April 2015 Workshops, Conferences, etc.

Last Saturday, I was invited to give a two-hour Creative Writing workshop to a small group of BCS students; I even prepared a handy handout featuring a variety of writing exercises for the occasion. The contents of the workshop were inspired by Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which I tried to make more accessible by avoiding as much of the scholarly jargon as possible. All things considered, I think it went relatively well. 

Yesterday I gave a talk at Université de Sherbrooke's fourth annual Conference on Contemporary Religion, in which I used Frye's Anatomy of Criticism to call attention to the reificatory tendencies of structuralist concepts of myth in the works of Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Joseph Campbell. I also attended a number of talks, including a fascinating discussion of a study of secular magical objects.

A few days ago, Sacred and Sequential published an interview with Sordid City Blues author Charles S. Snow. I get credited for the interview, an honour which I feel is somewhat undeserved. My contribution to the piece was rather limited to writing the questions: in all honesty, it was Mr. Snow -- and Sacred and Sequential's editor A. David Lewis -- who did most of the work.

How Catholic is "Marvel's Daredevil"?

In  her review for Patheos, Kate O'Hare writes:

I’ve seen five episodes, and Murdock, played by British actor Charlie Cox, has gone to Confession once, in the pilot — granted, he’s seeking absolution in advance, and he’s told that’s not how it works — and then there’s the above quip about Catholicism, from a later episode. But, other than that, faith doesn’t seem to be a big topic of conversation.

I concur that Catholicism is mostly there for flavour in the first few episodes.

Religion and religious narratives eventually become the show's foremost source of moral clarity, the standard according to which the main characters (Murdock and Fisk) make sense of their actions. Father Lantom has a number of encounters with Murdock, and his religiosity comes accross as the lifelike expression of a complex, living faith that has successfully undergone the harsh test of experience. Fisk delivers a thought-provoking monologue on prayer; in the final episode he has a striking moment of lucidity in which he quotes the parable of the good Samaritan at some length.

All things considered, I thought it was refreshing to see a show in which religion is not short-hand for inflexible or naïve dogmaticism. I was impressed with the way death had deeply-felt impacts on character development and plot; I find television writing does not usually dedicate much time to the theme of mourning.

"You see a Hulk, you run."

Overwhelmed by academic commitments and an overabundance of television (besides other distractions) I have had to put off reviewing the comics I have read over the past two weeks. I endeavour to correct this situation with this post. The following is a review of Soule, Pulido and Wimberly's She-Hulk (volume 1: Law and Disorder), Matt Fraction and Chip Zdarsky's Sex Criminals (volume 2: Two Worlds, One Cop) and Jonathan Hickman's Pax Romana. The title of this review is uttered by Herman Schultz (the Shocker) in She-Hulk #5: 

“Lady, all I know about you is that you're tough as hell. Guys like me, we got a list of people like you. Like a rating system. You got your Daredevils, your Iron Fists – those guys, you fight. Maybe you get lucky, or maybe you're actually good enough to beat 'em. Now, any Hulk – lady, dude, red, green, purple – you see a Hulk, you run."

Soule is exceedingly adept at weaving together character exposition and fast-paced narrative: consequently, the latest adventures of Jennifer Walters (aka She-Hulk) should prove enjoyable to just about any human-like creature with a functional heart and brain. Soule's plot is precipitated by an unfair performance review after which Walters leaves her law firm to fend off on her own. Serendipitously, Holly Harrow, the widow of a small-time supervillain, seeks compensation for use of her deceased husband's technology by a Stark Industries subsidiary. After using her Avengers connection to settle out of court, Walters uses her payment from the case to start her own practice. Strange cases have a way of finding her – strange cases and bizarre people, including the sardonic paralegal Angie Huang.

The first four issues of She-Hulk are illustrated in Pulido's vibrant pop-art style; Wimberly's art in issues 5 and 6 has a different, more psychedelic energy which suits the narrative direction, though the transition is indeed jarring.

Diversity score:

♀♀♀♀: Soule's She-Hulk features a variety of different relationship styles. Walters' practice is located in DUMBO, in a building for superpowered professionals owned and managed by Xavier Institute alumna Sharon King. For a secondary character, Sharon King is singularly fleshed-out; her interactions with Walters, though warm, give some idea of the potentially fraught relationship between landlady and tenant. Walters' connection to Wildcat is similarly multi-faceted – simultaneously professional and amicable. Paralegal Angie Huang's quiet but zealous devotion to her employer is fascinating. 

0: This comic is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive

πππ: The mystery that is Angie Huang and Hei Hei the mystical monkey is one of the driving forces behind She-Hulk's plot. Idea Hive, Sharon King's building, is home to an extremely diverse group of tenants. Doctor Kevin Trench (Nightwatch) also makes an appearance.

Despite the critical and popular enthusiasm surrounding it, I was not... turned on... by Sex Criminals' first volume. Though I was certainly able to appreciate Fraction and Zdarsky's energetic style of graphic storytelling, the way in which the creators flout sexual taboo did nothing to impress me. Fortunately for mature readers everywhere, the plot thickens in Sex Criminals' second volume – the introduction of more complex themes (such as the ambiguous relationship between physical intimacy and emotional attachment or the partners' mutual responsibility for their mental health) makes for more substantial fare. Far from detracting from the book's humour, the added seriousness tends to complement it by contrast.

Diversity score:

♀♀♀♀: Suzie Dickson makes up with a friend with whom she had something of a falling out during the first volume.

