event. It’s there that he faced down the villain Anti-Monitor and ran circles around his big world-destroying master weapon, destroying it via vortex. The stress on running faster than he had ever run and being unable to let up tore Flash apart and caused him to painfully decay as he powered on, screaming that he had to save the world one last time. He ruined Anti-Monitor’s plans, but at the cost of his own life. Kid Flash discovered the empty red tights – the only thing that remained of Barry – and swore that he would take up the mantle and make him proud.

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Professor X isn’t Martin Luther King, and Magneto isn’t Malcolm X, either.

April 3rd, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , ,

It’s hard to boil someone down to one position, but I think it’s fair to say that Martin Luther King wanted America to deliver on its original promise: that all men are created equal and therefore deserve the same rights, access, and opportunities. His preferred method of doing so was non-violent resistance, essentially making himself into a martyr to show exactly how unfair America truly is. I like this paragraph from his “I Have A Dream” speech:

We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

“Put up or shut up.”

Of course, non-violent resistance doesn’t mean that you fold at the first sign of hate. King kept guns for protection, and many of his peers did, as well. Owning a gun is their right under the laws of America, and it’s a right that’s well worth exercising, depending on your situation. It seems weird at first blush, but think it through: non-violent resistance doesn’t mean that you let someone kill you at their leisure. Non-violent resistance is a focused tactic, something you do intentionally. Self-protection exists apart from that, right?

Malcolm X is harder to boil down, and he’s been put into competition with MLK so often that it’s hard to define him as his own thing sometimes. I like these quotes, though:

This is to warn you that I am no longer held in check from fighting white supremacists by Elijah Muhammad’s separatist Black Muslim movement, and that if your present racist agitation against our people there in Alabama causes physical harm to Reverend King or any other black Americans who are only attempting to enjoy their rights as free human beings, that you and your Ku Klux Klan friends will be met with maximum physical retaliation from those of us who are not hand-cuffed by the disarming philosophy of nonviolence, and who believe in asserting our right of self-defense — by any means necessary.

“This a hands off policy. Y’all touch him, we riding.” –Young Jeezy.

I want Dr. King to know that I didn’t come to Selma to make his job difficult. I really did come thinking I could make it easier. If the white people realize what the alternative is, perhaps they will be more willing to hear Dr. King.

“You can get with this, or you can get with that.” –Black Sheep.

I like these quotes because they both show a better picture of the relationship between King and Malcolm X, later El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, than the usual narrative does. America likes to place them in conflict with each other, but the truth was much more nuanced. They didn’t see eye-to-eye, but they were both working toward the same goal, and they knew that.

Malcolm was more willing to be the devil than Martin was. He was willing to be the demon that America deserved, while Martin was able to become something different, something softer. Both approaches have their merits, and they aren’t necessarily fundamentally opposed. If America resisted Martin’s soft approach, Malcolm made it clear that he was right around the corner with a harder approach. “Deal with him or deal with me.”

Personally, I identify with Malcolm a lot more than Martin. I’ve had a copy of “The Ballot or The Bullet” in my Dropbox for years now, and it remains one of my favorite things to read. There is a directness to Malcolm’s approach that I appreciate and try to emulate. “You better give me the respect I deserve or I’ma take it by force.” Malcolm is bigger than his rep as the white-hating, bigoted side of the civil rights movement. That’s too small and too inaccurate an idea for him.

But it’s that idea that led to the idea of Martin and Malcolm in competition, which led directly to the idea that Professor Xavier of the X-Men and Magneto of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants are the Martin Luther King and Malcolm X of the mutant rights movement.

It’s an easy comparison to make, considering Xavier’s position as angel and Magneto’s as demon, but it’s wrong on basically every single level. Professor X drafted children into a paramilitary unit under the guise of educating them, and then sent them out to fight other mutants. They’re essentially a self-police force for the mutant people. When you step out of line, they’ll step on you. This was later explored when X-Factor and Freedom Force became government-sponsored squads, a kind of walking, talking COINTELPRO.

