Airboy and Deadly Class are both great. I'm also still following Low despite (or because of?) the ridiculous extents of its theme-serving, but overall I find Remender's darkness a bit contrived and hamfisted. What did you think of the []in Deadly Class? The execution was so gangbusters that I didn't mind it potentially devaluing the story's dramatic weight.
Speaking of Tom Scioli, I'm waiting for you to drop into the Hasbro Cinematic Universe thread to tell us why it's a great idea.
Last edited by Melville; 04-16-2017 at 08:37 AM.
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
I read all 35 issues of Sam Kieth's The Maxx the other day. I was 10 years old when it first came out, and reading its idiosyncratic tales of fertility symbols and trauma, Paglia and Dr Seuss, rabbit heroes and suppressed pain—not to mention its art deco layouts and wonderfully gristly, splayed inks—was a formative experience for me. But by the time I was 13 and it was at issue 25, I'd given up on it, after thinking it had started to go off the rails somewhere around issue 10* and only gotten worse from there.
Surprisingly, upon rereading it, I find myself in complete agreement with my young self. The art gets really sloppy really quickly, even if the sloppiness is often counterbalanced by the expressive cartoony flourishes and demasculinized-Frazetta-style paintings. It often looks horribly rushed, and you can tell where the "finisher" was actually drawing entire panels. Like the art, after a while the story meanders somewhat incoherently. It feels stretched out while still leaving pieces of the narrative clumsily undeveloped (especially some of the character relationships), it's littered with inconsistencies, and it keeps covering the same ground, intent on resolving mysteries that didn't need resolving or already felt resolved early on.
It also turns out I didn't miss much when I dropped it at issue 25: the storytelling in the final 10 issues becomes even worse, possibly due to Kieth taking over full scripting duties. His writing desperately needed a defter touch. It's overly expository and blunt, and it frequently devolves into bad psychoanalytical goop. There are a couple interesting stories about adolescence, and it maintains an appealing sympathy for all us weirdos, but the only really compelling thing in those last 10 issues is the "cycle of abuse" life story of the series' "villain". Like everything else, it feels tainted by flimsy psych 101 concepts, but it's easily the most powerfully told story in the second half of the series.
Looking back, I think what kept my interest going when I was young, and what provided a lot of the story's impact, came from the extensive letters pages, which were an engrossing mix of interpretations, absurd humor, and personal confessions. That sense of community was great, and in a meta way, the letters (and Kieth's responses) created depth, nuance, and narrative connective tissue that may sometimes have been missing in the story itself.
I still appreciate the distinctness of its oddness, though. And I still love the first 5 issues unreservedly.
* Issue 10 itself is great, but it stands out from some pretty shoddy issues around it.
Last edited by Melville; 04-17-2017 at 01:40 PM.
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
In case anyone's wondering what I think the best DC superhero book is, it has been Steve Orlando's run on Midnighter.
Movie Theater DiaryQuoting Donald Glover
No one here talked about the X-Men Gold art fiasco?
"All right, that's too hot. Anything we can do about that heat?"
"Rick...it's a flamethrower."
What is it?
I talked to my LCS owner about it, just for his reaction. I'd probably have more feelings about it if I was collecting current X-Men. As it is, I feel like I should have some feelings about it, but I don't really feel much about it. Maybe I don't understand it all? Am I missing something? Should I be more outraged by either side?
I'm more annoyed by the flippers buying stacks of em like its the Death of Superman all over again. So weird.
I'm pretty ambivalent about it other than feeling really strange that a local political issue from my hometown that I read family members and old friends talking about on FB months ago is suddenly a hot topic in American pop culture. That has been quite bizarre.
Movie Theater Diary
Yeah, I was wondering about your take Arya. The gist is that the stuff he put in the comic is anti-semetic, right? Though I'm assuming it's not actually that simple.
First I heard about it, but fascinating stuff.
Yeah, in short, they're statements against the current Indonesian present hidden in a Kitty Pryde panel by an Indonesian artist. The hate stems from him being Chinese and Christian and there's a reference to a line in the Quran about not trusting Christians or Jews. The other anti-Semitic thing about them might be the word "Jewelry" next to Kitty's head although maybe that's a cultural reference I don't get. Maybe 8 can shed some more light on the conflict that Wikipedia doesn't show.
Too bad because this Syaf character sure can draw.
Well, the short take is: No, he didn't actually put anti-semitic messages in a comic. He put in a reference to a political protest and didn't think about how it would get interpreted, thinking nobody who's not familiar with local Jakarta politics would know what the numbers mean. Certainly not Americans, who are the majority of his audience. And he was absolutely right (nobody should blame Marvel editorial in the least for not catching it). But like an idiot, he forgot that he has Indonesian fans who read Marvel comics and might take an issue and have this amplifying thing called, you know, the fucking internet.
