My guess is that you’ve noticed this already, but the comics blogosphere has exploded recently. I think it’s doubled in size since September or so, no kidding. Perhaps, then, it’s a good time to point out why blogs are, when done right, good–and not, as their detractors claim, just a bunch of assholes on soapboxes barking at the moon without bothering with discussion or dissent.

I don’t know what blogs you’ve been reading, but I’m pretty sure that if they’re any good (and I try to make mine “any good”) there’s discussion and differences of opinion aplenty. I’m unapologetic about the fact that my blog has no comments feature and no messboard or forum: This is a dictatorship, not a democracy, and a big part of the attraction of running a blog the way I run mine is to not have to put up with trolls, either of the straightforward namecalling variety or the TCJ.com type who hijack every thread about topics they don’t approve of into endless, resolution-free arguments about whether that topic even deserves to be discussed in the first place.

That being said, I ASSURE you that the discussions and differences of opinion I’ve encountered through the use of my un-user-friendly, heavily-moderated blog are, on average, about a billion times more interesting, intelligent, and rewarding than messboard discussions I’ve participated on about those same topics, or any other topic, for that matter. The comicsphere is diverse, articulate, insightful, and demanding of high quality from comics. The discussions and debates that have gone on between me, Dirk Deppey, Bill Sherman, Alan David Doane, Johnny Bacardi, Eve Tushnet, Franklin Harris, NeilAlien, Jim Henley, John Jakala, David Fiore, JW Hastings, Shawn Fumo, Tegan Gjovaag and on and on (links in the blogroll) are, I submit, the best comics-related discussions you’re likely to find–and they’ve been waged, in the main, through posts on blogs. (UPDATE: I think it’s also important to note, given what appears to be becoming conventional wisdom about comicsbloggers, that as a group these are some of the most passionate, enthusiastic advocates of good comics around. Hell, you could even call me an “activist” if you wanted….)

I think a problem that most people who don’t like “blogs” have is that they picture the least-good blog imaginable and attack that as the norm: Blogs that discuss an article or issue without linking to it, blogs that pontificate and then don’t link to or respond to worthwhile counterarguments, etc. Ted Rall did something exactly like that–saying blogs take stuff out of context, crush free speech, etc. (before, of course, with the charming hypocrisy that has become his trademark, he launched a blog of his own). In that Comics Pimp thread at the Brian Wood forums, Matt Brady just did the same thing, saying that Doane’s little “dancing monkey” gag wouldn’t be clicked through to the original post by its readers–ignorant of the fact that a one-line link is THE link most likely to be clicked through by blog readers, since on the whole such readers really DO want to know the context of things.

I’m not one of these “blogging is the future” people, but I will say that in my experience blogs are a far more useful means of discussing a topic with other intelligent people than any other venue on the web.

Another powerful post from Amanda, this one on the aftermath of the Green River killings. Worth reading, and more than once if, like me, you sometimes find that your “fascination” with serial killers causes you to gloss over the pain felt by their victims, both living and dead.

Amanda’s post on Lucy, our cat, moved me to tears.

Like the guys running around the mall in Dawn of the Dead, I’m continuing the mopping-up operation.

Bill Sherman and Johnny Bacardi have finished their thoughtful film-by-film responses to my 13 Days of Halloween movie selections. Bill uses the occasion to propose three categories for horror fans: old-schoolers, thrill-seekers, and purists. (You can guess which category I fall into.) He’s also got some thought-provoking comments on the differing tactics of The Shining and Blair Witch, by way of explaining why he prefers the latter. Johnny, meanwhile, runs down my top six, with an eye on how the venues in which one sees such films can affect how effective you view them to be. He also offers critical beatdowns of Nicholson’s performance in The Shining (the way his character is written and performed is a sticking point for many Shining detractors) and, in a separate post worth reading for his hilarious description of the film’s central fright device as “a weird Nine Inch Nails video” alone, The Ring. He also adds Last House on the Left and The Devil’s Backbone to my must-see list….

