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
“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.
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.”
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.
Andy passed away this morning. He’d been having problems keeping himself clean the last few weeks (which he hated), which meant more baths (which he loathed). No one wants to lay in his own mess all day, Andy included. I took him to the vet this morning to have him euthanized… I’ve never had to do that to a pet before, and I hope to never do it again, which is naive because I have three other little souls I need to take care of, and any one of them could get sick in the future. The vet – who, by the way, was wonderful, as was the whole staff – said they would give him two shots: one to zonk him, the other to stop his heart. They took Andy away from me to give him the first shot and to install a catheter in an artery for the second shot. I was moved to a bereavement room, and a few minutes later, Andy was given back to me, wrapped in a towel and… zonked. It wasn’t him. He was heavy and passive and … not himself. He was so heavy. And they gave him to me the wrong way, not that they could have known. Andy didn’t like to be on his back; he liked to be on his side. I moved him to the table and tries to get him to see me. Andy always watched me when I was nearby. But his eyes wouldn’t focus. Not even when I kissed him. Not even when I headbutted him (how he showed affection). That was the most upsetting thing yet. I knew what was going to happen, but this… this wasn’t right. I wanted a few more minutes with him to let him know I was there, to let him know it was alright, but he couldn’t even see me. Then the doctor came in with the final shots. And Andy was gone. He was a great cat and worthy of better than he was given. Even from me. I’m wrecked.
