When I was in the local comic shop the other day, I flipped through the latest issue of Mark Millar’s Marvel Knights version of Spider-Man, and you know what? It looked like a damn good time. Spidey getting the crap knocked out of him constantly? Reminds me of how I looked at the series back when I was a little kid. Ooh, that’s scary! Ooh, that’s dangerous! I hope he’s okay! I’ve got no idea whether the series maintains such feelings beyond an initial impression, but I’m intrigued.
(O’course, I was “intrigued” by Red Son, and remembered enjoying it well enough, but in retrospect it doesn’t have much to recommend it beyond the sharpness of its Elseworlds premise, the cleverness of its denouement, and the idea that there really isn’t much of a difference between Stalin’s Soviet Union and George W. Bush’s United States. If you don’t subscribe to that political position, the other ideas can’t really carry the series. Anyway, for a contrary take on Millar’s Spider-Man, head over to the Grotesque Rampage forum.)
Another superhero series controversial for its violence is Brad Meltzer’s Identity Crisis. The series was billed as something that will shake the DC Universe to its roots; so far it’s done so through rape, murder, and Clockwork Orange-style reprogramming of criminals by the DCU’s ostensible heroes. Now, I’m pretty open about being a fan of violence in fiction, even violence toward women, which I don’t believe is necessarily misogynistic. (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Kill Bill are two of my favorite films, after all.) However, I think a good indicator of misogyny is if you can picture the author of a given work treating male characters in a similar fashion. (This is why I am not a fan of Lars Von Trier, who’s established himself as a one-trick pony in terms of doling out the rough stuff.) Given the company- and commerce-driven constraints of the DCU, not to mention the reactionary tendencies of many of its fans, my guess is that Identity Crisis falls in the latter camp. (There’s also something genuinely awful about the notion of the Justice League brainwashing criminals, but as always I’m hesitant to let allegiance to fictional characters get in the way of a creator’s ability to tell a good story (which I’m not sure Identity Crisis is, mind you). I really couldn’t care less about the storied history of Kingpin and Bullseye, for example, if you can get a good story out of Daredevil crushingly humiliating them. Which you did, if you ask me.) Anyway, you can go back to the Grotesque Rampage Forum to hear me explain my views more fully. Tim O’Neil, meanwhile, is outraged, not least at the fact that DC has apparently stopped even pretending that children read superhero comics. I’m not all that upset–The Killing Joke was arguably even more fucked-up, and that was done years ago, and I don’t recall being scarred for life after reading it, though I was, what, a freshman in high school by then and was fucked-up enough as it was–but it really is worth considering what went into this decision on DC’s part.
That big NYT/Eightball thread got updated several times today. Just scroll on down.
Finally, I just want to say that with my new home theater sound system set up, Kill Bill is fucking awesome.