tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43907725494014784352024-03-05T03:19:59.207-08:00The Hooded Utilitariana pundit in every panopticonNoah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.comBlogger1128125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-65372010955486398592011-03-06T15:06:00.000-08:002011-03-06T15:07:54.001-08:00Moved Again!We're now at a new home; <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.com">http://hoodedutilitarian.com.</a>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-73637544727841299722010-09-25T11:29:00.000-07:002010-09-25T11:32:24.391-07:00DoneHey all. It's been 10 months since we moved over to out new home at <a href="www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian">tcj.com.</a> I think that's hopefully enough time for everybody to know we're there rather than here, so I'm going to stop doing updates on this blog. If you'd like to see what HU is up to, please <a href="www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian">click thorugh the link.</a> We continue to post every day on comics, culture and more. Hope to see you there!Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-67458289675431302622010-06-15T03:57:00.001-07:002010-06-15T04:00:20.520-07:00Iron Man 2: Iron Harder<meta equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 12"><link rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CRichard%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><link rel="themeData" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CRichard%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx"><link rel="colorSchemeMapping" href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CRichard%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:view>Normal</w:View> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves/> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:donotpromoteqf/> <w:lidthemeother>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:lidthemeasian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:lidthemecomplexscript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:snaptogridincell/> <w:wraptextwithpunct/> <w:useasianbreakrules/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:splitpgbreakandparamark/> <w:dontvertaligncellwithsp/> <w:dontbreakconstrainedforcedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> <w:word11kerningpairs/> <w:cachedcolbalance/> </w:Compatibility> <m:mathpr> <m:mathfont val="Cambria Math"> <m:brkbin val="before"> <m:brkbinsub val="--"> <m:smallfrac val="off"> <m:dispdef/> <m:lmargin val="0"> <m:rmargin val="0"> <m:defjc val="centerGroup"> <m:wrapindent val="1440"> <m:intlim val="subSup"> <m:narylim val="undOvr"> </m:mathPr></w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" defunhidewhenused="true" defsemihidden="true" defqformat="false" defpriority="99" latentstylecount="267"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="0" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Normal"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="heading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="9" qformat="true" name="heading 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 7"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 8"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" name="toc 9"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="35" qformat="true" name="caption"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="10" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" name="Default Paragraph Font"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="11" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtitle"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="22" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Strong"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="20" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="59" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Table Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Placeholder Text"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="1" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="No Spacing"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Revision"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="34" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="List Paragraph"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="29" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="30" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Quote"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="60" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="61" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="62" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Light Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="63" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="64" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="65" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="66" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="67" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="68" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="69" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="70" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Dark List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="71" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="72" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful List Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="73" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="19" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="21" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Emphasis"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="31" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Subtle Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="32" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Intense Reference"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="33" semihidden="false" unhidewhenused="false" qformat="true" name="Book Title"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="37" name="Bibliography"> <w:lsdexception locked="false" priority="39" qformat="true" name="TOC Heading"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--><style> <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:1; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:0 0 0 0 0 0;} @font-face {font-family:Calibri; panose-1:2 15 5 2 2 2 4 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:swiss; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-1610611985 1073750139 0 0 159 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin-top:0in; margin-right:0in; margin-bottom:10.0pt; margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Calibri; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoPapDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; margin-bottom:10.0pt; line-height:115%;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.0in 1.0in 1.0in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --> </style><!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b style=""><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";" >Iron Man 2 (2010)<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Directed by Jon Favreau<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >Starring: Robert Downey, Jr., Don Cheadle, Gwyneth Paltrow, Scarlett Johansson, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson, Sam Rockwell</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >After watching the first <i style="">Iron Man</i> movie, I was curious as to how the franchise would deal with Iron Man’s lack of memorable villains. I suppose the Mandarin is relatively well-known, but Yellow Peril stereotypes don’t play well in Asian markets. And most of Iron Man’s remaining opponents are just guys in battle-suits, and at least half of them are Cold War commies. So they’re both interchangeable and out-dated.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >The filmmakers behind <i style="">Iron Man 2</i> addressed this problem by avoiding it as much as possible. Much of <i style="">Iron Man 2</i> has nothing to do with Iron Man fighting Whiplash. Instead, the movie spends time on Tony Stark’s conflict with the U.S. government, or a subplot about Tony’s father issues, or a subplot about Tony’s impending death from palladium poisoning (due to the device in his chest), or a subplot about Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes becoming War Machine, or a subplot about Pepper Potts assuming control of Stark Industries, or a subplot about a rival weapons developer who wants to publicly upstage Tony, or a romantic subplot with Pepper Potts, or the introduction of Black Widow, or a couple of scenes that set-up the upcoming <i style="">Thor</i> movie, and a few scenes with Nick Fury that set-up the inevitable <i style="">Avengers</i> movie.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >The avoidance strategy actually works well for most of the film. Easily the most enjoyable part of <i style="">Iron Man</i> is not the action but Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Tony Stark. Downey-as-Stark can invent a new technology, outwit his business rival, and score a threesome with Swedish supermodels at the same time. In other words, he’s an unapologetic male empowerment fantasy, but without the trite moralizing of characters like Superman. And the best scenes in <i style="">Iron Man 2</i> are when Robert Downey, Jr. hams it up as a self-aggrandizing (but lovable) jackass. Whether he’s mocking a congressional committee, or getting drunk while wearing the Iron Man suit, or flirting with Pepper Potts, Tony Stark is an entertaining character even without the superheroics. Unfortunately, Tony doesn’t get to have as much fun this time around. The Rules of Hollywood Trilogies demand that the second movie be darker than the first, so Tony has to spend a sizable portion of the film fretting over his mortality, which gets tiresome very quickly (spoiler: he doesn’t die).
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" >And the film eventually has to get around to the external conflict. This is a summer blockbuster after all, so explosions are mandatory. And to be fair, there are a lot of explosions in the climax, and Mickey Rourke tries his hardest to make Whiplash seem like an intimidating character. But at the end of the day, Iron Man is still slumming it with a villain that shouldn’t keep him occupied for more than 15 minutes. As a comparison, imagine a Batman film where the only villain was KGBeast.
<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<br /><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:100%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:12pt;" ><span style="font-size:100%;">As for whether <i style="">Iron Man 2</i> is worth your hard-earned money, it depends on your taste for big, dumb action movies. <i style="">Iron Man 2</i> isn’t as good as its predecessor and it lacks a strong villain, but it does everything an action movie is expected to do, and in just over two hours. </span><o:p></o:p></span></p> Richard Cookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13255266047189963126noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-20678536459042389312009-12-11T10:10:00.000-08:002009-12-11T10:14:36.621-08:00HU Is Dead...Long Live HUAs we've mentioned a time or two, HU is moving bit, byte, and barrel over to the <a href="http://www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian/">new! improved! Comics Journal website!</a><br /><br />Though we'll be at a different location, our content will not change; you'll still have your long meandering posts about <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Only%20One%20Can%20Wear%20the%20Venus%20Girdlel">Wonder Woman and gender</a>, your enthusiastic <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Gluey%20Tart">manporn reviews</a>; your <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/face%20down%20in%20the%20mainstream">quest for mainstream titles that do not suck</a>; your <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/original-art-living-with-comics-art.html">erudite explorations of comics classics.</a>; your <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Black%20and%20White%20and%20Startlingly%20Offensive%20All%20Over">irritatingly named roundtables,</a>; your <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Music%20For%20Middle-Brow%20Snobs">music downloads no one listens to,</a> your occasional Thai pop videos, and all the other fun features which you've come to expect when you click over here.<br /><br />Also, coming up later this week at the new space, I'm going to try to get myself fired, and then (presuming that doesn't work) we're going to have a knock-down drag-out roundtable on Dan Clowes' Ghost World.<br /><br />All of which is to say, I hope you'll follow us to our new location. And if you have a link to us on your site (and thank you!) I hope you'll redirect it to where the new content is.<br /><br />This address will stay in place as an archive. I thought, as long as we're going, I would post some links to a few of my favorite posts from the past years. Feel free to just skip ahead <a href="http://www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian/">to the new site</a> if the maudlin nostalgia seems too intense.<br /><br />______________________<br /><br />The first post I did to this site was my <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2007/09/johnny-ryan-interview.html">long, complete interview with Johnny Ryan,</a> an expurgated version of which ran in TCJ a ways back.<br /><br />Also going back a bit is this <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2007/09/you-are-now-entering-hell-welcome.html">gallery of cartoons by the amazing editorial cartoonist Art Young.</a> From that page you can click around to some other images and my essay on the cartoonist, if you're so inclined.<br /><br />One of my favorite roundtables on the site (featuring Bill Randall, Tom Crippen, and Miriam Libicki) was our discussion of <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Helter%20Skelter">the feminist Japanese manga Helter Skelter by Kyoko Okazaki</a>. That discussion also links up at the end to the Mary Sue roundtable, which is also one of my favorites, so you can click over there if you're just not getting enough roundtableism.<br /><br />Tucker Stone and I did a back and forth discussion of <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Cowardly%20and%20Castrated">Bob Haney's Brave and Bold.</a><br /><br />Tom Crippen's epic discussion of <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2008/09/comics-arent-just-for-kids-anymore.html">Marvel Comics and Civil War</a> is the piece that really won me over to his writing when I saw it in the Comics Journal. It's great.<br /><br />Miriam Libicki's post on <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/02/many-can-wear-big-80s-bomber-jacket.html">Rogue of the X-Men</a> is shorter, but also a favorite of mine.<br /><br />I also love Bill Randall's apocalyptic vision of manga as <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/01/manga-what-is-point-part-4.html">apocalyptic coccoon.</a><br /><br />And Kinukitty's <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/04/gluey-tart-in-end.html">even more obsessive than you've grown to expect</a> discussion of "In the End."<br /><br />And for more recent highlights: <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Morpheus%20Strip">our Sandman roundtable</a> and Steven Grant's <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/black-and-white-and-startlingly_03.html">great guest post on race and comics,</a> and Richard's review of <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/event-of-century.html">Image United.</a><br /><br /><br />_________________<br /><br />And...I think that's it. I'm kind of reluctant to go; it's a little sad to say goodbye to the place, even if we're not really leaving the internets. Thanks to all the bloggers who have been kind enough to lend their talents here, to the folks who have linked to us, to our commenters, and to our readers. Hope to see you all soon <a href="http://www.tcj.com/hoodedutilitarian/">on the flip side.</a>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-86964948341962219132009-12-10T11:11:00.000-08:002009-12-10T13:29:46.013-08:00Empowered, Vol 1<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Empowered-1-Adam-Warren/dp/159307672X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260475243&sr=1-1">Empowered</a>, Adam Warren<br /><br />You know one of those weeks where you're so tired you're stumbling and your boss of course chooses to give you yet another boring but incredibly difficult project, and there is yet another freak ice storm which kills all your pansies, and you clean off your dog's muddy foot and discover that you've just smeared dog poo around on your bare hand?<br /><br />Yes, that would be my week.<br /><br />I flopped onto my La-Z-boy one day during that awful hideous week and sighed. I was not up for another bad comic with lumpy people in spandex, I just wasn't. I couldn't face beautifully drawn pretty boys, either, in case there was random non-con. I just wanted something, well, fun. And funny, if it could be had. I pawed around my stack of to be read books rather listlessly, spilling them all over the floor and tossing them over my shoulder as I went. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Tenant-Wildfell-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/dp/0199207550/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260475654&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">Tenant of Wildfell Hall</span></a>--good, but too long. Toss. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Idleness-essays-Routledge-Classics/dp/0415325064/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260475577&sr=1-3"><span style="font-style: italic;">In Praise of Idleness</span></a>--nice idea, but who needs philosophy? Toss. <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Marc-21-Everyone-Practical-Guide/dp/083890842X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260475678&sr=1-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">MARC 21 For Everyone</span></a>--yeah, right. Toss.