Early in October, blogger Bruce Baugh promised to do a bunch of horrorblogging for the remainder of the month. That fell by the wayside, but it looks like he’s making up for lost time now: here’s a post on horror as a means of expressing grief (“that was worthwhile, and now it’s gone”), here’s a post on 28 Days Later that pays attention to the unusually strong characterization in the film, and here’s a post on the most recent David Cronenberg movie, Spider, which I haven’t seen (and which is just going to have to go to the back of the Netflix cue like everyone else).

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.

No sooner have bloggers and the Comics Pimp been duking it out over the best way to convey the message that Comics Doesn’t Suck than messboard users and still other bloggers are coming to the conclusion that You Know What? Yeah, Comics Does Suck. These threads at TCJ.com and this one at Sequential Tart advance the meme; John Jakala and Johnny Bacardi can’t help but ponder the same imponderables (thanks to Rick Geerling for linkage).

Me? Well, alls I can say is that today was a pretty great haul at the comics shop, one of the best New Comics Days in a while for me: Powers, Alias, Ultimate Spider-Man, Savage Dragon, Supreme Power, and Arrowsmith; I’ve been avoiding collections for financial reasons lately, but a collection of Matrix comix and Gilbert Hernandez’s monstrous Palomar collection just came out today as well, and the last month or so has seen oodles of great trades tempt my comics-buying dollar.

I don’t blame people for suddenly getting sick of the amount of crappy comics, or even just not-great comics, they’ve been buying more out of habit than anything else–this happens to all of us from time to time. I just think it’s a mistake to ascribe the decision to stop buying them to some sort of searing insight into comics versus other media. This goes double because, when you’re in a bad mood about comics in general, I’m you end up being much harder on specific comics than they deserve.

I have something of a professional (and, in the case of the blog, serious-hobbyist) obligation to keep on top of comics, both for the the publication I write for and for my own aspirations to writing comics professionally. I’m lucky enough to have a great deal of this mitigated by financial compensation for many of the things I purchase in order to keep abreast of the medium. Still, I occasionally feel jaded by how much inessential stuff I’ve accumulated. On a week-to-week basis I find I’ve purged a lot of this feeling by no longer buying no-longer-interesting titles. Mainly, though, I just enjoy the heck out of a lot of comics, and those I’m still buying.

In those TCJ.com threads, scholar Andrei Molotiu is dead right about being a devotee of an entire medium–that really is silly. That’s the fatal flaw of comics activism, too: Comics is worthy of consideration the same way film, literature, TV, music etc. are, but that’s something that will be proven to the world at large, if it ever will, by the strengths of individual works, not some vague devotion to Comics. And it’s the former, not the latter, that keeps me excited to visit the shop every Wednesday morning.

UPDATE: Please note that I’m not just some comics-hating curmudgeon who hasn’t Done His Part–I’m actually something of an activist myself. Here’s the deal: I really do think that “comics activism,” which even when you just write it or say it is self-evidently silly, is sort of dumb.

Great Garys in Serial-Killing History, Volume II: Gary Heidnik

The Missus‘s “Favorite” Serial Killer: Albert Fish

Serial Killer Most Likely to Have Bumped Into Jimmy Corrigan’s Grandpa at the Chicago World’s Fair: H.H. Holmes

Harry Chapin’s Unlikely Muse: Charles Whitman

Who Inspired Hannibal Lecter?: the candidates

All links courtesy of the indispensable CrimeLibrary.com.

Gary Ridgway has confessed to the Green River killings. For those of you who aren’t unhealthily obsessed with serial killers, the Green River Killer was for years the unsolved mystery in the American serial-murder demimonde; like Jack the Ripper several times over, “he” was deemed responsible for so many slayings (mainly of prostitutes) that it was widely believed (and by legendary FBI serial-killer expert Jack Douglas) that “he” was actually a “they,” two or more different serial killers with roughly the same M.O. and area of activity.