Jason Adams is also responding to the horrorthon, with a series of posts commenting on my choices and suggesting his own. The first takes issue with the climax and priestly protagonists of The Exorcist, which in my opinion are the two strongest aspects of the film. However, he does raise (mainly in his second post) the interesting issue of how Ellen Burstyn’s mother character is shuffled offstage while the Men of God duke it out with the Devil. Do you think a message is being conveyed there? I sure do. Still, Jason Miller’s performance is too heartbreaking, and that climax too crescendoingly terrifying, to write them off just because Burstyn’s powerful presence was absent. Anyway, post #2 also nominates Frenzy (onto the gotta-see list with ye!) over both Psycho and The Birds as the most appalling Hitchcock film, which in both of our books is ultimately a good thing to be. Jason’s third post nominates and subsequently rejects Rosemary’s Baby, Seven, and The Game as the movies that most horrified him, and finally goes with Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream. I’d say that the latter two have to go on that to-see list, but I’m starting to sound like a broken record, aren’t I?

The two Daves of The Intermittent offer dueling posts on the failure of comics to generate truly horrifying moments, and on what makes for a horrifying moment generally. Dave Intermittent says that it’s hard for comics to shock the reader with anywhere near the force that film can, and that the medium therefore has emphasized “conceptual horror,” which as he delineates it is more effective when focusing on the horror of awful human behavior. Dave Jon tries to trump his colleague’s arguments by saying that yeah, comics can shock, and they can disturb, and they can fail at both too–ultimately it’s in the eye of the beholder. This is of course true, but the same can be said of any kind of emotional or intellectual response engendered by art–“beauty” and “goodness” and “suckiness” and whatever else is all ultimately in the eye of the beholder. The job of the critic is to sift through her own responses to find out what is prompting them, and why, and whether this can be extrapolated to other art. I don’t think this is as useless or reductive an enterprise as Dave J. seems to suggest. But as to his rhetorical question of “what is horror?”, I recommend Noel Carroll’s masterful book The Philosophy of Horror and H.P. Lovecraft’s seminal treatise Supernatural Horror in Literature. Taken together, they’re offer the best definition of what makes horror-art horrifying around, and I can’t stress strongly enough how much people who are really serious about the scary stuff should read these.

I’ve been thinking about Eve Tushnet’s comments on our difference of opinion re: Kubrick’s The Shining, specifically how she wants films about sin, not Calvinism, and how I have a much higher tolerance for “random, absurd evil” than she does. You know what? This makes a great deal of sense. In my struggles with Christianity and the notion of an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent God, I’ve never been able to buy the tortuous logic by which Catholicism and the mainstream Protestants say “see? it really does all make sense, and it’s good, honest.” I think that when you accept the basic precepts of Judeo-Christian monotheism, you’ve either got to go the completely nonjudgmental, essentially nondenominational route my wife has, or the predestination route of the Calvinists; everything in between is a dodge born out of unwillingness to actually follow the “logic” of faith to its inevitable, contradictory conclusions. (A succint example would be this whole “God didn’t create evil, since evil is just the absesnce of good” jive–what, is Creation like a condom with airbubbles in it that He got too excited and forgot to smooth out?) I’m an unbeliever, mainly, yeah, but nevertheless I’m still not satisfied with my unbelief; so I see a real appeal in the essential capriciousness of the universe present in what I guess Eve would call “Calvinist horror.” Sin, meanwhile, I see as nothing but a bonafide racket. (I’ve got very, very little use for guilt and shame, even though that’s pretty much what shapes my whole personality if you ask my therapist; honor and duty–that’s another story entirely.) So to sum up: I like The Shining. (If that was confusing, my apologies. Hey, there’s a reason I don’t talk about religion all that much around here.)

Finally, it was truly an honor to see Dirk Deppey break his comics-only commandments to compliment the horror-blogging I’ve been doing. Seriously, if he’d started a thread on the topic he’d have been booted off his own messageboard. Damn the Man, Dirk! And thank you! (And another movie, Audition, gets added to the list….)

(now UPDATED with several more pieces)

I’ve got to tell you: It’s a relief not to have to watch a movie today. Those two-hour chunks of time can be difficult to cram into your schedule, even a schedule as goofy as mine. And when it’s mandatory, that introduces a whole nother level of stress into the proceedings. (I know, I know–wow, watching your favorite movies every day, what a drag.)