<br /><br />Empowered. Huh.<br /><br />That was supposed to be good, I thought, and wrestled off the aggressive shrinkwrap.<br /><br />An hour later, I was still chortling when I had to go wrestle my Pookie back inside from where he was telling the facts of life (Thou Shall Not Look at my people, Thou Shall Not approach my yard, Thou Shall Not even think about coming over this fence) to the new yappy dog next door.<br /><br />In this volume, we meet Emp, the heroine of the tale and the eponymous Empowered. She has this supersuit that gives her powers, but it's shrinkwrap tight and very thin. When it gets torn--as it does very easily--it loses powers. She's famous for getting taken hostage, tied up and gagged with a ball gag, wearing her torn and scanty suit. Despite this, she's a better superhero than the rest of the Super Homeys, of which she is an Associate Member.<br /><br />I found this comic incredibly endearing, direly funny, and rather feminist. Also, hot. Emp is beautiful, but she's not hot just because she's beautiful. I can flip through a lot of lovingly drawn bodacious babes in spandex and be bored. No, it's Emp's spunk and humanity that make her so hot. Also, she has a nice butt.<br /><br />This is drawn by a man who likes women to have actual thighs, and unlike many superhero comics, her thighs are fat. It's cute and hot. Emp, of course, is worried about how she looks. There's a very spot on portrayal of her concern about the suit--which reveals <span style="font-style: italic;">everything</span>--when Sista Spooky makes fun of Emp for having a panty line. Which means thereafter she goes without. Which means, ahem, that she has to take care of certain things down there so as not to show, well, wiry realities to all and sundry.<br /><br />Emp is both brave and real--her concerns I would have and can relate to. Her bravery is amazing because she has these human feelings and failings. Supeman's bravery is not interesting or amazing, because he's never worried about how the tights looked on him and he's not too worried that the train will smash him, either. Emp has to worry about both and she dashes into danger anyway.<br /><br />She also has a terrible part time job in retail.<br /><br />I laughed and laughed through this comic, because so much of it is so painfully true. Who hasn't had a crappy job, struggled to make ends meet, and lied through their teeth to their mom when she's called to ask how things are going? 'Oh, fine,' we say, eating consolatory ice cream, the only good thing in our lives and probably costing more per pint than half our grocery budget for the week, 'things are going well.' And Emp does this.<br /><br />Along the way, she is joined by Thug Boy, who is a great boyfriend and Ninjette, who is a great best friend. But it's Emp that I feel for and who I'll be buying the next volume to get more of. There's also a possessed alien device, superheroes who got their mutant powers through alien STDs, and some hilarious side jobs for Thug Boy. But I think <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/08/lose-girdle-get-empowered-oocwvg.html">Noah</a> covered all of that.<br /><br />Highly recommended if you are in need of a sexy and funny comic to cheer up your week.Vom Marlowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06766012140370862681noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-26853500162816046102009-12-09T07:30:00.000-08:002009-12-09T20:25:37.178-08:00Original Art : Some Lessons from the Contemporary Art Market<span style="font-style: italic;">When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">I never attempt to make money on the stock market. I buy on the assumption that they could close the market the next day and not reopen it for five years.</span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br /></span><span style="font-style: italic;">Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: right;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">- Warren Buffet</span><br /></div><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggRXMzPVryTVmr5JXvtgN9T_SYYlg7cALBS2d2WfKA6N5VYhWXSG1zO7aZeBfebx8pgyJI6JFHazXfUVrvVWuk6DfQudqeYyH5lRJk6feVFg1oCFCl7CySHXqXpLxsX7sRJBPQSq5wkF3P/s1600-h/stocks-bubble-13-2.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggRXMzPVryTVmr5JXvtgN9T_SYYlg7cALBS2d2WfKA6N5VYhWXSG1zO7aZeBfebx8pgyJI6JFHazXfUVrvVWuk6DfQudqeYyH5lRJk6feVFg1oCFCl7CySHXqXpLxsX7sRJBPQSq5wkF3P/s320/stocks-bubble-13-2.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411731508516895778" border="0" /></a><br />The reason why I've chosen to start this blog entry with some quotes by the world's most famous investor is, in a sense, the same reason why an economist by training chose to write a book about the contemporary fine art market (the book in question is Don Thompson's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Million-Stuffed-Shark-Economics-Contemporary/dp/0230610226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259988968&sr=8-1"><span style="font-style: italic;">The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art</span></a>). It is also the reason why the same book has been mentioned sporadically in original art (OA) circles including industry professionals like former TCJ editor, <a href="http://thegreatgodpanisdead.blogspot.com/2009/09/crazy-mixed-up-art-values.html">Robert Boyd</a>.<br /><br />While original art was never designed as an investment tool, that is exactly what it is often viewed and discussed as - often by default considering the high prices commanded in recent years for certain pieces. Certainly original art is viewed as a business by many of the significant players in the hobby and a working knowledge of the original art market is indispensable if anybody has a mind to acquire comics art without losing one's shirt. It is a rare thing indeed for a discussion of comics art to revolve around the aesthetic qualities of the page in question. Discussions inevitably return to questions of price. Questions of value are often more discretely handled through the privacy of personal messages if at all. Such is the nature of a hobby which values a degree of sensitivity to fellow collectors and their tastes.<br /><br />Buffet is long term investor who aims to divorce emotions from any act of investment. In contrast a skilled professional trader successfully preys upon the emotions of the amateurs who form the bulk of the market. Buffet's reminder to assess the underlying value of a stock also applies to a piece of original art. Yet the average collector would have great difficulty in calculating the equivalent of a PE ratio or NAV for a piece of original art. What makes it doubly hard to put various time tested ideas in investing into practice in the original art market is the fact that the appreciation of a significant proportion of the art is predicated to a large extent on fluff - emotions filtered through nostalgia. It is a market ripe for manipulation.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB6P6OQjcT0n2Cpc1Gu0IJ_qSiM_ZnoHfqGTfhIOHQdUUVS85uCDE8iTsHXtYkM7jeGNJwkF6v26EoqWjgFN56nfkOLCSZV8OG7VNf4ORHGhOW01RhK63Iqyl3IhKsTDoXL-ycQjMm9i6J/s1600-h/9780230610224.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB6P6OQjcT0n2Cpc1Gu0IJ_qSiM_ZnoHfqGTfhIOHQdUUVS85uCDE8iTsHXtYkM7jeGNJwkF6v26EoqWjgFN56nfkOLCSZV8OG7VNf4ORHGhOW01RhK63Iqyl3IhKsTDoXL-ycQjMm9i6J/s320/9780230610224.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411763225041674898" border="0" /></a><br />Don Thompson's book has gained more notice in recent times because of the<a href="http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6275738.ece"> collapse of the contemporary fine art market</a>.The original art community's interest in Thompson's book pertains to its accurate description of the irrational aspects of collecting art, the market forces which can be applied to a hypothetical original art bubble and the apparent immunity of the original art market to such forces.<br /><br />Here are a few quotes from the book up here which may be relevant to original art collecting not only for their similarities but for their significant differences. I present them without commentary so it would be wise to evaluate Thompson's statements and facts with care:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The experienced art collector will take a work home before buying it, to look at it several times a day. The question is whether a week or a month hence, after the novelty disappears, the message and painter's skill will still be apparent."</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />""Never underestimate how insecure buyers are about contemporary art, and how much they always need reassurance." This is a truth that everyone in the art trade seems to understand, but no one talks about. The insecurity does not mean art buyers lack ability. It simply means that for the wealthy, time is their scarcest resource...So, very often, the way the purchase decision for contemporary art is made is not just about art, but about minimizing that insecurity."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Of the thousand artists who had serious gallery shows in New York and London during the 1980s, no more than twenty were offered in evening auctions at Christie's or Sotheby's in 2007. Eight of ten works purchased directly from an artist and half the works purchased at auction will never again resell at their purchase price. In the end, the question "what is judged to be valuable contemporary art" is determined first by major dealers, later by branded auction houses, a bit by museum curators who stage special shows, very little by art critics, and hardly at all by buyers."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"[Jasper] Johns was in awe of [Leo] Castelli's ability to market art. In 1960 Willem de Kooning said of Castelli, "That son of a bitch, you could give him two beer cans and he could sell them." Johns laughed and created a sculpture of two Ballantine Ale empties. Castelli immediately sold the work to collectors Robert and Ethel Scull. The cans are now in a German museum."</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6siMHl2twVflO6pfOLPSgMTb_anM05wex-TDULXPf2FeakovzC3cgZzEfuPN6SQvdezuaWIX_iDf3ApPRDnK3uCqjTOVFI742sQH3haoUiQ9YfrAgxjunYL6UbzjvaYEAw9S6JjTx6xOo/s1600-h/jj_beercans.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6siMHl2twVflO6pfOLPSgMTb_anM05wex-TDULXPf2FeakovzC3cgZzEfuPN6SQvdezuaWIX_iDf3ApPRDnK3uCqjTOVFI742sQH3haoUiQ9YfrAgxjunYL6UbzjvaYEAw9S6JjTx6xOo/s320/jj_beercans.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411743489803742434" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"One former <a href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=4390772549401478435&postID=2685350016281604610">Gagosian</a> employee claims that in about a quarter of the cases, clients says "I'll take it" without ever asking "What does it look like?" or "How much?". These are not cold-calls; they are made to existing clients only. Gagosian says he avoids what he calls "impatient money," that which chases art only as a short-term investment."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The reassurance given by the dealer's brand is reinforced by the behavior of the crowd. As critic Robert Hughes says of New York collectors: "Most of the time they buy what other people buy. They move in great schools, like bluefish, all identical. There is safety in numbers. If one wants Schnabel, they all want Schnabel, if one wants Keith Haring, two hundred Keith Harings will be sold.""</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB5yUqkXW9taJEzFiJL_ufWg9zPW1a0-gO6rBxrjJCILttwoHsTeQ-gUW46iO0O4yB2wQjCnLZYQbsmQcyxnR26dmu-gLQUlXt_FR6fBXECTlCE5q-TN-aCknX4kJ-h077NG5CG-bWu-cj/s1600-h/haring_untitled1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 315px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB5yUqkXW9taJEzFiJL_ufWg9zPW1a0-gO6rBxrjJCILttwoHsTeQ-gUW46iO0O4yB2wQjCnLZYQbsmQcyxnR26dmu-gLQUlXt_FR6fBXECTlCE5q-TN-aCknX4kJ-h077NG5CG-bWu-cj/s320/haring_untitled1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411766560912180434" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"When a work appears at auction, some dealers bid up to what it would sell for at the dealership, to protect the gallery market. Some buy back the work to protect the artist from going unsold. Opinion differs as to whether such price support is necessary. Some claim that it is an absolute obligation for dealers..."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"When, after a long bidding battle, the auctioneer hammered down Mark Rothko's painting White Center (Yellow, Pink and Lavender on Rose) at $71.7 million, there was sustained audience applause. What was being celebrated? The buyer's oil wealth? The triumph of his ego? His aesthetic taste? A new record price, sometimes well above that asked for a similar work earlier that day by the gallery down the street? When the auction hammer falls, </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">price becomes equated with value, and this is written into art history</span><span style="font-style: italic;">."</span> [bolds mine]<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcdYwWDlSIIOzMEawkNHvEdk5W8BsL5jSxf0pgkKl3MlZcrmFwJ20F6_GWR2EzhODw0Xbdz9_wR_v5IJCjfq4R0eq1aQ43lBUD_mTocOCaMHFbD7GLaxnmpK4N6-zZuxlftj6xm5jiQM64/s1600-h/article-0-009C0AB4000004B0-679_468x477.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 314px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcdYwWDlSIIOzMEawkNHvEdk5W8BsL5jSxf0pgkKl3MlZcrmFwJ20F6_GWR2EzhODw0Xbdz9_wR_v5IJCjfq4R0eq1aQ43lBUD_mTocOCaMHFbD7GLaxnmpK4N6-zZuxlftj6xm5jiQM64/s320/article-0-009C0AB4000004B0-679_468x477.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411745705181456258" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Robert Storr...says one of the challenges facing museums is "getting the public to forget the economic history of the object once it leaves the market; the more stress on how much a museum or donor paid...the more likely people will miss seeing the work of art because of preoccupation about the price tag."....Art critics and curators also follow the dictates of art prices. Expensive work becomes meaningful in part because it is expensive. Critics write essays interpreting the work of Jeff Koons or Tracey Emin - and many articles about Damien Hirst - but never admit that the reason the work has meaning is because so much has been paid for it...The history of contemporary art would be different if there were no reported auction results..." </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"How does a work then come to be worth $12 million or $140 million? This has more to do with the way the contemporary art market has become a competitive high-stakes game, fueled by great amounts of money and ego...The value of one work of art compared to another is in no way related to the time or skill that went into producing it, or even whether anyone even considers it to be great art."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Perceived scarcity also produces inflated prices. It does not have to be real scarcity; it can occur when an artist's primary dealer withholds her work and announces the existence of a queue of high-status buyers. It isn't that anyone believes the artist's work might never again be available; it is a combination of fear that prices will go up, coupled with the "I will pay to have it now" approach of the wealthy young collector.""</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Art prices are propelled by what is known in economics as a ratchet effect. A ratchet turns in only one direction, and then locks in place...The ratchet effect in art occurs when two collectors bid up the auction price of a Matthias Weischer oil to ten times the gallery's list price, and this becomes a new reference price below which no collector wants to sell. In an auction, a form of ratchet is at work when the first five items sell for double their estimate. The higher quality items that follow must be worth more."</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjODhKL6rhlEZLbCyDRqiv55AhScNmhQSTTniGEjpaVkGO466H8Q8o1JOhZm0JULT0OfqaGeFH333VWP8y3rWW5uTLQy5gDMTgx38Hi31psjOinmGCP7HqvTfbWIS6nD4wLCbkPpfIjEVXq/s1600-h/new-leipzig-painting-small.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 241px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjODhKL6rhlEZLbCyDRqiv55AhScNmhQSTTniGEjpaVkGO466H8Q8o1JOhZm0JULT0OfqaGeFH333VWP8y3rWW5uTLQy5gDMTgx38Hi31psjOinmGCP7HqvTfbWIS6nD4wLCbkPpfIjEVXq/s320/new-leipzig-painting-small.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411767081581438034" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"If the ratchet, perceived scarcity, and too much money consistently push prices up, is the entire contemporary art market just a bubble, a form of Dutch tulip craze? Art dealers and auction specialists never use the word "crash", and hate the word "bubble". The immutable rule in a buoyant art market is that the participants suspend all doubt."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"<a href="http://www.supremefiction.com/theidea/2009/12/the-art-market-explained.html">Tobias Meyer</a> famously claimed that "The best art is the most expensive because the market is so smart." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Saltz">Jerry Saltz</a> responds, "This is exactly wrong. The market isn't 'smart', it's like a camera - so dumb it'll believe anything you put in front of it...everyone says the market is 'about quality', the market merely assigns value, fetishizes desire, charts hits and creates ambience."</span><br /><br />_______________________________________________<br /><br /><br />One of the most acrimonious public debates this year pertaining to the wheeling and dealing in the original art market occurred sometime in July on the <a href="http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=postlist&Board=48">Collector's Society</a> original art message board where the collectors Felix Lu (a relatively new collector with a penchant for digging out dirt) and Jonathan Mankuta (a self-described big player in the original art market) clashed over a piece of art. It also involved the dealer Mike Burkey (one of the oldest and most canny dealers in the business) who runs <a href="http://www.romitaman.com/">Romitaman.com</a>. It is a dispute which will be very familiar to original art collectors but a short summary might be of some interest to people who don't indulge.