Magneto is the other side of the fence. Where Xavier wants mutants to coexist with humans, Magneto is a mutant supremacist and terrorist. He murders humans, he brutalizes mutants, and anyone who stands in his way is found wanting and considered a traitor. Magneto is a murderer with ideals, when you boil it down.

Neither character bears any resemblance to Martin or Malcolm, outside of a short-sighted and frankly ignorant idea of what Martin or Malcolm represent. People have said it, but that doesn’t make it true.

Professor X uses violent methods to get what he wants and to police his people. Magneto uses violent methods to oppress another species and is an actual terrorist.

Martin & Malcolm wanted America to deliver on its promise. Professor X and Magneto are the hero and villain of an adventure comic. Any connection between the two sets of people is based on inaccurate data. Any comparison between the two has no leg to stand on.

There is no relation in tactics, approach, or personality.

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monday mixtape david

April 1st, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , ,

monday mixtape david from brothers on 8tracks Radio.

Eight songs here, which should play in random order. The list:

-Adina Howard – Freak Like Me – Do You Wanna Ride?
-Aesop Rock – 6b Panorama – Float
-Anthony Hamilton – Sucka For You – Back To Love
-Arrested Development – People Everyday – 3 Years, 5 Months And 2 Days In The Life Of…
-Asher Roth & Nottz – Gotta Get Up – Rawth
-Atmosphere – Good Times (Sick Pimpin) – Seven’s Travels
-Angie Martinez – Live at Jimmy’s
-Al Green – I Want To Hold Your Hand – Love Ritual

Originally, I had wanted to make this eight songs about death or dying, but then I woke up this morning and it’s gloomy out, so instead these are eight songs about enjoying your life, though some songs are more down than others. That strain runs through it, though — “life is beautiful.” It’s why we put up with all this nonsense that life throws at us. One day somebody pretty is gonna smile at us, we’re gonna see some movie we like or hear some song we love, and smile by accident.

Aesop Rock’s “6B Panorama” is one of my favorite songs. I love storytelling joints, and this one isn’t a story so much as a scene. It’s just what Aes Rock sees when he looks out of his window, and it’s so simple but deep that I can’t help but love it. I honestly love Aes’s delivery on “I saw a blind man with a dog screaming ‘someday I’ll see it all’/ and then he sat down with his hammer and saw.” It’s delivered like the stinger at the end of an episode of Peabody & Sherman on Rocky & Bullwinkle.

“6B Panorama” is about appreciation, I think, and that’s something I have a hard time with. When I’m in a bad mood and everything tastes like ashes and I hate everything I love, I wallow. I try to focus more on appreciating what I see on a day-to-day basis these days. I moved last year, and while I can’t see the sunrise or sunset, I can stand on my balcony and still enjoy the morning. There’s always something to look at and appreciate, right? I forget that sometimes.

It helps that “6B Panorama” is a killer bit of writing from one of rap’s best writers, too.

This mixtape is smiley face music, even if it’s a sheepish smile. “People Everyday” is probably the outlier, but it’s such a happy-sounding song about whipping somebody’s behind that I couldn’t resist, not to mention that flawless outro.

The instrumental version of Atmosphere’s “Good Times” was my alarm for two or three years, and it’s strange how weird it sounds to me now. I associated it with snapping awake and being late to work for so long that just hearing the opening of the song makes me physically anxious, though I know in my head that it isn’t a big deal. It’s like a spike of anxiety that slowly fades into suspicion. Basically, don’t make your favorite songs your alarms. I ruined Aesop Rock’s “None Shall Pass” that way, too.

I do a mean version of “Live At Jimmy’s.” Get at me.


