Josh Hechinger on Iron Fist (Comment Pull Quote from "Comics Out" this week)

[The nice thing about Fraction Brubaker and Aja's Iron Fist]:

It's less "everything you thought you knew about the character was wrong" and more "everything you forgot about the character was great".

[Matt Fraction has posted comments on this blog in the past -- maybe he will pick this up as a blurb or something. I like how your little comment is accurate, but it also captures something important about the philosophy of Fraction's work generally. "Let's have fun and tell good stories instead of hype-ing massive self-serious crossover events" seems to be his ethic].

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

If you think your free form comment here might be better as its own post, but you do not want it to be public yet, email it to me. My email address is availible on my blogger profile page. If I think it will work on this site, your post will be published here with your name in the title of the post.

Geoff Klock's Blog: Expansion Pack

The comments threads on this blog are often great, especially in the Free Form Comments. We have a lot of smart, cool people around here. A few weeks ago I realized that these comments were being missed by incurious readers, and so I decided to pull one good one out a week and give it its own post, a Comment Pull Quote post. Now I want to expand again.

I want to start publishing blog posts by other people here. You can find my email address in my blogger profile page (click the link at the top right of the blog). If you think your Free Form Comment would be better as a post -- email it to me. If you have an idea for a post for this blog, email it to me -- an idea or a draft. You can also put your pitches in Free Form Comments, if you want your pitches public. On every post you write that is published here your name will be prominently displayed in the title and a tag with your name on it will be put at the bottom. Neil Shyminsky commented on a Slate article a few weeks ago. Under the new system that post would have been called "Neil Shyminsky: Slate on 300" and his writing would be the post, rather than merely a comment.

Why would you publish a post on a blog with my name at the top when you can open or create your own blogger account in seconds?

If you want to start a blog but you don't want to deal with the responsibility of updating frequently -- you can pitch blog posts here whenever you like, with no pressure to do any more. If you update your blog irregularly or rarely, your audience, who don't know to check in, may be small: consider sending your post to me for publication here; I update almost every day and you may find more readers through me. If lots of people do this we may get a lot more readers. If you are a regular commenter here, people may already know you, and like you. If you are advertising your blog on Free Form Comments, you are only reaching those readers who bother to check the comments. If you publish here you will reach the "lurkers." Keep in mind, there is no reason you cannot publish a post here, and immediately post it again on your blog. This is not a "real" magazine, and I do not "own" your posts or anything. Consider publishing an exciting first paragraph here that links to the rest of your post, which continues on your blog. Stephen Frug -- your blog could go all-politics if you published your comics and book reviews here. Jason Powell -- this is where you can do your Clairmont X-Men issue by issue analysis.

Posts have to be short (no longer than my longest blog post) and I would prefer posts that are focused on single, small things, such as individual songs. If you have read my posts you know what I am looking for -- but I would like this blog to expand into subjects outside my wheelhouse, such as the evaluation ofvideogames . What I am looking for is short appreciations of high culture and popular culture -- that means no politics unless it is part of a larger critical/evaluative point. Theory also, must be intrinsically interesting (e.g. Zizek ) or help in aesthetic evaluation. No jargon unless it is clearly explained. Reviews of all kinds -- TV, Movies, Comics, Albums, Games, Theatre -- are always welcome. I am not looking to publish creative writing. I am willing to consider pod-casts and video-blogging.

I will be the editor-in-chief. I may send your post back to you with revisions. I may reject posts if I think they are not appropriate. I think I would like to write short -- 3 to 5 sentence -- introductions to any post not by me, but we will see.

I do not know what this will actually be like. It may be that occasionally there is a post here by someone other than me. It may get to the point where a lot of the posts here are not by me. This may turn out to be too much trouble for me and I will have to drop it. It may turn out that we have far too many posts, and publishing them would exhaust readers. There is no way to know how many people will beinterested in writing here, or how many I will want to post.

I plan to continue publishing here as usual. These new posts would be posts in addition to my usual 5-7 a week.

Your reactions to this idea to expand are important, so if you have something to say, please put it in the comments.

Comics Out September 26, 2007

All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #7. Exuberance is beauty, as Blake says. I love this book. It is nuts, and it makes everyone very angry, and so Miller just pushes the nuts farther and farther. Exactly the right response. People did not like the phrase "I'm the goddamned Batman? Let them swallow this: "I've taken enough grief about calling my goddamn car the goddamn batmobile. I'm the goddamn Batman and I can call my goddamn car whatever the hell I want to call it". Hilarious. Plus the response is "That's just a totally queer name for a car, is all." Add in a sex scene punctuated by a lightning blast and a sound effect that suggest Dark Knight Returns and Dark Knight Strikes Again, and more ridiculous dialogue I do not have time to quote -- the whole project is aggressive, audacious, brazen, and prideful beyond all portrayals of Batman, if I can paraphrase Bloom on Dante. Make Mine Miller's.

Batman 669. Now that this is over I can see that this is a pretty good story -- I liked this issue more than the other two: Morrison is always good at endings. The art is often stylish and fun, and I see that it is nice to get a lighter more pulpy Batman. But I still do not really see the point of all the intertexts, all of the meshed art styles. It seems like a lot of occasionally distracting trouble to go to to make a small point about comics history that Morrison has made many times before, often much better -- in All Star Superman for example.

Immortal Iron Fist #9. I think if you are going to have a book where punching and kicking are so important -- even in a genre dominated by so much punching and kicking -- the art really needs to go to a whole new place to make it work. DavidAja does exactly that. The guy is just mesmerizing. I also like how Danny Rand is portrayed as maybe a little dumb, a little ditsy. I really like that. It is very not-Batman.

Immortal Iron Fist Annual. I know I am going to look like a philistine, but the art in this book is just not my cup of whatever. I know these guys are a big deal. I get that. It's not that I hate the art -- it is just not for me. I think maybeAja has just ruined me for Iron Fist. Aja is the Truth and the Way, as far as this book goes.