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SkRNRLNepvzPlVuc0KgsYaRzxb09uuPuPSUEUl_8bN2E_QrpuGi78G7NiUVnRrxJ8l5an_X1KGKysb1J0dIsKY86DU0hXS625Rlgf669gC90sYDmPpGKI-YhfrkdCCX5lEfVV2lzfXRT/s1600-h/Xmash.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3SkRNRLNepvzPlVuc0KgsYaRzxb09uuPuPSUEUl_8bN2E_QrpuGi78G7NiUVnRrxJ8l5an_X1KGKysb1J0dIsKY86DU0hXS625Rlgf669gC90sYDmPpGKI-YhfrkdCCX5lEfVV2lzfXRT/s320/Xmash.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411755929659196114" border="0" /></a><br />In short, a Kirby splash page from <span style="font-style: italic;">X-Men</span> #2 appeared on Burkey's website with an asking price of $150,000. Lu suggested that it was overpriced and actually on consignment with Burkey with Mankuta as the possible consignee. It was a dispute which escalated to accusations of the page being shopped to various collectors with no success prior to the alleged consignment, imputations of nefarious dealings and, not unexpectedly, mutual belittlement. The thread in question can be <a href="http://boards.collectors-society.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=3300094#Post3300094" target="_blank">found here</a> (with a parallel discussion on the <a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/comicart-l/">Comicart</a> list) and takes in talk (real or suggested) of a black listing, humorous asides concerning black robed original art cabals and exclusive "sandboxes" for the big players in original art collecting. Readers of Seth's <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Wimbledon-Green-Seth/dp/1896597939/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1260024033&sr=8-2">Wimbledon Green</a> will be amused.<br /><br />Questioning the "ethics" of comic art dealers would also appear to be a particularly touchy subject in the hobby. I suspect that many of these complaints would fall by the way side if most collectors viewed original art dealers in the same way they viewed professional stock traders who I do not consider definitively immoral but who should probably be held at arms length by those seeking to dive into such waters.<br /><br />It is of course a far cry from the straightforward market manipulation in the contemporary art market as described in Don Thompson's book or <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gth8_3msnIk" target="_blank">Ben Lewis' documentary</a>. The asking price of $150,000 for the <span style="font-style: italic;">X-Men</span> splash was probably inflated because of the expectation of a mixture of trade involved in such deals (i.e. deals in which other similarly inflated pieces of art are exchanged). A whole different economy comes into play when cold hard cash is the medium of exchange as it is with most auction houses and sites such as Heritage Auction Galleries which only accepts cash (sometimes leveraged I do believe but still "cash"). This historically important and very early Kirby and Ayers <span style="font-style: italic;">Journey Into Mystery</span> #84 Thor splash which was recently sold for $44,182.50 at a <a href="http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=7013&Lot_No=94010">Heritage auction</a> (a mere fraction of the asking price for the <span style="font-style: italic;">X-Men</span> splash) is a case in point.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDZNDnPkxyFiNtBia_wobEHJ_6sRH_UTAYKmPi5XDluT4-7uoxcugZ9iKcxG9wHm1bIn122LZZkxEzROytxUC0BJVzPJYcQ-_Fhj-sFH6pvYO8NHCUOn8z6rB-8Egvw-EU7KirVFiQJoMS/s1600-h/Thor.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 204px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDZNDnPkxyFiNtBia_wobEHJ_6sRH_UTAYKmPi5XDluT4-7uoxcugZ9iKcxG9wHm1bIn122LZZkxEzROytxUC0BJVzPJYcQ-_Fhj-sFH6pvYO8NHCUOn8z6rB-8Egvw-EU7KirVFiQJoMS/s320/Thor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411729849364888130" border="0" /></a><br />There are signs though that the original art market is far more healthy than some collectors had hoped. The incredulity which greeted the sale of a Steve Ditko <a href="http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=7013&Lot_No=93166"><span style="font-style: italic;">Mr. A</span> splash page</a> (which sold for close to $38,000 at the same auction) is the "freak" result getting the most mileage at present.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbAip62TkpUOE4BG9XRC96rfFguv1HFSXM_nZhRphbmJLNOy1ZFzHtxtAbPkXC8O9HlJQczO0ampP1jViKRigqnC9R7kTFoZ0IOVuK6H6Qwnr6WMd5vw1VTqgn8KNhri3agvplqPB96fQ/s1600-h/Mr.+A.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbAip62TkpUOE4BG9XRC96rfFguv1HFSXM_nZhRphbmJLNOy1ZFzHtxtAbPkXC8O9HlJQczO0ampP1jViKRigqnC9R7kTFoZ0IOVuK6H6Qwnr6WMd5vw1VTqgn8KNhri3agvplqPB96fQ/s320/Mr.+A.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411729646081884482" border="0" /></a><br />For those not in the know, this dollar value is higher than most of the Dtiko<span style="font-style: italic;"> Amazing Spider-Man</span> pages sold recently at auction. The same auction saw this <a href="http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=7013&Lot_No=93184"><span style="font-style: italic;">Prince Valiant</span> Sunday</a> going for $21,510.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5x7rm0bPzqY17Ojf05DFD0XtZKGJayOw637cyd75OGOYCDFi3tzc_2YH5JcLdbp3FbMsY6zP9xXc6lFDucL_3G3uc4dv3HjiURER6UKlxiv3oPZfuqjtoWLLNuWGBQCoAWkO7lTpIxB3/s1600-h/Prince+Valiant.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 215px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI5x7rm0bPzqY17Ojf05DFD0XtZKGJayOw637cyd75OGOYCDFi3tzc_2YH5JcLdbp3FbMsY6zP9xXc6lFDucL_3G3uc4dv3HjiURER6UKlxiv3oPZfuqjtoWLLNuWGBQCoAWkO7lTpIxB3/s320/Prince+Valiant.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411729763213080706" border="0" /></a><br />Some believe the depreciation of the US dollar against the Euro is a factor in these relatively high prices but a quick look at the <span style="font-style: italic;">Prince Valiant</span> Sundays which have come up in recent auctions would suggest that the price has also been bumped up by the quality of the Sunday in question. Similarly, a very respectable and historically important <a href="http://comics.ha.com/common/view_item.php?Sale_No=7013&Lot_No=93220"><span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> Sunday</a> went for $27,485 at the same auction. It is not the best <span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> Sunday that has come up for auction in recent years but it is perhaps in the top 20% in terms of aesthetic quality if such things can even be gauged accurately.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR9vIVUt6bQ1NbOfuVJJccfHkhtZh0I7-cNeyPdadimO7AIlf3Mpl4V9UkuprrI4Iz9-h3P_H4QQ_kG_zjXiEqisPJa3a76IKnmN5xAmvOrlYP2VjwR1HOpS-hjwnwTWmdcE2p-vBmfeW6/s1600-h/Krazy+Kat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR9vIVUt6bQ1NbOfuVJJccfHkhtZh0I7-cNeyPdadimO7AIlf3Mpl4V9UkuprrI4Iz9-h3P_H4QQ_kG_zjXiEqisPJa3a76IKnmN5xAmvOrlYP2VjwR1HOpS-hjwnwTWmdcE2p-vBmfeW6/s320/Krazy+Kat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411729920479531778" border="0" /></a><br />I believe that the most important reason (and there are many I assure you) for the original art markets apparent resistance to the global economic downturn is that in absolute terms, the sums of money being discussed are still small - even more so in global terms with the falling US Dollar and incipient inflationary pressures. Certainly the sums involved are small enough that any leverage involved is minimal. The entire original art market is insignificant enough in economic terms that it will never be provided with very large amounts of excess liquidity - an important component in the formation of asset bubbles. Nor does it provide anything close to the requisite amount of bragging rights which fueled the madness seen in the fine art market. If there is a bubble forming in comics original art, it is a small one.<br /><br />This is not to say that current original art prices present themselves as value buys - that's anyone's guess. Still it must be said that you couldn't buy a car (a depreciating "asset") in Singapore for the cost of the <span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> Sunday mentioned above and there are many of those zipping around the streets where I live. Actually, you couldn't even pay for the <a href="http://www.oneshift.com/pdb/lcoe.php?pageid=1#rs">right to buy</a> a car (called a Certificate of Entitlement or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certificate_of_Entitlement">COE</a>) in Singapore for the price of an average <span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> Sunday.<br /><br />I present these facts in order to provide some perspective on the real cost of original art. Prices for original art seem crazy only because of the <a href="http://www.thefreedictionary.com/provincial">provincial attitude</a> with which the entire original art market is viewed. I say this even though I'm a collector (albeit a lackadaisical one) of original art myself. While there is something to be said for a certain kind of naïveté there are a number of associated traits which collectors might do well to leave far behind in these shark-infested waters.Ng Suat Tonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05806614694631452474noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-42159259040985688172009-12-08T12:00:00.000-08:002009-12-08T18:31:20.690-08:00Crime Pays<span style="font-weight: bold;">Filthy Rich</span><br />Writer: Brian Azzarello<br />Artist: Victor Santos<br /><br />We live in a society of rules: no killing, no stealing, no coveting thy neighbor's hot wife. Most of us obey these rules without question, and we tell ourselves that society is better off when everyone does the same. There's also the fact that breaking the rules can lead to punishment, ranging from fines to imprisonment and even death.<br /><br />On the other hand, screw the Man! Nobody wants to be a square their whole life. Every now and then a little murder, theft, and debauchery adds spice to an otherwise hum-drum existence. And as much as our society demonizes the criminal, we all fantasize about what it would be like to throw the rules out the window and do whatever we want. This is why crime fiction never goes out of style. In fact, crime fiction gives us the best of both worlds. We can vicariously break the rules and indulge our every depraved fantasy even as we condemn such behavior in others. Crime pays, as long as it's someone else who suffers the inevitable consequences.<br /><br />Crime fiction has a long history in American comics, but over the decades it became marginalized or subsumed by the dominant superhero genre. In recent years, however, crime comics have made a modest comeback, and Vertigo is set to capitalize on this trend with its new imprint, the prosaically named Vertigo Crime. And what better way to launch a series of crime comics than to recruit Brian Azzarello, one of the few comic writers with a proven track record in the genre?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Filthy Rich</span> is the story Rich "Junk" Junkin, a broken-down ex-football star who's been reduced to selling used cars (in crime fiction, used car salesman is one step below crack-addicted prostitute in terms of shameful jobs). Junk is terrible at selling cars, but he's big and tough, so the owner of the car dealership offers him a different job; shadowing his trampy daughter Vicki around town and ensuring that she doesn't get into too much trouble.<br /><br />Of course, there wouldn't be much of a story if Junk just did what he was told. Enamored with both Vicki and her luxurious lifestyle, Junk quickly gets sucked into a wild plot filled with sex, violence, and the promise of a big payout. If this story sounds vaguely familiar, it's because Azzarello is relying heavily on the tropes of the crime genre: Junk is the two-fisted hero, Vicki is the femme fatale, and even the "good" characters have ulterior motives. The story is also set during some undisclosed period after World War II, allowing Azzarello to evoke the spirit of classic film noir such as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Indemnity_%28film%29"><span style="font-style: italic;">Double Indemnity</span></a>.<br /><br />But if <span style="font-style: italic;">Filthy Rich</span> doesn't exactly reinvent the crime wheel, it's far more than a rehash of earlier works. Azzarello knows how to craft a pot-boiler, and this story moves briskly even as it throws a few surprise twists at the reader. Another strength in Azzarello's writing is his ability to give each of his characters clear, relatable motivations. Junk commits monstrous acts not simply out of abstract emotions like greed or lust, but because of the sting of classism and frustrated dreams.<br /><br />Victor Santos is a good partner for Azzarello. Much like Azzarello's writing, Santos relies upon the look of film noir and classic <a href="http://www.crimeboss.com/">crime comics from the 1940s and 50s</a> (if you click on the link, you should check out the covers for <span style="font-style: italic;">Crimes by Women</span>. If ever a Golden Age comic called out for a reboot...) Men are either square-jawed or shifty, women are sultry, nighttime takes up 90% of the day, and even during daytime every room is half in shadow. This look is aided immensely by the fact that the <span style="font-style: italic;">Filthy Rich</span> is in black-and-white. I can only shudder to think how digital coloring would have ruined the contrast between light and dark.<br /><br />If Vertigo Crime continues to publish comics of this caliber, then all I can say is down with superheroes, up with crime!Richard Cookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13255266047189963126noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-58426510821938317262009-12-07T18:42:00.000-08:002009-12-07T18:47:04.288-08:00Gluey Tart: The Wallflower<i>The Wallflower</i>, Tomoko Hayakawa, Del Ray<br /><br />I've been following this series for a long time – I started with the first volume in 2004. I have all 21 volumes out so far (the run is 24), although I stalled out somewhere in there and I've only read 1-16. This has caused me mild anxiety. "But why, Kinukitty?" I hear you asking. "Please, tell us all about it, no matter how boring!" Well, how nice of you. I think I will.<br /><br />When I fall in love, I become irrational. As I finish each volume of a manga, the specter of having to wait several months for the next one makes me twitch and yell out random obscenities and become despondent and stuff. Cue the irrational hoarding behavior. I try to wait until I've accumulated three or four volumes before I'll start reading again, trying to, I don't know, concentrate the anxiety. Or minimize the bouts of insanity. This strategy plays out in various ways. Sometimes I forget the series exists for six months at a time, which is perfect. Then I buy the last three volumes, read them in one big, happy wallow, and the cycle repeats. Sometimes I fall out of love with the series and decide I'd rather eat pocket lint than finish it. This usually happens only when I've actually bought several volumes in advance. But sometimes, when I really, really, really love a series, I just won't let myself read it for, like, a year, hoping to completely forget about it for so long that eons will have passed by the time I think of it again, and all the volumes will be available, and I can sit down and read them in one long, orgasmic orgy of happiness and completion. <br /><br />And that, gentle reader, is my situation with <i>The Wallflower</i>. I keep buying each new volume as it comes out because I'm deeply afraid they will disappear from the face of the earth in the interim and I won't even be able to buy them used and then I'll die. But, at the same time, I pretend I don't know the series exists, because I'm not ready to break down and start reading it again. This is where a genuine case of multiple personality disorder would be helpful. Every time I buy a new volume and add it to the stack, I'm in danger of upsetting the delicate "balance" I've established.<br /><br />Which is what happened with volume 21. I'd been holding out on actually reading <i>Wallflower</i> since volume 12 – released in, holy shit, June 2007! That's a lot of holding out. I am amazing! (Ahem.) But it's all over. I fell off the wagon. I just read volumes 13-16, and I will be mowing through 17, 18, etc. until I finish them all. Don't get in my way; you might lose a finger.<br /><br />After finishing volume 16, I decided I must write about <i>The Wallflower</i>. No, I really must. But I also felt strongly that I should wait until I've caught up. And it will take me a little while to read the next five, since I'm really quite busy working in soup kitchens and advocating for world peace and getting my health-care plan passed and such. Oh, wait. That's not my life at all. What the hell am I spending all my time doing? My house is a mess, I haven't cooked since 1997, and all my clothes are stained or rumpled. Sometimes both. (I do have some very cool shoes, though.) Well, it's a mystery, although I suppose the damned job might factor into it. At any rate, it'll take me a while to finish five more volumes of this manga, and Gluey Tart the column waits for no man or woman, not even Gluey Tart the person. Content! The Internet demands content!<br /><br />I worried, at first, that it would be wrong to just write about it without reading all the volumes. But then I thought about the 16 I've read, and I decided – as I so often do – oh, fuck it. In fact, that's sort of my personal motto. The truth is, it just doesn't matter where I am in the series. Volume 16, volume 21 – it doesn’t matter. This is an episodic comedy, not a linear narrative. And there are not, shall we say, huge deviations in plot along the way. There is a certain sameness. We're good. It's fine. <br /><br />Let's talk about the plot, then, such as it is. The main character is Sunako, who is described as Goth. It would be tremendously geeky and pedantic of me to point out the reasons why she isn’t really Goth, so I’ll try to restrain myself. She’s something like Goth. She likes to stay in her dark room, which is decorated with skulls and anatomical figures and skeletons and stuff, and her favorite thing to do – besides cooking – is shut herself in her room – in the dark – and watch horror and slasher films – with the anatomical figures and skeletons. Which all have names. Sunako’s appearance is terrifying to others, and when she isn’t drawn as a sort of hyper-deformed dumpling, she looks like the girl from <i>Ringu</i>. She lives with four hot young men, whom she refers to as “creatures of light.” She is, obviously, magnificent.