Alex Pappademas interviewed DOC for Playboy, with a hat-tip to taterpie for the link. This interview? It’s fantastic. It’s wide-ranging and it put me up on things that I never even knew. I had an uncle who was into MC Breed as a kid, and finding out that DOC worked with him was a revelation. This is must-reading, but maybe not if you’re at work.

I liked Kiel Phegley interviewing Jim Rugg about his new project Supermag. Rugg is ferociously talented.

I liked Andrew Wheeler & Joe Hughes’s take on the Rick Remender Hobo Piss Avengers thing. It’s got an… academic approach, I guess is the best phrase to use, that I’m no good at. I don’t process this kind of conversation that way, which is why I rarely (a brief search says “never” on 4thletter! and mostly in jokes on twitter) talk about like, “white privilege” as a concept. It’s not what I’m good at, but Wheeler is, so give it a read. I also dig this more fan-oriented take.


Here’s a link to a transcript of the diversity-oriented panel I was on at ECCC, if’n you’re curious. I think the panel was pretty good, but I also think that I talked way too much. It was nice, though. The panel is continuing over here on Tumblr, if you’ve got questions/want to discuss things.

I reviewed Gabriel Bá and Fábio Moon’s BPRD Vampire, which is very pretty but thin. I wrote about a scene I like a lot though. It’ll be a good book, I think, but weak first issue.

I wrote about… me? Kind of. It’s about learning to trust my taste and accepting the connections my brain draws between otherwise disparate projects. My brain’s smarter than I am. Next week’s I’m David will focus on a similar subject, but with a bulletproof twist.


I saw GI Joe Retaliation. Here’s the first trailer I found on youtube:

I still love that reaction to the North Korea joke. “Bro! What?! C’mon! I just GOT this job!”

I loved it. I’m sure people are gonna say it’s stupid or “turn off your brain” or whatever, but trust me: stay engaged, especially if you’re into the Joes. It’s a treat, and it’s exactly what a toy/comic movie should be. Is delightful a weird word to describe a movie? ’cause GI Joe was a delight on par with Fast Five or Dredd/The Raid. It’s a proper action movie, basically, with some devastatingly good jokes, shockingly solid casting (keep an eye out for dude who played Dick Casablancas in Veronica Mars, for instance), and some well put-together action scenes. A few fights were a little too blurry for my tastes, but by and large? Utterly, completely enjoyable. I saw it in Imax 3D and had a time.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying?

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Guide to the Injustice Roster: Explaining Comics to People Who Don’t Read Comics Part 2

April 1st, 2013 Posted by |

BLACK ADAM

Alias: Teth Adam, Theo Adam
First Appearance: Marvel Family #1 (1945)
Powers: The stamina of Shu, the swiftness of Heru, the strength of Amon, the wisdom of Zehuti, the power of Aton and the courage of Mehen. Can also summon lightning by shouting his trigger word
Other Media: Appeared in Batman: The Brave and the Bold, Young Justice, the Kid Super Power Hour with Shazam and Superman/Shazam: The Return of Black Adam.

I’m not sure if Black Adam is the very first “dark shadow of an existing hero” supervillain in comics, but he’s got to be up there. Thousands of years ago, the wizard Shazam decided on empowering a champion to do acts of heroism. He saw a prince who he deemed pure-hearted and granted him the powers of the gods upon speaking the wizard’s name. Teth/Mighty Adam was an unbeatable force for good, but the power soon corrupted him and he felt the need to rule the world. Shazam couldn’t depower him, so he just banished him across the universe.

It took 5,000 years of non-stop, pissed-off flying for Black Adam to reach Earth (referenced in his Injustice intro) and by that time, he had been replaced with the team of Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. He fought them to a standstill until being tricked into saying “Shazam”. The years caught up to him at once and he decayed into a skeleton in an instance. He wasn’t brought back for another 30 years, resurrected by mad scientist Dr. Sivana. During the rest of the pre-Crisis years, he just showed up every now and then to be Evil Captain Marvel.

