Patrick on Joss Whedon: Joy, Art, and Realism

[Patrick sent me this as a guest blog. This is territory we cover every once and a while on this blog, but it is also one of my favorite topics, and also one that never really ends. So I thought I would print this, weigh in, and then see how interested everyone is in the comments.]

Recently on the CGS message WetRats had some interesting comments on the current direction of Marvel Comics.

I read the latest Daredevil today at lunch. It was incredibly well-written. But I'm dropping the book. I've come to the realization that nothing good is ever going to happen to Matt Murdoch. And I don't want to keep watching an endless series of horrible things happening to a character I care about. Upon thinking more about it, I realized that's the way I feel about the entire Marvel Universe. There's no heroes in Marvel anymore, only survivors. Nobody triumphs, they only win the latest fight. Nothing gets better for anybody. Nobody is happy. There is no joy in Marvel.

I must say that gave expression to a great deal of my thoughts and feelings toward Buffy post Season Six. The senseless whacking of Tara and Willow's subsequent descent into nerd-flaying marked the end of both the sense of the Scoobs as a family (you know, what the series WAS ABOUT), and the possiblity of any real sense of fun or joy in the series. After S6 all I see are endless series of horrible things happening to people I care deeply about, there are no heroes , no triumphs, nothing ever gets better, nobody is happy and there's no joy, either in the characters or the storytelling (and no I don't believe for a second Whedon ever intended to resurrect Tara).

I realize a lot of fans respond to this and that a lot the time this is how "real life" is.

Yet, I am kinda of the opinion that art or literature(especially escapist fiction like Buffy) is under NO obligation to reflect "real life" to that soul-killing extreme. If anything I believe one of the key purposes of art is illuminate and even REDEEM our bleak, crummy world totally absent of time travel and jet-powered apes.

The most recent issue of Season Eight has kinda confirmed this suspection. Whedon seems to have no interest in healing the divisions between Buffy and Willow and only wants to further the rift. I highly doubt they will even be friends anymore by the time issue 25 comes out.

I'm going to continue with the fandom for as long as I can, but I'm starting to think it would be less and less of a major loss to get off the bus at any point.

I could be entirely wrong about this. Opinions?

[Well, here is mine. "The senseless whacking of Tara and Willow's subsequent descent into nerd-flaying...". In order to talk about this, I have to separate these two things, because they are quite different, in my opinion, and take us to the heart of the issue.

Tara's senseless death was shocking, which was fully intentional: on a show that often focuses on heroes and heroic violence, often in a flip way, here comes something brutal and absurd. I thought Tara's death was one of the more amazing things about the Buffy run -- it showed a capacity for surprise six seasons in (not an easy thing to do); the emotional shock was real and powerful; because conflict is the essence of drama, as McKee puts so forcefully, there must be a cost for heroism, and this is a serious one; it offers an important counterpoint to Buffy's self sacrifice -- there is more to the story than people dying heroically to save others; it is a moving and necessary consequence of Willow's decision to play with black magic, regardless of how well intentioned -- we can't have her draining the blood from a deer to bring back Buffy and then nothing, everything is right with the world. For me this works, this is strong writing.

For many fans it was the wrong choice, but this judgement is muddied by the fact that the Buffy story, from this moment on, becomes badly told. Unlike Angel, who we really get to spend time with as a bad guy before his redemption, Whedon has hardly any time to establish Willow as evil, and redeem her -- the whole thing is rushed, and a mess. Also Wheon loves "Ally" as he calls her, and does not really have the desire to write her as evil, and it shows. By the time the deaths of the series finale come along more than a year later, Whedon's core "Scooby Gang" (Buffy, Willow, Xander, and Giles) will have become an awful smug and safe little clique, in no danger of real change (which, I counter, was what the show was really about); because someone has to die, it becomes everyone around them, characters that had more complex life to them, like Anya (the demon trying to fit into a world where she can never be fully redeemed) and Spike (the rapist who feels real love). Most fans will tell you that the end of season six and arguably all of season seven are bad, but it is because the story is being badly told, not because of the subject matter. And here come my point:

Shakespeare's King Lear -- a horrific vision of nihilism -- cannot be dismissed as a soul-killing picture of a bleak, crummy world totally absent of time travel and jet-powered apes. It cannot be dismissed in that way because, for all of its dark subject matter, you have to be happy to have found something that well written. In that way the crummy real world is redeemed -- because you just experienced a work of unbridled GENIUS. The content is not the point, the form, the language, is.