<br /><br />The foundation joke is that Sunako’s aunt, a fabulously gorgeous and wealthy jet-setter, has promised the four beautiful boys free rent in her opulent mansion, where they live with Sunako, if they can turn Sunako into a lady. Which is, as they say, not bloody likely. Hi-jinks ensue, and after ten volumes or so, Hayakawa reveals herself to be an irrepressible cock tease. We are all but promised that Sunako will get together with Kyohei, and maybe it will actually happen by the end of the series, but I’m not holding my breath. Their weird little romance plays out sweetly, though, so I’m happy enough. More on that in a bit, though. (Their romance, not my happiness, which might, possibly, not be your primary concern or interest. Strange as that sounds.)<br /><br />Throughout the series, the boys cook up stupid plans to lady-ify Sunako, and through the unbeatable forces of her indomitable will, kick-ass martial arts skills, and breath-taking craziness, everything goes wrong and one or more parties often needs to be rescued. Sunako does about as much rescuing of the boys as vice versa, so I’m fine with that. This is all complicated by the epic attractiveness of the boys, who are basically being chased through life by crazed, rabid fan girls from all over the country. They are very pretty prettyboys, drawn to look like Hayakawa’s favorite musicians. (Most of her filler notes are about the bands she loves fanatically, and these are really charming.) (The rest are about her cat.) The boys spend a lot of time posing provocatively, getting their clothes torn off, and/or suddenly indulging in inexplicable bouts of cosplay. Which is kind of awesome. If I were drawing volume after volume of beautiful boys over and over, I’d throw them into weird, sexy costumes for no reason, too. I mean, why wouldn’t you?<br /><br />OK, back to that romance. It is a very low-key romance, but it pleases me immeasurably. Every once in a while something goes amazingly wrong and ends up with Sunako and Kyohei holding hands and staring into each others’ eyes. And then her nose spurts blood and she runs away and he stares at her in horror. Occasionally Kyohei’s actions betray him and it is momentarily apparent that he has feelings for Sunako, but mostly not so much. He’s a tough-guy (a tough-guy prettyboy), and mostly he’s blunt and disinterested and kind of selfish. Sort of like Sunako. They get along in unexpected ways. <br /><br />Here’s an example, from volume 16. Sunako’s aunt sequesters Sunako and the four boys in a secluded cabin to protect them (the boys) from crazed girls on Valentine’s Day. The plan backfires that night, though, when they find themselves all alone in a deserted cabin, and there’s <i>something in the woods.</i> It’s one of the horror movie set-ups Hayakawa loves to play with. Well, the something in the woods is a terrifying horde of girls intent on giving chocolate to the boys – and tearing their clothes off. Sunako uses the frenzy to gather up all the chocolate for herself, and at the beginning of the next episode, she’s gained twenty pounds. <br /><br />Something must be done because Sunako’s aunt has invited her to a party to meet a prince, so the boys enlist help to remove Sunako from the dark room with the candy boxes and get her to run off the extra weight. She gets really, really into it, and the boys think they’ve finally gotten her interested in her appearance. The truth, of course, is that after a few workouts she begins to see muscle development, and that makes her yearn to further develop her muscles – so she can look like the anatomical chart of the human musculature system and finally fit in better with her anatomical dolls and skeleton. <br /><br />She becomes completely obsessed with this project. At one point, she’s gazing longingly at a lobster and thinking, “This lobster’s legs are so thin and hard… Crustaceans are so lucky…” Then, thinking about how poorly defined she looks in comparison, she gets upset and cracks two lobsters open with her bare hands. Koyhei finds this very impressive and starts helping her train more intensely. She explains to him (after crawling over him and running her hands longingly over his wiry chest and shoulders) that she wants to look just like him. At the end of the episode, Sunako shows up at the party with a body so buff it’s terrifying to behold, and she arm-wrestles with the prince, throwing him to the ground. (To get her to go to the party, Koyhei told Sunako the prince was an arm-wrestling champion who wanted to challenge her. What else would he say?) It all ends well – Sunako loses interest in fitness and goes back to eating chips while watching horror movies with her plastic friends, and it turns out that the prince had liked being wrestled to the floor. A lot.<br /><br />And that is a pretty typical <i>Wallflower</i> plot. There are those who are driven mad by the glacial pace at which Sunako and Koyhei are getting together, but a conventional courtship isn’t right for these unconventional characters. Hayakawa obviously loves them, and the rest of her cast, and she celebrates their eccentricities and their individuality. It’s a sweet story that heals some of my high school trauma every time I read it. And even though I’ve invested more than $200 in the series so far, that’s still a lot cheaper than therapy.Kinukittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10080066539741346520noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-24487512264348090472009-12-06T11:33:00.000-08:002009-12-06T12:16:59.185-08:00My Kid Could Do ThatVom Marlowe did a post last week about the virtues of the stick figure art in <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/art-and-craft-xkcd.html">xkcd.</a> She noted:<br /><br /><blockquote>See, I think there's a lot to be said for simplicity and humor and just plain getting the point across. The art needs to serve the point of the communication. Some of the, hmmm, shall we say overmuscled super hero comics seem to miss the idea that the art needs to communicate as much as the words do.</blockquote><br /><br />I have a lot of sympathy with that sentiment. Mostly that's probably because...well, here's one of my own drawings from my zine "The Adventures of Eustacia H. Cow."<br /><br /><br /><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cowspanking.jpg" width="250"><br /><br /><br />That's a cow spanking a sentient toaster. Just in case it wasn't clear.<br /><br />Putting aside my own individual bias, though, there's just a lot of great drawing that looks more or less like it could have been done by a 6 year old. One of the best examples I came across recently was the book "The Hearing Trumpet," by Leonora Carrington. Carrington is best known as a surrealist painter; born in England, she had a relationship with Max Ernst, and then moved to Mexico, where she became good friends with the amazing painter Remedios Varos. (According to Wikipedia, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonora_Carrington">she's still alive, too!</a> She's 92, I guess.)<br /><br />Anyway, "The Hearing Trumpet" as a novel is something of a mixed bag. It starts off as being about an elderly woman named Marian Leatherby. The everyday, mildly absurd details of Marian's life, and of her friend Carmella, are thoroughly delightful, adn the writing has that distintively English low-key nuttiness that puts it firmly in the tradition of P.G. Wodehouse and Douglas Adams. Carmella's explanation of why Marian needs a hearing trumpet in order to overcome her deafness and spy on her family is priceless.<br /><br /><blockquote>"You never know," said Carmella. "People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats. You can't be too careful. Besides, think of the exhilarating power of listening to others talk when they think you cannot hear."<br /><br />"They can hardly avoid seeing the trumpet," I said doubtfully. "It must be a buffalo's horn. Buffalos are very large animals."<br /><br />"Of course you must not let them see you using it, you have to hide somewhere and listen." I hadn't thought of that, it certainly presented infinite possibilities.</blockquote><br /><br />A whole book of that would make me happy. Unfortunately, "The Hearing Trumpet" is a bit like Promethea; entertaining through about the first half, then the author gets distracted by tediously crankish alchemical meanderings and the temptations of religio-mystico profundity. So it goes.<br /><br />Anyway, I was originally talking about the art. Here's a bunch of elderly ladies doing exercises, including Marian, who has set her era trumpet down off to the side.<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/carrington149.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/carrington149.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />There's some of Edward Gorey's sketchiness there, but without his sophistication or elegance. Instead, the proportions seem to elongate or contract to suit the artist's fancy; the woman with the turban (who I believe is Marian) has arms that are as long as her entire body. I love the little hint of motion lines as well; it makes the movements seem as scratchy and idiosyncratic as the figures themselves. And all the scribbles, on the ground, or in the tree indicating the leaves — it's just very energetic and personable.<br /><br /><br />Or this is great too<br /><br /><a href="http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php?quickkey=2gztzymzmjz" ><img src="http://www.mediafire.com/imgbnc.php/fd9c67003df614d7b73838bda7eb255f2g.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />That has to be about the most economically rendered transvestite revelation scene ever. The reactions of the two women watching are cleverly differentiated as well, just by slightly changing the positioning of their hands against their faces. I love the way the room itself is sketched too; just three wavery lines to make the corner, and then the more detailed window, so flat and blank it might as well be a picture of a window.<br /><br /><br />Here's another:<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/carrington151.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/carrington151.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br /><br />It's all still very stick-figure, obviously, but you can tell she can really draw. The way the bottom of the sled curves up is elegantly done, and that bird is made up of some deceptively fluid lines. Even the little dots of breath coming out of the animals' mouths are pleasingly arranged in half semicircles...and the small dots on the deer(?)'s face are very nice as well.<br /><br /><br />Of course, simple drawing doesn't always work:<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/75452strip.gif"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/75452strip.gif" width="350"></a><br /><br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/JeffreyBrownClumsyTopShelf.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/JeffreyBrownClumsyTopShelf.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />Dilbert's a very simple strip — yet it's also off-puttingly slick. There's none of the sense of quick whimsy you get in Carrington's drawings. You'd think if you were drawing a demon a little flair or wildness might be in order, but nope; it doesn't even really have any expression, nor does it move from panel to panel. The characters look like they're designed on computer...which maybe they are (no, I"m not going to research Scott Adams' technique. I mean, for God's sake, who cares?)<br /><br />Jeff Brown's work, on the other hand, doesn't look slick— but it's also just really ugly. I think, looking at it in comparison to the Carrington drawings, a lot of the problem is actually how cluttered this is. The shapes defining the window in the middle two panels for example. What do those add? It just makes it look like a mess. The linework also seems more labored than graceful. It's like he's trying to get everything in without thinking about how it looks. The narrative is driving the story, and his art is just struggling to keep up, rather than running with his sketchy style and trying to see where that can take him.<br /><br />(To be fair, this is a somewhat older strip, and I think recently Brown has actually gotten better at both simplifying and at drawing; some of the more recent work <a href="http://jeffreybrowncomics.blogspot.com/">on his site</a> is...not great, but not terrible either. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPRqYriuKtzuxtHPy7aWAnUg4x61gBSyDCV7gKa3RBAysA-GFPnfi0ILdXLN3lL-Au9siKKvY61hOLsp3RAoDoh1AyM6OgPbbb62y-wPy5alLmhp8-Npkl34mqPVXlVAgVS4_AMEYW7u8/s1600-h/bm6.jpg">There's nothing especially wrong with this Simpsons pastiche, for example.</a>)<br /><br />So, yeah, I guess I have to admit that, much as I might like it to be true, just because you can't draw doesn't mean you'll make great art.<br /><br />Leonara Carrington still kicks Alex Ross' ass, though.<br /><br /><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/carrington148.jpg">Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-87980651156312053492009-12-05T11:29:00.000-08:002009-12-05T11:32:59.193-08:00Utilitarian Review 12/5/09Well, as you may or may not have noticed, we're still here. Hopefully we'll shift over to TCJ early next week. In the meantime, here is your weekly wrap as usual.<br /><br /><b>On HU</b><br /><br />I started the week off with a long discussion of the question <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/can-wonder-woman-be-superdick-part-1.html">Can Wonder Woman Be a Superdick?</a><br /><br />Richard sneered at <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/event-of-century.html">Image United.</a><br /><br />I sneered at Carol Lay's <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/big-skinny.html">Big Skinny.</a><br /><br />Vom Marlowe praised the stick figure art in <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/art-and-craft-xkcd.html">xkcd.</a><br /><br /> Kinukitty pledged eternal devotion to<a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/gluey-tart-crossdress-paradise.html"> Japanese cross-dressing reality shows.</a><br /><br />And this week's download features <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/12/music-for-middle-brow-snobs-theme-from.html">a bunch of things I learned about through the Factual Opinion's year-end best of.</a><br /><br /><br /><b>Utilitarians Everywhere</b><br /><br />Bert Stabler and I have a long conversation about <a href="http://darkshapesrefer.blogspot.com/2009/12/moral-meaning-of-mourning-book-of-job.html">The Book of Job</a> of all things. Here's probably my best bit:<br /><br /><blockquote>The second epilogue, perhaps, is the crucifixion. You can see the wheels turning in God's head after Job 42, perhaps, maybe in a kind of Stan Lee or Star Trek vein — "How strange these humans are! So weak, and yet, parodoxically, so strong! I must study them more closely...and to do that I must become — One Of Them!"<br /><br />Next: Comes a Man-God!</blockquote><br /><br />And keeping with the religious theme, I have an article about <a href="http://www.madeloud.com/article/gospel">Anthony Heilbut's gospel compilations</a> over on Madeloud.<br /><br /><blockquote>Anthony Heilbut is probably the most influential white atheist in African-American gospel music. His 1971 book, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times, was the seminal study of the genre. In addition to being a scholar, he was also an influential producer and compiler, and the records he put together remain some of the best introductions to the music. Many of his compilations and projects were on vinyl and never made the leap to disc — but many more were done more recently and are still, blessedly, in print.</blockquote><br /><br /><br />I have a review of <a href="http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/dec/02/rihannas-post-chris-brown-album-rated-r-disappoint/">Rihanna's new album over at Metropulse.</a><br /><br /><br />And finally, for the new TCJ sight I've reviewed <a href="http://fantagraphics.tempdomainname.com/?p=242">Junko Mizuno's Little Fluffy Gigolo Pelu</a> and Johnny Ryan's <a href="http://fantagraphics.tempdomainname.com/?p=538">Prison Pit.</a> Of course, since the site is in beta, these links may be broken by the time you click on them...which is one reason that going live from Beta is maybe not the best of all possible ideas. Just sayin'.<br /><br /><br /><b>Other Links</b><br /><br />Jog has a massive, encyclopedic <a href="http://savagecritic.com/2009/09/my-life-is-choked-with-comics-19a-manga.html">discussion of all things manga</a>. I haven't made it through yet, but it looks stunning.<br /><br />Gary Morris has an interesting discussion of <a href="http://www.filmthreat.com/index.php?section=interviews&Id=1261">his new book of film interviews here.</a><br /><br /><br />And your Thai pop video of the week: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRqCBL2pAwA&feature=related">Duangjun Suwannee with Mon Boo Doo.</a><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sRqCBL2pAwA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sRqCBL2pAwA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="350" ></embed></object>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-52718976104764708792009-12-04T15:00:00.000-08:002009-12-04T15:04:00.088-08:00Music For Middle-Brow Snobs: Theme From JonesSome blaxploitation themes, some thai pop, and a bunch of things I learned about from <a href="http://www.factualopinion.com/">participating in the best song of the year extravaganza which will soon be unveiled over at The Factual Opinion.