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This Week in Panels: Week 184

March 31st, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , ,

Happy Easter into April Fools Day. No April Fools update from me this year, since I tend to forget about it until it’s April. I will have another one of those Injustice Profiles update tomorrow and a bunch more for the rest of the week. I just wrote up Hawkgirl’s profile and the research twisted my brain into a pretzel. Goddamn it, DC.

My Easter peeps include Gaijin Dan, Jody, Was Taters, Matlock and Space Jawa. Nobody’s reading Age of Ultron, it seems. I always find it funny when a big event comic gets ignored on this.

Before I get to panels, I have another improv show this Saturday! 4:15 at the UCB Theater in NYC! Go see it if you’re around!

All-Star Western #18
Justin Gray, Moritat and Glenn Fabry

Aquaman #18
Geoff Johns and Paul Pelletier

Batman Incorporated #9 (Taters’ pick)
Grant Morrison and Chris Burnham

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Uncanny Avengers, X-Men, Rick Remender, and Oppression Comix

March 29th, 2013 Posted by | Tags: ,

Here’s an image from the latest issue of Uncanny Avengers 5, drawn by Olivier Coipel, inked by Mark Morales, written by Rick Remender, and colored by either Laura Martin, Larry Molinar, or both:

uncanny-aven

I saw this excerpted on The Beat and I thought it was pretty funny. I disagree with what Alex is saying, but lots of comics characters say things I disagree with, and I’m not reading this comic anyway, so that’s a double dose of “who cares.” But I’ve also seen similar sentiments expressed elsewhere — by actual, non-fictional people, I mean, not other cartoon characters — and that always secretly bugs me, so whoops I do care a whole lot and my jaded exterior is a false face.

I have two problems with this, but they come more from a theoretical perspective than a “I don’t like this story” perspective. For the phrase “the m-word” to be viable as a concept, Alex’s speech can’t be about “mutant,” which has been the accepted way to refer to the X-Men for basically ever. Professor X does it, Magneto does it, and I figure basically every X-writer has approached it as a neutral way to refer to m-words nine times out of ten. It has been used in negative ways, but so have the pretty much neutral words black, Jew, gay, and probably everything else. The offensive part of “black bastard” isn’t “black.” It’s “bastard.”

Alex’s speech, to make the metaphor work, has to be about “mutie,” which is about as close as mutant-oriented slurs get to “nigger.” Alex’s speech is the equivalent of a black dude saying “Don’t call me black,” which is a thing that definitely gets expressed that I don’t think holds up under scrutiny at all. It prizes blind assimilation over actual acceptance. It’s not “I’m just like you” so much as “I’m just like you because I don’t mention this part where we’re different that makes you uncomfortable.”

(Yes, I’ve seen the Morgan Freeman video, people who are rushing to post it in the comments as some type of counterpoint. “Stop talking about it” is the stupidest advice anyone ever gave for solving any problem in the entire world. Nothing fixes itself.)

Luckily that’s my other point: this is naive in a way that I appreciate (honest!) but will never, ever believe in. I get what Alex is saying, but it also depends on the entire world magically changing their points of view to one that doesn’t view you as a threat. It’ll work on some people, especially if you’re a pretty mutant, but it will have less than zero effect on everyone else. “Don’t look at me like a black guy,” said the black guy who somehow forgot that racism is a system that doesn’t magically go away if you personally ignore our differences. There are years — centuries in real life, decades in comic books — of momentum that don’t just stop because you make a semantic change. This is the opposite of realpolitik. It’s tumblrpolitik. As far as workable philosophies go, it makes a nice image macro or touching edit of A Softer World.

But! Who cares? I’ve disagreed with stuff in comics before, and in X-Men comics in particular, pretty much ever since I first saw one of those idiotic “Professor X is Martin Luther King and Magneto is Malcolm X!” comparisons. (They aren’t, not even close, and you can’t support that position without being real ignorant of like… anything about everyone involved.) I’ll somehow limp along and live my life without holding a grudge over Alex “Havok” Summers believing something different from me in a comic book I ain’t reading.