I think Patrick is right to be angry and frustrated with Whedon to a point. But I think he is mistaking the cause of that frustration. Just as in the context of Shoot Em Up I argued that you cannot expect your "cool" content to do the work for you, you have to write it well, so here a bleak story is not why we should dismiss the end of Buffy season 6 and most of season 7. We should dismiss it because it is badly written.

As for sticking with a book, that depends on whether you think you are getting enough well told story for your time and money, and whether you want to stick it out. I have invested in the Buffy canon and I am going to stick it out for a while, but I also would not grab someone and force it into their hands as I would The Wire.]

James at Newsarma (Comment Pull Quote)

[This is sort of a comment pull quote. James, in the free form comments, pointed us to his voice-of-reason response to a review of Messiah Complex over at Newsarama.]

Over at Newsarama Troy Brownfield, reviewing Messiah Complex, wrote:

Cyclops finally acknowledged what the readers have always known: the X-Men don’t stop bank-robbers; the X-Men are fighting for the survival of an entire species. There’s no time left to be nice, and people die in wars. The acceptance of this concept by Cyclops is the first significant advancement in his character in a while, and I think that it makes him a more modern, and believable, leader.

Our own James thankfully replied

Wow, really? Have you been reading Astonishing X-Men? Let's do some recent history.

- Morrison is brought on to give the X-Men a Bold New Direction. Early on in the run, Cyclops bombs a facility in China, and Wolverine comments "So we're allowed to do stuff like this now?" "Let's see who complains" comes Scott's reply. This stance becomes muddied as Morrison's run unravels, but it's a strong moment nonetheless.

- Morrison's run ends, and Editorial decides the X-Men have been moved too far away from their Identity Politics origins, and a Bold New Direction is needed. The mutant minority genie goes back into the bottle with House Of M, and celebrity writer Joss Whedon is given a new title to give Morrison's team an iconic, Claremont-esque re-makeover.

- Whedon ostensibly gives Marvel what they want, while actually writing a more-or-less direct sequel to Morrison's run. As the (much-delayed) run progresses, the focus shifts from a Kitty-centric introduction to the fulfillment of Morrison's rehabilitation of Cyclops. Scott becomes a heroic, decisive leader, has the stick removed from his ass and gains full control of his powers. This fanboy swoons.

- Meanwhile, editorial decides that what the X-Men really need is a mega-epic giant X-over, like from the 90s! And this can include a REALLY Bad-Ass Cyclops, who yells at Professor X and is all about the killing. It reverses most of the character development going on in Whedon's title? Who cares, that late-ass book is nearly over!

Responding to Brownfield's statement that

Wolverine has a new respect for Cyclops, and while I don’t see them becoming best friends, I think that this is important for the family of titles.

James wrote

This is a change in the status quo? Anyone still writing the Wolverine/Cyclops relationship as "You're out of line mister!" "You're a lame square Cyke snikt snikt bub" is some sort of nostalgic throwback maniac. Morrison had them interact like adults, even moving the Scott/Logan/Jean triangle out of the playground. Whedon starts his run with the classic Scott/Logan fight over Jean, but it soon becomes clear that this is to recap/introduce new readers to the relationship, and it's not long before Wolverine says "Sometimes I remember why you're in charge". We didn't need Messiah Complex to reconcile the two, and we certainly didn't need the catalyst to be "Cyclops becomes as bloodthirsty as Early Wolverine".

