The Joys Of The Internet, In Two Easy Steps
There’s something genuinely awesome about seeing this comment about yourself on Twitter -
G. Macmillan is one of t/more knowledgeable, insightful writers about comics out there
- being answered by this one:
he’s a bullshit retard when it comes to movies, I guess.
The highs! The lows!
The Black Diamond: Introduction
(Last year, I wrote an introduction for the collection of Larry Young’s The Black Diamond. To this day, I’m not entirely sure why he asked me, but I was – am – flattered that he did, and knew exactly what I wanted to write for it. So sure was I, in fact, that I kept putting it off and putting it off, because I knew what I wanted to write and the deadline wasn’t for ages yet. Until, of course, the deadline was suddenly the next day, and I hadn’t written anything yet. So, I sat down to write it out, this perfect introduction that I had in my head, and… it was terrible. It was just this long block of me going blah blah blah and not really heading anywhere in particular, and I felt completely embarrassed at the thought of people actually picking up the book and seeing those words at the front of the book. I panicked, and tore apart what I’d written to save the little worth saving, and then decided that they’d finish off the introduction, instead. And then I wrote backwards. This was the result.)
There’s a scene fairly early on in the book you’re about to read, where a character says “OK. Here’s something they don’t tell kids in school, not really. I dunno why; cause a panic, ruin their day.” I love that line; it makes you sit up and pay attention. You read it and think to yourself, hey, I might be about to learn something here. Sadly, I’m not the most scholarly type; I got where I am today by reading comic books and then talking about them, and who wants to listen to a guy like that? Nevertheless, here’s a hint about how to read The Black Diamond, before you start: Don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the plot too much.
Don’t get me wrong; I don’t mean that in some kind of snotty “Hey, Transformers is so much better if you just turn off your brain and watch giant robots beat each other up for two hours” sense. Although, let’s face it, we all know that’s kind of true: More than a year after I saw it, and I’m still not completely sure why Megatron dying after having the All-Spark stuffed into his chest, because wasn’t that what Optimus wanted to do with it? But I’m not really sure I care that much, because, dude, did you see how awesome it looked? None of which is to say that Jon Proctor’s art isn’t something to be dazzled by, however; the credits say that the art is “presented in Comicscope,” and there’s really something to that claim besides the way it sounds pleasingly retro when you say it out loud. It’s not just that the potent mix of Proctor’s chiaroscuro linework and neon coloring is something that a Michael Bay or Steven Spielberg couldn’t hope to top no matter how much CGI they can throw into their movies; there’s an evolution to the way that this book looks that is the kind of thing that you can only do in comics. I mean, look at the relatively understated way the story starts, with everything in its right place and a fairly realistic way of showing the world, for example, and then compare that with the loud Pop Art of the last few pages, where literalism has been dropped in favor of symbolism and bold graphic images made up of zipatone, Russian propaganda and James Bond opening titles smashed together. That’s something that only comics can get away with, especially the way that the book moves from one to the other, almost without you even really noticing on first read: Giving you this extra eyecandied “oomph” as things get more and more out there for poor Dr. Don McLaughlin, on the road and running out of time.
(And, seriously, those colors. Unless I’m completely misremembering, this is the first all-color book that AiT’s put out, and it’s like they’ve been saving everything up until this point. It’s not just the boldness of the way that Proctor’s colored everything, it’s the smartness of it all – the way that the completely unrealistic colors are also completely evocative of where the story is at that point, where the characters are and what everything’s probably sounding and smelling like right then. The subtlety, as well; dig the gas flame that Don lights early on in the book, the way it changes color and how right it seems. The colors alone are enough for someone to want to buy Proctor a drink or several.)
So, yeah; the book may look amazing, created in a smart, subtle way that takes advantage of the way that comics can do things that no-one’s worked out how to do anywhere else yet. But that’s not what I’m saying when I’m telling you not to overthink the plot too much.