BUT! I do think doing this sort of story with the X-Men is a mistake. The X-Men are, in the eyes of both Marvel and the vast majority of fans, an oppression metaphor. Mutants-as-blacks, mutants-as-gays, mutants-as-outcasts. You can fill in the blank with your preferred marginalized group, up to and including white dudes. It’s a tremendous asset to the franchise, because everyone feels alone and like an outcast sometimes. The X-Men are feared and hated by a world they are sworn to protect, which sets them up as underdogs.

BUT!!! This is an example of the franchise flying too close to the sun and getting too specific, which is usually a mistake. The metaphor has worked for so long because it’s amazingly broad and they rarely ever address the actual factual parts of being marginalized within the text. The X-Men franchise is a soap opera about pretty people having sex and fighting evil and sometimes disfigured bad guys, but somehow they’re still underdogs and we love them for it. They’ll borrow specific things here and there, but fictionalize them to the point that they have a taste of real life, rather than a full bite.

There are a few good and recent examples of the franchise going specific. The Fraction/Land run on Uncanny X-Men had an anti-mutant take on Prop 8 I think, and I’m pretty sure that Bendis is mining black nationalist language and tactics for his take on Cyclops but don’t know for certain. Peter David and Larry Stroman kinda explored this years ago in X-Factor with the term “genetically-challenged,” which used humor to kill the tension and keep you into it.

Nailing this kind of specificity is a tough row to hoe, and if you tilt too far toward realism — toward acknowledging the actual oppression that provides fodder for X-Men stories — the balance gets entirely upset. In this case, “the m-word” is clearly, clearly, trading on “the n-word,” a censored version of the word “nigger.” That pulls Alex’s argument from being the kind of pie-in-the-sky optimism that is common to the franchise (my favorite example is Professor X’s speech during X-Cutioner’s Song, I think) to something that we look at with real world eyes. It reminds us that people still get called niggers for no reason at all, and that makes the metaphor that’s central to the X-Men seem cheap.

So in as much as I am upset with or at this scene, my problem is basically that, as a dude who is familiar with the X-Men and aware of how race is treated in my culture, I can’t buy it. It doesn’t work from a marginalized perspective, and it doesn’t necessarily do the X-Men franchise any favors, either. That’s a suspension of disbelief thing, so it ain’t a big deal. I though this was funny, tweeted about it, read other people talking about it, and then I saw this:

Which is kind of a bummer, and by kind of a bummer, I mean ughhhhhhhh. It’s a dumb response when “sorry it didn’t work for you, I hope you stick around” or dead silence will do. (“Kill yourself” in any form is a pretty bad look in a situation like this.) That was when I realized that this was a whole thing already, and I thought about tweeting Remender about it, but I’m blocked for whatever reason (I honestly don’t know why) so I didn’t.

While talking to Joe Hughes, my editor at ComicsAlliance and fellow Black Dude In Comics, Remender said that the story/scene “has nothing to do with black people. It’s about imaginary mutants.” and that “the n-word doesn’t own the concept.” Which is crazy. I mean, kids still do the s-word, b-word, d-word thing, but adults? In 2013? About an X-Men comic? You can’t tell me that “the n-word” has no influence on “the m-word.” That’s crazy. That’s like… I can’t even think of a good comparison. “The m-word” is related to “the n-word” because it’s a euphemism for a hurtful word introduced with the idea of decreasing the power of the original word. Arguing that it isn’t related at all requires some pretty amazing mental gymnastics. And if you honestly believe there’s no relation between the two… I don’t know, dude. I don’t have any jokes or anything to soften the blow — this is like ground level stuff.

