Ah, fuck it.
The blogosphere is getting all Filthy in response to Jim Henley’s theory that Morrison’s latest graphic novel is “a guy thing.” I think it’s an interesting theory, and I probably think it’s more interesting than usual because a) I just got back from a weekend visit to the residential treatment facility my wife checked into for anorexia over the summer, immersing me for a few hours in the world of women with profoundly catastrophic relationships with the needs of their own bodies; b) It occurs to me that at least 50% of the horror images in the book stem from men either being penetrated or being immersed in something vaguely vaginal. Something to think about, certainly.
Everybody hates Bendis. Everybody is wrong, of course. (Take heart, Johnny!) Personally, I feel that objections to Bendis’s dialogue stem from its relatively unique position in comics–its mimickry of the staccato rhythm of actual human speech is familiar enough in motion-picture media (and even then people like Mamet and Bendis’s idol Aaron Sorkin can morph it into an overstylized schtick) but can be quite jarring when it appears in a comic. As for the Daredevil stories themselves, he occasionally has trouble with endings (they just sort of happen, regardless of what has come before), but I’ve found them to be among the most compelling to come along in the four or so years since I began reading comics again. Certainly Matt Murdock’s trajectory has been the most unpredictable of any genre character around. Finally, I think certain critics bring aboard some baggage regarding the “appropriate” depiction of race or gender issues, or even relatively trivial stuff like Bendis’s position as Marvel’s bald golden boy, that affect their perception of his work. (As for people who hate on Alex Maleev–sorry, I got nothin’.) Meanwhile, and unsurprisingly, Dave Fiore takes the opportunity to go off on a gorgeous little tangent on the need for realism, or the lack of such a need.
“Hello. My name is Christopher Butcher, and I am a Big-Two-bash-aholic.” Hi, Christopher.
Jimmy Palmiotti has had one experience of graphic novels at major bookstores, and I’ve had another. Both are on display at this Fanboy Rampage post and comment thread.
Dirk is gone. Never forgotten, though, believe me. (And he’s named Kevin Melrose as the inheritor to the throne, by the way. And rightly so.)
John Jakala comments on my Battle Royale/fanservice post. What can I say? It didn’t look like she was wearing pants. (Man, if I had a nickel.)
Considering the illuminating conversations I’ve had with both men, I’m excited to see the Eisner/Miller interview book they mentioned to me way back in the summer of 2001 is finally on its way. (Courtesy of Ken Lowery.)
Marvel Comics: Making Zombies Happy Again Since 2004. Sigh. (Courtesy of Marc-Oliver Frisch.)
I haven’t joined the blogosphere’s Losers lovefest, and judging from Steven Berg‘s review of the spy series, which pretty much confirms my first-glance impressions, I’m unlikely to do so.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Milo George, who, in pointing to yet another embarrasing creator freakout on the Comics Journal messboard (I’m not gonna bother to link to it–you’re allowed to kill yourself, but I’m not allowed to help you) and offering pro bono, er, analysis of the Larry Young Phenomenon, proves why he’s the boil on the ass of the Comics Internet Era of Good Feelings. God bless him.
Jason Kimble is one blogyear old! And Rick Geerling is back!
I’ve probably missed the continuing iterations of the Demo #6 debate, but I put in my two Scorsese-influenced cents at the fascinating Johnny B comment thread. Steven Berg keeps on digging, too, even though author Brian Wood wants him to dig in a different direction. The best thing to come out of this whole discussion (aside from offering us bloggers the chance to directly discuss a work with that work’s author, not to mention thereby putting our feelings on authorial intent to the test) is J.W. Hastings‘s masterful post on parsing the difference between meandering, messy, and ambiguous fiction. If you follow one link in this whole monstrous post, follow that one.
(Also, Dave Fiore asked via email for me to comment on the narrative and thematic similarities between Grosse Pointe Blank, a film I hated, and Demo #6, a comic I liked. Yes, it’s true that both works center on a youthful suburbanite mass murderer who, in the eyes of the audience, is presumably supposed to have achieved some (almost completely unearned) redemption by the story’s end, at which point he is permitted to ride off into the sunset with his lady love. But Demo has any number of intervening factors in its favor: the fact that its central character actually has a reason to become a killer, however tenuous (and a one-two punch of institutional racism and animal abuse would piss me off, too; at any rate, though the specifics are different, I remember what getting bullied felt like, and if I could have dneo what he did, I just might have if I got mad enough); the supernatural angle serves as its own impetus for action (that is, Ken doesn’t deliberately choose, as Lloyd Dobbler or whatever he was called in that movie does, to hone his killin’ skills–they are some sort of gift/curse the presence of which likely compels their own use on a psychological or even physical level); it has a compelling fable-esque feel that eschews the “realism” that GPB, as a hipster post-Tarantino action film, is burdened with and subsequently fails to pull off (to me, Demo #6 feels like an “Appointment in Samarra”-type story told from Death’s point of view); in the end, there’s a certain sense of ambiguity about how “redeemed” Ken really is, since we never see anything from his parents’ or his wife’s point of view, whereas in GPB the special lady sees Cusack in full killing mode and decides “you know what? he’s so charming and his taste in music is so good that I’m gonna go out with him again, no matter how many people he’s murdered in cold blood and despite the fact that he stood me up at the prom,” to which Frasier’s dad (he’s in this movie, right?) says “Amen.”)
Finally, What is horror, you ask? That’s a very interesting question…