And I should probably get it straight right now that I’m also not telling you to ignore the plot because there isn’t one, or that it’s no good, or anything like that. You know the high-concept version of what you’re about to read, right? If you’re not ready to sign on the dotted line immediately after hearing “Mild-mannered dentist has to drive cross-country on the most dangerous road in the US to save the life of his kidnapped wife,” then you might want to go check out whether there’s a Masterpiece Theatre on television tonight or something. Although if you’re jaded enough to be looking for some icing on that particular cake, you’re in luck: Expect to meet romantic bikers, runaway girlfriends with secret bags full of tricks, corrupt businessmen, military men who want to change the world, and even literary kidnappers along this particular road you’re about to set off on. I could go on, but I’m pretty sure that one of the things an introduction is pretty definitively not meant to do is spoil the entire story that it’s supposed to be introducing. I should probably just leave it with “You’re very unlikely to be bored with where the story takes you, and the car chases and explosions will hopefully be enough to keep your attention over the next 150-odd pages you’re about to read.”
There’s nothing wrong with the plot itself, in other words. That’s not why I’m telling you to kind of never mind the story.
No, the secret of The Black Diamond is that, ultimately, it’s not really a story at all. It’s actually a book about stories (or even, as Larry puts it at the end of the book, a “comic book love-letter to the 1970s drive-in movie” about stories – although even his description sells it short, I think, because this is more than some kind of Grindhouse recreation pastiche, as cute as Rose McGowan was in that movie). Stories and storytelling are what this book is all about, whether we’re talking about the stories that people tell you (Just look at “American Look,” the fourth issue of the series as it originally appeared, which plays out an action sequence against the bad guy behind the whole thing telling what others would call his origin story), the stories that characters tell each other (Dixie and General Cooper swapping tales illustrating the way the world works for them in between shooting up Mother Nature’s kids: “You’re quite the warrior-poet,” indeed), and even characters pretending to talk to each other but really telling you about the story you’re reading and all stories in general. This book isn’t just a love-letter to drive-in movies, it’s a love-letter to the fine, ignoble art of telling stories in all its multiple forms. It’s not something Larry really tries to hide; as early as the first chapter, two guys lay out exactly what you’re about to read while in the middle of a car chase:
“Which one’s this?”
“What?”
“Which plot?”
“You mean in a Rosencrantz-and-Guildernstern kinda way?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“What are we in, you mean? What’s the narrative we’re locked into with this guy in the Ford?”
“Right. ‘Just trying to get home’ or ‘stranger comes to town’?”
“Me? I’d say it’s both.”
He’s not wrong; this book is both, on multiple levels. You can look at what happens in the story and say “Well, Dr. Don is a stranger in the ‘town’ of the Black Diamond, trying to save his wife and get that metaphorical home back,” and you wouldn’t be wrong (There’s also Kate, Dr. Don’s wife, who gets kidnapped and brought back to the creation of her dad, a home that she might not have wanted to get back to and is a stranger to, if you’re keeping score. Or Dixie, who’s trying to create the home that he wants to get back to. Or Dixie’s kind of useless son, who’ll never be the man he thinks his dad wants him to be, for that matter. Again, I could go on, but I’d probably just embarrass myself). But – and you knew there was one of those coming, admit it - there’s also this whole metatextual thing about the creation of the book itself. After all, The Black Diamond was originally a series of comics that saw Larry Young being this graphic-novel-only stranger coming to that town called “Full-color-serial-comic-mini-seriesville” (It’s somewhere near “Directmarketon” on your favorite metaphorical map, but good luck trying to find it on Google Maps), trying to get home to his audience by writing the only way he knew how.
(Admittedly, I may be talking out my ass with that last part, but I can’t help but wonder if it’s something that was playing in Larry’s mind as he was writing the thing and working out the themes and plot; did he see himself as a stranger coming to a new format, or was he just putting his foot to the floor and hoping for the best?)
It’s when you start looking at the book as something more than just a story that you’ll get the most out of it, and not just because you’ll get how funny the climax of the plot turns out to be in a weird, shaggy dog story, kind of a way. It’s because, freed of just focusing on “What happens next” all the time, you’ll be able to enjoy everything on its own terms – all the diversions you’ll go on from the story you thought you were paying attention to, the deconstruction of the form as the book progresses, as what you’re looking at and what you’re reading begin to separate and echo each other but start telling the same story in different ways, the world-building that’s happened behind the scenes and between panels, the whole shebang. And then there’s the dialogue; the wonderful, playful, dialogue.
