“hypocrites kick with their hind feet while licking with their tongues” – Russian proverb

Let’s say you like comics. Let’s also say you’re gay. Let’s go even further and say that you’ve spent some time in front of Xtube participating in your own personal Tubesock Holocaust the likes of which would make Onan himself stop and go, “Wow.” Pushing the “what if’s” past the bounds of good taste, let’s finally say you enjoy the Underworld series. Sean-Z’s MYTH #2, then, is probably for you. However, if you are a savvy politico who keeps abreast of current gay events, MYTH #2 is definitely for you.

Ostensibly a story about the often-naked Zithyran V’riel and his quest to locate and reawaken his world’s gods, MYTH also reflects an important part of the gay cultural dialogue that has long gone unaddressed: namely, the equal and opposite reaction of gay opponents to Marriage Equality. As important as Marriage Equality is as a civil rights issue, there is a faction within the gay community that does not embrace it as step forward, but rather as a white flag to the heterosexual hegemony (say that three times fast!). In essence, gay culture will die under the trappings of “normalcy” – spouses, children, split-level houses, and dogs that do no fit into a shoulder bag – finally losing our sense of “special otherness”. I’m not saying I agree with this, nor do I presume to know Sean-Z’s political leanings; nevertheless, he gives us an alluring, profound, and often exciting look at the Marriage Equality counter-argument.

Sex will always be a part of the gay identity, mostly because we are both self- and other-identified through our sexual behavior. In terms of the heterosexual (i.e., “other”) identification, I would even argue towards “over-identified and bordering on unhealthy obsession” (I’m looking at you, Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera). One only need glance at any number of postings by anti-gay groups to see that their fevered imaginings are far more pornographic and detailed than anything the average gay male has experienced. Why then is it important to have the discussion of “marriage” at this time? Wouldn’t Marriage Equality kill the gay sexual drive, as any number of late night TV wags have said it does to straight marriage? What would become of gay culture as we know it? Obviously with so profound a question mark directly in our path, it makes sense that some people would try to apply the brakes or jump out of the vehicle altogether.

In MYTH, inhabitants of the world Zithyra and their gods are comfortable with their bodies enough to go au naturel (and with their bodies, who wouldn’t be?) and are obviously queer. In choosing to arrange his universe this way, Sean-Z opens up two interesting points: one, that somehow the race propagates, and two, that there is no stigma attached to being queer, so we are left to judge “good” and “evil” by their respective behaviors. The “evil” side, the one that represents Marriage Equality proponents, is populated by vampires, draining the life of others to make it their own. I’ll admit the characterization is on the harsh side, but one can feel the sense of betrayal that V’riel has towards the head vampire, Donjovan Faust. I hope in future issues to see the past of their relationship. The “good” side is seen in V’riel and his mecha servant Koz (which brings to mind the colloquial “cuz”, so I’m left wondering about the implications of man-on-machine sex), who rescue a god (called a “Maker”), Julian, and his friends from a fire at a bar called “The Raunch”. The good guys are sexually liberated and for most of the book are naked and/or on teh cock like a GOP Congressman at an out-of-town convention without his wife. It’s a canny metaphor, and one without clear answers. While we root for the good guys, we can’t help but notice that the bad guys are just as hot and just as motivated to prevail.

Whether you are pro-Marriage Equality or feel that it will be the ruination of “gay”, Sean-Z’s compelling MYTH #2 will force you to take a long hard look at the future as it lays bare before you.

While looking at the cover of my copy of Giants in Those Days, specifically Miss Dawna, my nephew came up with the idea that her light power should evolve into an electricity-based power and her new name would be Static Elektra (which I thought was pretty clever)! And she would be evil because the good guys abandoned her (seems reasonable). Of course, I had to ask the ultra-talented Benjamin Ruth to come up with an appropriately good-stomping costume. And this is she:

Dominic now owns a character, and I hope it gets him to draw more and make up stories. When he becomes famous, he’ll owe Ben a HUGE royalty check.

I can tell already that Robert Kirby’s new series, THREE, is going to get a lot of mileage out of its title. So many good things come in threes – like wishes and bears and the hot soccer triplets down the street whom I fervently know are 18 years old – or multiples of three – like a six pack (a three pack would look weird with a partnerless odd-ab-out) and… no, a six pack is the pinnacle of all things “six”, I’d say. And to begin his latest anthology venture (the sublime Boy Trouble book preceding), Robert and two other cartoonists – Eric Orner and Joey Alison Sayers – each offer up a story of a moment. Filed under “s[tuff] you can’t make up”, I’m tempted to say there is a semi-autobiographical revelation that comes from these moments. Whether by accident or design, there is a theme of “one” in each cartoonist’s work (yeah yeah yeah, it’s also issue number one) that has the ring of verisimilitude which I say can only come from personal experience. Like so:

Weekends Abroad by Eric Orner sets the bar high for every story in every issue including and following this one. Ostensibly a tale of what an American Jew working in Israel does on the weekends (cruise guys on the Internet, go to clubs, get laid), Weekends is a sad story. Not suicide levels of sadness by any means, but I feel for the nameless protagonist. And that is my point in a nutshell: can it get any lonelier for this cartoon stranger in a strange land who doesn’t speak Hebrew and who can’t find a decent guy to schtup than we readers not even knowing his name? I doubt it. There are moments of comfort, but the anonymous hero isn’t part of them – Markot games, Vox, finding the mysterious graffiti poet; he’s an observer. But, as with most things, there is grace in the end.

Joey Alison Sayers’ Number One is an odd piece, but it made me laugh. My six-year old nephew is going through his “bodily noises and functions are funny” stage, and, yes, my brother and I are encouraging it, not only because burps that scare birds out of trees are funny, but also because they’re natural and everyone does them (we’re trying to avoid any kind of shaming issues). Recently, the three of us were at Sara’s, a local beach-front hamburger “stand” which has my favorite ice cream in the world: soft-serve orange sherbet, when my brother belched unexpectedly, like, “Kronos eating his children too fast” belched. We all started laughing then realized a woman and her daughter sitting next to us were chuckling along. Scott was immediately embarrassed and apologized for interrupting their meal, though I have to give him credit for not stopping laughing. The mother said she looked over because she thought her son was nearby as he also doesn’t cover his burps in public. My nephew and I were amused by this, like, groundling amused. This is the charm of Number One: we’ve all been there.