Later, Jason Aaron sent these perfectly reasonable messages (among others) as a way of defending Remender:

Which is true! It doesn’t match up all the time. But what I think is very relevant here is that the X-Men are a lot of things to a lot of people, but one of the most important things they are — I’m talking top two, right after “sexy people with cool powers” — is an oppression metaphor. You cannot escape this. It is built into the X-Men’s DNA. It wasn’t there at the beginning, but by the time Claremont got through with them? It was in there. It’s indelible, like Gwen Stacy for Spidey or Batman not murdering dudes. The oppression metaphor is a vital piece of the engine that makes the X-Men work.

It’s part of the incredible tapestry that is the X-Men, and it’s a big part, so you can’t really blame people for looking at it through that lens by default. And you especially can’t blame them for doing it in a story that specifically invokes that metaphor. I understand that the X-Men are a lot of things, but going by this page, the oppression metaphor is explicitly invoked. So of course people are going to look at it through the lens of real life oppression. It’s childish but… “he started it” is pretty apt here.

This isn’t even some kind of tough guy “if you can’t handle the heat, get out of the kitchen” thing. Remender cranked the heat up, put a quart of water on to boil, walked away, and came back like “Wow this boiling water should totally go drown itself in hobo piss, who does this water think it is?”

My biggest problem with this is Remender’s response. Scott Summers’s weird brother saying things is pretty immaterial to me, except as a way to start a conversation. But telling people who are participating in a discussion that you invited to drown in hobo piss is aggravating. It’s contemptuous. This guy is writing Oppression Comix and when questioned on a fine point, he goes to “kill yourself?” And obviously it’s metaphorical and he doesn’t think dissenters should actually kill themselves, but if I led this piece with “if all these straight white dudes keep acting out and then telling me how offended I get to be over something they did I swear I’ma hit somebody with a hammer, whoo lawdy this racism is killing me inside” you’d probably get upset at me, and with good reason.

I’m sure the usual gang of idiots crawled up his butt with idiotic harassment, but cripes dude maybe there is a better way to handle that than blanket-shaming everyone who doesn’t agree with you. It’s not hard to not be a dick. Ignore the trolls. Talk to the people with actual concerns. Ignore the people with actual concerns. Deflect. Pretend like nothing is going on. Do anything but sit there and tell a bunch of people who are dead in the center of the X-Men target audience and whose day-to-day life often provides fodder for X-Men stories to shut their yaps because mutants aren’t actually black/gay/whatever and your story has absolutely no basis in real life, even though your story is quoting an actual real life argument.

Instead:

which I guess is some kind of sarcastic ironic supergenius double bluff I’m not smart enough to get or something, because it just looks another stupid and tone deaf message after a day full of them from where I’m sitting here on my ivory throne. Besides, that finger of mine that’s wagging? At this point, it’s far from the pious one, hoss.

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Guide to the Injustice Roster: Explaining Comics to People Who Don’t Read Comics Part 1

March 28th, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , , , ,

Lately on the Something Awful forum, there’s been a thread about the upcoming Injustice: Gods Among Us game. A good percentage of the people who read and write in that thread aren’t comic fans, but are simply interested in the new game. That leads to a lot of questions based on various discussions. Questions like, “Who is Black Adam and why is everyone excited about him being in the game?” “Wait, what happened to the Green Lantern with the funny crab mask?” “What’s the deal with Flash, again?” “Hold on, Black Adam gets his powers from saying ‘chocolate egg cream’?” and mainly, “What the hell are any of you even talking about?”

For the hell of it, I started writing up profiles for each of the 24 announced characters. A guide that explains what each guy is about in a way that gives their backstories and notable moments, while spotlighting the stupid and cool aspects of their histories. I did a couple and it went over really well, so I’ve been trekking on. It’s actually been a complete blast to write.

So I figured, what the hell, I might as well repost them here. Send your non-comic reading friends and be edutained.

INTRODUCTION

Before I get to the game’s cast, let’s take a quick look at the DC universe itself.