</a><br /><br />1. Dennis Coffey — Theme From Black Belt Jones (Can You Dig It?)<br />2. Joe Simon — Theme From Cleopatra Jones (Can You Dig It?)<br />3. Tanya Morgan — Alleye Need (Brooklynati)<br />4. Pamela Bowden — Ruk Tai Luey (Bow Daeng Saraeng Jai)<br />5. Pamela Bowden — Noo Mai Dai Len (I Can't Play) (Pa Ched Na La Jai)<br />6. Gui Boratto — No Turning Back (Take My Breath Away)<br />7.Ulrich Schnauss — Blumenwiese Neben Autobahn (Far Away Trains Passing)<br />8. Ryan Leslie — Gibberish (Ryan Leslie)<br />9. Rihanna — Te Amo (Rated R)<br />10. A Sunny Day in Glasgow — Failure (Ashes Grammar)<br />11. Yeah Yeah Yeahs — Hysteric (It's Blitz)<br />12. M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel — Never Had Nobody Like You (She & Him)<br />13. Yui Yardyer — Park Wa Mue Wai (Yui Yum Yum Vol. 7)<br />14. Ajareeya Bussaba — Kang Rom Khon Diew (Hua Jai...Mee Ngarn Kao)<br /><br />Download <a href="http://www.mediafire.com/?jqioyylxmyz">Theme From Jones.</a><br /><br />You can get last week's <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/music-for-middle-brow-snobs-best-of.html">best of the year mix here.</a>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-7290409777879947992009-12-03T17:51:00.000-08:002009-12-03T18:12:25.801-08:00Gluey Tart: Crossdress ParadiseOccasionally you discover something so pleasing, so satisfying, so <i>right</i> that the world is suddenly a better place. The sun shines brighter, the birds sing louder – or if you, like Kinukitty, are sitting in a recliner that’s been temporarily parked in the middle of the dining room for so long you are forced to admit that’s actually where it lives now, and it’s past 1 a.m., and your eyes feel like someone’s scraped them down with extra-fine sandpaper, perhaps it would be more appropriate to say the piles of crap all over the place seem less squalid and the roving dust bunnies seem less aggressive. Playful, even.<br /><br />I do have a point, and that point is that I’m in love. Again. And I owe it all to the Hooded Utilitarian’s very own Suat, who gave me the best tip ever: <a href=" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJr-QAI2F8c"> Crossdress Paradise. </a> Suat! I don’t have words.<br /><br />I sat in the recliner and watched three specials all in one go, and when I was done, my face hurt from beaming at the computer. I smiled so much it aggravated my TMJ. It was worth it, though, and I went to sleep with a sense of peace and goodwill and whatever that I have seldom known.<br /><br />Crossdress Paradise is described as a Japanese game show, but I don’t see much game. All the show you could want, though. I’ll set it up for you they way they do, because frankly, nothing about this show could be improved on, not even if I understood what they were saying. Really. The language of Crossdress Paradise is universal. The show opens with two good-looking young guys chatting amiably. They are immediately likable despite the language barrier, and also unbelievably, hilariously funny, if the laugh track is any indication. When the hosts call out “open curtain” – in English, for reasons that are obscure to me – the glitzy silver curtain goes up, and the camera cuts first to the amazed faces of the hosts, and then to the studio audience full of gleeful, amazingly homogeneous high school girls, a sea of clapping, squealing, foot-stomping young ladies wearing almost exactly the same school cardigan, pleated uniform skirt, and big, baggy socks. These girls are not just happy with the transformation (which the home audience hasn’t seen yet) – they are so happy they are losing their collective mind. Finally, the camera cuts to the main event, a cute high school boy, sitting on throne (well, a flower-festooned, wing-backed wicker chair of the sort that featured in a lot of ‘80s prom photos) and dressed in drag. Not frat party drag, either. These guys are done up to pass.<br /><br />Their hair is styled, their makeup is luminous, their smiles coy and sparkly. After letting us stare in amazement for a few moments, the boys then perform the ceremonial wink at the camera, which is accompanied by an adorable little sound effect. Then, we get another look at the crowd, still going wild. The first special I watched introduced six boys, unveiled one at a time, with lots of close ups to show off their dewy foundation and pearly lip gloss. There are also lots of close ups of them clutching nervously at their knees, trying not to flash all of Japan in their short skirts. One of the most endearing tells all the boys shared was the constant blinking against the unfamiliar onslaught of heavy mascara and liquid eyeliner. I recognized it instantly as a problem I too suffer from, on the rare occasions when I try to dress up and fit into society. I sympathize, pretty crossdressers!<br /><br />There are several more specials in this series, and they basically make the same joke over and over and over – take the boys out, fool people into thinking they’re actually girls (sometimes by establishing a romantic attraction), and then, the punch line: Ha, ha! He’s a boy! What? Ha ha ha ha ha ha! They obviously think it never gets old, and I have to say I agree. Over the next two episodes, the boys learn to model, and they do a runway show. People are fooled and then everyone shrieks in amazement and hilarity. <br /><br />A couple of things struck me about this. First off, it’s all very, very cheerful, and everybody is as good-natured and happy as can be. It’s like stumbling into an alternate universe where social injustice, original sin, and global warming never happened. People abuse Oxycontin to feel like this. Also, the boys really want to do a good job. The show isn’t about cross dressing in the sexual sense (although one of them really, <i>really</i> got into it, and I think a new world might have opened up for him). It’s all about humor, and of course Japanese teenagers are under pressure to do well. Even if what they’re doing well is cross dressing. When the TV star flirts with one of the boys, or the model pokes a couple of fake breasts because she can’t quite believe her eyes, the boys are obviously proud. That’s part of the reason it’s all so much fun. There’s no humiliation.<br /><br />And that is perhaps the most important thing about the show. It’s about boys wearing dresses and makeup and passing as girls, and none of the humor comes from belittling them, or the girls watching them, or the myriad of bystanders who can’t tell what they’re looking at. (Well, as far as I can tell. They could be saying anything, I guess. But it all looks so damned amiable!) The American viewer thinks, over and over, that this couldn’t possibly happen here. There’s no way any version of a show like this could happen in the U.S. Only in Japan, the home of yaoi and fertility festivals where people carry around enormous carved penises. Also the home of cheese ice cream and caramelized potato KitKats. (They can’t all be gems.)<br /><br />I urge you to carve out four or five hours and watch Crossdress Paradise until you absolutely have to get out of your recliner RIGHT NOW because you have to pee and get yourself a good old American KitKat (chocolate, as God intended), and then probably go to bed. You can thank me (and Suat) later.Kinukittyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10080066539741346520noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-17041212663912250702009-12-02T08:17:00.000-08:002009-12-02T09:10:58.130-08:00Art and craft: xkcd<a href="http://xkcd.com/">xkcd</a>, webcomic<br />Randall Munroe<br /><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>As some of you know, I like to <strike through="">rant</strike> blog about the art aspect of the comics I read. I love JH Williams and I love Alphonse Mucha and Caravaggio, and from this, one might reasonably suppose that I abhor a lot of art.<br /><br />Which I do. But I also love a lot of art. The great thing about successful art is that it communicates. Art doesn't have to be perfectly anatomically correct, pure of line, based on divine proportion, or created with pigments ground from semi-precious stones in order to make the reader sigh, laugh, or feel that moment of beauty. It just has to work.<br /><br />Check this out:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoCiZ-fAirGKwxgJbWdPrIXxetZz9Bb4e5yPUCGXjGREn4rsc9nROj4ltVyUWO1EDnHz41EFQ0DKYM8guFin6gJ1ICzzK7hAXjOsN95UJjGXyc3V-wm9c29Ii2azxsULgyU2gDrfewhZ0/s1600-h/woodpecker.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 316px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoCiZ-fAirGKwxgJbWdPrIXxetZz9Bb4e5yPUCGXjGREn4rsc9nROj4ltVyUWO1EDnHz41EFQ0DKYM8guFin6gJ1ICzzK7hAXjOsN95UJjGXyc3V-wm9c29Ii2azxsULgyU2gDrfewhZ0/s400/woodpecker.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410678445404182850" border="0" /></a>I love this. The art is simple, but it's got a kind of silly grace to it that makes it perfect for its subject matter. There's no weird lumpy anatomy getting in the way of the joke or the compassion. There's just the guy on his deck and the woodpecker.<br /><br />And this, titled "Duty Calls":<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8l329FEnxOcGU8q_l8cdcAtVa7y9OxRT9rPYopkCUbUXSGwxESPscW8nz1wydFuqM9ilvUYjevR87ufToGU8XS6Z2Rcp69MQkAvIn1LK-JPi5kQKwMkB_WEU9EKDyjxcSN-TDAR2HVcU/s1600-h/duty_calls.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 330px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8l329FEnxOcGU8q_l8cdcAtVa7y9OxRT9rPYopkCUbUXSGwxESPscW8nz1wydFuqM9ilvUYjevR87ufToGU8XS6Z2Rcp69MQkAvIn1LK-JPi5kQKwMkB_WEU9EKDyjxcSN-TDAR2HVcU/s400/duty_calls.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410679175207431842" border="0" /></a>Come on, who hasn't been there?<br /><br />The anatomy is <span style="font-style: italic;">perfect</span>. Yes, I know it's a stick figure, but work with me here. The impact on the keys. The forward focus. The flat screen and the computer chair.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGD_So2MAD3mLJ4j10hjTKHnQYI08-d_SDSxIjH5B1iPRn7gwIplfPMLR8gffz0VVo6o63iCRmX5YP4aXkCsKKCT9G_wAemYruQiYLWuD0bqIAh5z7hEcBJ3MPjgeYkhkLs6j25EJ6Zrg/s1600-h/grownups.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGD_So2MAD3mLJ4j10hjTKHnQYI08-d_SDSxIjH5B1iPRn7gwIplfPMLR8gffz0VVo6o63iCRmX5YP4aXkCsKKCT9G_wAemYruQiYLWuD0bqIAh5z7hEcBJ3MPjgeYkhkLs6j25EJ6Zrg/s400/grownups.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410684381108707986" border="0" /></a>This doesn't depend on anatomy, but it does depend on perspective and layout. It's also funny and sweet and warming. I like it.<br /><br />See, I think there's a lot to be said for simplicity and humor and just plain getting the point across. The art needs to serve the point of the communication. Some of the, hmmm, shall we say overmuscled super hero comics seem to miss the idea that the art needs to communicate as much as the words do. I often wonder what would happen if the dialog was removed from the mainstream comics I have been reading. Would anyone still look at it? I'm not so sure.<br /><br />But back to xkcd. It's funny. And I love that. I am going to leave you with one of my absolute favorite comics of all time, which I have been tempted to buy in tee shirt form. (I have not, as yet, ever been tempted to buy another comic in shirt form.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVZiZnyULIAZnTIX0TEAXPgrqxJc7MNS94hmBQPAOMQtIIz-qfGVGPti8jdNQ5afdJ73Mk9mwpsRKCXMaI5zu1RoEVu6xPCB3iYkJ0PBGrRIpFi7klZ6m1ixhwPF6e5AX2KGWXE2IBLE/s1600-h/tech_support_cheat_sheet.png"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 356px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinVZiZnyULIAZnTIX0TEAXPgrqxJc7MNS94hmBQPAOMQtIIz-qfGVGPti8jdNQ5afdJ73Mk9mwpsRKCXMaI5zu1RoEVu6xPCB3iYkJ0PBGrRIpFi7klZ6m1ixhwPF6e5AX2KGWXE2IBLE/s400/tech_support_cheat_sheet.png" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410685564829215042" border="0" /></a>This is really better large, so here's the <a href="http://xkcd.com/627/">link</a>.Vom Marlowehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06766012140370862681noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-12274145238732486262009-12-01T23:48:00.000-08:002009-12-01T19:38:26.768-08:00The Big SkinnyCarol Lay<br />The Big Skinny<br />Villard Books<br /><br /><br />At the beginning of "Big Skinny," Carol Lay draws herself being approached by a hostess at a party. "How did you lose all that weight?" the hostess asks. "I count calories and exercise every day," Lay responds.<br /><br />And so the conversation coughs once, staggers slightly, and flops down dead.<br /><br />Lay would have us believe that the problem here was that the hostess wanted a more juicy rationale for the weight-loss: liposuction, pills, bypass surgery, whatever. There's a simpler explanation, though. Dieting is just boring. The hostess didn't really want to talk about Lay's diet; she was just issuing a polite compliment. The correct response would have been, "Oh, thank you! And you look lovely too! Let's talk about something more interesting, like sports, or Barack Obama's new puppy, or how to make love to an importunate dolphin (practical tips available <a href="http://www.sexwork.com/family/dolphins1.html">here</a>.) Or...we could talk about paint drying? Please?"<br /><br />But, alas, no. Lay thinks dieting is interesting. She's written a whole book on the subject, in fact. In it, she talks about her history as an overeater. She provides lists of disgusting foods she's consumed. She mentions having eaten a pan of Raid-killed ants under the misapprehension that they were chocolate sprinkles. (That bit was pretty funny, actually.) She gives how-to notes on counting calories. She throws in a joke about how she's got so much willpower she'd even turn down George Clooney if he showed up at her door with McDonald's take-out. And it's a comic, so she can actually draw George Clooney at her door — isn't that clever? Then she talks about her history as an overeater — wait, didn't she do that already?<br /><br />Yes she did. And she may have talked about it again, and again, and again for all I know. I only got about 50 pages in, and that was plenty, thank you very much. The intrinsic tediousness of the material would be bad enough, but Lay adds to it the aggressively insufferable moral grandstanding of the recent convert. She used to be depressed and grumpy...but now that her body is burning her brain for fuel, she just feels so cheerful and powerful! Don't you want to feel cheerful and powerful too? Don't you want to get a scale that measures your weight to a tenth of a pound? Don't you want to feel completely morally justified in your ravenous self-obsession? If you do, pick this up. It has pictures too. I only received black-and-white proofs, so I guess they might even look somewhat less generically bland in color. After all, as any sunny self-appointed self-help guru will tell you, anything is possible. <br /><br />___________________<br />This review first appeared in The Comics Journal.Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-66430520857629130572009-12-01T07:15:00.000-08:002009-12-01T15:40:40.009-08:00Working on ItThe new <a href="http://fantagraphics.tempdomainname.com/">comics journal site is in beta</a> at the moment; I believe they're hoping to have it transferred over to the regular TCJ domain today. The new Hooded Utilitarian space is lagging a bit behind that, I think, but hopefully we'll be over there sometime today...or perhaps later this week at latest.<br /><br />In the meantime, we'll roll along here as usual....<br /><br />Update: Couple more days on this site I guess...so maybe we'll get over there Thursday or Friday? Something like that, anyway.Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-89837156146008762412009-11-30T12:00:00.000-08:002009-11-30T12:00:02.466-08:00Event of the Century!<span style="font-weight: bold;">Image United #1</span><br />Writer: Robert Kirkman<br />Artists: Larsen, Liefeld, McFarlane, Portacio, Silvestri, Valentino<br /><br />Working for Marvel Comics may be a dream come true for a lot of young artists, but it's a raw deal when you think about it. If you just do your job and get your pages in on time, nobody but hardcore fanboys will ever remember your name. But if you're actually creative and introduce some new characters and ideas, Marvel "rewards" you by taking ownership of all your creations and maybe paying royalties if by a miracle your characters appear in other media. In 1992, several superstar artists said enough was enough and they left Marvel to form Image Comics.<br /><br />For a brief period, Image was king. Everyone* was excited about the next generation of superheroes, who all had cool names like Spawn and Savage Dragon. But according to Internet wisdom, those early Image comics weren't any good. Lacking in competent characterization and storytelling, the comics relied instead on flashy art and lots of gore and cheesecake. I can't personally confirm any of that, as my knowledge of Image was limited to a few issues of <span style="font-style: italic;">Spawn</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">WildCATS</span> that I borrowed from my brother and neglected to return. I didn't hate them (I was a kid and easy to pander to) but they must not have made much of an impression because I don't remember anything about those books and never bothered to collect them.<br /><br />But that was back in the 90's. It's almost 2010 now, and Image is an established publisher (if nowhere near the size of Marvel or DC). And being an established comics publisher in North America means publishing superhero crossovers. Even a cursory glance at the Direct Market sales for <span style="font-style: italic;">Secret Invasion</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Blackest Night</span> reveals that everyone** loves superhero crossovers. That's why the hot shot creators from 1992 (minus Jim Lee) came together to give the fanboys one more thing to buy, <span style="font-style: italic;">Image United.</span> And I bought it too, because what the hell, it's only money.<br /><br />So what does a creator-owned crossover look like?<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0003.