0: This particular volume of Sex Criminals is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive. The previous one made a passing allusion to youthful same-sex experiments.

ππ: Sex Criminals vol.2 features a secondary character of African descent and a vaguely middle-eastern villain; other than that, it is all very white. 

A conceptually-dense formalist experiment in Alternate History, Pax Romana's narrative is driven almost entirely by its heavy-handed prose. The book does not function at all like a customary graphic novel: it dispenses with sequential art altogether, unravelling the plot through a series of still-frames crowded by speech bubbles, excerpts from fictional history books, and conversation transcripts – most of it turgid, pseudo-Hegelian nonsense. The entire narrative rests on two assumptions: 1) that the highest echelons of church hierarchy are necessarily the most conservative, seeking the preservation of the institution at any cost, and 2) that the rulers of ancient Rome could find it in their episteme to embrace with eagerness the methods and values of a technologically-superior invader. Both assumptions are likely to strike the literate reader as misapprehensions, and whereas some might be willing to suspend disbelief in order to take part in Hickman's experiment, I personally could not derive much enjoyment from such a cynical view of human potential. Though Pax Romana's technologically-accelerated civilisational project has colonized both the moon and Mars by 1421, we are to regard the outcome of the whole process as a dystopia insofar as imperialist autocracy remains the dominant political and religious paradigm.

As the thought-experiment of a singular creator, Pax Romana is a work of considerable complexity. Complexity, unfortunately, does not mean nuance, and on the whole Hickman's revision of history is as mean-spirited as it is implausible.

Diversity score:

♀♀: Though the series spans hundreds of years, it manages to feature only two female characters – only one of whom has any impact on the plot. 

0: This comic is not LGBTQA-inclusive.

πππ: One of the four artisans of the Pax Romana is of African descent; there are also vague references to a break-away African civilisation.

"How can anything matter when every possible thing happens?"

Though last week was rather busy, I did manage to get a fair bit of reading done: I had the pleasure of perusing Azzarello and Risso's Batman: Broken City (2004), the first volume of Hickman and Dragotta's East of West (The Promise, 2013), and the second volume of Remender and Scalera's Black Science (Welcome, Nowhere; 2015). The title of this review is shamelessly stolen from Remender and Scalera's Black Science.

For their first contribution to Batman's canon, dynamic duo Azzarello and Risso channel Frank Miller to create a quaint and curious volume of comic-book noir. While seeking justice for the victim of a hired killer, Azzarello's Batman waxes theological, soliloquizing in the rain while perched upon the cornices of Risso's Gotham, a baroque monument carved out of black shadows. Broken City is not a whodunnit so much as a whydunnit: we are not delving into the mystery of the murderer's identity – it is not at all a mystery; Batman tells us outright: it was Croc. We are instead made to wonder about the motivation of the person who ordered the hit, and forced to to consider what it means to share our fallen world with such monsters.

Diversity score:

♀♀♀: Batman follows the trail of evidence through Gotham's underworld, repeatedly running into the mistress of a suspect, a woman named Margo Farr, who becomes something of a deuteragonist. Margo is clearly a "dame" after Frank Miller's heart; though coy to the point of cloying on her first meeting with the Dark Knight, she becomes bristly and evasive after he brushes off her advances. It is perhaps not entirely irrelevant to point out that all the women in Broken City are either murder victims or connected to the mob, often both.

0: This comic is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive.

πππ: Batman's most capable ally is detective Crispus Allen (whose name is inexplicably misspelled "Crispis"). His dialogue lays out more character than is customary for a character whose chief purpose is to disclose plot-precipitating information; much to his credit, Detective Allen is not exactly eager to trade notes with a vigilante. Azzarello introduces two Japanese mobsters named Fat Man and Little Boy, the former an amalgamation of sumo and yakuza, the latter a ninja with hints of geisha. Cringe-worthy as such characterization may seem to certain readers, Fat Man and Little Boy have at least some merit insofar as they manage to knock out the Batman.

For the first volume of East of West, Hickman delivers a very peculiar mash-up of alternate history and eschatology with a hint of King's Dark Tower series. In the aftermath of a mysterious cataclysm, North America was divided into seven warring nations. Wishing to exact vengeance upon the secret cabal of America's heads of states for the murder of his paramour, Death deserts his fellow Horsemen of the Apocalypse to exact his vengeance – oblivious to whatever part he may be playing in the prophesied End of the World.

Diversity score:

♀♀♀♀: Through Hu interactions with her sister Xiaolian (Death's paramour), the reader catches a glimpse of a fraught, lifelike relationship.

0: This comic is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive.

ππππ: East of West's America – like actual America – is a land of immigrants: ethnically diverse and torn apart by racial tensions. Though they say very little, Nick Dragotta manages to infuse Wolf and Crow with a kind of sombre dignity that transcends stereotypes about America's First Nations.

Black Science's second volume unravels the skeins of fate and deception even further than the first, uncovering motivations which even the most astute reader could hardly have suspected and, in the process, redeeming characters with whom there was previously very little reason to sympathize. While the accursed Pillar is still forcing the dimensionauts to jump from world to world, Remender's formula has not gotten stale; Scalera's surrealistic landscapes do not fail to impress.

Diversity score:

♀♀♀♀: Women dimensionauts continue to argue; Pia shows more determination than before.

0: This comic is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive.

ππππ: Welcome, Nowhere provides a great deal of backstory, including the origins of Kadir and the Native-American Techno-Shaman; both characters play increasingly significant roles.