The Order. The art here was kinda frustrating in places. I did not get that Mullholland was choking, for example, and they weird hubba-bubba cocoon with a head was ... just odd. And was the stretchy girl the same girl in the black dress that got bug's blood on her? Maybe I read this too fast. Also I am pretty sure that in the exchange that begins "I can still use my powers" someone goofed and attributed the lines to the wrong characters. Or, again, I read this too fast. On the plus sideKitson is fantastic with faces (which this book needs a lot of) and there is a nice homage to Moore's Big Numbers.

Wonder Woman Annual. This is an odd week for me, where I am almost exclusively focusing on the art and not the story. I got this issue for the art only. I really admire the very few artists -- I am looking at youBachalo -- that can draw girls you can really crush on. As for story -- whatever. I think the distinction he sets up between human and non-human at the end of the book is pretty meaningless.

In Comics News Newsarama has an interview up with Judd Winnick about the Black Canary / Green Arrow Wedding special. There are two issues on the table. One is the dress. I like the dress actually. Not in real life, obviously. They considered getting an actual designer to do it -- Pat Field would have been a good choice, maybe. But they ended up doing it themselves. I think Winnick is right -- one you figure out that the fishnets are iconic and indispensable, the rest of the ridiculous thing falls into place. I have not read this but the art seems fun. As for the ending -- apparently it gets real dark for no reason. That's the age we live in apparently. The superhero version of torture porn cannot be far behind.

Wallace Stevens Reading "The Snow Man" (Commonplace Book)

[I found this on Stephen Frug's blog, but I wanted to post it myself and make a brief comment.]

Here is one of my indispensable poets reading one of his indispensable poems -- on youtube no less. The video is at best pointless and at worst distracting and painfully literal, so look away from the screen, or close your eyes, and just listen. It is an interesting experience, but not as good as reading the poem yourself, I think.

There is an assumption that there is something valuable in hearing poets read their own work. I disagree, at least as far as most of the poets I have heard read. I think, generally, poets are terrible readers of their own poems. (Ashbery is an exception here -- T.S. Eliot is not). This is not as surprising as it sounds, as we would not, for example, expect a screenwriter who was not also an actor to do a very good job reading parts of his own script. I recommend we treat poetry the same way. Let's find actors to read these things aloud -- college actors for instance -- and let the poets get back to doing what they do best: writing poetry.

[How embarrassing is it that I now embed youtube clips because I am excited to have "cracked the technology" of embedding? I am such a Luddite.]

Commercials: Bob Dylan and Victoria Secret

Here is the add if you do not know it.



This is an old subject but a fun one I think: A few years ago Bob Dylan appeared in a Victoria Secret add. There were two main reactions. One: Bob Dylan sold out. This is sometimes followed by an admission that this is at least a fun way to sell out -- from Dylan's point of view it is not hard to see the appeal of being around sexy women. But the second reaction looked from the other direction: what -- you know -- ON EARTH would make Victoria Secret want the aged Dylan in their sexy women underwear commercial?

The answer is, as a memento mori, a reminder of death. Dylan aged dramatically, and looks like a skull. The music is cool, but the juxtaposition of Dylan's face with the bodies of the models suggests -- hey, better look sexy now, because death is coming for you and he might look a lot like Bob Dylan. Carpe Diem.

This Is My 400th Post

And that's a lot of posts.

I Have Switched to G-Mail

If you want to update your address book you can get my new address by clicking "view my complete profile" under my picture and bio on the right, and then clicking where it says "e-mail" under Contacts.

Ping33 On the Top Ten Video Games (Comment Pull Quote)

Ping gave us his top ten list this week in Free Form Comments. I have only played a handful of videogames since they got all complicated and novely and world-building, but I am proud to say that two of that handful are on Ping's list -- Jet Set Radio Future (which I always called Radio Free Europe for no reason), and Super-Metroid (that was the Nintendo Cube one right?). And they were great. Except Metroid had terrible creature designs. Generic bug-aliens. On Radio Free Europe you could design your own graffiti and spray it on everything.

I would also say that the Simpsons Game for the Game Cube was one of my favorites, if only because of the perfect way labor got split up between Sara and Me -- she likes to look for stuff and I like to race around, and the game had both, so we teamed up and won.

Also you have to love classics like Super-Mario brothers, if only because the Japanese have such an instinctual grasp of the everyday life of working class Italians.

Here is Ping:

Top 10 Games of all time (no order)

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (yeah bitch! better than Ocarina of Time, the graphics are timeless and all zelda games are basically the same anyway)

Joust

Jet Set Radio Future

Halo

Starcraft

Nights: Into Dreams

Super Metroid

Every Extend Extra

Wipeout

RESERVED FOR THE NOW (Bioshock... Hopefully Mass Effect)

LOST Season 4 Teaser (a Dharma Corp Video)

Mitch found a trailer for the fourth season of Lost! It is not clips -- it is a film from within the world of Lost. It is awesome. And it gestures toward some answers to at least two of my questions about the show. Spoilers in the comments. Thanks Mitch.

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

The Heresy of Paraphrase

I read the first 13 issues of 52 and was bored so I dropped it. Ping33 kept telling me how great it was -- and Ping got me on board with Casanova and All Star Batman. Then Matt Fraction had a long post on his blog about how he also read the first dozen or so issues, got bored, came back and it got brilliant. That convinced me -- someone else who was bored by the first issues but then found out it got better beats Ping, who liked it from the beginning when I didn't. So I have been reading the trades, and am now at week 30.

I have discussed this before, but I want to come back again to the Heresy of Paraphrase. Cleanth Brooks discusses the Heresy of Paraphrase in his book The Well Wrought Urn. Here is a quote from the Wikipedia entry (I am being lazy today):

The book is a polemic against the tendency for critics to reduce a poem to a single narrative or didactic message. He describes summative [that's not a word, Wikipedia...], reductionist reading of poetry with a phrase still popular today: "the heresy of paraphrase." In fact, he argued poetry serves no didactic purpose because producing some kind of statement would be counter to a poem’s purpose. Brooks argues "through irony, paradox, ambiguity and other rhetorical and poetic devices of his or her art, the poet works constantly to resist any reduction of the poem to a paraphrasable core, favoring the presentation of conflicting facets of theme and patterns of resolved stresses."