Like in all the best writing, the people you’ll meet here don’t talk like normal people, thank God (Sure, there’s something to be said for naturalistic dialogue, but there’s a limit. If you want to hear real people talk, then go outside and talk to real people. It’s really not as entertaining as you might think). The people you’ll meet while driving down the Black Diamond are funnier, quicker and, yes, occasionally given to delivering plot exposition than your friends and family, but most importantly, they’re just generally smarter. I’m not saying that because of all the metatextual commentary they let slip on their own story – As one of the characters puts it midway through: “Kind of a self-reflective bit of hoo-hah, if you’re paying attention. Kinda… arch. Self-aware.” That kind of hoo-hah’s all through this book, if you know to look for it – but because of, well, what they talk about and the way they talk about it all: Definitions of words you’ll probably never have heard of before (Unless “yclept” is taught in all schools in the US and everyone’s managed to keep this a secret from me all these years. Which, if it’s true, I should probably congratulate you all for managing to do), societal analysis hidden in backstory delivery and the history of air travel and how it relates to the wider world we all live in, to name just a few of the topics you’re about to find discussed when and where you’d least expect. Like the artwork, the writing here is deceptively smart.
I guess what I’m trying to say, in this roundabout, screwed-up way is this: The Black Diamond is something that’s smart, a lot of fun, and something that you really don’t need to think too much about, because the creators have already taken care of that for you (Wait for that second or third read before you turn on the overanalyzing part of your brain; you’ll find everything you’re looking for, and more). Turn off your mind, relax and float upstream, as the man used to say: After all, Dr. Don McLaughlin’s about to wake up to find out that his wife’s been kidnapped and he’s got a hell of a morning commute to deal with. He’s got to save the day and the dame; you don’t have to do anything other than keep reading.
Sit back and enjoy the ride.
Help Wanted. Inquire Within Marvel Universe
(I haven’t done this for awhile; here’s one of the essays that I wrote for Comix Experience’s Onomatoepeia newsletter, from pretty much a year ago.)
There must be many benefits from living in the Marvel Universe, if you stop to think about it. Just imagine what it’d be like in such a world of wonder where gods walk the Earth, the existence of aliens is a proven fact, and New York gets destroyed every second week! You couldn’t turn on the television without watching news items about Tony Stark gladhandling George Bush on a daily basis, or look in the sky without seeing a SHIELD Helicarrier floating above you like some kind of oppressive metal cloud, but on the plus side, Marvel Universe Jon Stewart probably has awesome material for Marvel Universe Daily Show every night.
But it’s not all fun, games and carnage for the everyday folk of Marvel Earth; even though we know from years of comics that the employment world there is very forgiving to Scientists (Mad) and photojournalists for large metropolitan newspapers even in this internet age, think of all the other regular schlubs who have to make a living there in less glamorous careers. Who would want to clean a hotel room after the Absorbing Man and Titania had stayed there, for example? And can you imagine how few responses a Craigslist posting for “Research Subjects Wanted for AIM experiments – $$$!” would get? Join me now as I lead you through some of the least popular gigs available in the Marvel Universe:
* Construction Worker.
There are, of course, pluses and minuses to every job. For example, you may be hideously underpaid in your office job, stuck in a cubicle for eight hours a day in a dully-lit office without adequate heating, surrounded by people with long criminal records and with no hope of an upwards career path, but at least you can spend the day talking to people on MySpace (This may simply be the experience of everyone at my office, as opposed to a universal thing, but I’m sure that you can understand). That’s exactly the dilemma faced by the construction worker in the Marvel Universe: Yes, the amount of property damage caused by any large slugfest means that you will almost certainly have more work than you know what to do with. But, on the other hand, the amount of property damage caused by any large slugfest also means that you will almost certainly never be able to finish any job and know that said job will still be standing twelve months from now.