Robert Kirby’s Freedom Flight rounds out the issue with another story about loneliness in the middle of a crowd. Drew has always wondered what it would be like to disappear, so when his boyfriend blows him off to work one afternoon, Drew leaves their apartment to meander around NYC. Kirby’s “one” could be seen as a companion piece to Orner’s, but much darker. In both stories, the protagonists are lost in the Big City, mostly because they’ve never been connected to it. But unlike Orner’s leading man, whose interior monologue connects his past to his present and to his future, Kirby’s Drew cycles around and around in a never-ending present, an existential “Groundhog’s Day”. And finally, there is no grace to save his Drew in the end: “one” simply becomes “none” (worse, “no one”). It’s a sucker punch in the gut, to be sure. It’s also honest and real.

Robert Kirby promises this is the first issue of an on-going series (a promise backed by the art samples for #2 on the final page) with contributions from old and new names in queer comics. It’d be a shame to not get on-board for this sure-to-be spectacular ride now. Order a copy of THREE here as soon as you reach the period at the end of this sentence.

In brief: See it, but pretend that someone else is playing Scott Pilgrim.

Too gay to be straight?

Several weeks ago, there was a minor rhubarb in the gay blogosphere when Ramin Setoodeh of Newsweek suggested that Sean Hayes, co-starring opposite Kristen Chenoweth in Promises, Promises, ruined the play because his gay was sparkling through what was supposed to be a straight character. I’m going to suggest the exact same thing about Michael Cera in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. Dude acts like a lady. I’ve seen him in similar movies about disaffected and intensely understated teen love – Juno springs immediately to mind – which end in emotional waterfalls of caring and empathy, but I’ve never actually bought it from him. I’m now convinced it’s because is ways too subtle for the conscious mind to perceive, he was actually projecting his love for J. K. Simmons. (And who wouldn’t?) Never having read the manga-books, I wondered for the first thirty minutes if Cera’s lispy and breathless performance was foreshadowing Scott’s coming out later the film. Even his roommate, uber-slutty manbanger Wallace, in a metafictional moment says of him, “And you think I gay up the place too much?”

Is Cera really gay? Is he really straight? Who knows? Who cares? All I can say is, he needs to butch it up there a little and step out of his “less is more” schtick or he’s going to be typecast in the way of D J Qualls who is mostly famous for being Holocaust-thin. That or, ya know, he can start up a production company with Chad Allen. “Cerallen” or something mish-mashy like that.

Too hip to be square?

And speaking of disaffected. Is the… I dunno, are they still called “hipsters”? What is the generation of Xbox addicts and lonely souls in skinny jeans and pork pie hats called? Someone let me know, but until then I have to ask, is the Hipster Revolution over yet? I’m kinda tired of them. Yeah yeah yeah, my generation had the spotlight held up to our disappointments in The Breakfast Club, but kids these days remind me vaguely of kids from my college days who didn’t have jobs or any visible means of financial support but who still managed to be dropped out of helicopters to snowboard down mountains.

Holy crap. I’m my father…

Scott Pilgrim and his friends are like that (not my father; the previous thing): they don’t do much, but their days are full of activity – playing video games, wearing ironic t-shirts, faking suicides, trying to get signed with a music label, making much ado about trivia, and muddying the waters with their unexpressed emotions in a self-conscious way. Of all the gang, only Kim (Allison Pill) has the facial chops to pull off the seething cauldron of rage and resentment that threatens to bubble over at any moment. Scott himself is dating a high schooler – 17-year old Knives Chau – because he wouldn’t get any play otherwise. Though he wants to hang out with her, and they have a simpatico ninja-ass kicking video game technique, it’s awkwardly apparent that the power dynamic between them is WAY off. In one moment, Scott literally freezes his affections towards Knives until she obsequiously puts more quarters into their arcade game then he continues as if she had done nothing wrong. Yeah, right away, I didn’t like Scott (the character, not Michael Cera), but I’m certain I wasn’t supposed to like him, otherwise how could he grow into a better person by the end? Thinking of it, the ladies of the film were actually far superior to the boys in every way, not only as characters, but also as actresses. Knives (Ellen Wong), Kim, Stacey (Anna Kendrick), and Ramona (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) are part of what I’m calling “Hit Girl Syndrome”: “when a secondary female character upstages the male lead in every scene.” (I’ve already submitted it to Urban Dictionary, bitches.)

I think the only current cultural obsession missing from the movie was zombies (seriously, it even had a bacon moment! I don’t think even Twilight had a bacon moment.), but it did have winged Japanese succubi in sailor outfits. Is that almost the same thing? Is Scott Pilgrim too, almost cynically, relevant?

What’s a meta for?

None of this movie is meant to be taken literally, postmodern bitches.

+8 Balls

It may not seem like it, but I enjoyed this film a lot. I could relate to the story and the difficulty of forming relationships in what is now the 128-bit digital age (yeah, the NES graphics are part of the metaphor, too.), and though I wasn’t moved by the characters, I was certainly touched by their woes. Had it been directed by anyone other than Edgar Wright, it would have been forgettable, maybe even terrible. But Wright brought all the charm of the comic book medium to the screen as literally as was possible, and in doing so kept the usual translation problems to a minimum. Perhaps Neil Gaiman should have a sit down with Wright before Anasi Boys goes into pre-production.

A-

cataphysical

from Joe Palmer’s review of Jon Macy’s adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Teleny and Camille:

Dear God-fearing gentlemen and ladies: It is with indignation burning in my breast that compels me to sound a clarion bell to forewarn the populace of a most horrifying book which has surfaced of late from the foulest recesses of the lowest levels of society. This novel, no this affront of debauchery, this “Teleny and Camille” has the telltale stamp of the once feted degenerate Oscar Wilde. This is no simple manuscript; accompanying the writing are illustrations depicting the lecherous adventures of these two young men as they indulge in unspeakable, lascivious and unnatural acts which are proven as the abhorrence of God and hallowed civilization. One might presume these debased drawings to be produced by Wilde’s occasional associate Aubrey Beardsley. Rather, they are the unholy work of one Jon Macy, and we feel he must be of equal standing to Wilde for so putting into form acts between these two men and others which should never be spoken of by good and righteous people. Never before has this upright person looked upon images of lanquor, of men in cataphysical couplings, declaring love to one another. It is a mockery of the natural order upon which our history rests! Mr. Macy, this one believes, should be sent to the gaol — gentle ladies, please avert your gaze as it is not our wish to offend — for sketching tumescent members and ample buttocks as if to be confused as supplications! Messers Macy and Wilde are denizens of whorish Babylon, as surely as their fetid imaginings!