Writing and Drawing the Dark Knight

Writing and drawing are two very different crafts. When a creator takes it upon himself to do both, the resulting fusion of art and storytelling can take the reader to unexpected places.

In Batman: Odyssey (2010-2012), Neal Adams attempts to show up James Joyce by making Bruce Wayne his very own Leopold Bloom. Like his modernist predecessor, the DC veteran takes a great deal of liberty with classical tropes: catabasis and cyclops make the cut, empowered female characters do not. The Homeric journey is stretched to cover less familiar territory where the reader meets Neanderthals, trolls, mutant Egyptian gods, and jive-talking mages.

(Matt Fraction’s gender-swapping Ody-C exhibits radically different sensibilities).

Thematically, the product of this collision between ancient inspiration and the modern male power fantasy is predictably uneven. At times Odyssey reads more like a retrospective of Neal Adams’ contributions to the Batman mythos than anything else: Deadman, the League of Assassins and Man-Bat all feature very prominently. As a spectral guide to the underworld, Deadman’s responsibility to Batman and Robin is like that of Virgil’s to Dante. The underworld in this case is a hollow earth overpopulated with dinosaurs, a fantasy cliché which, while satisfying in a gee-whiz sort of way, cannot help but remind the wary reader of Neal Adams’ climate-change denying theories of Earth’s expansion.

While Odyssey is all over the place when it comes to plot, themes and characterization, its narration is certainly very consistent: every episode is introduced and narrated by beefcake Bruce Wayne sitting across a table from an unseen interlocutor whose point of view the reader shares. Inexcusably, most of the frame story’s dialogue takes place in front of a computer-generated backdrop which could not have seemed less contrived even at the height of the nineties. Adams’ layouts masterfully integrate text, the flow of which is most easily intuited on his splash pages. The writer/illustrator's script is unfortunately not on the same level as his artistic vision: I frequently found myself looking back to previous frames or pages – for fear of having read them out of sequence – only to find out my confusion stemmed not from misleading layouts but rather from awkward or repetitive pieces of dialogue.

Diversity score:
♀♀:  None of the series’ fourteen issues depict a woman who is not under the direct and complete control of a man. Even Talia al Ghul is merely a pawn in her father's schemes.
0: The series is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive.
ππ: While Sensei, Ra's and Talia Al-Ghul all have significant impacts on Odyssey's plot, they tend to conform to the common stereotype of the scheming "oriental" mastermind. Moreover, the physiology of the craven primitives whom Batman and Robin must beat into compliance is worryingly reminiscent of caricatures based on racial stereotypes.

. . .

Walter Simonson's The Judas Coin (2012) tells six stories happening around the same cursed object: one of the thirty shekels of Judas Iscarioth's reward. The first tale is but a brief introduction, an account of Judas' last days which, instead of making a religious statement of any kind, focusses on the convoluted circumstances through which the coin came to line the pockets of a murderer. The second story skips 40 years forward as the coin travels to Celtic Europe by way of Roman legionnaires; the third takes place some 900 years afterwards, when Northerners go a-Viking on Welsh shores. The fourth episode follows the coin upon the High Seas during the golden age of piracy; the fifth, featuring Bat Lash, has the cursed piece of silver land in the Wild West. The sixth takes us at last to the "present day," where Batman has a run-in with Two-Face at the Gotham Historical Museum. The seventh and last tale, something of an epilogue, tracks the coin into the far future when it crosses paths with a certain Manhunter.

Simonson uses each self-contained story as an opportunity to explore a radically different artistic style. The sixth episode especially is a bit of a formalist experiment, forcing the reader to view the album at a 90 degrees angle and interspersing comic frames with ersatz newspaper clippings. Every story exhibits the creator's concern for setting: where Adams would be content to use a blur in lieu a background, Simonson gives us careful recreations of historical environments.

Diversity score:
♀♀♀♀:  Two of the seven stories show women exerting agency: in the second, we meet Ardra, a leader of the Celts;  in the seventh, the thieves Ledora and Fenette give Manhunter a run for his money.
0: This graphic novel is not explicitly LGBTQA-inclusive.
0: People of colour are alluded to once in flashback sequence, but are not otherwise represented in this graphic novel.

Metanarrative as a Roadmap to Parallel Universes: "Multiversity" and "Black Science"

Ahead of Convergence – the event which will bring about “an end” to the current phase of the DC multiverse, but not (we are told) to its New Earth setting – Dan Didio has announced changes in editorial guidelines intended to put diverse storytelling approaches before such paltry things as canon and continuity. Whereas there is little doubt that 75 years of contradicting narratives might stick in the craw of a new reader intent on getting acquainted with the DC multiverse, it would be a mistake to operate under the assumption that a more streamlined setting might make complex exposition unnecessary. To be sure, comics’ most celebrated stories rarely depend on the reader’s acquaintance with lore: following the principle of Chekhov’s gun, writers tend to incorporate only the most relevant references to previous works. Be that as it may, crises and retcons would not have become a genre unto themselves if they did not speak to the interests of a significant portion of the comic-reading audience.

It is therefore not unreasonable to surmise that genre readers experience anagnorisis differently than the audiences of other fictions – the comic-reader, looking for coherence beyond the episodic plots, embarks on a personal quest to piece together the metanarrative of an expanding fictional continuum. The editors at DC have not been particularly consistent about providing clear directions on this journey: the original crisis (On Infinite Earths) is the only one of its kind to have a substantial metanarrative epilogue (History of the DC Universe, in which Harbinger details the consequences of the event on continuity). While Final Crisis is certainly a metanarrative – a story encompassing stories – it also raises more questions than it answers.