DC’s continuity is a complicated mess. Originally, back in the 30’s and 40’s, DC hit the scene with Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash and other Golden Age heroes. Popularity died down a bit except for the first three (early Wonder Woman sold a lot through the years due to being a thinly-veiled fetish comic) and during the late 50’s/early 60’s, DC reintroduced a lot of their ideas. Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were more or less the same concepts, but Green Lantern went from being a magical dude in a cape to a space cop in spandex and the Flash went from being a dude dressed as Mercury to a masked man with lightning bolt ears. Eventually, they figured out a storyline reason for this. The Golden Age of DC takes place on Earth-2 while the “modern” stuff takes place on Earth-1. This is discovered when 60’s Flash teleports himself to Earth-2 to meet the original Flash. This also meant that Earth-2 Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman were all about 20 years older than their modern counterparts.

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monday mixtape chthonic

March 25th, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , ,

monday mixtape chthonic from brothers on 8tracks Radio.

Eight songs here, which should play in random order. I don’t know where the title came from. I found it on a list of c-adjectives and liked how it looked. Anyway. The list:
-The Weeknd – Life of the Party – Trilogy
-Pulp – Party Hard – This Is Hardcore
-blur – Death of a Party – blur
-STS – We Threw A Party – GOLD RUSH
-Regina Spektor – The Party – What We Saw From The Cheap Seats
-Prince Paul – War Party feat. Horror City – A Prince Among Thieves
-OutKast – movin cool (the afterparty) – big boi and andre present…
-Method Man – Party Crasher – Tical 2000: Judgement Day

One thing that gets lost when people try to legitimize rap by going on a crusade about how it’s poetry is that rap is so much more than rhyming. It’s the way you enunciate the words to the beat (flow), it’s the way those words sound (voice), it’s the way those words are put together (skills), and something indefinable, like charisma or coolness. It’s ad-libs and asides and hooks and everything. “Rap is poetry” doesn’t work because it files off everything that makes rap different from poetry.

Method Man’s “Party Crasher” is one of my favorite joints on Tical 2000. It paints an incredibly vivid picture of one night at the club, from the pushy douchebag doorman to the dudes looking for someone to jack to enjoying the night. There are so many moments in here that can’t be talked about like they were poetry but totally make the song. Mef talking about choking while smoking, “million dollar broke niggas” being an incredible turn of phrase, that “you know what this is” aside just before dude gets done dirty in the bathroom, and — my favorite part — “Niggas! yeah, gon’ turn the party out!”

“War Party” is something else. It’s like the ultimate Goon Theme Song. This is what the nameless dudes in movies and music videos who mean mug at the camera listen to to get hype. Some of my favorite rap songs are joints where a bunch of dudes just get in and get out, and this song is a good example. I’m also a sucker for a song with an outro composed entirely of threats, pimp.


I’m not sure who wrote this, but I really dig this retrospective of Earthtone III and their place in the music industry. They’re incredible, first, and they’re Big Boi, Dre, and Mr. DJ, second. OutKast. I feel like a lot of people don’t realize that Dre and Big produce, too, because it so rarely ever seems to come up. With good reason, I think — Organized Noize deserves more acclaim than they get, which is a lot — but it’s still sorta weird. This piece does a great job of placing them in context.

Maddie Collier wrote a pretty interesting essay about rap and cunnilingus. Not safe for work, obviously, but more for language than pictures. I don’t think I’d have had as much trouble as she did finding rappers who are all about putting some south in their mouth, but maybe that’s selection bias. I notice it more when rappers say they don’t than when they say they will. One seems normal, I guess, and the other is weird. There’s a G Rap line she quotes that struck me as weird even when I was heavy into KGR. Like — son, you’re down for killing how many people? But you’re the chicken of the sea? Yuck. Either way — fascinating essay. There are all these nooks & crannies of rap that go underexplored or are approached in asinine and blatantly untrue ways, so I really get into seeing stuff like this. It means I’m one step closer to reading someone’s groundbreaking piece on white girls and rap.