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0003.jpg" alt="Photobucket" width="350" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />Right off the bat, I recognized Spawn, Savage Dragon, and Witchblade, but I had no clue who the rest of them were. To his credit, Robert Kirkman seems to understand that <span style="font-style: italic;">Image United</span> could be a reader's first exposure to Image, so he spends a good portion of the book laboriously introducing everyone. And since these are Image characters they all have hardcore names like Badrock (big guy in back), Ripclaw (below Spawn), Shadowhawk (upper left), Fortress (middle), and the unironically named Shaft. Things get complicated fairly quickly though, as a dozen more characters are introduced in rapid succession. With such a large cast, it's not surprising that most of the characters lack distinguishable personalities.<br /><br />With all the introductions, the story just barely gets started. Supervillains are simultaneously causing trouble in various cities, and the heroes don't know who's coordinating the attacks. But the readers do, because the main villain shows up at the end. Apparently, the Image Universe is being threatened by none other than Al Simmons! Don't feel bad if you have no idea who the hell Al Simmons is, I didn't either. If you look up "Al Simmons" on Wikipedia you'll find entries for a baseball player and a Canadian musician who specializes in children's music. But Al Simmons was also the civilian identity of the original Spawn, who I guess lost the job at some point. You learn new things every day.<br /><br />But screw the story, let's talk about the art. Six different artists worked on this book, but don't ask me who did what because ... I'm going to level with you guys. I don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of comic book artists. I don't know what Whilce Portacio's style looks like. I'm pretty sure I can recognize what Rob Liefeld drew but only because of the extra teeth in each mouth. Does that mean I'm not qualified to review this comic? If you're a hardcore fanboy, my opinion probably doesn't mean shit to you, but I'm okay with that. I'm still going to argue that the art in this comic leaves something to be desired.<br /><br />(The following image may be offensive to people who hate cheesecake and/or bad anatomy). Let's begin with this panel featuring Cyberforce.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0012.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0012.jpg" alt="Photobucket" width="350" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />There's a lot of linework and detail, but it's all in service to a rather drab scene. A bunch of generic, techno-themed heroes are standing in front of boxes and gray walls. That's not eye-catching. And the woman on the far right is trying her hardest to pull off the <a href="http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2009/11/12/welcome-to-the-brokeback-pose/">brokeback pose</a>.<br /><br />Moving on to big fight scene. There are about five gallons worth of steroids in this panel.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0014015.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0014015.jpg" alt="Photobucket" width="350" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />This is supposed to be the dramatic smackdown of the issue, but it feels rather flat. Like so many listless fight scenes in so many mediocre comics, the characters come across less like they're pounding each other and more like they're posing for a picture. The static nature of the fight is only reinforced by the tendency of the characters to have lengthy chats in between punches. Of course, many superhero fans would argue this is just a convention of the genre. But it's a shitty convention perpetuated by lousy comics, so why defend it?<br /><br />Now for the big reveal.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0024.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i670.photobucket.com/albums/vv64/poperich/0024.jpg" alt="Photobucket" width="350" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br />I have to admit, if I were a 12 year old I'd probably think this was the coolest image ever (except for the left hand, which seems detached from the rest of the body). But how many 12 year olds are actually reading superhero comics these days? I suspect that <span style="font-style: italic;">Image United</span> is geared towards the same adult readership that DC and Marvel compete for. And judging this panel as an adult, Omega Spawn comes across as a design that tries too hard but doesn't get very far. He looks just like regular Spawn, but with more pointy crap layered on the standard outfit.<br /><br />To sum up, the creators tried to make a book that was appealing to new readers, but they couldn't think outside the tiny box that is mainstream superhero comics. While the story is easily comprehensible, only the true believers will give a shit. In my case, I didn't know who half the characters were but I was able to follow along. But the comic didn't have any emotional impact on me, as there's nothing in the story that leads me to care what happens to these people. I'm not terribly concerned that Omega Spawn is going to blow up the Image Universe and deny me the awesomeness of (white) Shaft. The art is also intended for the true believers, relying heavily on genre conventions like talky fight scenes, steroidal men, and ridiculously busty women.<br /><br />But maybe the Image creators were only ever interested in pandering to the same old base. And if they wanted to produce a crossover as insular and self-reverential as <span style="font-style: italic;">Secret Invasion</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Blackest Night</span>, then they've succeeded.<br /><br /><br /><br />*By everyone, I mean 12 year old boys.<br /><br />**By everyone, I mean 30 year 0ld men.Richard Cookhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13255266047189963126noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-62215780926647957412009-11-29T08:36:00.000-08:002009-11-29T08:36:00.680-08:00Can Wonder Woman Be a Superdick? (part 1)I've been doing a series of posts about <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Comics%20in%20the%20Closet">superheroes and gender</a>. In the most recent <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/11/superdick-in-closet.html">I talked about superdickery</a>. Superdickery here refers to the way super-heroes tend to stand in for the uber-patriarch, both as benign law-giver and as evil ogre-father. In the post, I talked especially about how Marvel's innovation was to shift more explicitly towards the idea of superhero as nightmare ogre-father (the Hulk! the Thing!) Ultimately, though, the ogre-father is still the father; Marvel comics are still about dreams of empowerment, rather than about denigrating or undermining those visions of absolute mastery.<br /><br />Okay. So...if superheroing is all about superdickery, what happens when you have a female superhero? As the title up there says, can Wonder Woman be a superdick? And, if so, how, if at all, is that dickishness different when it's attached to a woman?<br /><br />There have been a couple of gestures at making Wonder Woman dickish. As I mentioned last post, <a href="http://asylums.insanejournal.com/scans_daily/1210831.html">Kate Beaton's butch WW</a> can be seen as dickish to some extent. And Greg Rucka's WW in the Hiketeia might be considered superdickish in some sense too.<br /><br />Overall, though, male writers have seemed distinctly uncomfortable with having Wonder Woman act as a superdick. I'm going to talk about some specific examples in a minute. First though, I want to discuss briefly why the superdickery meme is so hard (as it were) to apply to female characters.<br /><br />In general, the whole point of the superdick is that you have some non-powered weakling (Bruce Banner, Clark Kent, whoever), and then the superhero acts as empowerment fantasy. Bruce Banner can't lay down the law — but Hulk can smash. Peter Parker can't replace Unlce Ben — but Spider-Man can! Bruce Wayne cant' fight evil in his undies — but Batman will. Etc.<br /><br />On the one hand, this is a pretty simple formulation. On the other hand, though, it is, I think, plugged into some fairly profound dynamics around male identity. As I discussed in <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/10/comics-in-closet-part-1.html">this post,</a> <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/10/comics-in-closet-part-2.html">this post</a>, and <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/10/comics-in-closet-part-3.html">this post</a>, male identity is built around a central incoherence. This incoherence can be seen as biologically Oedipal (with Freud), or as cultural (with Eve Sedgwick.) Either way, the point is that a male is both identified with patriarchal power (the father) and distanced from that power (the child.) To be identified with patriarchal power is to turn one's back on femininity, and in some sense on humanity — so that the uberpatriarch is both a monster and, in some sense, unmasculine, since he rejects women (what gender is the Thing under those briefs, exactly?) But, on the other hand, to be a sniveling child outside of patriarchal power is to be feminized.<br /><br />In short, the engine behind the super-hero split identity is the anxiety of maleness. Peter/Spider-Man is constantly vacillating between two people because neither one is stable. Peter is under pressure to take up the rod of superdickery and become a real man; Spider-Man is under pressure to cast aside the rod of superdickery and pay attention to the girls already so he can become a real man.<br /><br />Women aren't implicated in this psychodrama. Female identity isn't incoherent — or at least, it's not incoherent in the same way. A commenter on a recent article of mine at Reason put the point succinctly:<br /><br /><blockquote>girls can think ninjas are cool without any blowback. Any man who likes sparkly emo vampires is probably sorting through some issues.</blockquote><br /><br />That's exactly the point; a girl who likes ninjas doesn't have her femininity called into question (on the contrary, butch women are often considered especially hot, as I argue <a href="http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/61/61womeninprison.html">here</a>. Men who like romance, on the other hand, open themselves up (as it were) to the charge of not being sufficiently masculine. <br /><br />So that means women have it easy compared to poor, conflicted men, right? Well, not exactly. It's true that female identity is in some sense more stable...but there's a certain amount of coercion which goes into enforcing that stability. Men are always defined by their lack of the phallus, always anxiously scurrying after the unattainable superdick...or dropping it like a hot potato and scurrying away when they get it. Women, on the other hand, aren't supposed to have the superdick in the first place, so they're just kind of supposed to sit there and be. Basically, for women, the ideal is more coherent, which means that individual slip ups (watching ninja movies) aren't necessarily always as important. However, overall, a more coherent ideal can actually be more limiting. Always striving and failing is tiresome, but probably preferable overall to being stuck in prison.<br /><br />Which brings us back to Wonder Woman.<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/wwfreak.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/wwfreak.jpg" width ="350"></a><br /><br />That's from Denny O'Neil and Mike Sekowsy's first issue on WW from 1968. And, as you can see, the creators seem to be of the opinion that WW is a freak. And why is she a freak? Not because she's actually a monster like the Thing, but simply because she's got "muscles" and is a woman. And, not coincidentally, in the following issues of their run on the series, O'Neill and Sekowsky actually depowered WW, turning her into a civilian spy — still a crime fighter, but one who wouldn't necessarily scare the (male) kiddies.<br /><br />O'Neill and Sekowsky are more blatant than most, but they're hardly alone in their discomfort with the super-powered WW. Throughout "The Greatest Wonder Woman Stories Ever Told," there's a constant, insistent effort to evade the image of Wonder Woman as superdick — to domesticate her, if you will. In Robert Kanigher's "Top Secret," Steve Trevor engages in an elaborate plot to get Wonder Woman to marry him. His scheme fails...but it forces WW to create her Diana Prince identity in which (of course) she serves under Steve in the military. In this story, then, Wonder Woman isn't Diana's empowerment fantasy; rather, Diana is *Steve's* empowerment fantasy. WW does get the better of Steve, but only by doing what he wants. She bows to his superdickery and relinquishes her own.<br /><br />Similarly, in Robert Kanigher's revealingly titled "Be Wonder Woman...and Die!" the emotional focus of the story is on a terminally ill young actress who impersonates Wonder Woman and then expires beautifully. It's pretty clearly a <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/04/diana-sue.html">Mary Sue story</a> in some sense — a WW fan appears, is lauded by her idol, and then shuffles off the mortal coil to great acclaim. But you do have to wonder — if this is a Mary Sue, whose Mary Sue is it? Who exactly is getting off on a depowered and dead WW clone? Could it be the male writer,by chance?<br /><br />One final example; Wonder Woman #230, from 1977. (Todd Munson very kindly gave me this issue when I visited his class at <a href="http://www.rmc.edu/News/09-09-21%20Bound%20for%20Feminism.aspx">Randolph-Macon</a> a few weeks back. ) This issue is by Marty Pasko, and it's set in the 1940s to tie in with the then-current TV series. It's also obsessed with doubling. The villain is the Cheetah, who suffers from multiple-personality disorder; normally she's an everyday socialite (Priscilla Rich), but when she sees Wonder Woman she has a psychotic episode and turns into a supervillain. In this sotry, Priscilla accidentally encounters WW and has her transformation triggered. As the Cheetah she then manages to discover WW's secret identity, and makes plans to use the information to kill her. However, Cheetah turns back to Priscilla before she can take action. Priscilla then contacts Diana Prince...and hypnotizes her into forgetting she's Wonder Woman, figuring that if Wonder Woman disappears, Priscilla herself will never change into the Cheetah again.<br /><br />So along the way here there are several suggestive incidents.<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah1.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah1.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />— Early in the issue, Steve Trevor is gushing on and on about Wonder Woman. Diana Prince is clearly quite pissed about this; she's jealous of her alter ego. Thus, there's a definite implication that Diana *wants* to get rid of WW, just as Priscilla wants to get rid of the Cheetah.<br /><br />— There's an erotic tension between the female antagonists. Priscilla's repressed emotions are released whenever she sees Wonder Woman; it's not hard to read a lesbian subtext into that. Moreover, the hypnotic encounter between Priscilla and Diana is framed as seduction; Priscilla even comments (lasciviously?) on how "naive" Diana is. <br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah2.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah2.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />In breaking the mirror here, Priscilla is banishing both Wonder Woman and the Cheetah. Where agonized male-male tensions tend to lead to heroes hitting villains and hyperbolic violence, the female-female encounter/seduction does the reverse. It doesn't redouble anxieties around female identity; it eliminates them. Priscilla is ushering Diana back into femininity. (I don't think it's a coincidence that in the last panel Diana's face seems definitely softer and less butch than it does towards the top of the page.)<br /><br />Priscilla can be seen, in other words, as patrolling the boundaries of femininity. This is actually a fairly common dynamic, I think; women are often harsher on (small) infractions against femininity than men are. My wife pointed out that Patti Smith in the 70s once commented that there's nothing more disgusting than seeing some woman's breast hanging over a guitar. The quote is interesting too, because, like this encounter, there's definitely some not quite dealt with eroticism there; Smith is perceiving female guitarists as sexual beings; there's a same-sex frisson. I haven't quite worked this through, but it seems like there's a parallel here with Eve Sedgwick's ideas about male homosociality. That is, men form homosocial bonds (and repress explicit homosexual ones) as a way of cementing patriarchal power. Women might be seen as forming homosocial bonds (and repressing explicit homosexual ones) as a way of policing or reaffirming femininity — which again essentially has the effect of cementing patriarchal power. That seems like a good description of what Priscilla is doing here, certainly — she seduces/explains the error of her ways to Diana in order to prevent Diana from becoming a superdick, and so leading Priscilla herself into superdickery.<br /><br />On the one hand this ends up being a false consciousness argument (women reinforcing the patriarchal order out of a mistaken fear of their own power/acceptance of their natural role.) On the other hand, it might also be seen as a not unrational risk assessment. Priscilla is worried that Wonder Woman's escape from femininity will bring reprisals against Priscilla herself (she'll become the cheetah, get herself in trouble, and end up being punished.) Similarly, Patti Smith, as a female rockstar, could be seen as covering her own ass — too many female rockstars might cause trouble. <br /><br />I don't know; not sure that that's all thought through as well as I might like. But I think there is definitely a sense in which bonds between women are used to patrol femininity just as bonds between men are used to patrol masculinity. And the obsessively doubled relationship between Priscilla/Cheetah and Diana/Wonder Woman seems to get at that.