Actually, I still wonder whether “they” is the real deal here. Ridgeway pled guilty to 48 counts of first-degree murder mainly so he could avoid the death penalty, and I’d imagine there are many, many law enforcement officials happy to see this case closed. (Since the Green River killings stopped years ago, there’s not even really an issue of “we got the wrong guy!” to worry about.) It’s also worth noting that there are at least 7 “official” Green River slayings that Ridgeway did not plead guilty to, and God knows how many other killings took place that didn’t make it onto law enforcement’s tally (Ridgeway pled to six such cases himself).

At any rate, if you’re interested in this case you could do worse than to read over CrimeLibrary.com‘s thorough run-down of the Green River Killer. The site has recently been redone, and it’s user-friendly and fascinating. Let’s just hope they’re able to add an epilogue to this story that will stand the test of time.

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.)

perfect little dream the kind that hurts the most

forgot how it feels well almost

no one to blame always the same

open my eyes wake up in flames

it took you to make me realize

it took you to make me realize

it took you to make me realize

it took you to make me see the light

smashed up my my sanity

smashed up integrity

smashed up what i believed in

smashed up what’s left of me

smashed up my everything

smashed up all that was true

gonna smash myself to pieces

i don’t know what else to do

covered in hope and vaseline

still cannot fix this broken machine

watching the hole it used to be mine

just watching it burn in my steady systematic decline

of the trust i will betray

give it to me i throw it away

after everything i’ve done i hate myself for what i’ve become

i tried

i gave up

throw it away

–nine inch nails, “gave up”

Close the door, put out the light

You know they won’t be home tonight

The snow falls hard and don’t you know

The winds of Thor are blowing cold

They’re wearing steel that’s bright and true

They carry news that must get through

They choose the path where no-one goes

They hold no quarter,

They ask no quarter.

Walking side by side with death

The devil mocks their every step

The snow drives back that the foot that’s slow

The dogs of doom are howling more

They carry news that must get through

To build a dream for me and you

They choose the path where no-one goes

They hold no quarter, they ask no quarter.

–Led Zeppelin, “No Quarter”

HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYBODY!

Go out and try to do something scary and eat something sweet. This holiday rules.

If you’re in the mood for some good scary reads to go with your tricking and treating and such, go visit Blogcritics’ Halloween Madness feature. They’re featuring tons of Halloween- and horror-related posts done by most everyone who ever posts at the site. (Practically all the reviews I’ve done this month are up there as well.) Glut your soul!

I walked by the sea, and there came to me,

as a star-beam on the wet sand,

a white shell like a sea-bell;

trembling it lay in my wet hand.

In my fingers shaken I heard waken

a ding within, by a harbour bar

a buoy swinging, a call ringing

over endless seas, faint now and far.

Then I saw a boat silently float

on the night-tide, empty and grey.

‘It is later than late! Why do we wait?’

I leapt in and cried: ‘Bear me away!’

It bore me away, wetted with spray,

wrapped in a mist, wound in a sleep,

to a forgotten strand in a strange land.

In the twilight beyond the deep

I heard a sea-bell swing in the swell,

dinging, dinging, and the breakers roar

on the hidden teeth of a perilous reef;

and at last I came to a long shore.

White it glimmered, and the sea simmered

with star-mirrors in a silver net;

cliffs of stone pale as ruel-bone

in the moon-foam were gleaming wet.

Glittering sand slid through my hand,

dust of pearl and jewel-grist,

trumpets of opal, roses of coral,

flutes of green and amethyst.

But under cliff-eaves there were glooming caves,

weed-curtained, dark and grey;

a cold air stirred in my hair,

and the light waned, as I hurried away.

Down from a hill ran a green rill;

its water I drank to my heart’s ease.

Up its fountain-stair to a country fair

of ever-eve I came, far from the seas,

climbing into meadows of fluttering shadows:

flowers lay there like fallen stars,

and on a blue pool, glassy and cool,

like floating moons the nenuphars.