I wrote about Mike Allred & Peter Milligan’s run on X-Force and how good it is. Wrote about Air Force 1s, too.

-I wrote about this Miley Cyrus twerk video and linked the Grantland piece on my tumblr, too:

This is real fascinating to me, even once you take her getting it out of the equation. I’m from Georgia, right? Ying Yang Twins’s “Whistle While You Twurk” hit when I was in 10th grade. The last two songs I really remember popping off super hard and killing the radio before I left for Spain was Luda’s “What’s Your Fantasy” and Ying Yang’s “Whistle While You Twurk.” Luda was the new hotness, but Ying Yang were on some whole other thing. They shouted out a strip club in my hometown, and flipping Whistle While You Work for a song about strip clubs was an amazing choice. This song, and twerking by extension, reminds me of a very specific time and place in a very visceral way. It’s a time machine.

And now, in 2013, we’ve got ex-Disney stars twerking on camera. Life is crazy. It sorta puts me in mind of when Dave Chappelle told everybody what skeet means and then everyone ran that into the ground.


I saw Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers this weekend, featuring James Franco, Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson, and Gucci Mane. It was terrible, but terrible in a way that I thought was interesting. Not interesting enough to be happy about paying train fare and movie ticket prices for it, but interesting like “I’m glad I saw that so that now I don’t have to watch it ever again.” A few notes:

-Is this what spring break was like? I missed out on that experience, but if it’s just a bunch of goofy looking white dudes pouring beer on topless white chicks and their token black girlfriend in a pantomime of peeing… I’m good, bro. Surely there is a better way to get into some debauchery.

-Selena Gomez looks like somebody’s little sister. It’s really distracting. She’s the babyface di tutti babyface.

-James Franco: utterly ridiculous, but I forgot he was Franco for a while, so maybe it was good? He was equal parts excruciating and perfect.

Spring Breakers is tedious, but tedious in an almost exciting way. It feels like it’s three hours long, and I was definitely checking my watch at the end. But I liked some of what I saw. I would see something awesome — the girls in prison, posed around the room like dolls — and then I would have to wait thirty minutes of troll-looking twins and excruciating voiceovers before the next cool thing.

-The shot composition was great. There were a gang of shots that I thought were really, really fascinating. You could probably pull a lot of visual inspiration from this flick.

-The editing was awful. It felt like the movie was an overlong music video set during one hellish Spring Break moment of bouncing boobs, bikini-covered butts, dudes with guns, and alcohol. There’s no sense of place, not at all. There’s no geography. It’s all one place at one time.

-The party’s over once the black dudes arrive, and I’m pretty sure every single black lady in the movie is either naked, silent, a stripper, or all of the above. Gucci Mane is blank. There’s some interesting subtext going on, but the text is like… I made a joke about this movie being Set It Off for white people to friends ages ago. It kind of is? It is coded very, very white in terms of POV, even down to the worst thing that could happen being black dudes treating you exactly like white dudes treated you about thirty seconds before that scene.

-The most concise review I can think of: Spring Breakers is like Vice Magazine putting on a production of Belly entirely in the form of tumblr posts.

Open thread. What’re you reading/watching/hearing/enjoying?

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This Week in Panels: Week 183

March 24th, 2013 Posted by | Tags: , , , , , ,

Hey. Panel time. Full house this week as I’m joined by Was Taters, Gaijin Dan, Space Jawa, Brobe, Jody and Matlock. You want to be added to the list? Send me some panels next week. Gamble a stamp.

Action Comics was a pain to pick a panel from. There were like a hundred great choices at its disposal.

Action Comics #18
Grant Morrison, Rags Morales, Brad Walker, Sholly Fisch and Chris Sprouse

All-New X-Men #9 (Jody’s pick)
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

All-New X-Men #9 (Gavin’s pick)
Brian Michael Bendis and Stuart Immonen

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