Jason Powell on Classic X-Men #12, part a (UXM #104)

[Jason Powell continues his issue by issue look at Claremont's X-Men. For more in this series see the toolbar on the right. Powell makes an especially interesting argument about the significance of a minor Defenders story in the overall X-Men history.]

“The Gentleman’s Name Is Magneto”

We come, at last, to the first appearance of Chris Claremont’s Magneto. In the original version of this story published in X-Men #104, it’s pretty obvious that Claremont hadn’t yet struck upon the notion of the noble Magneto. This character is still very much a continuation of the Silver Age characterization, in which he was all-out evil and more or less psychotic. Also, the idea that Magneto had history with Professor X before X-Men #1 has not been established yet, although the new pages that are unique to Classic X-Men #12 do acknowledge that backstory. (The new pages in this issue are drawn by Dave Cockrum, which is pretty great.)

So, there’s not much to really examine here in terms of characterization. Magneto is just another lackey of Eric the Red here, like Havok, Polaris, Juggernaut and Black Tom before him. He’s out to kill the X-Men, and even though five of the six he faces here are people he’s never met before, he still hates them just for being students of Charles Xavier. When the five new X-Men first show up to fight him, he refers to himself as “your oldest, deadliest foe,” which is sort of an odd thing to say to five people you’ve never met before.

This is the first appearance of Muir Island, a giant Scottish island all owned by Moira MacTaggert. We finally get the “true” story behind her here: she is a peer of Charles Xavier in the field of mutant studies, and she lives alone on Muir, inside of a giant laboratory. We learn that her home is not only a place of study but also a makeshift prison for evil mutants captured by the X-Men. Magneto has been here ever since he was turned into a baby.

Magneto’s last appearance before this was in a two-part Defenders arc (in issues 15-16 of that series). At the climax of that story, he and his latest Brotherhood (consisting of Mastermind, Unus, Blob and Lorelei), an artificially created mutant called Alpha magically transformed all the villains into babies. (The story is written by Len Wein, and it isn’t exactly a classic.)

The process is apparently easily undone: Eric the Red uses “some sort of ray” to turn Magneto back into an adult. Now, it should be noted that for a superhero comic, this is all pretty standard procedure: One story leaves a villain trapped in a certain situation, and the next story to use that villain must come up with a way to get the villain out of that predicament and back in action. That’s all Claremont does here. However, the specifics of this particular ploy will have far-reaching consequences. At some point a couple years down the track, it will occur to Claremont that if Magneto was de-aged early in his villain career and then restored to his prime, it means his age before that point can be whatever Claremont wants it to be, and the origin of Magneto (at this point still unrevealed), if tied into a certain historic period, will never have to be updated. The reduced-to-infancy gimmick draws a line through Magneto’s history, allowing his story before that line to be immutable (unlike Storm’s tie-in with the Suez crisis, which – as already discussed – was forced to be updated, or Professor Xavier’s military history that tied into the Korean War, but which would eventually have to be updated to Vietnam).

So what Len Wein did by de-aging Magneto in a throwaway Defenders story is fairly significant – it’s what will ultimately allow Claremont to make Magneto a survivor of the Holocaust, which is a huge, amazing, brilliant idea. More on that when we come to it.

In the meantime, Magneto is simply a badass villain, made all the more formidable by Cockrum and Claremont’s shrewd decision to have him win here. Cyclops has a great line: “The old X-Men could [beat Magneto] – but Magneto was a baby when the new team was formed! ... They’re good kids ... but against Magneto, they haven’t a prayer!” I love the way that line simultaneously reinforces that the new X-Men are still relatively green, while also playing up Magneto as a major villain to be reckoned with. (And there’s a third, subtler effect: Cyclops thinking of the other X-Men as kids, implying that he – at least in his own mind – has shifted into the mentor role that Charles occupied for the original team.)