Alders were sleeping, and willows weeping

by a slow river of rippling weeds;

gladdon-swords guarded the fords,

and green spears, and arrow-reeds.

There was echo of song all the evening long

down in the valley; many a thing

running to and fro: hares white as snow,

voles out of holes; moths on the wing

with lantern-eyes; in quiet surprise

brocks were staring out of dark doors.

I heard dancing there, music in the air,

feet going quick on the green floors.

But whenever I came it was ever the same:

the feet fled, and all was still;

never a greeting, only the fleeting

pipes, voices, horns on the hill.

Of river-leaves and the rush-sheaves

I made me a mantle of jewel-green,

a tall wand to hold, and a flag of gold;

my eyes shone like the star-sheen.

With flowers crowned I stood on a mound,

and shrill as a call at cock-crow

proudly I cried: ‘Why do you hide?

Why do none speak, wherever I go?

Here now I stand, king of this land,

with gladdon-sword and reed-mace.

Answer my call! Come forth all!

Speak to me words! Show me a face!’

Black came a cloud as a night-shroud.

Like a dark mole groping I went,

to the ground falling, on my hands crawling

with eyes blind and my back bent.

I crept to a wood: silent it stood

in its dead leaves, bare were its boughs.

There must I sit, wandering in wit,

while owls snored in their hollow house.

For a year and a day there must I stay:

beetles were tapping in the rotten trees,

spiders were weaving, in the mould heaving

puffballs loomed about my knees.

At last there came light in my long night,

and I saw my hair hanging grey.

‘Bent though I be, I must find the sea!

I have lost myself, and I know not the way,

but let me be gone!’ Then I stumbled on;

like a hunting bat shadow was over me;

in my ears dinned a withering wind,

and with ragged briars I tried to cover me.

My hands were torn and my knees worn,

and years were heavy upon my back,

when the rain in my face took a salt taste,

and I smelled the smell of sea-wrack.

Birds came sailing, mewing, wailing;

I heard voices in cold caves,

seals barking, and rocks snarling,

and in spout-holes the gulping of waves.

Winter came fast; into a mist I passed,

to land’s end my years I bore;

snow was in the air, ice in my hair,

darkness was lying on the last shore.

There still afloat waited the boat,

in the tide lifting, its prow tossing.

Weary I lay, as it bore me away,

the waves climbing, the seas crossing,

passing old hulls clustered with gulls

and great ships laden with light,

coming to haven, dark as a raven,

silent as snow, deep in the night.

Houses were shuttered, wind round them muttered,

roads were empty. I sat by a door,

and where drizzling rain poured down a drain

I cast away all that I bore:

in my clutching hand some grains of sand,

and a sea-shell silent and dead.

Never will my ear that bell hear,

never my feet that shore tread

Never again, as in sad lane,

in blind alley and in long street

ragged I walk. To myself I talk;

for still they speak not, men that I meet.

–J.R.R. Tolkien, “The Sea-Bell, or Frodo’s Dreme”

And through the life force and there goes her friend

On her Nishiki it

The 13 Days of Halloween: Day 13

1. The Blair Witch Project dir. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez

the scariest movie I’ve ever seen

Well, here we are: Blair Witch. Let me say right off the bat that I don’t expect to change anyone’s mind here. This is a movie for which the phrase “you either love it or hate it” was invented. I remember seeing it on opening night in a theatre: Half the audience booed and yelled at the screen as the closing credits rolled, while the other half looked as though they’d just been eyewitnesses to a plane crash. With most films you can argue that people just didn’t “get it,” but it’s different with this movie: It gets you. Or it doesn’t. A lot depends on where you first see it, how you’d heard about it, the kind of mood you were in, and (I think) the kind of mood you allowed yourself to be in. So yeah, this movie gets you, or it doesn’t.

Good God, did it ever get me.