I keep coming back to this again and again, reading 52. 52, at least as far as I have read (and Fraction says the turning point comes later, and I am not done reading yet), fails to resist the reduction of the comic book to a paraphrasable core. I think a detailed summary of the issues so far would be exactly as good as the comic book itself.

You can summarize Casanova all you want, but Ruby Berserko has to be seen in the comic book itself. You have to experience the density of ideas. In 52 you are not missing much if you miss what Infinity Incorporated actually look like. The meanwhile-somewhere else-the next day structure is really kind of a non-structure, so you are not missing much there. Would the comic book really be worse if you heard each thread (the space thread, the Booster Gold thread) summarized separately?

The Heresy of Paraphrase could also be a great blow to people who are ok with merely serviceable art if the story is good -- art like Quitely's prison panels in All Star Superman 5 cannot be paraphrased. The art for the first eight issues of the Invisibles on the other hand -- I think I might like them better just reading the paraphrase, or just reading the script.

Is the heresy of paraphrase a good test for distinguishing a good comic book or movie or poem from a bad one? I suppose this will only tell good stuff from mediocre stuff, though I do not think life is long enough to read mediocre stuff. There are things so bad they have to been seen to be believed, like I Know Who Killed Me.

I don't want to talk about I Know Who Killed Me.

Comics Out September 19, 2007

Greg Pak and John Romita Jr.'s World War Hulk 4 (of 5). This issue seemed badly made physically -- the transfer from the originals to the printed page seems a little muddy. That could just be my copy. The art is pretty fun, and the story is serviceable. And I like seeing Reed with a mace. But the ending beat? I wish they had gone with something they had not been telegraphing from issue one. Plus -- did I mention I do not care bout the Sentry?

Gerard Way and Gabriel Ba's Umbrella Academy 1 (of 6). The guy from My Chemical Romance teams up with the artist of Casanova. I felt like I HAD to get this. I really enjoyed the Myspace Dark Horse Presents free Umbrella Academy thing. This was pretty good too -- great art and lots of fun stuff. But I felt maybe the slightest hint of staleness here. The opening page with the wrestler taking down the space squid is great -- the Squid reminded me of the aliens on the Simpsons, especially with the Chuck Jones cartoon art, which I love. But I feel like, I don't know, this kind of absurdity is becoming, or will shortly become, a little predictable? The device of "and all these superpowered children were born at that exact moment, coincidentally" is something from novels like Gravity's Rainbow and Midnight's Children, -- a replacement of causality with coincidence. I don't hate it, but I have seen it before. Sir Reginald's body guard is Sachelle's bodyguard from Casanova, yeah? I like the newspaper heading and the title filling in for narration, but the superhero/spy kids who call each other "number 1" and "number 2" is right out of Codename: Kids Next Door on the cartoon network. The Eiffel tower bad guy is very much out of Steampunk, or something I cannot put my finger on -- League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Five Fists of Science? Something. I love the monkey space suit, but the girl who wrote a book about her life on the fringes of this superteam is very Watchmen, or the Whip from Seven Soldiers, or something from Powers. The talking monkey -- included because of the assumption that talking monkeys are always great? -- is OK, but I am exhausted every time I see a comic book with a faux encyclopedia page, or "historical material" in it now. Too much of that. I am going to stick with this cause I like the art, and am trying not to be a jerk. I feel like with a slight tweak I could be really excited about all this, maybe. Could just be a grumpy day for me.

Geoff Johns and Grant Morrison et. al's 52 volume 3 TPB. I have not read this yet, but Ping33 and Matt Fraction said 52 is great so I continue to try to see what they see in it.

In comics news Jeph Loeb and Joe Madureia's Ultimates will be five issues. People are really mad about that, apparently. Plus people are not that happy about the device of killing a character in the first issue. I can see that, but am not feeling that passionate about it today. There was other stuff I am sure, but that is the only one I read about this week. Let me know if there was anything I missed.

[I seem to be phoning it in a bit this week. Maybe teaching took too much out of me today. Sorry]

John Wheelwright's "Any Friend to Any Friend" (Commonplace Book)

[The subtitle of this poem is an equation, but I do not know how to make blogger do proper superscript, so I am going to have to write out "squared" as a word, even though it is a superscript number 2 on the page.]

(A - B)squared = (B - A)squared

On outskirts of the woods of thought
B saw A bow his head
to mourn the death of one B sought...
and found himself was dead.

A dug one grave for corpse and man.
And turned aside to laugh.
But when B rose to dig, A ran
upon B with the staff,

which B had cut A when it leaved
(though it ran blood, not sap).
There was no combat. They both grieved,
fallen, across the dead man's lap.

[This poem is pretty mysterious, so don't get the idea that I get it 100% and you don't. But what I do get, I love.]

The Weakerthans' "Our Retired Explorer"

The Weakerthans
"Our Retired Explorer (Dines With Michel Foucault In Paris, 1961)"
From The Reconstruction Site

Lyrics:

Just one more drink and then I should be on my way home. I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about. I've had a really nice time but my dogs need to be fed. I must say that in the right light you look like Shackleton. Comment allez-vous ce soir? Je suis comme ci comme-ca. Yes, a penguin taught me French back in Antarctica. Oh, I could show you the way shadows colonize snow, ice breaking up on the bay off the Lassiter coast, light failing over the pole as every longitude leads up to your frost bitten feet--Oh, you're very sweet! Thank you for the flowers and the book by Derrida but I must be getting back to dear Antarctica. Say, do you have a ship and a dozen able men that maybe you could lend me? Oh Antarctica!

Video:



Is this is fun and silly nonsense song, in which the main attraction is the fact that it uses Derrida's name to rhyme with Antarctica, and imagines Foucault having a conversation with a retired explorer? A song in which the explorer, possibly drunk, cannot understand Foucault's dense philosophy and wants to go home, or is trying to politely extricate himself from Foucault's romantic overtures, or both, and blames it on his lousy French? Is that last question aimed at a passerby, a funny, doomed attempt at an escape?

Or does this song have a point, however small and simple and cliched, to make about the philosophy of Derrida and Foucault? Something along the lines of "Give up the abstractions of philosophy books and appreciate the concrete beauty in the world, such as shadows on snow, ice breaking up on the bay, light at the pole)"? Is there something significant about the use of the word "colonize" -- Is the explorer casting his description in a metaphor that would appeal to the philosopher of power, Michel Foucault?