In all seriousness, though, I really enjoyed my little horrorblogging marathon. My mission, aside from providing some entertaining content for the blog, was to get back in touch with those films, and the part of me that loved watching them so much. Mission accomplished, without question. It was tremendously enjoyable to immerse myself in horror for that long, and I loved the debates and discussions that arose from the process. And, of course, the movies were good.

I’m also happy with the way I broke down the month. My original plan was to watch a horror movie a day for the duration of the month, which I quickly realized was asking way too much of my wife and my employers. The Missus suggested that I limit it to a 13-day countdown ending on Halloween, and also forced me to stick to this when it finally came time to select the Top 13 movies. Much as I hated whittling down my favorites to fit the guidelines, I think the overall 13 Days of Halloween project benefitted a great deal from the editing involved. From the comments I’ve received in the blogosphere, via email, and in the comments sections at Blogcritics, I did a good job, which is extremely gratifying to hear. (As I think I mentioned, I was very nervous about how florid my prose became, but with few exceptions people seemed to really enjoy the style, or at least what I was using it to say.)

That being said, it pretty much killed me to leave out Deliverance, Psycho, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Nightbreed, Taxi Driver, Summer of Sam, the little-seen biopic Dahmer, and the fantastic documentary The American Nightmare out of both the big list and the runner-up posts that allowed me to talk about Heavenly Creatures, The Thing, Jeepers Creepers, 28 Days Later, and Della’morte Dell’amore. I also would have loved to talk about the films of David Cronenberg, M. Night Shyamalan, Steven Spielberg, Brian DePalma, and (other than Lost Highway, which I did include) David Lynch–not to mention Night of the Hunter, Cries & Whispers, Rosemary’s Baby, Jacob’s Ladder, Shallow Grave, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, Poltergeist, 1984, Day of the Dead, M, The Stand, Ghostbusters, Aliens, Batman…. Believe me when I tell you that the list goes on.

On the plus side, all the horror-related blogging this marathon helped inspire put a whole bunch of movies on my to-see list, the first time this has happened in such large quantities since college. I’m really looking forward to wading through the suggestions. Hell, maybe they’ll give me something to talk about next October….

A few more links to wrap this all up. (Actually, I can’t imagine that being the case–I have a feeling I’ll be horrorblogging, albeit with less… intensity, for some time to come.)

Bill Sherman has two more posts commenting on my choices for the Top 13. The first focuses on Night of the Lving Dead, particularly on its chilling depiction of night itself; the second on the pros and cons of Lost Highway, The Exorcist and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Johnny Bacardi submits a gorgeous piece on horror comics (the second such piece to come out of the comicsphere in honor of Halloween, the first being Bill’s). He also promises more analysis of my 13 Days, and I’m waiting not so patiently.

Jason Adams brings us a history of Halloween. Meanwhile, John Jakala agrees with Jason’s assertion that given person’s Ring/Ringu preference depends on which one that person saw first.

Jason Kimble joins the attack against anti-genre snobbery of the type that labels horror-genre films “genre-busting visions” if they happen to be any good.

Bruce Baugh becomes the latest person to unconsciously harrass me into buying the horror manga Uzumaki. (Speaking of which, John Jakala, I haven’t gotten Tomie in the mail yet….)

In an oldie but goodie, Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle calls The Exorcist a Western. Interesting, though interpretations of The Exorcist lose points for arguing that the film is not scary, which is just preposterous.

Eve Tushnet continues our debate about the morality, or lack thereof, of Grosse Pointe Blank, and also explains why she prefers Stephen King’s The Shining to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. (If you’re interested, my favorite King books are It, The Stand, Night Shift and Skeleton Crew–I always say that he’s at his best when he’s over 1,000 pages or under 100–though as far as the regular-length novels go I like ‘Salem’s Lot and Christine.) She also says she hasn’t seen The Exorcist, which she must do. At night.