Opening night, August 1999, was not the first time I saw Blair Witch. That was actually back in June of that same summer. At the time I was working for Troma Studios, progenitors of the Toxic Avenger, Sgt. Kabukiman NYPD, and various other rubber-masked individuals you see at the San Diego Comic-Con or on E! Entertainment Television. The Troma Team had just gotten back from their yearly expedition to the Cannes Film Festival, which took place just before I began interning at the company. Along with the usual tales of living 20 people to a room and having your picture snapped by hundreds of paparazzi while dressed as a man-eating condom, my coworkers had brought back a videotape. It was given to them by the makers of The Blair Witch Project, who, it turns out, were enormous Troma fans. (I guess Troma is an inspiration for anyone who wants to make a movie for less than no money, although clearly the Blair Witch people emphasized Troma’s can-do spirit and not so much their fondness for exploding heads.) They gave them a copy of their movie, which was just beginning to garner some attention during its screenings at the festival, as a gift. Needless to say the Troma folks were quite excited: Horror-film true-believers to a man (and woman), they were up for anything, as long as it was frightening. Before long copies were making the rounds of the whole staff, and I remember being quite excited when I finally got mine. There was no hype, no stories in Newsweek or Time proclaiming this the scariest film in history and touting its micro-budget blockbuster status, no appearances on late-night and early-morning talk shows to publicize it, no endless parodies consisting of people talking into videocameras. All I knew when I took my copy home was that it was a mockumentary, and that it was scary.

That weekend I dutifully summoned my buddy Dave G. (the cartoonist currently known as Davey Oil), the guy who forces me to call myself the second biggest horror fan I know. By the time Dave and I got around to putting the thing into the VCR, it was late–I think around 11 o’clock or so. The house was quiet, and it was dark outside. We sat back and began to watch.

I’m not sure at what point it began to dawn on me that I had never, literally never, been so scared in my entire life. I think it might have been when the three student filmmakers woke up to find someone had constructed little rock monuments around their tent that Dave and I began saying “oh, shit” compulsively. I remember that around the third nightfall or so, when the tent was shaken, that my heart was pounding so hard it was actually uncomfortable and my stomach had that feeling it gets when you narrowly avoid a car accident. People, we were completely terrified. There wasn’t a single level on which this film didn’t work for us–the realistically pointless vulgarity of the kids’ speech, the endless grays and browns of the video-taped forest, the way in which the lights from the camera illuminated just this much of the night, leaving so much of it ripe for possession by something… other. Even the fact that the Troma copies were the rough-sound edit enhanced the experience: though we couldn’t hear what the characters could when noises awoke them during the night, we wanted to, and we sat on the edge of our seats and strained our ears and damned if our minds didn’t provide a soundtrack that more than adequately scared the wits out of us.

And then–and then–the final scene. This time the yelling in the distance we could hear, and I still wish, when I hear it again, that I couldn’t. The panicky running of Mike & Heather, that house looming up out of nowhere–my God, I was shaking, shaking hard. And then they went inside–no, please don’t! I still vividly remember thinking to myself, almost in an abstract fashion, that if an old woman’s smiling face were to appear in one of those (many, goddamn it) windows I would literally collapse in fear. Then up to the top floor, then yelling that “I hear him downstairs!”, then running into that basement, turning a corner– Heather following, screaming over and over again, past the handprints and scrawled gibberish on the walls, down the stairs, around the corner– oh my God, what is he doing? WHAT IS HE DOING IN THE CORNER?

The End.