Jon Macy’s adaptation of the early gay pornographic work Teleny into the graphic tome (seriously, I could kill a cat with its heft) Teleny and Camille seethes. It churns. It tugs. It traps all things beautifully gay and all things terribly gay then challenges the reader to not look away. I’m sure many will see this novel only for the love story, but what Jon has given us is a vision of how much and how little we gay folk have changed in the 100-plus years since Oscar Wilde (allegedly) and his band of lavender men wrote the original novel in round-robin. It’s a FAR superior execution of the idea behind Francis Ford Copolla’s Dracula: Victorian context, modern subtext. (I have to thank my brother for this succinct metaphor.)

The story is a simple one: boy (Camille) meets boy (Teleny), and they begin a secret yet intense love affair that knocks Camille out of his perennially heterosexual life and into the clandestine London homosexual world. But there’s so much more than that. Even in 2010, the gay world is somewhat invisible, almost like a Wonderland that isn’t seen until someone falls down the rabbit hole. Yeah, people are aware of Teh Gays, but they have no idea how subversively ubiquitous we are until it’s pointed out to them. A dear, dear friend of mine knew me for years before I mentioned the local bathhouse in Austin, TX to her, and when I did, I thought she was going to have a stroke. What she couldn’t get over was that it’s located right next to a major shopping mall on a major street. She’d seen it a million times, but never knew what it was for. So it goes with Camille. After becoming involved with Teleny, the scales fall from his eyes and he stumbles upon homosexuality everywhere. But when you look into the gay, the gay looks into you. Camille is no longer able to hide his nature (though he does try at times).

I won’t be the only person to say this (though I hope I’m the first): Jon’s art is the sensual motifs of Aubrey Beardsley with the grotesqueness of P. Craig Russell (though it lacks PCR’s cool detachment from said grotesqueness). I’m sure by now that everyone knows NOM’s Tour of Hate is crossing the nation, preaching the sanctity and sturdiness of a “one man, one woman” marriage and the horror that is Marriage Equality. But if one looks back over just this past year, there have been shocking abuses in these “sanctified” marriages ranging from mundane adultery to selling children in Wal-Mart parking lots. The hypocrisy rankles me, but it seems to be “OK” with Maggie Gallagher and Brian Brown because straight people are perpetuating the abuse.

Stay with me. I have a point.

Teleny and Camille calls this hypocrisy out, or at least recognizes that straight people don’t get a free pass by virtue of where they insert their genitals. In his youth, Camille visited a brothel with friends before they all left for college. The night ended… let’s say, “poorly” for one sad prostitute. Yet there is no condemnation between Camille and his friends for being in the brothel in the first place (to say nothing of the dead whore). As an adult, Camille accidentally wanders into a cruisy section of a park, calling it a “modern Sodom and Gomorrah”. Yet, what is the difference in these locales and the behaviors except the attitudes which accept or reject them? Wilde and company were making a point then that we’re still trying to make today. Consciously or unconsciously, Jon does some editorializing in these scenes. Most of his pages are not made of composed art inside panels in a certain disposition, but rather the pages themselves are full compositions, whole art. However, in these scenes (and one or two others), the pages break apart in a sense. Panel dominate the landscape, and Jon’s lines change from fluid and expressive to harsh and… like barbed wire in 3-D. Grotesque. They fit the scenes perfectly, but they jar the eye.

And don’t even get me started on how much I think Jon hates poodles.

Where the story and the art meet is in the sex. The sex in Teleny and Camille is more than just hardcore porn. Yeah yeah yeah there are engorged penes and money shots that could blind a treeful of squirrels, but it’s not gratuitous and definitely not there for a cheap thrill or (even worse) page filler. The sex has meaning and purpose and emotion behind it. Some of the emotions are lovely and expansive; others are more bothersome, but still need to be there.

One thing I must thank Jon personally for is his ending. THANK YOU, JON!! Your indictment against the trend in gay literature that “even the one’s written by the gays” require a tragic ending because “it’s like we’re too damaged to even dare imagine being happy” is difficult to refute. So many stories dwell on death for obvious reasons, but even pre-AIDS gay media fall to either Boys Beware or Cruising-type idioms. It’s refreshing to have a gay love story with a happy… well, at least an ending without murder, death, or disfigurement (I’ll leave it to the reader to decide if your ending is a happy one). E. M. Forster is no doubt completely behind your modern addition to the text.

So. Yeah. Buy it!

Xposted at Prism Comics

…but this seems like the most fun:

I write like
H. P. Lovecraft

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

Tickets available at the Weird City Theatre website. It’s about heroes, villains, monsters, God, and the End of the World (all my favorite perseverations), but, thankfully, not about sparkly vampires.

GIANTS in THOSE DAYS got a blurb in this week’s Austin Chronicle. I don’t know who wrote it, but they’re pretty comics savvy. Hope my words live up to theirs!

This was an early draft of a review I wrote of Android Karenina for Instinct Magazine:

I can say without reservation that I would rather have an anal fissure treated by a leper armed only with lemon juice and a nail gun than get involved in any literature from Russia, let alone Anna Karenina. Thank goodness Quirk Classics has taken out all the proletarian angst and replaced it with ROBOTS, which studies have shown to be 2 bajillion percent more interesting than the travails of bored upper-class housewives. In this alt.Russia, robots are inseparable companions and confidantes of the wealthy; faithful and obedient, save for Alexei Alexandrovich Karenin’s FACE implant, which threatens to destroy the peaceful monotony of everyone’s lives. Thankfully. The original novel makes the “Little House on the Prairie” series looks like a grindhouse bloodbath, so a touch of mayhem helps the boredom disappear like android exhaust in a stiff breeze. Guaranteed you will not throw yourself under a train by the end. Thank you, Quirk!

