Interlude 2: Eclectic Boogaloo

Dave Campbell agrees with my Dr. Doom hypothesis.

Go me.

Stay of Execution

Just a brief missive here to let you know that your daily fix has been delayed a wee bit.

Yes, my poppets, I know: you must have your PalPal fix. Your cries of agony and deprivation warm my bleak and shriveled heart. But it's your own fault, you know. After all, was it not you, my adoring public, who tripled in readership the moment I began talking about comics?

Alas, comics are a chiefly visual medium, and without suitable excerpts to "quote", the remainder of my posts shall be as bland as an American cheese sandwich with mayonnaise on white bread. And we certainly don't want that, no.

So I have retreated deep into my Fortress of Lurkitude to obtain scans of the highest quality for your optical consumption, my chirping birdies.

Oh, and fair warning: Auntie Palette is working blue tonight.

Prepare the F-Bomb shelters!

Interlude: a slight case of bombing

Because if Chris Sims jumped off a bridge, so would I:


Go on. Tell me you don't understand. I live to explain stuff like this.

Hell, earlier today I made a reference to Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! and nobody got it. So ask.

I DARE YA.

The Hero With a Thousand Issues

Since we're talking about comics this week, I figure I'll share an epiphany I recently had concerning What Is Wrong With Comics Today:

They don't end.

You may think I'm being flippant here, but I'm not calling for the immediate cessation of all comics. What I am calling for is for comic series and/or characters to have definite beginnings, middles, and, most importantly, endings.

Think of the coolest story you know, regardless of whether it is a comic, a novel, a film, a TV series. They all have 3 things in common:

1. A beginning, where we meet our heroes, and the crisis they must face.
   
2. A middle, where the heroes struggle against incredible forces.
   
3. An end, where the plot is resolved, villains are defeated, and sacrifices are made.
   

Joseph Campbell called this the Monomyth. The Lord of the Rings. Babylon 5. Star Wars. Transmetropolitan. They all end. And that is what makes them special, because without an ending, stories lose their narrative "punch".

Look at the Dark Phoenix saga. Note how wrenching it is to see a beloved character fall to evil and then redeem herself through death. Note how this sacrifice becomes utterly pointless as Jean is brought back from the dead, gains the Phoenix Force yet again, dies again. Note how something utterly cool has been reduced to yet another plot element to be recycled every 5-7 years because it sells.

Characters who don't stay dead, plot elements that recur until you're sick of them, storylines that threaten to change everything yet, within a few years, have been forgotten as the status quo is reset: what else does this remind you of?

That's right: soap operas. Soaps don't have endings. They have a beginning, and a middle, and then nothing but middles for decades. And the reason for that is because when the series ends, so end the profits. Artistic integrity is defeated by the sultry crinkle of the almighty dollar.

I don't think it's unreasonable to have a middle ground, a continuous money-making series that neither cheats nor recycles plot elements. Here are my suggestions:

1. Have the characters age at a reasonable rate for their species.
   
2. When they are too old, or injured, let them pass the mantle on to a successor.
   
3. Have character death be meaningful.
4. If it is essential to the plot that a dead character return, make it come with a heavy price.
5. Above all, actions MUST have consequences that are not conveniently forgotten or return to the status quo.
   

Essentially, I am proposing that comic book characters have a beginning, middle, and end. Let us chart their rise and mourn their passing.

Because without death, immortality is meaningless.

Listen Up, You Primitive Screwheads

Well, my first "theme week" has come to an end, and while I'd like to consider it an unqualified success, it seems like my throwaway post on Saturday has generated more controversy.

Damn you all.

Fine. We'll continue to discuss comics, specifically Civil War #7, for a bit longer, because apparently some people *cough JV cough* don't get it *cough BridgecrewDave cough*.

The summary, courtesy of Wikipedia:

The Secret Avengers break into the Negative Zone Prison, where Hulkling, who has been disguised as Hank Pym, releases imprisoned heroes from their cells to join the fight. Cloak teleports the combatants to New York City, where Namor and an army of Atlanteans fight alongside the Secret Avengers, and the Thunderbolts, the Thor clone, and Captain Marvel join Stark's team. As Captain America is about to deal a final blow to Stark, police, EMTs, and firefighters hold him back. Captain America realizes how much damage the fight has cost the people he says they should be fighting to protect. To prevent more bloodshed, he orders his team to stop fighting and surrenders.