It's not even about a Presidential election! That's what's most ridiculous to me. The whole thing is over a race for Mayor/Governor (they're the same thing in Jakarta since it's a special district like Washington DC). I honestly don't know where to begin to explain the whole thing, because it involves an internet smear campaign, a specific hardline conservative group, and the way Quran interpretations work. On comic sites, it's just boiled down to "There's an anti-semitic verse in the Quran and this dude was promoting it." My LCS owner, to his credit, grilled me for all the nuances last week and then thanked me because now he can talk to other customers with more knowledge on the issue. I still felt a bit awkward talking about it because I live here in the US and learned all this second-hand from family and friends.
I'm not interested in commenting on the verse itself. For what it's worth, Ms. Marvel writer G. Willow Wilson wrote a fiery takedown on her blog about how she disagrees with that translation. I defer to her. Ardian Syaf himself claims that his intention wasn't to insult other religions and it was more of a political easter egg on his part. He put in the number "212," referencing the date of the December 2nd protest in Jakarta, and "QS 5:51," referencing the Quran verse at the heart of the protest.
Here's the best I can explain it: Jakarta's current Governor is Christian and facing an election. This one ultra-conservative Islamic group who are historically a bunch of assholes complaining about Indonesia's secular government and moderate citizens not being Muslim enough has been trying to get him out of office by telling voters that there's a verse in the Quran that forbids them from voting for him in the upcoming election. They were hanging banners about it on several mosques in Jakarta, which the government forcibly removed for violating the Indonesian constitution. Back in October, in one of his rallies, the Governor told the crowd, it's your right to not vote for me because of your personal beliefs, but please don't let yourself be deceived by people who use this verse of the Quran to convince you that you're forbidden from voting for me if you want to. Someone edited the video of the speech to make it seem like he just said, "this Quran verse is lying to you," uploaded it to Youtube, and it went viral on Facebook. The guy who made the video actually got arrested for inciting religious hatred, but the spin was enough for thousands of Muslims in Jakarta to organize a protest against blasphemy in November, which turned into a riot.
To promote unity, other Muslim groups teamed up with other religion's leaders and social activists to organize a nationwide counter-protest in response, which prompted the conservatives to form another protest, on December 2nd. So Syaf was apparently one of the fools who got duped into believing in this blasphemy charge and participated in the December protest while he was working on the X-men issue at the time, so he put in those numbers in solidarity of the side he was on (and you know what, in general I think artists should be allowed to do this--writers put in their political beliefs all the time, after all).
The "Jewelry" thing is just nonsense. That's comic fans looking for other hidden messages after the fact and thinking a jewelry shop sign in a city background is supposed to be criticizing Kitty because there are the letters "jew" in "jewelry." That's Reed Richards level of stretch to me.
Movie Theater Diary
I totally agree. It also sounds like he's doing a very poor job of defending himself.
He just lost the election today, btw. Thought I'd add that coda.
Movie Theater Diary
And how do you feel about this?
I'm honestly curious. It's never easy to explain one's political panorama to foreigners. And Indonesia sure is a complicated place.
Huh. I got a Linkedin request from Darick Robertson. That is very unexpected.
Movie Theater Diary
I love Howard Chaykin. Finally someone who doesn't apologize for bullshit.
I read #1 and it was absolute garbage. I'm convinced that Image is milking the edgy dollars for all it's worth because the work itself sucks.
Movie Theater Diary
Heh, I'm going to have to give you the benefit of the doubt there because Chaykin is wildly uneven. I'll always have a soft spot for him because his The Shadow limited series marked my puberty.
Regardless, I'm just glad someone can't be bullied into nonsensical apologies.
Yeah, The Vision is great. Good to see you back.
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
What do you guys think about 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die? I've been skimming through the list and I was pleasantly surprised that it includes comics from all countries and ages. For some reason I thought it would be a lot more US-centric.
Still, The Dark Knight Strikes Again is its own entry? Seriously?
Read all of Uzumaki weekend before last.
It is amazing and wondrous and horrible and repulsive and God so good.
Well, frankly, it's very difficult to find out without buying the book. Best I could do is this: http://www.listchallenges.com/1001-c...-die-1970-2011
... which pretty arbitrarily only features comics from 1970 onwards.
I don't dislike it as much now as when I first read it, but come on - would you really recommend it as its own thing other than a caricature of Dark Knight Returns?
The full list is on the official site: http://www.paulgravett.com/1001_comics/1001_atoz/
It's an interesting list for sure. Lots of variety and lots of stuff I haven't read.
I am impatient of all misery in others that is not mad. Thou should'st go mad, blacksmith; say, why dost thou not go mad? How can'st thou endure without being mad? Do the heavens yet hate thee, that thou can'st not go mad?
lists and reviews
It's precisely because of the way it characterizes DKR that I would recommend it. I appreciate that it's basically a big FUCK YOU to the fans. It's punk rock.
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