A significant subplot begins here, in which Mutant X “comes awake.” This will not be resolved for another 20 issues or so, and not in the form that Claremont originally intended. More on that when we get to it, too.

LOST Season 4 Episode 1 (Spoilers)

The first episode of LOST season four was solid. I have no complaints. The teaser to the the first episode of season four was not as striking as the openers to season's one, two and three, but it was not bad. This did what I want a Lost episode to do --

Introduce a bunch of random mysterious stuff: Why the Oceanic 6? Did only 6 people make it back? Kate, Jack, Hurley, and three more (one of whom may be dead)? Did Hurley make it back some other way, since he went with Locke -- he apologizes for that, which suggests they have not talked much since then, a period which would include the ride home, if they went together. What does Lt. Daniels from the Wire (!) want with Hurley? What is Charlie's status? What did they do that day that Jack is afraid Hurley will tell someone about? Why is Jacob communicating with Hurley now? Why did Naomi not tell the ship she was attacked? What is the status of the "rescuers?" My brain can see this is all dumb, but I love it. It is an irrational addiction.

Have great character moments: Jack firing the gun, the castaways choosing sides, Hurley telling Clare about Charlie, Hurley and Charlie, Ben worried about his daughter. And that patented LOST emotional King Lear rain, which is ridiculous, but which I have come to love. Got a serious moment? Here comes the shower.

And the whole thing of course moves us just the slightest step forward, which many people hate, but it is genius because it allows LOST to do so much that no other TV show can do -- tell a variety of stories (practical survival, ghosts, time travel, four guys fix a bus, Alfred Hitchcock presents [Paolo and Nikki]) because the "rules" are never clearly laid out as they are on Buffy. You cannot have a Buffy episode where everyone just fixes a truck.

Really the best thing about the new "flash-forward structure" (really still flashbacks, just with a newly established present) is that I now care equally about the two time periods, just as I did in the beginning. The show is refreshed, not an easy thing to do three seasons in. There was a while there, when the connection between the Island story and the flashbacks was often just thematic, and I would tune a bit out and be eager to get back to the island. Not any more.

I will say that I found myself a little less emotionally involved in this episode than in episodes past. I attribute that to the fact that I know this is all just going to stop, for no narrative reason, seven weeks from now, with no word on when it will return.

Comics Out January 30, 2008

Batman 673. Morrison, in his continued war with Frank Miller (click the label for more), takes his Batman, after a Dark Knight Returns moment last issue, to Year One. He tries to make and end run around Miller by characterizing Miller's style as an affectation Batman uses when writing his cases down to entertain Alfred ("I practice that self-conscious, hard boiled style Alfred loves to read. Anything to keep it interesting). Morrison's Batman, you see, is the real thing, while Miller's is a merely a mannered pose, something Batman pretends to be. Morrison's version of Year One has Joe Chill and Eastern Mysticism. It's not badly written or badly drawn, but it feels like a lot of Batman comics I have already read. The Bat-Mite was to be Morrison's saving grace here, the thing Miller could never do, but he leaves the possibility that it is just a hallucination a la Ally McBeal (of all things -- we are a notch away from the dancing baby). It may save him yet if he has the guts to do something really interesting with it, but we will have to see on that point. "Make it work" as Tim Gunn always says.

Quick question: where are Morrison's editors? In this issue Batman writes his cases down in an "A4" spiral bound notebook, which is a Brit thing. I suppose they could be from Alfred, but you see my point -- even if a Brit gave you A4 paper you would not call it that so casually. I don't fault Morrison for these miniscule gaffs, but I often see editors at DC fail to americanize the scripts of their British writers. In Morrison's JLA somewhere The Flash, invited to something, says he will have to check his "diary" by which he means "calendar."

Notice also, Grant Morrison knocked out in Joe Chill's hideout. He has the purple glasses.

In comics news, Y the Last Man, which I have not read, ends, and the new Captain America uniform debuted -- go to the guest blog part of the tool bar on the right to see Erin's takedown of it when it previewed.