Grant Morrison’s Multiversity (especially its latest issue, the Guidebook) harkens back to Final Crisis, in part to tie up some of its loose ends, but mainly so as to connect disparate narratives within a coherent, purposeful whole. Despite the inadequate prose of some of its entries, the Multiversity Guidebook conveys a powerful sense of the explosion of narrative into metanarrative, forcing a reflexion on the relevance (or irrelevance) of canons in fiction.

Multiversity combines metanarrative with metafiction: multiple elements of the setting call attention to the artifactual character of stories, up to and including the metanarrative. Resuscitating a trope from The Flash of Two Worlds, Morrison shows the DC multiverse is held together by the comics medium in a kind of holographic structure: every realm is represented in every other realm in the form of a comic (interestingly, Batman comes to this realization the same way we do: by reading the Guidebook). Metafiction permeates the whole of DC's metaphysic down to its very nomenclature: the orrery of worlds is suspended in an aether called the Bleed, which is to say, in comic-book parlance, the image that runs off the page.

Metanarrative does not have to be an explicit or central element of plot. Most of the exposition in the first volume of Remender and Scalera’s Black Science is not metanarrative per se: the reader is instead made to dance around the story’s chronology, beginning in medias res (as is customary) before witnessing the chain of events leading to the plot trigger in a series of cleverly interspersed flashbacks. Grant McKay and his fellow dimensionauts are adrift in the quantum eververse, the maelstrom of all possible worlds. Though the action of Black Science focuses on a singular narrative thread (that is to say: it does not have to cope with the narrative entropy of a shared universe) it nevertheless has a highly ingenious way of intuiting that other narratives beyond the purview of the reader are equally relevant, especially insofar as they involve alternate-universe versions of the protagonist. The “reality” of the story is thereby shown to be derived from an arbitrary impulse of the reader, a fortuitous consequence of the inclination to make the first given information the central point of any interpretive scheme.

"There is no good side here." – Gail Simone's "The Movement"

In May 2014, the Tumblrs groaned: Gail Simone’s latest team-book was scheduled for cancellation with what seemed at the time like very little editorial fanfare. New characters at DC have not had very much luck this past decade; I was holding out hope The Movement might break the pattern. I was disappointed, if not altogether surprised.

(The title of this review is shamelessly lifted from the second volume of the series.)

As the protectors of their benighted urban setting of Coral City’s low-income neighborhood, the superpowered members of the Movement assume more complex roles than typical vigilantes. Between scenes of violence, our heroes work alongside muggle allies at improvised soup kitchens, shelters, and classrooms. While the scenes of urban domesticity give the book some grassroots credibility -- providing a moral counterpoint to the more straightforward styles of problem-solving traditionally promoted by the genre -- the Movement’s political endgame remains exceedingly vague. Altercations with a plethora of unrelated antagonists are made more complex than necessary by dissension within the ranks, creating a kafkaesque climate of all-against-all which tends to undermine the book’s message of pacifism and class solidarity. 

The Movement’s roster of misfit heroes boasts more diversity than the Planeteers: four of its six members are women, three of whom are women of colour. Virtue (née Holly Ann Fields) is a powerful empath capable of tapping into all of the energies of the emotional spectrum. As the practical, street-smart leader of the titular group, Virtue knows how to attract people to her cause: she is aided in her social justice mission by the geokinetic Tremor (Roshanna Chatterji, a transfer from Simone’s pre-Nu52 Secret Six); Katharsis (Kulap Villaysack), a former cop with a flight-suit and a very large collection of grudges; Vengeance Moth (Drew Fisher), a self-effacing wheelchair-user with energy-construct powers; Mouse (Jayden Revell), a kooky rat empath; and Burden (otherwise known as Christopher), a troubled teen with the ability to change into any one of the many demons that haunt his fervid religious imagination. 

Burden’s perspective as an inexperienced newcomer to seedy Coral City often serves as the reader’s way into The Movement’s fallen world. Though Burden’s naïveté is at times an excellent pretext for entertaining pathos, I suspect it also proves a very awkward fit for many readers; I was grateful for Batgirl’s cameos for providing a different, less obstructed point-of-view.

Ultimately, The Movement does not really break away from the conventions of the bourgeois power-fantasy: despite the book's emphasis on social issues, Coral City's beleaguered proletariat is not given any alternative to standing in a crossfire. Be that as it may, it would not be entirely fair to suggest Simone plays up class struggle as a shortcut to thematic substance. We must take into consideration the fact that The Movement’s storytelling style is consistent with its overt gospel of diversity: instead of a singular view of a narrative centered on objective violence, we are given multiple angles on a plot elaborated around complex interpersonal drama. While there is some evidence to suggest The Movement bit more than it could chew – tackling too many issues without giving any of them the nuance and attention it deserves – it is not unreasonable to suppose the need to wrap things up before cancellation affected the pace. When all is said and done, DC Comics should have given The Movement a much longer run in consideration of Simone’s concern for inclusiveness: cancelling the series on account of underwhelming sales flies in the face of the socially-progressive values the publisher professes to uphold.