This was my final draft:

I would rather have a broken bone set by a dog armed only with a nail gun than read any piece of Russian literature, let alone Anna Karenina, the 19th century’s “Real Housewives…”, except instead of vapid whores who have everything, there is one bored betty who jumps in front of a train instead of divorcing her husband to be with her lover. Happily, Quirk Classics has taken out all the proletarian angst and replaced it with ROBOTS, which studies have shown to be 2 bajillion percent awesomer than bustles and adultery put together. Anna’s doomed affair with Count Vronsky takes a backseat to the treacherous plan by Russia’s cybernetic citizenry to usurp their fleshy creators and become Mechanical Overlords of the World! More Robotech than Tolstoy, and thank goodness for that!

They’re both WAY over my word limit (Sorry, Jeff!), but I’m curious to know which one has more “oomph!”. Thoughts? Comments? Opinions?

Tickets available at the Weird City Theatre website. It’s about heroes, villains, monsters and the End of the World, and, thankfully, not about vampires.

god-botherer

I am lucky enough not to have a god-botherer in my life, at least not directly. Most of the ones with whom I have a passing familiarity are much more interested in how I put my genitals to use than they are about promoting peace in the world or feeding the hungry or, you know, being Jesus-like.

anosognosia

Back in April, I wrote about the Dunning-Kruger Effect – the inability of an incompetent person to recognize their incompetence because they’re too incompetent to know any better. However, as quoted in a recent New York Times article, David Dunning himself calls it “the anosognosia of everyday life”. And being the brilliant man he is, Dunning can explain it much better than I can:

An anosognosic patient who is paralyzed simply does not know that he is paralyzed. If you put a pencil in front of them and ask them to pick up the pencil in front of their left hand they won’t do it. And you ask them why, and they’ll say, “Well, I’m tired,” or “I don’t need a pencil.” They literally aren’t alerted to their own paralysis. There is some monitoring system on the right side of the brain that has been damaged, as well as the damage that’s related to the paralysis on the left side. There is also something similar called “hemispatial neglect.” It has to do with a kind of brain damage where people literally cannot see or they can’t pay attention to one side of their environment. If they’re men, they literally only shave one half of their face. And they’re not aware about the other half. If you put food in front of them, they’ll eat half of what’s on the plate and then complain that there’s too little food. You could think of the Dunning-Kruger Effect as a psychological version of this physiological problem. If you have, for lack of a better term, damage to your expertise or imperfection in your knowledge or skill, you’re left literally not knowing that you have that damage. It was an analogy for us.

I don’t know when, if ever, it will happen, but I look forward to the moment I can unholster this baby and pull the trigger.

Apophenia

What do “Knowing” and “Contact” have in common besides being films ill-advisedly made in the first place? The answer is “apophenia”. In both films, the lead characters look for patterns in seemingly chaotic systems. If you were wondering what the big difference between the movies is, the answer is one movie had a phenomenal lead, the other had Nick Cage.

interiority

Dana Stevens of Slate.com was quite the wag when it came to reviewing the new Diaz/Cruise vehicle, “Knight and Day”. My co-worker Zach and I were laughing about her characterization of Cruise, but stumbled over this paragraph:

The character of Roy Miller is so quintessentially Cruise-ian that he skirts the edges of self-conscious parody. He’s an indestructible superspy who’s bottomlessly cheerful and yet vaguely malevolent. Roy seems to lack any interiority whatsoever; even when he’s telling the truth, he appears to be lying. (Cruise’s most memorable characters have tended to be liars: Jerry Maguire, the kid in Risky Business, the unstable self-help guru in Magnolia.)

Zach turned to me and asked, “What’s ‘interiority’?” I had to admit, I had never heard the term before, but hanging around theatre folk for a good portion of my life led me to believe that it was some new-fangled acting technique that are always coming out of New York. Then I remembered something an ex used to call “the Neve Campbell Interior Moment”, a pause in acting during which the “Party of Five” would check to make sure her character and her character’s actions were still in sync. Apparently, not doing that can now be called “the Tom Cruise Spelunking Moment.”

And she did it better than Brett Ratner could have…

Thanks, Owen!

New X-Men #114
New Mutants #14

The Once and Future Master Mold. No wonder New X-Men #114 was re-issued this week.

“Second Coming” continues with Part 11 this week. It’s still mass destruction on all sides (though I seem to care less about which characters are dying than I did way back in “Mutant Massacre”), and all the B-list mutants (like Colossus) are taking the heavy knocks. Of all my impressions of this book, the strongest one I come away with is that I don’t like Doug very much. Actually, I don’t like any of the Muties very much. They’re all grouchy and smarmy and way too cocky for their own good. At least when they were teens, there was a reason for their cockiness (i.e., they were teenagers who thought they knew better than everyone around them); now it just reads as snark. And transparent snark at that. And what happens after “Second Coming” ends? What is the next genocidal plan Marvel will put into motion? I know that The X-Men will join “The Heroic Age” next month, but I probably won’t be along for the ride. “Mutant Massacre” was back in 1986, and it’s been one long assassination attempt since then. And “The Heroic Age” pits the X-Men against Dracula. Wow. Didn’t that happen back in 1983? Well, it will free up a few bucks every month to start my Bird of Prey, volume one collection. Speaking of which…

DC Legacies #2
Birds of Prey #2
Brightest Day #4

Apparently, “Brightest Day” is not going to be the solution to the endless deaths and editorial-driven disasters that I have assumed it to be. In an interview for the DCU Blog, Alex Segura has Geoff Johns as saying

“Brightest Day” is about second chances. I think it’s been obvious from day one that there are major plans for the heroes and villains from Aquaman to take center stage in the DC Universe, among many others, post-”Blackest Night”. “Brightest Day” is not a banner or a vague catch-all direction for the DC Universe, it is a story. Nor is “Brightest Day”a sign that the DC Universe is going to be all about ‘light and brighty’ superheroes. Some second chances work out…some don’t.