Or something else?

The video is very cute in spots, but it is a tad literal and unnecessary I think. I will take second opinions on it though.

Forgive me! -- I just did not feel like writing about a comic book today.

Comment Pull Quote (Jason Powell blurb)

From Jason Powell, a comment on "Grant Morrison's JLA Classified 3" (Thursday):

I promise not to sully or diminish my experience of your fine writing here by ever opening the actual work under consideration.

Awesome. I should print a version of this on my business card. I should write introductions to books, then ask people, in the introductions, not to read what comes next so as not to mess up their reading of my intros.

[I am having second thoughts about the Comment Pull Quote posts. I think they are too incestuous. I feel like I am going to grab the same few people every week. We will see.]

Arrested Development and George Bush

I really liked Arrested Development when it first aired, but I was a night security guard then and missed most of the first season. Then I was in England, where it did not air. I watched random episodes this year, and loved them, and so decided to buy all three seasons on DVD and go through them in order. I am virtually done now. I have the second half of season 3 left, but I saw most of those when they were re-run on G4. I know I saw the last four.

Because I missed this when it was on, I wanted to know -- did everyone watching at the time notice the weird political skeletal structure on which the show was built? Because I am only just now watching these fully paying attention, I only just now picked up on it.

Obviously I noticed stuff like the Bluth company doing business with the Iraqi government. That is explicit -- a picture of George Senior shaking hands with Saddam prompts someone to say that it will ruin his career, at which point the narrator shows us an image of Rumsfeld shaking hands with Saddam. There is a broad (maybe too broad) joke about homeland security being stupid, and a "Mission Accomplished" banner put up at the Bluth company for a minor accomplishment. The whole end in Iraq, with GOB's Burning Bush trick ("Burn Bush! Burn Bush!") -- of course I saw that.

What I missed was the family structure thing. I thought GOB's name was "Job," like in the Bible. Turns out it is "George Oscar Bluth." While his father, George Senior, is in prison he is put in charge of the corrupt Bluth company, but just as a figurehead. Michael Bluth, the smart one, is given a vice president role. Michael really runs the place; George Senior wants to keep him in the background so if the Feds come he will not take all the blame. Buster is GOB's even stupider brother.

So GOB (George Bluth junior) is the president. He is just a figurehead for the real power, the vice president. And behind the scenes George Bluth Senior, who used to be president, pulls the strings. The names chime as well: George Bush /George Bluth, sons also named George, GOB / Jeb . This makes jokes like GOB using George Bush's malapropisms, George Michael's school election campaign (in which he starts by aiming for the Christian vote), the clips of Fox news, and GOB's putting up posters that say "Everyone Makes Mistakes" funnier.

Two questions.

Am I the last one to notice this?

And

What is the status of this? It is not exactly a satire. Or is it? It is just like this odd structural detail that throws some jokes into high relief, but stays underground enough so that it never interferes with the other, random jokes the show feels like making, so that the show never becomes polemic. Is that right?

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

Grant Morrison's JLA Classified 3

[This is the last of three posts talking about why Grant Morrison's JLA Classified 1-3 are my favorite three superhero comics.]

Morrison's dialogue: "Dawn arrives before dawn / in the morning of destruction"; "I love it when you bark orders at me, Diana" is met with "Hmm. I've heard that about you, Arthur."

McGuinness's panel design: a page spread of staggered, tall panels; a tiny box around a distant satellite with a line for the zoom-in on they guy we otherwise would not have noticed was standing on it; four small boxes at the bottom of the page to show feet taking off; little panels staggered down the page and getting larger showing Jonn reforming, then flying up from the bottom of the page to the top.

McGuiness even makes Aquaman look cool, as he leaps from a plane; I did not think anyone could make Aquaman cool.

The JLA have been a sub-plot for two issues. When they show up here they each are introduced, and shown in cool fight scenes, and they even get those little flags with their name on them. This is a device I have always loved. I makes you feel like this could be someone's first comic book ever, a nice thought, since this is such a good one.

The guy with the cosmic keyboard can restore Green Lantern's weakness to yellow by saying "Edit. Cut. And Paste." He is an evil DC editor who revises continuity. Hilarious.

Ne-bol-lah is revealed to be a time travelling baby universe all grown up, and Gorakio was beingcontrolled by a little girl that Aquaman saves. All fun. So this post is a list of stuff. Sue me.

One moment in particular stands out. Grodd ties Batman up and is roasting him. Batman gets out and beats him. But we do not see how Batman escapes. Unsympathetic readers would not necessarily be out of line to call that an error, or to call me a Morrison apologist. But to me this is great. You know how Batman escaped being tied up? He is Batman. He always does that. Any further explanation would just belabor the point that, to borrow Miller's fantastic and much maligned phrase, he is the God-damned Batman. One panel later Batman kicks a very sad and bateranged telepathic Gorilla in the crotch and says "There goes the dynasty." Morrison just skips the cliche and goes straight for the absurdity. A lesser writer would have offered an explanation.

Compression is often what makes Morrison great. One character is identified as "The disgraced 'schizophrenic Superman' of Greece." The quotes are doing a lot of work there -- did a newspaper call him that? Why? It suggests this whole wacky back-story in a few words -- again, a lesser writer would have felt the need to go into a whole thing about it.

Two final big picture things.

One: all of this turns out to be a prologue to a larger story, Seven Soldiers. This great story opens up something else, connects to something larger. By pointing to something bigger than itself it seems ever better, because more is on the way.

Two: Out of nowhere, this story has a moral, stated by Superman just so you know to take it seriously. Superheroes who kill are bad news. This does not make much sense in the context of the story -- does this make them more susceptible to the Sheeda? -- but it does not matter. Morrison is really dismissing books like the Authority. Why? Because, as Superman says "These 'no-nonsense' solutions of yours just don't hold water in a complex world of jet-powered apes and time travel." JLA Classifed 1-3 both shows you and tells you a moral I care about a lot -- Superhero Comics Should Be Fun. Because the real world is not enough fun, and in fact, it seems our world, or a world very much like ours (corrupt, no superpowers) grew up to be this story's bad guy. The enemy of imagination is depressing reality.