Steven Bissette is a legendary, now-retired horror-comics artist whose passion for and interest in the genre clearly hasn’t waned. He gives an interview to Comic Book Resources that is one of the most fascinating and intelligent examples of horror theory and criticism I’ve ever seen. He defines the genre too broadly for my tastes (yes, there are parts of Jimmy Corrigan and Maus that are horrifying, but define them as “horror” and the word has lost its ability to describe a proper genre), but other than that it’s just great reading.

Finally, two last things:

A sincere and heartfelt thank you to all the bloggers and readers who praised the work I did on Where the Monsters Go and The 13 Days of Halloween. Your kind words, and your contributions to the discussion, truly made the project worthwhile.

And a note for all those who were genuinely in suspense regarding my choice for The Scariest Movie I’ve Ever Seen: That’s what the search function is for! Boo!

You can’t swing a dead cat around the comicsphere these days without hitting a post dedicated to either writer Tony Isabella’s fight with his former employers, DC Comics, over his character Black Lightning, or bloggers Alan David Doane & John Pierce’s issue-taking with the methods and motives of columnist-retailer-“activist” James Sime, aka The Comics Pimp. Would it surprise you if I said I felt that in both cases, all the sides are wrong? (To some degree, at least.)

First, let’s take the case of Isabella v. DC. Tony argues (here and here) that a recent plotline in Green Arrow (written by Judd Winick) in which the Black Lightning character murders a man in cold blood (albeit because the man himself committed a serious crime) a) runs contrary to how Black Lightning would “really” act; b) is part of a long-running pattern of DC abusing Tony and his creation particularly and c) black superheroes generally. I don’t think that DC has responded, but Winick has offered something of an apology (along the lines of “I was sorry to hear Tony was upset”), along with assurance that this plotline was his idea and not part of any larger anti-BL or anti-TI conspiracy on the part of DC editorial.

Here’s the problem: Having seen Winick speak in person, and being familiar with his persona and politics generally, he seems to be one of the last people on whom DC could count to keep the black man down, as it were. Winick’s as liberal as they come, and the time I did see him speak (at San Diego Comic Con 2001, I believe), he passionately defended the decision of Warner Bros. to include the black Green Lantern, John Stewart, in the then-upcoming Justice League cartoon–regardless of their real motives, Winick argued, it’s important that African-Americans be represented in the TV incarnation of the World’s Greatest Superheroes. I don’t see him thinking to himself “Gee, black guys murder people all the time–why not have Black Lightning do something like that?” It just doesn’t wash. Nor do I see him “deliberately” targeting a Tony Isabella creation for any reason. Tony seems to think that because he emailed Winick several months ago regarding his objection to the proposed storyline, Winick’s refusal to amend the storyline is a purposeful slap in the face. I think Tony needs to realize that there’s a difference between going out of one’s way to irritate or offend someone and simply refusing to buckle if someone happens to be irritated or offended by what one is doing–particularly if one doesn’t believe one’s really doing anything wrong (or even just mistaken or dopey).

The larger problem with Tony’s arguments, though, is the abuse he’s been directing toward people who take issue with them. It appears that in Tony’s view, no one who disagrees with him has a heart, much less a clue–they’re all ignorant, or maliciously impugning his character, or both. To a certain degree, this line is to be expected from the somewhat irascible Isabella; politically, for example, he’s a rabidly liberal attack dog who slings epithets at the “Wrong Wing” and the “Repugs” that’d make Michael Moore blush. In other words, he’s not really in the business of admitting that the other side may be arguing in good faith. But that’s an explanation, not an excuse, and this attitude will get him nowhere except with people who are predisposed to agree with his side of the story to begin with. If he really wants to successfully make his case, it simply won’t do to get furious at people for not immediately agreeing to, say, the notion that a major corporation is pursuing a vendetta against this one guy who created a relatively obscure superhero a couple decades ago. Regardless of whether or not it’s actually true, it is hard to believe at first glance, and “first glance” is exactly what most people are are now getting regarding this situation.