Dave and I sat for a moment, staring at the credits as they rolled by. Then slowly, we turned to each other. Our eyes widened. “Holy shit,” we said, almost in unison, “what a scary fucking movie.” There is almost no way in which I could exaggerate how horrified we were by that film that night. Despite the fact that at this point I had to urinate so badly it was painful, I think it took us 45 minutes to actually work up enough nerve to get out of our chairs and move to another part of the house to go to the bathroom. Since the bathroom was one of those deals where the fan comes on automatically with the light, thus making it difficult to hear what’s going on the other side of the door if it’s closed, I forced Dave to walk with me to the bathroom, stand outside, and continuously talk to me as loudly as possible while I peed, just so I could be sure that he was still there and hadn’t disappeared. At some point we realized it was late and I had to drive him back to his house on the other side of town. This was a genuinely harrowing ordeal. We were scared of the distance from my door to the car. During the car ride, we were scared of the back of the car itself, which was way too dark for us to be able to handle it. We were scared of the way the headlights illuminated the night–way, way too much like those camera lights for comfort. When we finally got to Dave’s house, it took us another 15 minutes to build up the courage to actually allow Dave to exit the car, walk the 20 feet or whatever to the back door, and go inside. Then I had to drive back to the house alone, making the back of the car even more frightening and making every dark street I passed by a goddamn nightmare. Then I had to navigate the space between the car and the house myself, then walk through the entire dark, empty, silent ground floor–past the freaking television where the freaking movie was just playing, for the love of God!–by myself, walk up those creaky stairs (stairs!) by myself, and turn the light on in my room without having a heart attack from thinking that something would be in there waiting for me. I say it again: this was the most scared I’ve ever been in my life.

A few weeks later, I brought the movie with me on a trip with some friends to a cabin in the woods upstate. At this point I was still terrified by the movie, but enjoyed the experience enough to subject others to it. And they were outraged by how scared they got. One girl called it “emotional porn” and was furious at the filmmakers for having made something so completely harrowing (and she’s no anti-horror puritan–she was just scared half to death).

And then a few weeks after that was the premiere in theatres. This was a very different experience–better in some ways (watching a crowd of strangers have the bloody bejesus scared out of them was fun; some of the more grating lines of dialogue, ones that didn’t ring true, were cut; and of course the sounds from around the tent were now fully audible), worse in others (the disappointed/pissed off moviegoers who booed; the fact that the movie really does work better as an unlabeled nth-generation bootleg than as a big-screen projection).

The main difference, though, involved the ending. This is a spoiler, so far as it goes: The final image consists of Mike standing in a corner. In the version I originally saw, no explanation was ever given for what the hell was going on here. None. So either he’s dead, and something has propped him up, or he’s alive, and—uuhhhhhh GOD I don’t even want to think about it. However, in the theatrical version, a man-on-the-street interview was added to the collection of such snippets at the film’s beginning, in which a local claims that the serial killer once inspired/possessed by the Witch would take kids into the basement two at a time, and make one face the corner while he killed the other. So we switch from a nameless horror that I’m still trying to scrape out of my brain to a “hey lookout she’s over there!!!” kinda moment. It’s a lousy tradeoff, as even the actress Heather Donahue seemed to notice–though she didn’t specify what she was talking about, she feistily pointed out on Leno that week that she and the other two actors had shot everything in the film themselves “except one thing.” She wasn’t happy about that one thing, let me tell you. Neither was I, but so what? I’d done without it, to my everlasting horror and delight.

Are there movies that are, as a whole, scarier than this one? Yes, I’d probably have to say so. The Shining, and probably The Exorcist, and maybe even Texas Chain Saw and The Ring are packed wall-to-wall with terrifying images and relentless ante-upping horror. Blair Witch has sticks and stones. But it relies on the strength of its stars–three humans, and their collective fear. If you see it in the right way, at the right time, with the right people, that fear overtakes you. And you’re there in the basement, standing in the corner.

Setting sun can’t shine, now you’re gone

Inside sleeping, my heart beating

You know that you tried to hide it

Couldn’t you have said what you meant?

Time heals, time congeals around us

Endless hours of wasted moments

Understanding’s not demanding

Your eyes tell what you feel inside

Setting sun can’t shine, now you’re gone

Inside sleeping, my heart beating

You know that you tried to hide it

Shouldn’t you have said what you meant?

You lied

–Tool, “You Lied” (originally by Peach)