<br /><br />Though at the same time, of course, there's a tradition of feminist sisterhood which is about confronting or challenging patriarchy. It's interesting in that regard how, even though this is set in the 40s when the Marston /Peter stories took place, there are just a lot less women here than in Marston's writing. The only woman who's around is Priscilla, which is obviously an antagonistic relationship....<br /><br />— Because WW has disappeared, Steve has to take her spot in a video. (The director comments "I'd rather shoot a war hero than some broad in a silly get-up anyway!") The Cheetah has booby-trapped the camera, though. Priscilla doesn't want to kill anyone...so she figures she has to remind Diana of who she was. She leads Diana off to the side (which looks again very much like femme/butch seduction)<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah3.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah3.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />and this time the female/female encounter brings WW and the Cheetah both back.<br /><br />Because we see this entirely from Priscilla's perspective, though, this comes across more as sad necessity than triumphant victory. The return of female superpowers may be necessary, but it's not ideal or normal. And, moreover, it really does result in bad news for Priscilla; she gets beaten up, captured, and sent off to Paradise Island for reeducation (where presumably she'll be reintegrated back into femininity.)<br /><br />—Soon after WW reappears we get this panel:<br /><br /><a href="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah4.jpg"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p13/NBerlatsky/cheetah4.jpg" width="350"></a><br /><br />The reappearance of WW seems to humorously undermine Steve's maleness. When a woman wields the superdick, men are less male. Not only can't Steve take WW's place, but even in wanting to he becomes ridiculous; less of a man. <br /><br />— The comic ends with WW back in Diana Prince identity, talking to Steve. Steve is worrying about the possibility of WW disappearing again — and Diana suggests that if WW does disappear Steve should spend more time looking for her. There's certainly a hint here that Diana would like WW to go away— she wants Steve to recognize, or respond, to Diana instead. Like Priscilla, Diana seems to in part want to lose her super-powers and her super-identity.<br /><br />This isn't that unusual a trope — as I mentioned in the last post, Spider-Man often wants to lost his powers, as does Bruce Banner, and so forth. The difference here is, perhaps, that when Diana is just Diana, there's no indication that she wants to be anything else. She doesn't wish she had her powers back, or think about WW. Instead, Priscilla has to remind her who she was. When Peter Parker, or whoever, is depowered, his identity remains incoherent; he still wants the superdick. But for Diana, the only tension is when she's Wonder Woman. A feminized Diana, sans superdick, is perfectly happy — just as, presumably, a Priscilla without the Cheetah would be perfectly happy. There isn't the attraction/repulsion for patriarchal authority that you tend to feel in male super-hero narratives. Instead, the energy of the story seems to push pretty firmly towards just turning superfemales into ordinary women and being done with it. Of course, it can't end up there because, you know, Wonder Woman's name is on the cover of the comic, and you need more stories with her. But that isn't Marty Pasko's fault. He didn't create the character.<br /><br />And next time we'll talk about the guy who did create the character and how he felt about superdickery. Hopefully we'll get to that next week. <br /><br />In the meantime...this is actually part of a long series of posts on latter-day Wonder Woman iterations. You can read the whole series <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/search/label/Only%20One%20Can%20Wear%20the%20Venus%20Girdle">here.</a>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-75699225431704055282009-11-28T10:00:00.000-08:002009-11-28T10:00:00.631-08:00Partially Congealed Pundit: A to ZI wrote these all between 2000 and 2004 or so.<br /><br /><br />Anthropology A to Z<br /><br />Analyzing bigamy, chiropractors dissecting Ethiopians find gratuitous horniness. "Inferior jism kills," lament medical non-Negroes. "Our prostitutes qualmlessly relish sable, towering usufructuaries." Vampire-vivisectionist-vasectomites want xenopotency — yea, zoöplasty.<br /><br /><br /><br />Grants A to Z<br /><br />Argh. Bastard coins demand enthusiastic flim-flam, genuflecting horse-pucky — iterated. Jejune kleptomaniacs like myself nuzzle other's piss (quantified.) Respect seeps through undergarments viscously. Wampum-warranted xenogenesis yields zilch.<br /><br /><br /><br />Marx A to Z<br /><br />Attacked by capitalists, Dimitri Endclass fretfully grunted, "Help!" Injustice jouster King Lumpen materialized. "No obstreperous prole quashing, reactionary swine!" the über-underdog vociferated. "Working-class xanthochroi yean Zion!"<br /><br /><br /><br />Physics A to Z<br /><br />"Atomic bomb," cogito. Deductively, ergo, funding. Gravity's hierophant, I, Jehovah-Kewpie, license meritocrats; noblesse oblige. Prosper, quantum Rotarians! Seek, thou, universal vacuity! Wantonly X-ray your Zeitgeist!<br /><br /><br /><br />Spielberg A to Z<br /><br />Amiable Bildungsroman chug-a-lugs deep emotions, feels great! Heroine (innocent, jiggly) kisses lachrymose morality’s nether orifice. Peddlers quiver righteously! Suddenly, teleologically, upstart visionaries win! Xeroxed youngsters zombify!<br /><br /><br /><br />Xmas A to Z<br /><br />Avaricious bambinos covet Disney-detritus. Elders' Fallopian genitals, heaving immaculately, jaculate kenosis-knickknacks. Levittowners merrily nurse organized pedophilia. Quasi-riant revenue-ravenous Santa Taws uncoil. Vultures watch Xt.'s yummy zygote.Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-87041275657713864422009-11-27T12:30:00.000-08:002009-11-27T12:30:00.146-08:00Utilitarian Review 11/27/09It's been a slowish week here with the holidays, but I did want to mention that i had a brief but (IMO) entertaining review of <a href="http://www.metropulse.com/news/2009/nov/25/horse-meat-disco-compilation-lives-its-name/">the very aptly named Horsemeat Disco</a> comp over at Metropulse.<br /><br /><br />And I love this Por Parichart video. <br /><br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CkB-Fo_segA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CkB-Fo_segA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="350"></embed></object>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-2294732827824498652009-11-26T07:42:00.000-08:002009-12-07T14:33:58.681-08:00Music For Middle-Brow Snobs: Best OfI'm participating in the music best of madness which Tucker and Marty are organizing over at <a href="http://factualopinion.com/">Factual Opinion.</a> As part of that I put together a list of my favorite songs of the year that I remembered at the moment, and, what the hey, I organized them in descending order of goodness. Some of these have shown up in downloads before...but now they're in an exciting new list!<br /><br />1. Ina unt Ina — Teacher (All Sides of Ina)<br />2. Justin Townes Earle — Mama's Eyes (Midnight at the Movies)<br />3. Amerie — Dangerous (In Love and War!)<br />4. Funeral Mist — White Stone (Maranatha)<br />5. Antony and the Johnsons — One Dove (The Crying Light)<br />6. Legion of Two — Legion of Two (Riffs)<br />7. Lovers — Let's Stay Lost (I Am the West)<br />8. Brooke Valentine — Dr. Do Right (Physical Education Mix Tape)<br />9. Drukdh — Distant Cry of Cranes (Microcosmos)<br />10. Mariah Carey — More Than Just Friends (Memoir of an Imperfect Angel)<br />11. The Horse's Ha — Asleep in a Waterfall (Of The Cathmawr Yards)<br />12. The Juan Maclean — One Day (The Future Will Come)<br />13. Ithdabquth Qliphoth — Funeral Spirit of Holy, Holy and Holy Trance-formation (Funeral Spirit of Holy, Holy and Holy Trance-formation)<br />14. Raekwon — Surgical Gloves (Only Built For Cuban Linx II)<br />15 Electrik Red — Friend Lover (How to Be a Lady: Volume 1)<br /><br />This download has been removed for copyright reasons; so if you missed it, you're out of luck, alas.Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-42638547645556370492009-11-25T10:00:00.000-08:002009-11-25T05:31:06.719-08:00TwiHard the HunterI've gotten into a bit of a back and forth about the Twilight series with pop-culture blogger Alyssa Rosenberg. It started with Alyssa's article on the <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200911u/new-moon">Atlantic website</a> in which she argued that the Twilight is a poor excuse for a fantasy series because Bella is overly passive:<br /><br /><blockquote>I don’t imagine that I was alone when I was young in wishing there was something magical about me – or in reading Talking to Dragons until it became dog-eared or keeping The Mists of Avalon perpetually on renewal at the library. What girl doesn’t wish she could discover some special attribute about herself that would smooth her way through the demons of junior high school and beyond—particularly if that something would get her noticed for the first time by a boy or girl with special attributes of their own? But earlier this week, when I stumbled over the Twilight finish line, reaching the final page of Breaking Dawn, the series’ last book, it seemed clear to me that even in my younger days, Bella Swann would never have captured my imagination in the same way Cimorene, or Juniper, or Wise Child, or Morgaine had, and still do. Those heroines understand the joy of being loved by someone else. But their stories make the case that being a witch, or a warrior, or a queen—even without a king—might be better than an eternity as a metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower, no matter how much the vampire company sparkles.</blockquote><br /><br />I responded in an article on <a href="http://www.splicetoday.com/moving-pictures/twilight-of-the-concern-trolls">Splice Today:</a><br /><br /><blockquote>The real issue is, as Rosenberg says, that Bella's actions are all inspired by her love for family and friends, rather than by a desire to save entire kingdoms and uphold "justice and freedom." Of course, by this standard, Elizabeth Bennett isn't much of a role model either—why, she never saves anyone! And what about Jane Eyre, refusing to sacrifice herself by going off to do mission work among the poor and heathen and benighted. What kind of model for young girls is that?<br /><br />Rosenberg might as well just come out and say, "You know what? I don't really like romance—and, on top of that, I'm kind of a liberal do-gooder who thinks that abstract notions like justice and power are more important than love and family." Rosenberg accuses Meyer of turning Bella into a "metaphorical princess in a metaphorical tower." But she's not a princess in a tower; she's a wife in a family, and one who at the end is not only equal to her husband in strength and magical powers, but actually superior to him. That hardly seems rabidly anti-feminist to me-but I like Pride and Prejudice too, so what do I know.</blockquote><br /><br />Rosenberg came back on her own blog to <a href="http://alyssarosenberg.blogspot.com/2009/11/twihards-strike-back.html">tell me that I'm still wrong,</a> most pointedly because she does in fact like romance novels. Assuming makes an ass out of me as they say...though, as I'll argue here, for somebody who likes romance novels, Alyssa is awfully uncomfortable with some of the central points of the genre.<br /><br />So first, on a couple of interpretive points. Alyssa takes me to task for overestimating Bella's achievements and power. In my Splice Today essay, I argue that Bella has to practice to master her magical vampiric abilities in the last volume, and that she ends up being stronger than Edward. Alyssa responds:<br /><br /><blockquote> I think Noah's actually mistaken: when Bella finally uses her powers, she exerts them much farther than she's ever been able to in her practice sessions, which kind of defeats the point if you're trying to make an argument about "determination and commitment." (Also, to the point Noah makes in a paragraph I pull out below about Bella being more powerful than Edward, Meyer seems to establish pretty clearly that that's just because she's a new vampire, not that it'll be permanent.)</blockquote><br /><br />Bella does become much more powerful at the end of the book all of a sudden; the rationale is that her loved ones are threatened, and that gives her the inspiration to exert an extra oomph. But it's not clear to me that therefore all the training and work was worthless. Surely the point could just as easily be, you put all the effort in, you exert yourself to the limit, and maybe that will be enough to get that miracle you need. It's a little overly pat, sure; but I think it's a stretch to argue that it's not about Bella working to achieve success.<br /><br />As for the strength thing — Bella's natural vampiric strength will fade after she's a newborn, sure. But her power seems to only be getting stronger — and it's her power (the ability to negate other vampires' powers) which really makes her more special, and more powerful, than Edward. (It's also worth noting that Bella is unusuall self-controlled for a new vampire, which is a big part of the reason she's even able to use her physical strength in a way that's at all useful to her or anyone else.) <br /><br />To move onto more substantial disagreements: Alyssa responded to my comparison of Bella with Elizabeth Bennett and Jane Eyre by saying this:<br /><br /><blockquote>I think Noah forgets that I'm writting a critique of Twilight within the realm of fairy tale, and about why it's a step backwards within the innovations of that genre. But I absolutely agree that I would be completely and utterly freaked out if teenage girls wanted to emulate Jane Eyre. Less so if they wanted to be little Lizzy Bennets, since she's an intellectual and stands up to class prejudice (to the extent capable within her constraints of course). But I do think those books are regularly read with the acknowledgment that a) they're about an era when women's choices were substantially limited, b) frequently read in a context like a classroom where those roles can be discussed, and c) presented social criticisms in the times they were written. Twilight is neither set in another era (although it's curiously removed from the technology of today) nor is it mostly read in a critical context like a classroom. And while I recognize that many, many Twilight readers can distinguish fact from fiction, I do think that some of the book's themes demand a critical context, particularly the obsessiveness of the love affairs. Perhaps it's just me, but I think it's important, especially with young girls, to have a conversation about the fact that sometimes, no matter how much you love someone, if he leaves you, he is never coming back. I don't think this is a trifling point: Bella never experiences permanent romantic loss, something a lot of contemporary fairy tales have managed to incorporate into the genre, and that's a genuinely valuable lesson in a society where most people date before they marry.</blockquote><br /><br />So there's a bunch there...but let's start at the top.<br /><br />First, I wasn't saying that Jane Eyre was a bad model. On the contrary, I was saying that, at least in the incident I referenced, she's a fine model. At the end of the book, the aptly named St. John tells Jane that she should marry him and come with him to be a missionary in some far away, benighted land. Despite great pressure, from St. John and her own conscience, Jane eventually refuses to go, putting her love and family above the call to change the world for the better. That's a choice Bella would agree with. Would Alyssa? <br /><br />Alyssa is more willing to accept Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice as a role model...but even here, she's leery. Elizabeth, after all, isn't really sufficiently independent; she doesn't save the world, she marries to devote herself to the estate and her husband — not quite independent enough, for all her spunkiness. So, to make Pride and Prejudice safe, we need to read it in a classroom context, where girls can be taught what to think and what not to think about their chosen romance.<br /><br />As someone who spent 14 years developing curriculum for high school students, I can say with some certainty that this is utter nonsense. The only thing students get from studying a book in school is bored. If Pride and Prejudice ever had any relevance, the fastest way to denude it of same is to relegate it to the classroom. And Alyssa's comments on Twilight in this connection are almost Kantian; the problem with the books is that they're not read in a classroom context, and as a result, girls actually enjoy them! The fall of society and/or feminism is certainly at hand.<br /><br />I also find this point kind of bizarre:<br /><br />"Bella never experiences permanent romantic loss"<br /><br />It's true; Bella gets everything she wants. At the end. Along the way, though, she experiences intense, brutal despair, not once, but multiple times. Edward rejects here and she really thinks he doesn't love her, causing her to be almost nonfunctional for months.Then Jacob rejects her, making her miserable for an extended period. And it's those experiences, as much as (or more than) the eventual triumph, that are really the heart of the series. To suggest that Bella needs to be *more* depressed really seems kind of ridiculous. I do get the point that most girls are going to not get the first guy they love, and that it's useful to point that out . But at the same time, Twilight is not shy about acknowledging, and even reveling in, romantic disappointment.