So when blogger Kevin Melrose questions whether Tony’s feud with DC isn’t really an Old Guard-New Guard thing, he’s not “impugning” anything, particularly not Tony’s “character”; he is questioning Tony’s motives, and how that’s “not deserving of a response” in an argument such as this is beyond me. Moreover, as Graeme McMillan points out, in his effort to take on DC’s entire race-relations legacy, Tony’s been making some unfair and misleading statements regarding the treatment of black characters versus the treatment of superheroes in general. If DC’s malfeasance is as clear-cut as Tony says it is, it seems like he wouldn’t have to resort to points like John Stewart’s dithering leading to the destruction of a planet, particularly when the primary, white Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, went nuts and wiped out solar systems and such.

All that being said, Tony’s got a lot on his side. The vagaries of the contracutal dealings between comics companies and comics creators at the time when Tony created Black Lightning leave him with a substantial stake–at the very least personal, and quite arguably legal and financial–in the future of that character. Historically he’s been a lot more involved in what goes on with Black Lightning than most people would expect. Additonally, there does appear to be a history of bad blood between DC and Isabella, and regardless of who happens to be in the right, it’s certainly conceivable that this grudge may come into play when Isabella or his creations come up in the course of plotting a book. And the lack of African-American superheroes of import or staying power is indeed an egregious one. Sending one of the few into the moral gray zone by turning him into an ersatz Punisher type makes building on this character’s legacy genuinely problematic. Finally, the big comics companies do not exactly have an untrammelled history of supporting the rights of the creators who’ve worked for them, and I see very little reason to automatically assume this came to an end with Siegel & Shuster getting credit for Superman and Jack Kirby getting some of his pages back from Marvel. In other words, we shouldn’t just write Tony off as a grumpy old crank who’s upset that “they” are ruining his baby, even if, unfortunately, that’s how he’s coming across.

—–

Tussle Number Two involves James Sime, owner of the comic shop Isotope and writer of the column “The Comics Pimp.” Sime’s column details the methods he employs to drum up comics sales at his store and raise comics awareness in general. It has a tendency to employ drug, military, and (obviously) soliticitation metaphors, to swear, and to get very excited about the introduction of new ideas into the debate as to how to “save” comics. Bloggers Alan David Doane and John Pierce object, arguing that Sime’s showy tactics and overheated rhetoric likely do more harm than good, that his methods are unproven and unsound, and that the whole enterprise is silly and self-congratulatory. (The meat of the “debate,” if it can be called that in its current state, can be found here, at the Brian Wood Forum.)

I’ll say this in Sime’s defense–as over-the-top and obnoxious as the presentation may be, some of his ideas are, in fact, good ones. The one that gets bandied about the most–selling comics in airports, or as Sime might put it, SELLING COMICS IN FUCKING AIRPORTS!–is actually a great idea, though likely financially and possibly logistically impossible, given the stranglehold national chain retailers of all kinds seem to have on airport concessions; simply put, there is no national comic-book chain, and therefore I don’t see any comic shops finding their way in there next to airport Bennigans’ and airport W.H. Smiths and airport McDonalds’. But that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried, and apparently that’s what Sime is doing. Moreover, it gets people thinking about the need for comics retailers and publishers to reconsider their venues, putting comics where people actually shop. It’s part and parcel of SLG selling their goth comics in Hot Topic stores, or the graphic novel sections found in Virgin and Tower Records, and so on. If it can be done–granted, that’s a big “if”–it would be fantastic for the business. UPDATE: forgot to mention this initially, but Alan isn’t exactly known for calm, non-antagonistic discussion, and his own bravado played a part in the donnybrook that this discussion quickly became.

On the other hand, I don’t think I even need to say how tedious the “guerilla marketing” and “pimpin’ ain’t easy” and “street teams attack public transportation” rhetoric is. God only knows how intelligent comics fans have come to see such bravado as the future of the medium–as though the ability to compete on the pop-cultural landscape is predicated on the degree to which one acts like a nightmare amalgamation of Eminem and a Battle-of-Seattle Black-Blocker. To a certain extent we can blame Warren Ellis, who virtually invented overheated-prose comics “activism” in his forum and its offshoots; perhaps we can also point the finger at Grant Morrison, who despite not really doing much activism on his own introduced the whole rockstar/radical/media-terrorist concept into comics in his series The Invisibles.