Yet, for being “just a story”, it’s leaking all across the DCU, even into the restart of Birds of Prey (granted Hawk and Dove are now part of the team), so it seems to be more of a paradigm than a story. After reading my DC titles this week, I’ve come to the conclusion that this could be a great opportunity to shake things up in DCU. Yeah, yeah, “again”, but everyone loves a crisis,right? Looking at DC Legacies, the heroes of the Silver Age disappeared rather than reveal who they were to the government and thereby lose their effectiveness to fight crime. But look at this week’s Birds of Prey: Oracle’s Braves know who the Penguin is, know his real name and know that he’s a bad guy. I’ve never really thought about it before, but, really, everyone in the DCU knows who the villains are. They don’t have secret identities per se, though they do have criminal personae and $$$ and guns and guards and compounds and Machines of Doom. Yet for some reason, they persist like untreated athlete’s foot even after year of head-butting with any number of heroes. But how much more fragile is a hero’s secret identity. The whole plot of BoP is the ruination that would follow revealing a hero’s alter ego. Witness what happened to Black Canary, and she’s apparently just the first. Does this make her more vulnerable (as we’ve always thought), or does this free her to be more of a hero? If “Brightest Day” is about second chances and not about being “light and brighty”, then maybe the way the heroes can get the upper-hand and not make porridge out of this second chance would be to adopt the villains’ “lifestyle” – live openly and without apology.

At least, that’s how I’m making sense of “Brightest Day”: that there really is a plan to drastically cut back on the snuff porn and get back to good stories. Of course, I thought that keeping New Krypton around for more than a minute was a good idea, too. Oh oh oh! and leaving Paradise Island intact.

burned flesh, irreversible blindness, cutting through some metals: these are all the first steps to making my Jedi dreams come true. Wicked Lasers has developed a lightsaber-like product that can inflict loads of damage, but without the philosophical claptrap to get in the way of some real mayhem.

Wicked Lasers radically redefines the way we see lasers yet again. For the first time in history, direct blue laser diodes have now become available in the consumer market. Wicked Lasers took the direct blue laser diode components and made the world’s first 445nm direct blue diode laser, the Arctic.

The Artic emits a 445nm cool blue, ultra high power 1W beam which appears up to 4000% brighter than the Sonar’s 405nm violet beam. This direct blue laser diode is the result of the evolution of laser technology. Less than one year ago, this laser would have cost thousands of dollars to build. Don’t let the Arctic name fool you, this laser possesses the most burning capabilities of any portable laser in existence. That’s why it’s also the most dangerous laser ever created.

And I need to get one before the FAA decides that no one needs that much power hanging on their belt.

For Immediate Release: June 10, 2010
Media Contact: Patti Neff-Tiven, Managing Director, Weird City Theatre Company
512-786-5033
Patti@WeirdCityTheatre.com

Weird City Theatre Company
Announces World Premiere
Giants in Those Days

AUSTIN—Weird City Theatre Company announces the world premiere of Giants in Those Days, an original graphic novel to stage adaptation by local writer, Sean McGrath. Heroes and villains of the muscle-y spandex-clad kind have been all but expunged from the world by the godly decree of Jason December, but one man remembers the Heroes of the Superior Union – shining beacons of everything mankind could become – and their stand against the evil of The Karnivale. Alone, he attempts to resurrect hope and decency and light in a new generation of heroes. But victory isn’t guaranteed for the good guys… Directed by Patti Neff-Tiven, the cast includes WCT Artistic Director John F. Carroll, Company members Kevin Gouldthorpe, Bethany Harbaugh, Nick Orzech, Jenni Bauer and Russell Minton and features Jennifer Baldillez, Chris Romani, Braden Hunt, Daniel Moore, Paul Camp, Austin Davison, Terri Lynne Hudson, LeRoy Beck, Ronis Alvarenga & Xaq Webb. This multi-media piece includes film, puppetry and panels from the original comic book. Featuring original art by Benjamin Ruth, Nockiman, William O. Tyler, Michael Troy, Joe Palmer, Ren Burke, Christopher Moshier, and Sean S. Martin.

Performances run July 8 – July 25, 2010 at the Dougherty Arts Center, 1110 Barton Springs Road, Austin, TX. Performances are Thursday through Saturday nights at 8:00PM and Sundays at 5:00PM. Tickets are $15.00 for adults and $12.00 for children, seniors and students (with ID), and group rates are available. Tickets can be purchased at our website, www.weirdcitytheatre.com, or by calling 512-745-2636.

Weird City Theatre’s mission is to encourage the growth of the artist and represent the uniqueness and vitality of Austin through re-envisioned classics and original works. Keeping a child-like sense of play, we focus on the process of the actor and we are playing our part to keep Austin weird!

Weird City Theatre is a sponsored project of Austin Circle of Theatres, a nonprofit performing arts service organization.

shonda

Joe Jervis provided me with another Yiddish word today, “shonda”, “a shame”. I need pearls to clutch when I use it.

Acts of Violence

I often say that Noir is dead though my saying so doesn’t stop people from trying to put the corpse on stage and make it dance. Noir was a time and a place that doesn’t exist anymore, and woe betide anyone who thinks its resurrection is imminent. This being said, it’s so much better just to write a 1920′s gangster story or a rural justice anecdote in one’s own voice the way that Martin Scorsese did in Gangs of New York or The Departed… well, maybe The Departed is a bad example of “better”. The team behind Acts of Violence took the better path, and in doing so put out a collection of four outstanding stories. I’m not one for gratuitous, over-the-top violence, but I am one for good stories, and the four tales here – “The Three Princes”, “Six O’clock Noose”, “Reggie-Town” and “The Orchard” – are excellent reads. I was especially intrigued by “Reggie-Town” with its deluded protagonist and the unexplained fate of the baby he kidnapped. Without histrionics nor finger-wagging, these stories stare at a black spot in the human psyche then take a picture.
Grade: A+