Did you get that? Cap stops fighting a cause he knows is right because the ghost of 9/11 stops him. Are you telling me you can't see that? The living embodiment of our country is kept from defeating a fascist because of the NYPD and FDNY, aka the heroes of ground zero. And then he gives up because he sees property damage in a city that:

1. Has been attacked by Kree, Skrulls, Atlantis, demons from the Inferno, Godzilla, and Galactus his own bad self;
2. Has more super-heroes per square foot than any other place on earth, with the resultant property damage and astronomic insurance rates that come with that.
   

Give me a freaking break.

Now, let's look again at what Joss said:

I said looking around at the destruction of Manhattan didn't have much resonance -- these guys destroy Manhattan all the time! It was the personal act of putting his fist into the face of his powerless one-time friend that would Make Cap feel like a bully, a monster [...]

Cap got past Tony's armor and started beating the poo out of him -- thus becoming exactly what Tony had called them all: a superpowered guy taking it out on a powerless human. Cap realizes this and lay down his arms. (But he wins. Eat that, Stark.)

That is literally the tale.

This ending is so much different, and so much better, because:

1. Cap beats the snot out of Iron Man.
   
2. Cap stops fighting because he realizes he has crossed a line, rather than quitting because of thinly-veiled propaganda.
   
3. Property damage doesn't factor into his decision because Cap is a freaking soldier.
   

This entire fight -- probably the entire series -- could be boiled down to Patriotism vs the Military-Industrial Complex. In Joss' version, Patriotism wins, even if he surrenders afterwards, because he surrenders for the right reason. In Millar's version, the post-9/11 population of America sides with Iron Man and makes Cap stop.

Look, I don't care what your politics are, if you're an American you should be incensed by this. Hell, I'm a pro-war conservative and even I think Cap should have won, and yes I'm fully aware of what that means in this political cartoon we're calling a comic book. I'm sure that Tony's victory is supposed to be some kind of clever commentary about how, post-9/11, we've given up our liberties for a sense of security etc, and how in the months to come repercussions will be felt blah blah freaking blah. That's not the point.

This is the point: Captain America is all that is good and pure and RIGHT about the USA. When the man who fought Hitler stops fighting -- STOPS FIGHTING!! -- someone who puts unregistered superheroes into concentration camps, all because some buildings have been trashed, that's bad characterization. Of course, this entire series has been a poor excuse in getting beloved characters to act in uncharacteristic ways, so I really shouldn't be surprised.

Want to know how I'd have ended it? Cap would have taken Tony's head off (accidentally, of course), had his moment of fear and doubt and shame -- and then it would be revealed that Tony had, in fact, been replaced by a Doombot.

Yes. The entire scope of Civil War would have been masterminded by Doctor Freakin' Doom just to:

1. Compromise American heroes;
2. Sew distrust of said heroes in the minds of the people;
   
3. Screw with Reed.
   

Now that's super-villainy.

(Cartoons courtesy of the ISB)

Because I Feel Like Scooping Chris

As said by Joss himself at Whedonesque:

Hi and briefly: I walked into the infamous Marvel meeting, where they pitched me civil War. Cool enuf, sez I. Then they pitched the end they were currently going with, wherein the woman whose son is killed breaks up the fight between Cap and Iron Man, much like Joanne Dru in "Red River". Not cool enuf, sez I. If the whole thing rests on Cap and Tony's conflict, and they're gonna fight, I sez sez I, somebody's gotta win. I just pitched that Cap got past Tony's armor and started beating the poo out of him -- thus becoming exactly what Tony had called them all: a superpowered guy taking it out on a powerless human. Cap realizes this and lay down his arms. (But he wins. Eat that, Stark.) That is literally the tale. I said looking around at the destruction of Manhattan didn't have much resonance -- these guys destroy Manhattan all the time! It was the personal act of putting his fist into the face of his powerless one-time friend that would Make Cap feel like a bully, a monster, a Nazi and kiddies, I didn't say much else. (Except that a fight between titans broken up by the 'voice of reason' before it ends is a lame fight indeed.) I didn't know Civil War was gonna envelop the whole universe for a year. I didn't know the entire face of Marvel was changing, and though I heard pitches of what's to come, I don't know what stuck. I think I've been given too much credit for all this. Which is sweet, but I wanted to save you all endless speculation. Which I have done, and now back to work. -j.