<br /><br />The real heart of our disagreement is here, though:<br /><br /><blockquote>As for the assertion that "I'm kind of a liberal do-gooder who thinks that abstract notions like justice and power are more important than love and family." First, it's a mistake again to conflate the abstract concepts of justice and equality as they exist in fairy tales with contemporary politics. And one of the things I find fascinating about contemporary fairy tales of all stripes is the ways they've managed to make the condition of societies and of individual marriages co-equal. In a lot of contemporary fairy tales, the main characters have to establish peace or societal equilibrium in order to craft a space where a marriage can thrive....I actually think it exalts love to tie it to larger societal concerns, rather than to isolate it entirely from society, and it makes for wider-ranging and more interesting stories, too.</blockquote><br /><br />Abstract justice in fairy tales doesn't map exactly onto contemporary politics, of course...but it isn't divorced from them either. And, indeed, in the rest of her argument here Alyssa goes on to make parallels between how life and politics work in a fairy tale and how they work in the real world. She likes certain fairy tales, she says, because they present an image in which men and women fall in love and work together to save the world (or work together to save the world and fall in love.) The dream Alyssa wants is one in which social and political engagement maps onto romance, and the two enrich each other. That's why she doesn't like the message in Jane Eyre, where political and social engagement is shown as existing in contrast to love; it's why she's uncomfortable with the message in Pride and Prejudice, where Elizabeth Bennet never really thinks all that much about social or political engagement (Alyssa says at the end of her essay that Elizabeth engages in rebellion...but really, calling a little satirical wit rebellion seems fairly desperate wishful thinking.) And her enthusiasm for great social change and rebellion is also why Alyssa absolutely hates Forks, the little town where Bella spends her life. <br /><br /><blockquote>There is no larger world beyond family and Forks in the Twilight books, and if I were immortal, I think I might get kind of bored with that after a while. But then, I was never the kind of girl who could stare at a guy's face for that long.</blockquote><br /><br />Okay, sure, I get that the treacly romance eternal love thing is irritating. But what is wrong with Forks? And why, as Alyssa repeatedly insists, is it lame, or passive, to save your loved ones and your entire family? Why exactly is Bella a failure? Because she doesn't want to rule a kingdom? Because she doesn't want to save the world? Because she's chosen to care for those she loves and not impose her passing messianic dreams on the rest of the populace? Because her story — which is much more romance than fairy tale — ends in private happiness rather than public triumph?<br /><br />Alyssa reminds me that she works as a political reporter, and is therefore not a liberal do-gooder at all, but instead is non-partisan. All right. Then she should be fine with the following argument, hopefully. Most people — girls, boys, what have you — they're not going to save the world. Most of them don't even want to save the world, you know? Is that because they're victims of false consciousness and read too many Twilight books? Or is it because wanting to save the world is a kind of megalomaniacal sickness that most people just aren't especially afflicted with? Or is it because there are different strokes for different folks? In any case, the fact remains; Bella, like most people, cares about the people she cares about. On their behalf, she's able to do great things — risk her life, battle against evil, even perform miracles. But she doesn't get off — and most of her readers don't get off — on writing the wrongs of the world. Does that make her, and them, less virtuous or wrong? Are all those people in the Forkses of the world just not ambitious enough? I'm a liberal do-gooder myself, but still, that seems like a pretty presumptuous conclusion to me.<br /><br />Update: It sounds like Alyssa is probably not going to respond further, so I should probably add that she's been incredibly gracious and pleasant throughout the whole back and forth. So thanks, Alyssa. It's been fun.Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-90435304747514537412009-11-24T07:30:00.000-08:002009-11-24T07:30:01.021-08:00Desert Island Comics<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLeuDG1sz1FA4Inj7BzIDW9-VYpJOzV1haa09ZIAOL1wg4aMweMBJXhhUk6A3RRIEcHuOJ2-04eUCTTdm7xlwZi66pulrk10qZf6ElddqORgacq-xmG6QHDYKzT9BOCnJlZagbeq5XniHG/s1600-h/desert-island.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLeuDG1sz1FA4Inj7BzIDW9-VYpJOzV1haa09ZIAOL1wg4aMweMBJXhhUk6A3RRIEcHuOJ2-04eUCTTdm7xlwZi66pulrk10qZf6ElddqORgacq-xmG6QHDYKzT9BOCnJlZagbeq5XniHG/s320/desert-island.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404174177894096754" border="0" /></a><br /><br />As you may have heard, the HU bloggers are taking a break this Thanksgiving week.<br /><br />I will be heading off to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indonesia">Indonesia</a> myself so it seemed "appropriate" to bring up the subject of desert island comics (see <a href="http://www.comixology.com/articles/185/Desert-Island-Comics">here</a> for Shaenon K. Garrity's survey of various industry professionals on the same subject). I was first exposed to the whole concept through the BBC's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Island_Discs">Desert Island Discs</a> about 20 years back. Now I won't be following all the rules laid down by Roy Plomley but the radio program did have the useful proviso that the guest would be "automatically given the <span style="font-style: italic;">Complete Works of Shakespeare</span> and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work" (from Wikipedia).<br /><br />One way in which I'll deviate away from that program's premise is that I'm going to be choosing a comic and only a single one at that. I've never viewed a desert island comic as one which a person might objectively consider the best ever made. Nor would it necessarily be that person's favorite comic (though this would be the most obvious choice) or even a comic which has affected the person the most deeply. These factors might be seen to overlap but some books have a habit of affecting readers at particular periods of their lives only. Rather, it whould be a combination of all these factors to varying degrees: aesthetic beauty, emotional involvement or attachment, length and most importantly timelessness - a complex simplicity which affords endless re-readings. After all, you'll be stuck on that island for quite a bit of time - maybe for the rest of your life.<br /><br />Lest we forget, you'll be taking along your desert island disc and desert island book as well. In my case, I will be searching for a desert island comic to go along with my copy of Luo Guanzhong’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_of_the_Three_Kingdoms"><span style="font-style: italic;">Romance of the Three Kingdoms</span></a> and a piece of music by J. S. Bach. It certainly wouldn’t be a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Watchmen</span>, a run of Kirby's <span style="font-style: italic;">Fantastic Four</span>, Chris Ware's <span style="font-style: italic;">The Acme Novelty Library</span> or a collection of comics by Robert Crumb. As far as modern day pamphlet comics are concerned, <span style="font-style: italic;">Love and Rockets</span> probably stands as good as chance as any of being included in my short list but even that would be a stretch. I would consider bringing along a collection of <span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Peanuts</span> strips. The former in particular seems to demonstrate quite engagingly the growth of the artist from his early years of enthusiasm to a middle period of great flowering before the final months of unmistakable and very palpable struggle and depression.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5UkEUmqq1KIWiDrkLHrLS5XtrMuRsJCHZzTNGR3E0sQpSTFz9BjCDAV0h1sQRbTGY_ojWZ_SUTIMNIsJPzqAhHw3ypxYkKTr4y4Nfzs-XMoLR6nyg-daovZSweatMMOYH_3QVx6J3TDzW/s1600-h/KK-6-18-44-med-res.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5UkEUmqq1KIWiDrkLHrLS5XtrMuRsJCHZzTNGR3E0sQpSTFz9BjCDAV0h1sQRbTGY_ojWZ_SUTIMNIsJPzqAhHw3ypxYkKTr4y4Nfzs-XMoLR6nyg-daovZSweatMMOYH_3QVx6J3TDzW/s320/KK-6-18-44-med-res.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404184274692527394" border="0" /></a><br /><br />[Second to last <span style="font-style: italic;">Krazy Kat</span> Sunday from <a href="http://www.comicartfans.com/GalleryPiece.asp?Piece=165011&GSub=24137">Rob Stolzer's</a> collection.]<br /><br />But what I would really need is something to balance out a palate made raw by too much erudition and history and whenever I think about this, it is Carl Bark's Disney Duck Comics which come to mind first (the Uncle Scrooge stories in particular have a place close to my heart). When I read Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's <span style="font-style: italic;">Toon Treasury of Classic Children's Comics</span> a few months back, one thing I noticed was how exceptional Bark's stories were even in the presence of his illustrious peers. It must be said though that I can't discount the effect of nostalgia here. "The Paul Bunyan Machine" story from <a href="http://www.comics.org/issue/15426/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Uncle Scrooge</span> #28</a> was one of the first comics I ever read as a child.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKO5ddV6xsZtwK9xdog4c272sRsHCP78pOH5zGUKkIJ0M2k-_tZertG6scEn0ppg_IwzrXXdLkotsPbTGBP9D0B2S3hgQJdXCrEmTGhWBUlHNUkckdFR3fJ8tezxvrRJ4ShJBZnzirCZy/s1600-h/Paul+Bunyan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIKO5ddV6xsZtwK9xdog4c272sRsHCP78pOH5zGUKkIJ0M2k-_tZertG6scEn0ppg_IwzrXXdLkotsPbTGBP9D0B2S3hgQJdXCrEmTGhWBUlHNUkckdFR3fJ8tezxvrRJ4ShJBZnzirCZy/s320/Paul+Bunyan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5404183336422794274" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Is it perhaps a bit disturbing that I'm putting a Barks Duck story in the same category as Shakespeare or one of the most important books in Chinese literature? Perhaps. It may simply be a reflection of the youthfulness of comics as an art form. Still, as far as reading material is concerned, there are few things as relaxing or viscerally delightful as a good comic. Certainly no piece of traditional literature has offered me so much for so little effort. In the same way that the qualities of the best children's comics exceed those of most (if not all) children's literature, what comics have always offered is a very accessible and intensely rich and fulfilling experience, one which has every chance of breaking down the crumbling barriers between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_culture">high</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_culture">low</a> art. Only time will tell if it fulfills this promise.Ng Suat Tonghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05806614694631452474noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-57019697602905230332009-11-23T09:09:00.000-08:002009-11-24T08:03:43.505-08:00...And Kids Like Them!There's been a bit of a back and forth on the old internets about all ages comics. <a href="http://comics212.net/2009/11/22/the-myth-of-all-ages/">Christopher Butcher weighs in and summarizes the kerfuffle here.</a> His take is basically that it's much ado about nothing, and that the complaining about a lack of all ages titles is really mostly about super-hero nostalgia:<br /><br /><blockquote>So let’s really, really narrow this discussion about “all ages” comics to what it really is: Superhero Fans Want To Buy Superhero Comics For Their Kids That Are Simultaneously Exactly What They Read As Kids AND All New At The Same Time. They want all the comics on the stands to be ’safe’ for children, while still engaging them on an adult level like all of the other media targeted at adults. They want the stuff they read as kids and teenagers in the 70s and 80s (or hell, the 60s) to be the same as what’s published today for their kids. They will accept no substitutions, and most importantly they need it to be CANON. That’s right, even if the Superhero comics meet every other criteria, they can’t take place in their own “universe” or be the “for kids” version (even if it’s for ‘all ages’), it has to be part of the 616 or DCU continuity or else it isn’t ‘real’. Superhero fans want validation for their tastes and interests, just like the OCD football dad who couldn’t make it to the NFL and is going to live out his dreams in his son. Exactly the same sentiment, but without a million dollar paycheck at the end of ‘reading superhero comics’, so waaaay less pressure.<br /><br />And that’s what Retailers, older retailers in particular, want to sell them. Because it’s what they read, and it’s what they know, and they have the same nostalgic feelings for and biases towards that material.</blockquote><br /><br />I'm always willing to sneer at superhero fans, as most folks know. But I think this maybe misses or downplays a fairly major point — kids really, really, really like superheroes. A lot. It's not me who was foisting my old <a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2008/05/old-comics-for-new-bottles.html">Spidey Super Stories and Super-friends comics</a> on my kid because I desperately wanted him to read them for the sake of my overwhelming nostalgia. On the contrary, I pulled those out of the long boxes because my son was obsessed, and I figured it would be cheaper than buying new reading material. And let me tell you, by the time I'd read them fifty or sixty times out loud, any lingering nostalgia I felt for the material was killed well nigh dead.<br /><br />Butcher goes on to talk about the Marvel Adventures all ages books, which he notes haven't been doing so hot, especially in pamphlet form — especially, especially in the direct market. The Marvel Adventures books have come up more than a time or two on this blog (<a href="http://hoodedutilitarian.blogspot.com/2009/10/face-down-in-mainstream-spider-man.html">Most recently in a Vom Marlowe review here.</a>) They're in general quite good; certainly, my son has enjoyed a number of them, from Spider-Man to the Fantastic Four to the Avengers. And I can confirm as a parent that they tend to be more fun to read than old Superfriends comics.<br /><br />The point, it seems to me, is that super-hero comics really should, in some sense, be for kids; that's where the biggest potential audience would be, in any logical world. There are a small percentage of 35 year old men who are consumed with the desire to read super-hero comics, but there's a much larger percentage of 5-10 year old boys who would (at least potentially) like to read those comics. The industry hasn't totally abandoned the younger audience,it's true — but it definitely sees them as a side-issue which it addresses fitfully, nervously, and not always very effectively.<br /><br />So Butcher may be right that most of the hand-wringing about all-ages titles is from retailers working through misplaced nostalgia. But even if that's so, I think it's indisputable that Marvel and DC and the industry as a whole don't really know how to sell super-hero comics to kids, which is embarrassing given the fact that selling super-hero comics to young boys should be about as difficult as distributing crack to addicts. I mean, it's clear enough what the problem is in terms of distribution barriers, institutional focus, marketing, and so forth. But still, it's pitiful.<br /><br />Update: <a href="http://pwbeat.publishersweekly.com/blog/2009/11/23/childrens-comics-a-not-so-phantom-menace/">Heidi</a> also weighs in on Chris's post (link thanks to <a href="http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/blog/540000654/post/1680050768.html">Brigid.</a>Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-57954225400523080732009-11-22T15:29:00.000-08:002009-11-22T15:29:00.568-08:00Lovers — I Am The WestLovers<br />I Am the West<br />[Pop Heart Records]<br /> <br />Sometime in the oughts, folk and shoegazy pop crossbred, creating a sparse, drony, soundtrack for coffee-shops gently orbiting the moon. Is this Chan Marshall’s fault? And has somebody named it already? <br /><br />In any case, whoever’s responsible, and whatever it’s called, I’m all for it. As are the Lovers; lead singer and writer Carolyn Berk’s tunes range from mid-tempo to slow. Everything’s a dreamy trudge; a nice fuzzy blanket of sound, sprinkled with sweet little songwriting shivers: a touch of harmony here, a dollop of strings there. I go back and forth on which is my favorite tune…but Let’s Stay Lost is certainly a contender. It has a syncopated keyboard and drum intro, ending in a half beat of silence before Berk comes in with a hooky, strolling vocal line “You and me babe/we got lost in the same maze,”; a couple more couplets and then there’s another voice, singing long held “ahhhhs” — and then you get to a fantastic, weird, bridge, with the bandmembers doing sunny, almost Beach Boys harmonies while somebody plays what sounds like a banjo. “Stay Another Night” is great too; it’s got the slow grace of Dylan’s ballads, plus a goofy keyboard burble halfway through and some fuzz feedback at the end — plus that banjo again. I love banjo. <br /><br />The only downside is that Berk’s lyrics are sometimes a little too clever for their own good. “Your eyes are two deep pools of mud” is funny,; following it with “Maybe I got stuck/Baby I got stuck” is kind of beating a dead metaphor around the bush. Even if you’re occasionally tuning out the words, though, this is a thoroughly enjoyable album.<br /><br />I Dub Thee: Shoefolk?<br />Or Maybe: Birkenstockgaze?Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4390772549401478435.post-64005947332873925562009-11-22T06:24:00.000-08:002009-11-22T06:28:43.720-08:00Break to GobbleMost of your utilitarian bloggers are going to be taking off this week, so things will be a bit quiet around here — though there will still be content of some sort, never fear.<br /><br />Shortly after the holiday I'm told we may be moving over to our new location at TCJ.com. I'll pass along more details when they're available....Noah Berlatskyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07224228101183148043noreply@blogger.com0