The story ends with a vision of superheroes being sent in our world. Ostensibly they are to save it from crime, but really they are going in to save it from a lack of jet-powered apes and time travel.

Comics Out September 12, 2007

Matt Fraction and Fabio Moon's Casanova #9. There is no one left who does not know I am obsessed with this book. I am rapidly running out of superlatives.

A great new character, Kubark Benday is introduced, a character Fabio refers to as "Dragonball Wolverine" in the back-matter. Sasa Lisi gets some development -- her "I came from tomorrow to save you from boring" could be the tag line for all of Casanova. I am just falling in love with Fabio Moon -- his image of Sasa Lisi is crazy fun. And all those little details. I am not going to list them all but the last panel encapsulates the tone that makes this book my favorite.

A side note: Kubark Benday talks about the awesomeness of "Sifers Valomilk, the Original 'Flowing Center' Candy Cup." At the back of the book Fraction tells you where you can order these online, but if you don't want to wait, and you live in New York City (as a lot of readers here do) just go to 108 Rivington Street (zip 10002) -- the awesome purveyors of old school candy, Economy Candy, has a bunch, plus stuff like Candy Cigarettes (can you believe those were ever legal?).

Matt Fraction and Leandro Fernandez's Punisher War Journal #11. This issue was my favorite so far. I do not think it was the lack of Ariel Olivetti's art -- I wonder what this issue would have been like if he had drawn it. This is a character study, but rather than being a high concept gimmick, it reads like a real story, because it is: it is the epilogue to the Captain America costume story, it introduces a change in the G.W. Bridge story, and it introduces a new villain in a plot that is very creepy. Fraction knows how to find the tension in each of the three stories. Fraction even gives Iron Man a line about enjoying change that makes you see how he sees Civil War, in just a few words. A solid piece of craftsmanship.

Mike Mignola, Richard Corben, and P Craig Russell's Hellboy: The Troll Witch and Other Stories. I have not yet had a chance to read this, but I did not know there was more Mignola drawn Hellboy for me -- this story collects several Hellboy shorts from Dark Horse Anthology things. This is cool.

In a related story, MATT FRACTION AND KELLY SUE HAD A BABY! Congrats! I would use exclamation marks after ALL OF THESE SENTENCES! Baby!

At Newsarama, I tried to read some interviews about the next Hulk thing, and Marvel's Skrull thing, but I got bored.

Recommend, review, and discuss this week's comics and comics news.

From A. R. Ammons's "Tape for the Turn of the Year" (Commonplace Book)

we must keep the
tradition &
modify it
so we stay resilient to
change:
too traditional is a loss of
change: too changing is
loss of meaning & memory:

Grant Morrison's JLA Classified 2

[Continuing my look at why JLA Classified 1-3 are my favorite superhero comics of all time. Last post had the broad points about all three issues, so this will just have details.]

More panel layout fun: 16 panel grids over three pages leading to one big splash page, Batman walking around Beryl in a circle so that we see him at several points, a page of tall panels, a pair of symmetrical trapezoid panels that are close ups on the eyes of villains, panels chaotically overlapped, panel gutters destroyed because a character is freaking out, a panel whose gutter is fire, and fire shaped white.

As for subject matter, Morrison has McGuinness drawing fun iconic close ups in those 16 panel pages: sexy lips, Clark's glasses, skull shaped smoke to show poison, the Flash emblem, Superman's famous chin, Superman's famous S-Curl, Superman's blue eye, Jonn's red eye, Black Death's purple eye, Green Lantern's emblem, Flash's ear thing, Aquaman's belt logo, Wonder Woman's tiara, everyone in black silhouette with colored emblems. Those icons tell the story, and the little boxes remind you they are trapped in a smaller universe, a universe without superpowers, our universe. In the end McGuinness does a great JLA splash page.

Plus Beryl is suspended Mission Impossible style with lines holding her ankles, knees, waist, head and FANTASTICALLY her pony tail (I have blogged on this detail before). Grodd gets a little crown and later a machine gun, Nebolah appears in a fantastic design, and we see the Sheeda for the first time. These things are just great. I do not have a more complex way of putting that. They are just fun and nothing else. And Beryl contacts another universe through a payphone. I think that is fun.

Morrison is again on point: "his thoughts are like mad dogs running through his skull"; "they told me you were educated on the streets. Were these the streets of Princeton?"; "Who's up for blowing away a few bad monkeys?"; "When their spurs dig in you have to obey"; "Gorillatropolis"; "I've always wanted to eat Batman. But now ... I don't know where to begin."

I will admit this is not much of an argument. This is more of a list of stuff I like. My point is that each 22 page issue is packed with all kinds of fun details, and that is why these comics are my favorite. Subtext is important, and has other virtues, and will get a book into my top ten, but my very favorite things are the ones like this. Things that exemplify a genre in a fresh way are the only things that can beat out books like the first 14 issues of Planetary that are very smart about more complex things like genre relationships.

I do not know if I believe what I just wrote, but I am going with it for now, and will keep thinking about it.

A Slate Article on Homoerotic Movies

I probably should not call people out like this, but it is Sunday, so I feel like doing something off the cuff.

Neil Shyminsky -- your blog says that your research includes the pop cultural representations and practice of white masculinity in late 20th and 21st century North America. I read this article on Slate a while back, but do not know what to think of it. Give me your expert opinion.

The Surf Also Rises: How Macho Movies get Misread as Homoerotic.

Everyone else is, of course, welcome to weigh in.

Brad Winderbaum's Satacracy 88.10.3

The new episode of Satacracy 88 is up at itsallinyourhands.com, and after you watch this one, you get to vote. This episode has a great fight scene, hooks up with the foreshadowing in 10.1, and has an interesting vote at the end. The numbered soldiers are revealing their super-powers here as guest star Kirk Ward, the Futurist, shows an awesome super-power, and 88's connection to electricity expands into something useful.