Here’s the thing about that, though: the rockstar concept is an important route for the growth of comics, through prominent, intelligent, presentable, cool-looking comics creators. (Indeed, you can bet your sweet bippy that’s the route I’ll be taking on the road to funnybook domination.) However, it’s important to keep rock-star brio and the attendant high profile of its possessors tethered to actual talent, which Morrison and Ellis (and Paul Pope and Alan Moore and so forth) have a great deal of. Stripped of talent, rockstar spectacle in comics can lead to the same empty, stupid crap that constitutes most other pop media–a world where Madonna can be mentioned in the same breath as Prince without people laughing in derision. (Seriously, when has Madonna recorded a single song as good as “Purple Rain,” much less an entire album as good as Purple Rain? But since both stars enganged in high spectacle, and Madonna has been more successful at this than Prince in the long run, we have to endure column inch after column inch about Madge’s flirtations with kabbalah and politics and motherhood and blah, blah, blah, as if she’s actually an artist.)

The point is that most of Sime’s ideas are unproven at best and (as in the case of leaving comics lying around on public transportation) transparently cost-ineffective and self-aggrandizing at worst. The idea that we should all clap our hands for him because he’s “doing something for comics” or “trying something different” is just silly–in the words of The Muppets Take Manhattan, if you want to try something different, “put some Jell-O down your pants.” We have to apply the same success-based, rational standards to comics activism that we would to any other (less flashy, or less worthy) endeavor. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that “guerilla activism” of the Comics Pimp style comes up short just as do similar facets of boosterish activism–“Team Comix,” “The New Mainstream,” the Marvel method of Press Attention At Any Price, etc.

And it really should go without saying that the ad hominems leveled against Sime detractors by his supporters–in some cases, by high-profile professionals like AiT/PlanetLar founder Larry Young, Newsarama head Matt Brady, and comics creator Brian Wood, all of whom should know better–are stupid beyond words. Ridiculing blogs as narcissitic peanut-gallery ranting, getting into “what have you done for comics lately?” pissing matches, and generally speaking in the same “ROCKS!!!/SUCKS!!!” Beavis-and-Buttheadisms that so grate in Sime’s original columns do nothing to shore up the notion that the Comics Pimp brand of activism is the wave of the future for intelligent comics and their fans.

The best thing I’ve heard so far on conservative Episcopalian’s grotesque freak-out after the consecration of the religion’s first openly gay bishop:

The actions taken by the New Hampshire Episcopalians are an affront to Christians everywhere. I am just thankful that the church’s founder, Henry VIII, and his wife Catherine of Aragon, and his wife Anne Boleyn, and his wife Jane Seymour, and his wife Anne of Cleves, and his wife Katherine Howard, and his wife Catherine Parr are no longer here to suffer through this assault on traditional Christian marriage.

Courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.

Recently I’ve gotten some emails from various anonymous-blogger acquaintances of mine taking me to task for giving people who write anonymously a hard time, or justifying their own use of pseudonyms. The thing is, I have no idea WHY. To the best of my knowledge I’ve never said anything about anonymous bloggers. Have I? Or–I know this sounds paranoid, but I’ve seen it happen–is someone claiming to be me making such statements someplace? Any light anyone could shed on the subject would be appreciated–the email link’s to the left.

UPDATE: Turns out that very email link is the problem. Apparently Kennyb got a little “creative” when he made it and wrote a bit about “anonymity is a sign of shame in one’s opinions” or something to that effect. So please note: Statements made by Cornell engineering graduates do not necessarily reflect the opinions held by Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat.

Why do spam email subject headings always end in a bunch of gibberish? You know, like “Awesome! Look and Feel 20 Years Younger! xupzknywxrik” or “Self Employed Health Insurance Free Quotes ygmwgbrmayfx hznt” or “Kill all junk a rp g orqsd” (you’ve got to love anti-spam spam). Surely they realize that this kinda sorta possibly maybe just might tip people off that the message is spam?

Why do Bollywood musicals always star a superhot woman and a schlubby guy? It’s inevitable: the woman will be gorgeous and the man will have a unibrow and be about 15 pounds overweight. I guess it’s a cultural thing?

(Was that what I think it was–an entry that didn’t even mention the word horror? Well, it was… Ed.)