Batman/Superman Annual #4

Lex Luthor is one of those characters who can be admired for his ability for do impossibly heinous acts in the name of some twisted moral code and yet slip away form punishment like Louisiana shrimp from the hands of a shrimper… too soon? For this same reason he is also a source of frustration for me. Yeah, he’s Superman’s greatest enemy, but I’m rather tired of him (especially in the movies), so it’s nice to see that he will eventually (at some far-flung future time which should reach the newsstands in about 3130) get what’s coming to him. And while I at first thought he was a commercial ploy, I’ve grown to like Batman Beyond, and wouldn’t mind seeing him in an on-going series of his own, especially if Renato Guedes continues to draw him (his transitions are somewhat awkward, but his coloring and linework are peerless).
Grade: A-

Brightest Day #3

Wow. This is a total downer. And not all that bright at all. Seriously, Blackest Night had more hope than this. The story is intriguing and well-paced, but it’s not living up to its title. Yet. I’m standing by my man and saying that things will get better as the series goes on.
Grade: B

Potemkin

There is no language to truly express my love for Dan Savage. He’s never not on his game and his arms are just so ripply. In this week’s column, he got a letter which read:

One of my best friends at college is gay. I’m a straight female with my own boyfriend. We’re going to be sophomores in the fall, and I feel like this is about the age where coming out to one’s parents is in order. However, my friend’s parents are conservative. His older brother is also gay—and when he came out, his parents cut off all funding for college and excommunicated him from the family, so my friend is understandably terrified.

When his parents come to visit, I tag along on “dates” with him to “meet the parents.” It’s a free meal, but it feels a little dirty to lie to his mom and dad about how “in love” we are. Moreover, my friend is coming to my house in California this summer. I had said I would love for him to come visit—as a friend. But his parents think he’s going to be staying with his girlfriend, and they’re thinking of tagging along so they can finally meet their future in-laws, i.e., MY PARENTS. I feel like this is getting way out of hand. How far should we take this act?

I Should Win An Oscar

When you feel bad about lying, ISWAO, remind yourself that you’re doing a good deed—you’re doing God’s work—every time you pass yourself off as this boy’s girlfriend. Yes, you’re lying to his mean-spirited, emotionally abusive parents, two complete shits who deserve so much worse than simply being misled. And he only lies to them because—for the time being—he must.

You should ask him to do three things to secure your continued cooperation in this deception. First, he has to make a solemn promise that he will come out to his parents the day after he graduates. Second, he has to reach out to his excommunicated brother and, if his brother can be trusted to keep his secret, he has to come out to his brother. Third, he has to break up with you at the end of the school year.

The course of true love never did run smooth, as someone or other once said, so a painfully messy June breakup with his college girlfriend—right before summer break!—not only makes your friend’s Potemkin heterosexuality that much more credible, it also gets you off the hook for this ill-advised summer visit. Then when September rolls around, ISWAO, you two crazy kids get back together. Repeat as necessary, i.e., be “on again” when his parents are in town, be “off again” when your parents are in town, over summer breaks, holidays, etc.

And help him look around for his next girlfriend—perhaps a lesbian student with similarly batshit parents—because he can’t expect you to be his beard for your entire college career.

I’ve heard of the movie The Battleship Potemkin, but didn’t know how that related to a gay man needing a beard, so I looked it up. It turns out the usage is from a post-Crimean War story, which says that a Russian minister had fake villages built to show Catherine II that the land she had won was indeed prosperous. It now means any hollow deceit used to maintain power or position or status.

Dear Dan Savage,

Wonder Woman #44

As cool as it might be to dream of being an Amazon, after this issue I am convinced it’s just a protracted death sentence being related to Diana. Last issue, Astarte revealed that she was Diana’s long-gone aunt, taken by The Citizenry and become mother of their greatest monster, Theana, Diana’s never-known cousin. By the end, Theana, by all rights an interesting and powerful character, is dead, and Astarte is Paradise Island-bound to be re-educated (which is the same fate Diana has planner for her, but with an upstanding moral twist to it, I’m sure). Another branch of the Amazon family tree is pruned for no really good reason other than to make Diana fightin’ mad and win the day. Yeah, it’s a long drink of hemlock being Diana’s kin.

But why? Why did Gail Simone end her excellent run on Wonder Woman with a rather macabre tale of mayhem and familicide, and then blunt the point of the tale with a happy ending that makes that of the first “Harry Potter” film seem maudlin? I’ll give her props for handing off the book to JMS in a package cleaner than that handed to her by Picoult, but there’s a difference between having a mess to clean up, and being handed a story that’s been cauterized. Which is not to say that this was a bad story; I’m just uncertain what its meaning is for future Diana stories. Usually, an author will take a moment to show what lurks around the corner or for terrible realization to dawn on a hero’s face, but here, Diana’s ignorance of what she’s just done is more worrisome than anything. I’m not saying there’s any deliberate malice on Diana’s part, but there were some troubling juxtapositions between her and Astarte’s behavior. And maybe Diana was supposed to come off looking better, more moral, than Astatre, but I’m not convinced she did. Here’s what I saw:

* Diana used the lasso to compel Zusen to betray her people. It was said in the previous issue that the members of The Citizenry were taken from various cultures and trained to forget their past lives. Having Diana subvert someone’s free will to do her bidding looked bad.
* The Reformation Island reference was a bit too close to the re-education proposed by Astatre.
* Diana took over a violent culture that has centuries of severe administration issues then let it go without supervision.
* She omitted telling her mother about her stolen sister. Yeah, Diana said she would te

ll her later, but it’s such a Catholic thing to do, putting off bad news until someone is happy enough to receive it without falling apart. It’s pretty co-dependent.
* She let Gail Simone kill her cousin (ok, that’s probably just Gail’s evil showing through ).

i dunno. could there be an evil Diana in the future, regardless of the “Brightest Day” mandate?
Grade: B

Madame Xanadu #23

“Broken House of Cards” finally ends, and while the end is just as subversive as most of Matt Wagner’s other endings (where instead of a full-pitched battle for world supremacy, protagonist and antagonist sort of slip away from each other to wage war another day; really, Wagner is the Anti-Millar), I found it to be a satisfying one. Of course, anyone who’s read Jack Kirby’s The Demon knows that Morgana comes back around 1973, but however frustrating that might be for Madame X, it’s also another story for another time.