Resolutions and Recommendations

January in Québec is cold and dreary; one of the only potentially good things about it is New Year's resolutions. Amongst other things, I have resolved to organize my online presence, and so I moved all of my creative writing from 2006 to the present onto another blog in order for this space to be fully dedicated to my half-baked ideas short critical essays. I am superlatively grateful to Zoe from Chic & Sassy Designs for the new-and-improved template. 

Also a resolution: to prepare more of my food. 

Another good thing about January is the abundance of recommendations appearing in the form of yearly reviews. After consulting Paste, CBR, Comics Alliance, and Mental Floss, I have settled on the following shortlist of tomes I definitely want to add to my collection:

- She-Hulk by Charles Soule, Javier Pulido and Ron Wemberly

- Moon Knight by Warren Ellis and Declan Shalvey

- Lumberjanes written and illustrated by the inimitable Noelle Stevenson (whose excellent Nimona can be read online).

- The latest Saga hardcover by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples

- The Wicked + the Divine by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

- Through the Woods, written and illustrated by Emily Carroll

I will also be adding these titles to my wishlist (in case anyone feels generous):

- Here, a formalist experiment by Richard McGuire

- The Wake by Scott Snyder and Sean Murphy

- Jolies ténèbres by Marie Pommepuy et Sébastien Cosset (collectively known as Kerascoët)

- East of West by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta

- Pretty Deadly by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Emma Rios

- Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark

If I have not included certain of the more popular titles on this list (particularly, G. W. Wilson's Ms. Marvel or Grant Morrison's Multiversity), it is in some cases because I already own them. Indeed, I have recently reviewed Ms. Marvel and I very much look forward to its second volume. My pull-list currently consists of Multiversity, Justice League Dark, Constantine, The Sandman: Overture --and I systematically pre-order every hardcover/TPB of Aquaman, Wonder Woman and Swamp Thing.

I am also extremely excited about A. David Lewis' American Comics, Literary Theory and Religion (of which I have received a review copy; a first in my academic career). I do worry it may make my own work redundant.

What are you looking forward to reading in 2015?

"Men kill for the truth because they do not know how to live for it." -- G.W. Wilson's "Air"

The title for this review is stolen from the second volume
of G. Willow Wilson’s Air.

From 2008 to 2010, G. Willow Wilson chronicled the trials and tribulations of Blythe Cameron, hyperpract extraordinaire. Hyperpracts are (mostly) women and (much more rarely) men, ordinary in every respect except for their singular intuition and fierce imagination. Given the right circumstances, hyperpracts are capable of tapping into the essence of things, manipulating the symbols which ontologically pre-figure reality in order to produce a variety of thaumaturgic effects (though mainly: efficient, expedient air travel).

If my pseudo-metaphysical verbiage does not truly give it justice, it is because Wilson’s Air is utterly unpigeon-holeable. Air is a treatise on the power of words, a meditation on the origins of ideas, a thesis on liminality; it is a narratologist’s fantasy. Air is a pamphlet against both fundamentalism and the extremes of relativism, arguing that symbols are too wild and too precious to bow to any agenda. While certainly a highly satisfying alternate-history/sci-fi yarn, Air is above all a love story -- though not by any means a straightforward one.

Wilson is particularly adept at presenting us multilayered characters, progressively revealing their motivations by unraveling the intricate web of their allegiances. We make acquaintance with certain very colourful organizations in the process, some which we might wish were real -- sky-faring gypsies and punk-rock mujahideens -- others which we cannot help but hate for embodying our own paranoid, parochialist tendencies.

Blythe Cameron is a complicated personna in that she alternates between tumbleweed passivity and extremes of resourcefulness; one might charitably suppose this to be the path a traveller must walk to find herself in a world of unknowables. Thinking back on the story as a whole, I am grateful to observe a tendency towards increasing agency is indeed part of Blythe's evolution.

M.K. Perker’s art is a model of restraint; action scenes (and even hallucinations) are depicted with rare tact and sobriety, leaving more than enough breathing room for the reader’s imagination -- and not a little ambiguity.

Weëna

Minnesota, my brother and sister-in-law's feline roommate.

Catsitting takes me out of my usual element. My brother and sister-in-law borrowed some bédés from the local library, and so I read the first two volumes of Éric Corbeyran and Alice Picard's Weëna, an earnest (if derivative) attempt at mythopoeia which may not be available in English at this time. 

Weëna follows the titular character's quest to escape the dark destiny prophesied at the moment of her birth by a grim spectre. The deuteragonist, a young aristocrat with an unpronounceable name, seeks to marry Weëna in order to break an unspecified curse on his bloodline through the sacrifice of their hypothetical firstborn. With the perinatal portents, magical allies and trials of initiation, it sometimes feels as though the author must be writing the script between the lines of a fantasy tropes checklist. All of the characters wear their motivations on their sleeve, making absolutely certain to soliloquize in the most grandiloquent manner at every given opportunity. This penchant for awkward dialogue and frankly juvenile melodrama is highly unfortunate, as poor exposition detracts from the exploration of what might be an intricate and fascinating mythology.

Picard conjures enchanting scenery and striking fauna; the layouts, while not particularly innovative, serve the story well. I personally don't feel compelled to find out what happens to our young heroine, but I suppose there are worse ways to spend an hour with a cat.

"Good is not a thing you are, it's a thing you do" : 3 Reviews

This week I read two (relatively) recent anthologies: the first volume of G. Willow Wilson and Adrian Alphona’s Ms. Marvel, followed by Jeff Lemire and Terry Dodson’s Teen Titans: Earth One. I also perused yet another first volume, the New 52’s Voodoo by Ron Marz, Josh Williamson and Sam Basri. The title of this post is lifted from the pages of Ms. Marvel.