Free Form Comments

Say whatever you want to in the comments to this post -- random, off topic thoughts, ideas, suggestions, questions, recommendations, criticisms (which can be anonymous), surveys, introductions if you have never commented before, personal news, self-promotion, requests to be added to the blog roll and so on. If a week goes by and I have failed to add you to the blog roll TELL ME TO DO IT AGAIN, and KEEP TELLING ME UNTIL IT GETS DONE. I can be lazy about updating the non-post parts of this site.

ALSO. You can use this space to re-ask me questions you asked me before that I failed to answer because I was too busy (but now might not be). That is often the reason I fail to get back to people, and on a blog, after a few days, the comments thread dies and I just kind of forget about it. Let's use this space to fix that, because it does need to be fixed; I look like a jackass sometimes, leaving people hanging. I will TRY to respond to any questions here.

AND you can use this space to comment on posts that are old enough that no one is reading the comments threads anymore. For example, if you thought of a great quote for the great quote commonplace book, but now no one is reading that, you could put it here.

You do not have to have a blogger account or gmail account to post a comment -- you can write a comment, write your name at the bottom of your comment like an e mail, and then post using the "anonymous" option.

Comics Out September 6, 2007

Brian K. Vaughan and Georges Jeanty's Buffy The Vampire Slayer #6. I keep trying to like Brian K Vaughan, and people keep telling me to, but boy, no. At best the guy is solid, as in the best issues of his Runaways, but he is overrated, and I will not buy into the hype. In this issue I could not have been more pre-disposed to like him, since I am loving Buffy just now.

Among my complaints: the use of Doctor Suess is a leaden, obvious irony; a grown woman referring to tea as "those smelly bags?" (because she did not know this word ... "tea"?); a lame -- if I am reading this correctly, and I am not sure I am -- and pointless allusion to Alan Moore ("the great bearded Wizard of Northhampton"); showing the depraved rich by having them hunt not foxes ... but PEOPLE! (This was done definitively in the Invisibles); the awful exposition of Roden explaining to someone who must know by now that he is not a witch but a warlock; the cliched structure of "A wise man once said [insert low brow commonplace]"; overdoing quirky dialog when a few more "normal" words would better off-set the wit ("I thought this stuck up debutard lived in Jolly Olde. Why are we still chilling at the mistake by the lake?"); having a grown, sexually active woman respond to the word "cunning" by thinking, or pretending to think, the user is referring to oral sex with a woman; a grown, sexually active woman referring to said oral sex as "going downtown on this chick"; a grown person referring to fun as "getting down"; sloppy writing like having "getting down" so close to "going downtown" for no reason and using a phrase like "the stakes are higher" in a vampire book without irony; and the awful cliche of My Fair Lady -- I simply do not believe knowing a rule book's seating precedence at a formal dinner will help her with an assassination.

On the plus side Vaughan writes Xander a great speech about Kurt Russel. On the DVD commentaries for Buffy the writers always say they get compliments on lines that Joss silently added to their scripts. I bet, for know reason other than the weakness of BKV here, that this is Joss.

And the art. Is there a new inker? Did something go wrong? Faith's face is messed up on page 2, and 3, and 4, and 5, and again on 5, and many more times after that. It seems like he can draw faces -- Buffy, Xander and Giles look OK -- just not Faith's. She most often looks mongoloid, or melted , or very old. Principle Wood looks ridiculous standing calmly on a cell phone so close to a big fight. Or is that not a literal image? I should be able to tell.

Way to sink a good idea. Yick.

Joss Whedon and Fabio Moon's Sugar Shock #2. Now that's what I want. Whedon at his most wacky and funny and silly -- it is great to see Whedon without the angst and heartfelt sincerity, though I would not want to see him get rid of it in all his work. And Fabio Moon is one of my new favorite artists. I think I like him even better here than on Casanova -- I like him with the colors. His lines have such energy and charm. And his girls are cute. This is my favorite Whedon work. Period. This is one of my favorite new comics. It is just ridiculous. A great -- GREAT -- joke with Robot Phil saying "legs" over and over. You can read it online by clicking the Dark Horse Myspace link on the right.

But can anyone fill me in on Dark Horse Presents? Is issue one no longer available for viewing? How do I view this bigger, like I did last time? Are these going to be published at some point?

In Comics News, nothing caught my attention.

Can anyone spoil Spiderman: One More Day, which came out today? I opened it in the store and decided I did not like Quesada's art as much as I thought I did, or used to. Or I was in a bad mood because of all the hype.

From Harold Bloom's Genius

[It was Sara's birthday Monday which reminded me of this.]

"The ancient Roman made an offering to his genius [originally a person's attendant spirit] on his birthday, dedicating that day to 'the god of human nature,' as the poet Horace called each person's tutelary spirit. Our custom of birthday cake is in direct descent from that offering. We light the candles and might do well to remember what it is that we are celebrating."

Grant Morrison's JLA: Classified 1

[Some folks around here have wanted to know why Grant Morrison's three issues of JLA Classified are my favorite comics of all time, after Casanova. So here it is.]

JLA: Classified immediately connects with Morrison's JLA run -- the Ultramarine Corps, which he invented in his run there, are the heroes for this first issue.

There is something quintessentially "superhero" about the JLA, more than any other comic book I can think of, because the JLA consists of characters from other books all on a team together -- with all the smash up of continuity that implies. JLA: Classified goes out of its way to emphasize such a smash up: Batman gets gear to deal with the Ultramarine Corps being kidnapped and says "I'm opening the Sci-fi closet, Alfred. Don't tell my friends in the G.C.P.D. about this." First of all he identifies all the crazy gear he has as "science FICTION" gear even though, for him it is real. He does this, and he needs to keep it secret from the local police, because as far as much of Batman Continuity goes, for the characters in the Batman title, including to some extent Batman himself, this stuff it just that -- science fiction. But in JLA is is just everyday business.

The issue opens with a character speaking a scientific formula for gravity -- the situation is grave, get it? Formula puns. You have to be a little impressed with that. Warmaker One, the leader, then says this -- read this out-loud:

The JLA are AWOL. These terrorists are, quite literally, animals. Wanna bet the International Ultramarine Corps can wrap up this little insurrection in ... what? Let's give it ten minutes? Who needs the Justice League? Shock and Awe, Gentlemen.