Two things I would like to see happen with this book: one, that we linger in the early days of the DC Legends for another story or two. With DC entering the “Brightest Day” (which is still pretty dark, all things considered) and looking back on the early days of the DCU and its heroes, seeing Madame X move alongside more of them would be years worth of fascinating reading, especially under Wagner. Two, Madame X needs to grow in power. What kept her from being more powerful than Morgana who has basically been catatonic for centuries? Is it her moral restraint, as though the power to appropriately defend her ideals would end up eroding them, or is it some kind of… let’s call it “naivete” instead of “character flaw”. It’s fitting to be reviewing Wonder Woman this week while bringing up this issue. Diana has grown up in her comic from a wide-eyed princess to a warrior-philosopher. However, she’s done this in (relatively) little time. Madame X needs more depth without her having to go to the Dark Side and back again (“depth” does not have to mean “be laid waste to”), and I think then that we’ll see her grow in power and in character.

Grade: B+

Birds of Prey #1

Collectors are by nature an obsessive people. Nothing is so upsetting to us as missing pieces of a set. While I had been aware of Birds of Prey, I was so turned off by the TV show of the same name that the comic book didn’t seem like a “must get”. Then Gail Simone took over the writing duties for Wonder Woman, and I immediately loved her take on the Amazon Princess. I still had zero interest in BoP, but when I heard that it was starting over with Gail at the helm (sadly no longer on WW), I had to pick it up. I mean, I needed my monthly Gail fix. All I can say is, “Well. Crap. It looks like I need to get the full run of the original BoP series.” Damn you, Gail Simone, for loving your characters and making them so fun and appealing to read!
Grade: A

New Mutants #13

There not being even one mutie on the cover gave me pause. I know that with the “Second Coming” storyline taking over all things X, I shouldn’t have been surprised that Sam’s team took a backseat to Hope and Cable’s return (though Moonstar beating up the Messiah was an awesome tribute to the on-going struggle between polytheism and monotheism). I like and dislike that Marvel would declare martial law on the X books and commandeer their regular storylines. I like it because it means there are no core event books to buy with my regular reads being tie-ins. Instead, there’s a chapter book-like continuity to “Second Coming”. I dislike it because everyone is all jumbled up and I’m missing important information that core event books would probably provide.

Zeb Wells continues to grow as a writer and continues to grow on me. He hasn’t hit any remarkable strides yet, but I’m aboard. For now.
Grade: C+

Seige #4

Marvel is the Naproxen of event comics. Yeah yeah, they get the job done, and the result is almost indistinguishable from the real stuff, but ultimately there is something off-brand about their stories – a whiff of clone, a hint of prête à porter – that makes them seem tawdry in comparison to the Aleve of DC. Stan Lee rather cynically and shamelessly exposed the Silver Age trend of Marvel’s copying DC’s lead during a feature on the Justice League: New Frontier DVD (why he was doing an interview for a DC project is anyone’s guess), but why they still do this is beyond my imagination. Seige (along with “Necrosha” and Civil War and… some other event I have blocked out) is Marvel’s Darkest Night, though less aptly handled. Is it any surprise then that later this month they’ll be releasing their Brightest Day, The Heroic Age? (Though to be fair, I’m skipping The Return of Bruce Wayne because GMo’s Bruce-Wayne-as-Dawn-of-Time-eugenicist is already tripping me out.)

Beyond the ethics of the story, Seige ends, and ends well. Good. I’m uncertain how the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, but the S.H.I.E.L.D. helicarrier can. And if the combined forces of Marvel’s heroes can’t hurt The Void, how is it Thor manages to drive The Void back and disintegrate Bob? I think it’s time to revisit the Marvel power scales flowchart. Oh! Ares gets a splatter porn death, but Loki just disappears? Not a power comment, just wondering why the bad taste couldn’t have continued all they way through to the end. In the end, there is a promise of renewal and hope which I do indeed hope Marvel follows through on. I’m kinda worn out with the body count and all.
Grade: C

Hanlon’s Razor

“Never assume malice when incompetence will suffice.” This week, I caught a student plagiarizing her final exam. Correction: “caught” gives the impression it was a skillful game of “Go” or an episode of “Spy vs. Spy”, when in actuality, she was that guy from Tiananmen Square, blatantly daring me to run her over. Who am I to pass up a dare? But after I zeroed out the grade, I wondered if this was some strange revenge plan? It wouldn’t be the first time a student has failed a class on purpose to hurt me (yes, I have been told that: “I failed this class to get back at you.”), so I asked her what the deal was and, proving Hanlon’s Razor, she said she just didn’t understand the assignment and thought that copying (the whole thing) from the Internet was allowed. It bears saying that the final exam (a book review on a book of the students’ own choosing) was given to them three months before the due date with a very clear suggestion to see me for help. Ah, well.

However, I think there needs to be a corollary to this law which says that persistent incompetence should be viewed maliciously. Case in point: after telling the above student that I had to fill out a Student Disciplinary Form on her and that consequences could range from her just getting a zero from me (no further discipline) to being suspended from school, but that was a call for the Dean to make. The student then went to an admissions counselor (the infamous P whom I’ve had moments with before) which led to my getting this email:

I’m meeting with one of your students who was explaining to me about her meeting with you regarding copying from the internet or book (sic). She reported that you were going to “write a letter and send to the ?boss? to look at and make a decision about her being expelled”.

If this is the case, there should have been a Student Discipline Report filed (sic) out and shared with the student so they (sic) can sign and keep a copy. XXXX said she has nothing in writing from you about this. I know plagiarism is a serious matter, but no reason for a student to feel scared, afraid and in tears about maybe being kicked out of school, especially since she just moved her (sic) …seeking to better her educational situation – again her words.

I know there are always two sides to this, and I was hoping you can fill me in, so as her Counselor, I can help her understand what she needs to do. If there is a Student Disciplinary Form, done, she will need a copy after you explain it to her.

Thanks in advance and I hope by following the procedures, any misunderstanding can be eliminated on how to handle such situations.