The first six issues of the new Ms. Marvel’s adventures are collected under the fitting title of No Normal, the implication being not only that there is nothing ordinary about a shape-shifting teenager in a world of marvels and monsters, but also that normalcy is itself a construct without any real moral status. Kamala Khan’s struggle to control her newfound powers mirrors her search for a functional identity; the usual sources are not forthcoming with solutions to either problem. American/secular values and familial/religious authority are shown to be as ill-equipped to assist Kamala with her shape-shifting abilities as they are ineffectual at helping her navigate her dual identity. 

No Normal is moreover highly atypical for a superhero story arc: we don’t encounter a real villain before issue 4, and none of the altercations show Ms. Marvel achieve unambiguous victory through the use of force. The focus is decidedly on character development, which is achieved through her many interactions with a colourful cast of New Jerseyan high-schoolers, wage-earners and misfits. Though it may not conform to the expectations of most readers, this focus on character development does not make for a slow pace: fortunately for us, Kamala has a knack for getting into trouble, and her Jersey City environment is depicted in such a vibrant way as to provide much comic relief.

No Normal has many highly interesting things to say about religion and ethics, but it shies away from giving any single character the theological or moral upper-hand. The numenal is encountered in a surrealistic dream-state which is almost a parody of both superhero fiction and traditional iconography. The conversational style of the hierophany undermines the traditional separation of sacred and profane, standing in stark contrast to the stodgy moralism of school and mosque.

+ Watch this insightful video on how Kamala Khan is changing the world of media for the better.

+ Read these G. Willow Wilson interviews with CBR and the New York Times.

. . .

Lemire and Dodson’s Teen Titans is a reimagining of the celebrated Wolfman/Pérez creation for the low-fantasy series Earth One. Focussing on a teen-aged ensemble cast rather than on a single adult protagonist (as in the Superman and Batman novels of the same series) makes for a very different kind of book. The plot’s progress is somewhat hampered by the need to provide background for all six of the main characters so that by the end of the first volume there are still more questions than answers.

In this new incarnation, the Titans are connected by more than just their heroic proclivities; five of them are orphans recruited without their consent into a Star Labs experiment. One can hardly help but wonder how much of the novel’s conflict makes sense seeing how most of it could have been avoided through a few lines of realistic dialogue. The plot depends rather excessively on the teenagers’ rebelliousness and extreme distrust of authority, perhaps even more so than it does on the cynical machinations of machiavellian scientist Elinore Stone.

Despite the seemingly gratuitous conflict, it is interesting to see the trope of the “evil stepmother” subverted in that at least some of  the Titans' foster-parents’ grow genuinely attached to the test-subjects. On the other hand, I am not sure how to interpret Lemire’s decision to make Elinore the architect of Cyborg (instead of Silas, Cyborg’s father in the original Wolfman/Pérez run). As much as I am in favour of reinterpreting popular narratives to include more women in positions of power and prestige, it is not clear to me that turning a martyr into an evil mastermind is an improvement on the source material. 

. . .

Having not read the whole of WildStorm’s Stormwatch/The Authority, I cannot really comment on Voodoo’s (un)faithfulness to earlier source material. The titular character is a mind-reading, shape-shifting human/Daemonite hybrid sent to report on Earth’s heroes in advance of an alien invasion. Marz, Williamson and Basri’s take on the character unapologetically straddles the line between representation and reproduction: while the decision to have a shape-shifting spy pose as a dancer in a strip-club attended by military types makes sense for plotting purposes, Basri’s treatment of the subject leaves little doubt that sexualization was the primary motivation for this creative direction. In fairness to Basri, it could be noted that Voodoo is rarely as sexualized in the story proper as much as she is on the Tyler covers; moreover, Basri exerts remarkable restraint in his imaginative depictions of brutal mayhem.

A vague sense of “the search for truth” drives a fast-paced plot as Voodoo alienates herself from both sides of her hybrid identity, leaving many bloody corpses in her wake. Her only capable, non-superpowered antagonist is revenge-driven special-ops investigator Jessica Fallon; ordinary men are expendable yokels whose hormones rule out the very possibility of free will or lifelike personality. Kyle Rayner/Green Lantern and a new Black Jack are thrown into the fray to remind readers of the larger DC universe in which this otherwise straightforward sci-fi thriller takes place. By the end of the volume, the reader is left in very much the same position as the protagonist, knowing neither where to go nor for which faction to root.

Only on CW...

I love The Flash, especially last night's episode, but something dangerously close to this happened:

Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil

In Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil, Jeff Smith reimagines Captain Marvel’s origins, drawing not only from the Fawcett canon, but also from more incongruous sources such as Middle-Eastern myths and popular physics. These many inspirations are largely ornamental and do not crowd out a story that reads like an urban fairytale. While we do get the sense that the plot takes place in a world which extends beyond the story’s purview, the writer/artist does not presume our prior acquaintance with the characters; all of the narrative threads are neatly contained within the book's 206 pages. Smith’s retelling is eminently accessible, vibrant with character and raw energy.

Despite the tale’s light-hearted, child-friendly tone, Smith manages to throw some strong emotional punches. Captain Marvel’s struggle is not primarily with the cosmic but rather with the mundane; it is the day-to-day troubles of Billy Batson’s life on the streets which stir up the most pathos.