I am going to say this and risk looking like an idiot. More than half of the first sentence is acronyms. The second sentences has, I don't know, some kind of rhythm that makes my ears perk up, as does the all the W sounds and images: AWOL, Wanna, wrap, what, who, awe. This has -- I cannot believe I am going to write this down on the internet where I will never be able to take it back -- a kind of poetry not unlike David Mamet. This is Morrison at his dialogue best. And actual poetry will not be far behind, as Goraiko speaks Haiku-type metaphors before smashing stuff. "As a flower opens to the sun / So Goraiko's wrath." "Crushed like autumn leaves in my hands / The bones of bad monkeys." Here also, is Morrison at his best:

My original country is in the cold region of the vampire sun. I was born of the eternal fogs, there is Last Country. Neh-Buh-Loh the Huntsman, am I, master of the Wild Ride. I prepare the way for my Queen of Terror, who will come soon. I will spread at her feet a carpet of skulls. I am of the Other World. I herald the end of this one. Now let us make weapons of these supermen.

Creepy well done, in all the silly.

Ed McGuinness is THE artist for this title. Just as the last issue of the Invisibles made me wish Quitely had gone back and drawn every issue of the series, Ed McGuinness makes me wish that he would go back and draw all of Morrison's JLA. The first thing that strikes you when you see
a Quitely image is the sense of design. The first thing you see in an Alex Ross image is the person he used for a model. The first thing you see in a Bachalo drawing is, if not a cute girl, than a little chaotic puzzle. The first thing you know when you look at McGuinness's drawings is that this is meant to be FUN. The best cartoon you never saw. So Morrison has him draw an English Knight on a motorcycle, Monkeys in jet packs and goggles, a giant telepathic ape, little tiny airplanes, a flying city, a man made of goop, a robot with a "cosmic keyboard" who later gets sucked into a cube of stars, Batman with a red rotary phone, Batman in a flying saucer, Robot Supermen. And that is just the first issue. Fun stuff for a fun artist.

Plus the panel designs are great throughout -- tall disjointed windows at angles, little reaction panels, Grodd's head literally splitting into panels -- get it?-- he has a splitting headache. Concentric circles for the massive reverberation of sound, globs for that "information soup" Morrison always talks about, panels in a cube for guys about to be trapped by a magic cube, Bat-shaped panels, falling boxes for chaotic air movement, panels that zoom out of the background, as Batman does when he arrives.

This is what I want from a comic book -- a big team, and lots of fun in the ideas, speeches and images. JLA Classified is a distillation of what I think the Superhero genre should provide. Everything I want and nothing I don't.

[I may not even need to get into the next two issues. Depends on the response to this post.]

Neil Shyminsky and Jason Powell Can Work It Out (Comment Pull Quote)

[Last week I had the idea to do a post every Sunday pulling a good quote from the week's worth of comments and giving it its own post. The post from a week ago today that announced that idea generated the best discussion this week, including some great stuff on Batman and criticism. But the award this week has to go to Jason and Neil on the Beatles -- which began life as an analogy for the collaboration of Morrison and Williams in Batman].

Neil said...

One of the reasons that the Beatles 'We Can Work It Out', for instance, works so well is in the bridge, where McCartney sings a high, almost manic melody and Lennon contrasts it with a low, nearly monotone, and vaguely snarling harmony. McCartney's optimism is completely undermined by Lennon's boredom, leading us to believe that McCartney's confidence in the chorus/verse is wholly unfounded.

Jason said...

I know it's a digression, and Neil sorry to disagree, but ... man, I hate that popular interpretation of "We Can Work It Out." Lennon’s section doesn’t undermine McCartney’s section. It complements it. (Sorry if that word is starting to be overused in this thread.)

To call McCartney’s section optimistic and Lennon’s section bored is to ignore the lyrical content. There’s not a lot of optimism in McCartney’s line, “There’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.” And Lennon’s section is not bored – it’s urgent. “Life is very short, and there’s no time...”

There is contrast in the music of the two different sections, and I agree that the tension between McCartney’s high-flung melody and Lennon’s dogged single-noted-ness does is part of what makes the song so engaging. But Lennon’s single-note style (which he utilizes in most of his work as a Beatle) is a result of Lennon’s songwriting style, which was to avoid extemporaneity in order to get his point across in as naturalistic a way as possible. He writes melodies that imitate the way he speaks. He sings “Life is very short” on a single note because that’s how he’d say it, not because he’s bored.

I also don’t see mania in McCartney’s bit. It sounds as controlled as any McCartney’s melodies – but that’s probably getting a bit subjective. The mistake, I think, is to see McCartney’s relentless “we can work it out” as optimism rather than an attempt to win an argument (i.e., my way is right, your way is wrong). It’s almost overbearing, in a way, and when it’s read in that light, Lennon’s text flows quite naturally from McCartney’s. If anything, the dichotomy being struck is not optimism/boredom, but rather personal/universal. (McCartney is about “my way” and “your way,” and Lennon’s is about “life.”) Lennon isn’t knocking the foundation out of McCartney’s verse/chorus – he’s providing it.

Neil said...

Jason - I don't necessarily see a contradiction in my labeling McCartney's vocal 'manic' and your calling it 'overbearing'. In fact, I think they're entirely consistent - manic and overbearing would actually serve as a perfect description of McCartney's method as a songwriter and performer with the Beatles. I also think that optimism and 'i'm right' work well with McCartney in this context. The song, reportedly, is about his relationship with Jane Asher, which was falling apart at the time. He was desperately clinging to it (while controlled, it's also near the top of McCartney's range, and 'life is very short' is very staccato, almost screamed), confident they'd figure it out, but also wanting to dictate its terms.

But I certainly have to disagree with your interpretation of Lennon's vocal. The single-note style, for one, has nothing to do with naturalism - it's because he wrote songs on his guitar, and since he wasn't a very good player he preferred progressions that required limited hand movement. But even if I were to agree that Lennon's vocal sounds like it's being spoken, anything less than McCartney's intensity provides a contrast whereby that same intensity is made to seem excessive.