Make no mistake, P is a cow, and a malicious one at that, like Crazy-Bessie-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-barnyard malicious. So, I responded:

i am very familiar with the discipline reporting process, but thank you for taking the time to make sure i know how it goes. i am also familiar with the consequences, and expulsion is not one of them, at least not for a first offense. i think perhaps that this student has misrepresented our discussion to you.

as for filling you in, i’m afraid this is a matter between myself and XXXX. if she needs to speak with me further, i have never turned a student away in need. pulling you into this is at this stage certainly not an option for me to entertain. i’m sure you’re quite familiar not only with FERPA but also with… procedures that say counselors appear to help students fill out paperwork should it come to an appeal, but not before. i do, however, thank you for your zealous advocacy for our students.

enjoy your summer!

The real horror was that before this email (cc’d to about three admins) I was considering not filling out the paperwork (it was, after all, the next-to-last day of the semester) then P had to go and make a scene, basically forcing me to report this student. Ah, well.

In short, the action sequences are doled out like handfuls of rice in the Congo but without the accompanying satisfaction; however, the characters with the exception of Rhodey, are all hot. Don Cheadle is a bit too serious in his role, Chekovian levels of serious. He makes “The Three Sisters” look like vaudeville.

Look, anyone who wants to go see “Iron Man 2″ is going to go see it no matter what I say. Hell, I warned all my friends about “Clash of the Titans”, and yet some of them still went (and regretted it). I’m not saying “Don’t see it”. Definitely not! Go see it in an auditorium full of people because this is probably the Cotillion of summer films, the social event of the season. It’s all downhill from here. I’m just saying I didn’t like it as much as the first one, despite the snappy dialogue (reminiscent of Mandy Patinkin’s overlapping arguing with just about everyone during his stint on “Chicago Hope”) and the inclusion of the Black Widow. OH OH OH! andthe 40-by-his-face Mickey Rourke, who has the uncanny ability to do a consistent Russian accent. Yeah. Go see it.

Like its protagonist, “Kick-Ass” suffers from an identity crisis.

When Kick-Ass the comic was first released, I was impressed by how far the writer, Mark Millar, was willing to take his characters. However, as the story moved on, the body count grew higher and higher, and the scenes bloodier and bloodier to no good end except that Millar could do it that way. His property. His choices. No problem with that, except it didn’t make for good reading after an issue or two. However, sitting in a theatre watching an 11-year-old girl, supposedly living in the real world, pull off these amazingly choreographed kills was nothing but fun. And pretty much weightless. The concern I felt for all the heroes in Kick-Ass the comic, wasn’t present in Kick-Ass the movie at all. While I fretted over Dave’s choices and Hit Girl’s salty vocabulary and sociopathic upbringing in the reading, I never felt that there was any damage being done to their psyche’s in the film.

And this is the schizophrenia of Kick-Ass: it’s a terrible read with gem-like commentary and a featherweight movie that doesn’t even stand up to Titus Andronchus for character violence. Or for more modern watchers, it doesn’t even stand up to Die Hard 4 for general mayhem.

I will give Kick-Ass and Mark Millar this: I appreciate the wanton escalation and huge payoff at the end because there’s no expectation of continuance. Unlike most comic books which want to preserve a core cast of characters because the buying public identifies with them and wants to buy products in which they appear, and, therefore, must keep these characters alive ad infinitum, Kick-Ass has no upper limit that keeps characters “in play,” as it were, because the characters are not what drive the story, so they are expendable in the face of a rising action that has to keep rising. And I’m torn on liking this or not. On the plus side, it hurries the story along and stakes seems that much more risky. This was a lesson that Jericho learned after being canceled less than a season into the story. I tried to watch when it was on, but after four or so episodes of the town facing one more post-apocalyptic crisis yet settling down to a cold brewski at the end, I gave up. I never felt like these characters were at risk because they weren’t. Keeping a story going for as long as possible, usually past the point of usefulness or interest, is the TV way of telling a story. However, after “Jericho” was canceled, the writers took the story into some radical and life-threatening directions (I caught a clip here and there). Too bad they didn’t do so earlier. I hope that “V” learns the same lesson. Soon. (Related kvetch: the pacing on that show is glacial. And a resistance movement of four people?!? Riiiight.) On the con side, it hurries the story along and characters are sacrificed along the way. Aaron Johnson as Dave Lizewski/Kick-Ass was apt: kinda bland and not much of an emotional range, but there wasn’t a lot of call for emotion in “Kick-Ass”. Alone, Johnson couldn’t carry the movie, but he luckily had Chloe Moretz (Hit Girl) to do all the heavy lifting. More than anyone else, she had a story that was worth telling. and Nic Cage… good Lord. He’s almost like Shelly Winters, the butt of his own joke. More than once, I thought he was Nic Cage playing a man who was mocking Nic Cage.

And for comic that was so audacious, I was shocked that Millar signed off on (I assume he signed off on) a Hollywood ending: boy gets girl, boy lays girl, boy uses personal bazooka to dispatch antagonist and usher in the dénouement (not as cool as it sounds). The ending to Kick-Ass the comic was much more coherent, or at least much more in line with the rest of the story. The movie’s seams show so badly that I again found myself wondering if there was an element of parody involved.

While the movie didn’t live up to Mark Millar’s own hype, it’s an adventure worth catching. If it were 3D, I’d tell you to see it now, but it’s 2D, so wait till it’s on DVD.

Einstein’s Injunction

My friend Aziza posted about this months ago on Facebook, saying it was from Research Design and Methods for Studying Cultures by Victor C. De Munck, but when I went to look for it, there was no web-based elaboration, so I assumed it was from a very field-specific text. Whether it was or not, leave it to Google to get Munck’s book online in under six months. I’d like to propose “Johnson’s Corollary” from a lecture by my Linguistics 707 teacher, Bob Johnson: “Anything that is American Sign Language is easily identified by signing it to Bob’s grandmother. When she says, ‘You know I don’t understand that stuff,’ you have produced ASL.”

deuteragonist

I’d never heard of this word before the other day. Everyone knows the antagonist is the hero of the story, and the antagonist is the enemy (or as my friend Ren used to say, “Hi! I’m Satan. I’m the antagonist, the complication, if you will.”). The deuteragonist is the character of secondary importance in a story, carrying equal weight with the antagonist. The best example I can come up with is Lord Mhoram in the first series of Stephen R. Donaldson’s The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. He was the proof that the Land existed outside of Covenant’s experience. His story is equally weighted with Covenant’s.