It is much to Smith’s credit that this all-ages title does not shy away from politics: considering it was written in the aftermath of 9-11, the reinterpretation of Marvel’s nemesis Doctor Sivana as the attorney general of “heartland” security can be read as a particularly audacious indictment of anti-terrorist paranoia.

"The only people reading are fanboys who don't count": thoughts on Morrison’s X-Men

I recently read the first two volumes of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men (issues 114-126). Here are some of my impressions:

There are expressions one only ever encounters in Morrison’s works -- phrases such as “I feel like a Hindu sex god” that fall so far outside the category of verisimilar dialogue as to create a genre all of their own. That “sex god” line is delivered by Henry McCoy/Beast, a modern Chiron whose character usually emphasizes sophistication over animality. I do not begrudge Morrison’s eagerness to expose the mainstream to esoteric concepts and turns of phrase, but I rather wish he would do so in a manner that is more mindful of precedents.

The initial arc of Morrison’s run introduces Cassandra Nova, the first of a new psychokinetic species, an evil parody of Charles Xavier. In lieu of the usual characterization, Morrison develops Cassandra Nova as part of a purpose-driven extinction machine, putting forward an evolutionary theory of species-wide apoptosis.Though this is not the first time Xavier is shown to have an evil double, previous writers have shied away from making this trope the cornerstone of any pseudo-scientific eschatology. This is certainly a matter of taste, but I find that -- in the interest of narrative flow -- it may be preferable for writers of speculative fiction not to construct elaborate rationalizations for the scientific plausibility of their scenarios, as this only draws attention to those magical/mythical elements which most contemporary readers are eager to take as given.

The second arc deals mainly with the U-Men, a group unscrupulous transhumanists harvesting mutant organs. The U-Men have a frontman in the person of Elon Musk lookalike John Sublime, but the concept of their movement is actually introduced by a school-shooting teenager. It is refreshing to see the enemy manifest as a largely leaderless ideology instead of a government and/or corporate conspiracy against an innocent minority. 

Quitely’s art is at its most expressive when depicting unseemly mutations; one does not get the impression that the students at Xavier’s are part of a fortunate genetic elite. More than in perhaps any previous incarnation of the X-Men, the reader is confronted with abhorrent disfigurations. Even the more iconic characters are shown in a less dignifying light, often appearing without any kind of distinctive attire. The New X-Men’s work uniforms are clearly more functional than ritual.

Emma Frost, the only exception to this rule, is probably the series’ most problematic character. She is never shown without her X-shaped bikini: one supposes it can stand for either body-positive female-empowerment or male-gaze slavery, but lectio dificilior potior suggests the latter is more likely. I wonder whether Frost’s Machiavellian morality can credibly extend to embrace the instrumentalization of the feminine form.

In an eleven-page manifesto dated October 20th 2000, Morrison states his intention to make the X-Men “cool again,” complaining about the sacrosanctity of status quo in the superhero comic genre.

“ The only people reading are fanboys who don't count. [...] Longtime fans will read the book and bitch about it no matter what. We don’t need to attract them, we need to make the book accessible to the real-world audience. [...] We need to recapture the college and hipster audience because that audience is bigger than ever, and thanks to the movies and games [...] the entire mainstream is pumped and primed to consume super-hero stories.”

With hindsight, it is clear that Morrison’s intuition was largely correct: almost 15 years after his memorable X-Men run, superhero narratives are more popular and influential than ever. Be that as it may, it does not seem as though the superhero paradigm has been in any way subverted. With few exceptions, the superhero narratives developed for mainstream audiences are even more archetypal than their comic-book counterparts. We watch the Marvel cinematic universe with the expectation that an unambiguously prosocial contingent will triumph without suffering significant losses to equally unambiguously antisocial forces -- and our expectations are seldom disappointed. As Northrop Frye wrote in Anatomy of Criticism, "[… W]e could almost define popular literature […] as literature which affords an unobstructed view of archetypes."

Some thoughts on Chris Claremont's X-Men

I just finished the third volume of Essential X-Men. I had previously been perusing volumes 1 and 2, which means I'm about 68 issues into the Chris Claremont run (in addition to having read a few annuals). I was excited to witness the introduction of iconic characters such as Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Kitty Pride (not yet known as Shadowcat). These early issues also feature the death, resurrection and second demise of Jean Grey and the Days of Future Past story arc. Here are a some of my thoughts, in no particular order:

Colour is a valuable interpretational aide in comics. Not only does it convey mood (by way of lighting), it also facilitates the decoding of graphically-complex situations. I won't be buying more of the black-and-white Essential editions (unless they come cheap).

Apart from some very male-gaze-oriented outfits and a few gratuitous shower scenes, Claremont's X-Men is relatively light on the sexism. Many issues even pass the Bechdel test. Practically all of the female characters are given complex, independent personalities. Storm is a particularly capable squadron leader (and indeed: much more suited to the task than Cyclops). Claremont does buy into some gender stereotypes in that his female characters seem somewhat more susceptible to irrational fits than their male counterparts (i.e. the Phoenix Force, Storm's claustrophobia which cause her to lash out).

The world of the X-Men is fairly diverse. White Americans are in the minority on the second X-Men roster. Claremont's depictions of foreign and minority personalities are not unproblematic (there's a good deal of exoticizing and some rather ludicrous patois) but the most stereotypical character (the Apache Thunderbird) is sacrificed a few issues after his introduction. One is glad, for once, for the noble-savage-dying-for-his-colonial-friend trope.