I'm perhaps reading too much of their biographies into the song, but I don't think that's unfair with the Beatles. Lennon sounds bored to me because this song was written during his incredibly depressed period. He doesn't care if he wins the argument, his delivery sounds snide because 'fussing and fighting' is all he and Cynthia ever do. He's 'asking once again', but he knows it's useless - it's still incredibly intimate, not at all universal. When we read that on to McCartney's performance, we get the sense that he may be equally hopeless - but only because Lennon's there to provide the subtext.

Jason said...

“The song, reportedly, is about his relationship with Jane Asher, which was falling apart at the time. He was desperately clinging to it (while controlled, it's also near the top of McCartney's range, and 'life is very short' is very staccato, almost screamed), confident they'd figure it out, but also wanting to dictate its terms.”

Hmm. I see where your “manic” and my “overbearing” dovetail. But then, as you note above, McCartney’s mania spills over (in the form of staccato, high-pitched singing) into the bridge that you claim completely undermines it.

“But I certainly have to disagree with your interpretation of Lennon's vocal. The single-note style, for one, has nothing to do with naturalism - it's because he wrote songs on his guitar, and since he wasn't a very good player he preferred progressions that required limited hand movement.”

The phenomena of a single-note melody and an uncomplicated chord progression are not necessarily connected, and I don’t think they are in Lennon’s case. A wide, far-flung melody can be sung over a single chord. (Example: the first line of “When I’m Sixty-Four,” everything up to “many years from now” is over a single chord, for example, with the first change happening on “now” – unless I’m misremembering/mishearing). Meanwhile, the same note can be sung over complicated and rapidly changing chord progressions. (For example, the Lennon-composed “If I Fell” changes chords on almost every word, but the notes of his melody move in small increments. Also, a listen to other songs in the Beatles canon shows that even when Lennon has devised a harmony vocal on a progression built by McCartney, he still very doggedly will keep things on a single note if the progression allows it.) Melody need not be dictated by what chords can or cannot be played. The reason Lennon’s melodies are low on incident and tend to lack a lot of jumps in intervals is because Lennon sought melody in a naturalistic way, i.e, seeking out a note for the new chord that was as close as possible to the note he’d previously sung. Which is to say, he didn’t fuss over complicated melodies – life was too short. :)

“But even if I were to agree that Lennon's vocal sounds like it's being spoken, anything less than McCartney's intensity provides a contrast whereby that same intensity is made to seem excessive.”

But again, as noted above, the bridge also contains McCartney’s vocal right on top of it. If you’re arguing that “desperation” characterizes the “optimistic” verse/chorus, then doesn’t that desperation carry over into the staccato and high-pitched plaintive cry of “life is very short and there’s no tiiiime”?

“I'm perhaps reading too much of their biographies into the song, but I don't think that's unfair with the Beatles.”

I agree, perfectly fair, but at the same time ...

“He doesn't care if he wins the argument, his delivery sounds snide because 'fussing and fighting' is all he and Cynthia ever do. He's 'asking once again', but he knows it's useless”

This all seems like a lot of “reading in” to stuff that isn’t actually in the text of the song. Other than implication based on vocal tone, there’s nothing to suggest he doesn’t care, or that his “asking once again” is useless. Indeed, if he thinks it’s useless, why is he asking again? I’d say “asking again” implies the opposite, that he thinks there’s a point in asking.

“it's still incredibly intimate, not at all universal.”
If it’s all about Cynthia, then yes, it is. But I think that’s too much reading in. “Life is too short for fussing and fighting, my friend.” That’s contextualizing one argument in the frame of life in general.

“When we read that on to McCartney's performance, we get the sense that he may be equally hopeless - but only because Lennon's there to provide the subtext.”

I realize it might be hairsplitting, this argument, because I of course agree that the two sections enrich each other – I just don’t think it’s an “optimism”/”pessimism” dichotomy. It is McCartney who sings, “If we see it your way, there’s a chance that we might fall apart before too long.” That – along with his worry that he might eventually not be able to “go on -- is as pessimistic as anything in Lennon’s bridge, so I can’t see how it is Lennon who is solely providing that darker angle, either as text or subtext.

(You know, it suddenly strikes me as hilarious that we’re arguing about a song that itself is about an argument. Try and see it my way, Neil! Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?)

Neil Said...

Hey Jason - great discussion. I'll make only a couple quick comments.

"Indeed, if he thinks it’s useless, why is he asking again? I’d say 'asking again' implies the opposite, that he thinks there’s a point in asking."

Because I think that Lennon is going through the motions. I don't have my copy of 'Revolution in the Head' nearby, but I seem to recall that this song was written only months after other Lennon pieces like 'Nowhere Man' and 'Norwegian Wood'. There's a certain nihilism and self-defeating angle to a lot of his lyrics at this time. Lennon hasn't quite figured out what he wants out of life just yet, and so he's asking simply because he's supposed to. And don't the lyrics admit this much? 'There's no time for fussing and fighting my friend' is contrasted with 'so i will ask you once again', as if they realize it's an inescapable trap that demands a certain performance that will never yield a desirable result.

"'Life is too short for fussing and fighting, my friend.' That’s contextualizing one argument in the frame of life in general."

Except that the Beatles, and Lennon in particular, tended to draw the great majority of their material directly from their lives. There's a personal story behind nearly everything John wrote. I would also be remiss if I didn't point out that Lennon himself would later claim that every song he wrote was about him and spoke to specifically to his own life. But he had a certain revisionary streak. :)

"(You know, it suddenly strikes me as hilarious that we’re arguing about a song that itself is about an argument. Try and see it my way, Neil! Do I have to keep on talking till I can’t go on?)"

But if I see it your way, there's a chance that things my fall apart before too long!

And it's a song about an unending argument, no less. It's really just a metaphor for the internet, isn't it? :)

Brad Winderbaum's Satacracy 88.10.2

The new episode of Brad Winderbaum's Satacracy 88 is up at itsallinyourhands.com. It is the 70th most watched clip on youtube.



This installment stars Kirk Ward, the title character in Brad's student film, The Futurist. His freakout in the final moments of this episode makes the whole thing for me -- this guy seems like he jumped right out of a comic book.