joss | February 24, 14:36 CET

Bold text added to highlight relevant portions.

How I Found Eris, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her

I found Discordianism, and therefore Eris, in 1994. I had turned 21, and was in that awkward transition between "too old to be a teenager" and "too young to be an adult". Plus, it was the Nineties, so I spent most of my time wearing black, listening to Sisters of Mercy, and when I wasn't reading Anne Rice or playing Vampire: the Masquerade, I was depressed and wondering What Was The Point Of It All.

I'm not going to tell you that my life was instantly changed the moment I found a copy of Steve Jackson Games' Principia Discordia -- I had a lot of ingrained uptightness to overcome -- but it did take a turn for the weird, and my life has been richer for that weirdness.

See, I'm the kind of person who obsessively looks for patterns. I seek meaning in way too many things. I like to attribute this to my artistic leanings, and truth be told it's served me well in life, both in discerning literary symbolism and in helping me unearth the motivations of those around me. (Yes, we brainy introspective types with English majors and Psychology minors can double as FBI profilers and Lit Critics. Be afraid.)

However, sometimes this passion for pattern recognition borders on OCD. Don't tell us that a pattern isn't there! We just haven't dug deeply enough. Give us time, by golly by jingo, and we'll find it. You just wait and see.

Next thing you know, we're starring in a sequel to A Beautiful Mind.

Into this frothing mass of post-teenage aaaaaaaaaaangst fell Eris. At first, I thought it was something silly, a vaguely coherent-sounding rant that I could use when I LARPed my Malkavian. Then I re-read it. And re-re-read it. Again. And again.

I had to keep reading it because, well, I sensed something. A pattern, a greater truth... as Polonius said, Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

And then, finally I got it. It took me a long time to get not because the truth was particularly hard, but because I had to shatter my own paradigm of reality to understand it.

I'm going to try to share it with you. If you don't get it, that's okay. Some people get it instantly; some never do. Some, however -- and I sincerely hope to count you, dear reader, among this number -- read it; don't quite get it; read it again; spend days puzzling it out; and then, at an inopportune and potentially embarrassing moment, you GET IT and have a falling-down case of the giggles.

Paraquoting:

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids. Different philosophies use different grids. Through this window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The order is in the grid.

Disorder is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", non-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about gender. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness," or vice-versa, is a matter of definition, and thus unmeasurable, and therefore wholly arbitrary. Pick a grid, and through it some reality appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same reality will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, be True. This is an illusion, because it is based upon the notion that Order is inherently good and Disorder inherently bad. This causes man to endure the destructive aspects of order and prevents him from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder.


To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a worldview composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the the destructive is to choose an all-creative worldview composed of both order and disorder.

The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously: LIFE IS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.

If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither, or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with goodwill in his soul and love in his being.

If you didn't get all that, don't fret. Eris has a way of fucking with you when least expected.

It's really only proper that I end this mostly quoted blog with another quote, this time from Kerry Thornley, one of the co-founders of Discordianism.

[...] before I was a Discordian, when I entered my room only to be reminded by its disarry that it was a mess, I felt a sense of defeat. These days when that happens I just say, "Hail Eris!" - our customary salute to any embodiment of chaos - and then I cheerfully carry on, secure in the knowledge that the constellations look no better.

I'm still uptight in a lot of ways. I still obsess over patterns. I am still a work in progress. But instead of getting upset by disorder, by absurdity, by chaos which doesn't fit in my little grid I call reality... I can laugh at it, and get on with the far more important task of living my life as I wish.

Hail Eris.