Claremont dialogue is better than I remember it to be. I have often mocked action scenes which depict characters delivering long diatribes between punches. The balance between exposition (tell) and depiction (show) is certainly different from what a contemporary comic-reading audience might expect or enjoy, but it's not unjustifiable from a story-telling standpoint. It was a different era with different conventions; many of Claremont's ideas could not easily have been communicated without extensive speech- or thought-bubble commentary.

Claremont has interesting ideas about religion. In issue #108, he throws some kabbalah at us: 

 "In that instant -- as she feels her power, the power of her friends, sing within her; as she reenergizes the energy lattice -- it's as if a door has opened before her eyes. A new pattern forms -- shaped like the mystic tree of life -- with Xavier its lofty crown and Colossus its base. Each X-Man has a place, each a purpose greater than himself or herself. And the heart of the tree, the catalyst that binds these wayward souls together, is Phoenix. Tiphareth. Child of the sun, child of life, the vision of the harmony of things."

It is not at all suprising that Phoenix was designated to undergo apotheosis, but I am at a loss to explain why Claremont opted for kabbalah as his frame of reference for mysticism. Claremont's Jewish heritage notwithstanding, it seems to me as though there might have been more popular or obvious options at the time. It is possible he chose kabbalah precisely because it was not exceedingly well-known. I am not convinced his interpretation of the sephirot is kosher, but I am not an expert. Perhaps this is irrelevant, or perhaps it is cultural instrumentalization -- I am not sure.

In X-Men Annual #4, Doctor Strange accompanies the X-Men on a trip through Dante's Inferno to rescue Nightcrawler. I am not at all sure what to make of that issue.

The Mystery Play

The Mystery Play is difficult to summarize. Part religious allegory, part mystery novel, it is a well-executed experiment in rural noir, lending itself to many interpretations (and in all honesty: a bit hard to read).

Parallels could be drawn with Arkham Asylum in that madness is a fairly central theme. Muth's hyperrealistic art (which is reminiscent of Dave McKean's) has a kind of oneiric quality, and adequately conveys the protagonist's confusion.

Vimanarama!

Called back to Earth after 6000 years away in outer space, the gods find the human race much diminished, largely unfit to defend itself against the antediluvian demon-robots who are destroying London. Caught in the middle of it all, Ali picks the worst possible moment to have an existential crisis, hoping his arranged marriage will prove the benevolence of God.

In other words: Best. Thing. Ever.

The human cast is immediately endearing. Far from diminishing the supernatural characters' mystique, the deliberate distortion of religious tropes demonstrates the shortcomings of ordinary rationality when it comes to apprehending the numinous.

Grant Morrison is in top shape. Philip Bond's art seamlessly mixes the caricatural and the iconic, to great effect. Vimanarama is both esoteric and fun -- a rare combination -- and accomplishes all it sets out to do in only three issues.

DC Comics Presents: The Demon Driven Out

This one will likely please fans of grunge-era ultra-violence.

I picked up this release not realizing it was the collected edition of a ten-year-old limited series. The best thing about it is probably its fantastic cover. The magazine format may be a cheaper alternative to the regular TPB, but the lower price-tag doesn't quite make up for the disorganized plot, the uneven tone and the heavy-handed references to yakuza culture. The artist attempts some fairly cinematic angles and the break downs are extremely dynamic, but I was left feeling as though he didn't quite know what to do with a script that alternates between earnest noir and farcical grand guignol.

Diary: A Novel

This one is delectably erudite and rife with half-truths. It seems that taking liberties with History is rather the point and the art of it. We must reclaim our freedom from History, from the "collective unconscious" and other forms of maieutics, as these are not emancipatory forces. Theirs is an ancient and insidious kind of domination, like the karmic cycle which we must escape.

Making Comics by Scott McCloud

Advice is cheap. And plentiful; the electronic ether is alive with the voice of a million gurus and charlatans, some well-meaning, some egotistic, most a combination of the two. I have myself occasionally operated under the delusion of having heard the plea of the ignorant; of being capable – nay, required – to impart necessary knowledge. This, as the Teacher put it, is vanity.

The superabundance of short guides and SparkNotes indubitably has many advantages, though it also tends to make it more difficult to focus on those works wherein one might find substance worthy of sustained attention. Scott McCloud’s guides to comics (Understanding Comics and Making Comics) fit squarely in the category of "must read" in that they creatively synthesize many compelling theories about art and storytelling. Though McCloud focuses on sequential art, all creators should be able to appreciate his psychology of artistic experience, which focuses heavily on the audience’s appropriation of the narrative.

Best of all, McCloud’s guides are extremely pleasant to read. Jargon is kept to a minimum and even the most complex of concepts are elegantly illustrated. The books criticise many forms of dogmatism prevalent in the arts, and such critiques are made more convincing by their author's admission of his own biases. McCloud provides a detailed bibliography of his sources, and is otherwise very demonstrative of his gratitude towards his many inspirations.

Making Comics suggests creators remain mindful of the following five story-telling goals:

1. Look for stories that are rooted in your own experience and that speak to the experiences of your readers

2. Find new and interesting kinds of conflicts between characters

3. Surprise your readers

4. Provoke emotions by tapping into common heritage and experience

5. Make your audience care

Though McCloud’s practical advice may seem initially obvious, it is the kind of sound logic which tends to get drowned out by impulses and aspirations – in other words: it bears repeating, if only on account of how seldom such wisdom is taken to heart.

Listen to Scott McCloud lecture at the MIT Colloquium of Media Studies