It’s this problem – called “The Banner Paradox” by those in the know – that has led to another problem for construction companies in the MU: lawsuits from the owners of those few buildings that have managed to see their fifth birthdays. Builders, you see, so sure that their work was essentially meaningless in a world where everything gets smashed or zapped or infested by alien symbiotes without a moment’s notice, started using sub-standard materials – and employing immigrants from other dimensions, where quality was seen to be some kind of sick dream as opposed to something to aspire to – in order to get things done quicker and cheaper than their competitors. After all, they figured, it’s not like the Sentry won’t be throwing Ultron through the fifth floor at some point in the next couple of years. For the most part, they were right. But for that small percentage of those buildings that weren’t destroyed, such corner-cutting proved very expensive indeed.
* Historians.
Picture it: You’ve spent twelve years of your life working on some ground-breaking new thesis detailing exactly why the Mayan civilization had formed those particular social structures that fascinated and confused all your predecessors, and then Reed Richards walks in the door and tells you that he’s travelled back in time and found out it was all a plot by the Mole Man, who’d accidentally discovered something called a “cosmic cube”.
‘Nuff Said.
* Gossip Columnist.
Sure, gossip columnist would have been a great gig back in Stan and Jack’s time: You’d have spent your days drinking cocktails surrounded by glamorous women and men in tuxedos, fighting those red commie bastards and writing things like “Just why is millionaire industrialist Tony Stark’s bodyguard Harry Hogan so ‘Happy’? Maybe it’s got something to do with Stark’s sexy secretary Pepper Potts… With a name like that, you just know that she likes a little spice, if you know what I mean.”
Hell, even in the ’80s, it would be an easy gig: “Just where have the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes gone? That’s the question being asked by Scarlet Witch and the rest of the remaining superheroes who didn’t disappear into that mysterious construction in Central Park last Saturday. Personally, we think it’s just a publicity stunt for the Raiders of The Lost Ark sequel on behalf of George Lucas and ET‘s Steven Spielberg – How else to top melting Nazis in the first one?” If things ever got really slow, you could always make jokes about Power Man’s tiara or the Beyonder’s Michael Jackson impersonator status or whatever.
But nowadays, you just know that the Daily Bugle has been advertising this position for months, cycling in and out wannabe-Perez Hiltons who just can’t hack the danger. Never mind the constant threat of lawsuits coming from the US Government every time you publish a photo of some minor superhero from the Initiative falling out of a club drunk and with their underwear showing – or, in the case of someone like Dazzler or whoever, no underwear – because that would be the least of your worries. Think of how everyone would deal with Mary Jane Watson’s current situation:
“Supermodel Mary Jane Watson was seen stepping out of New York’s hottest nightclub last night with a mystery man – Could it be her husband, except she was never really married, although I seem to remember she was living with some guy who was Spider-Man except he wasn’t and oh crap, never mind.”
And that’s not even getting anywhere near what it’d be like dealing with all these Skrull replacements running around. You’d run some harmless (you thought) item one day about it being funny that Black Bolt was seen at a deli yukking it up with the cutie behind the counter, and next thing you know, there are several million green guys with pointy ears and nobbly chins pointing guns at you in the middle of the night and asking you how you discovered their plan hu-man, before punching things and declaring that nothing can stop them. How would you explain that to your landlord?
* Butler.
Every single day, all butlers hear is this: “Well, I’ve heard that Edwin Jarvis does this for Tony Stark,” or “Selina from the townhouse was telling me that Edwin Jarvis even ironed Wolverine‘s underwear,” or “I bet you that Edwin Jarvis wouldn’t refuse to cut my toenails and then eat the clippings.”
Every. Single. Day.
Somewhere in the Marvel Universe, there’s a Butler-only message board online that’s devoted entirely to complaining about how perfect Jarvis is. “Even when he wore an eyepatch, his service was impeccable,” they’d write, “how is anyone supposed to compare to that?” And then they’d add lots of angry emoticons to emphasize the point.
* Cab-driver.
I was initially going to say that this was a New York-only no-no, before I remembered that the Earth in the Marvel Universe only consists of New York, some mid-western place where aliens can crashland, New Mexico where the Hulk can stomp around, and Latveria (which means Geography Teacher may actually be the greatest job in the Marvel Universe, considering. No, wait, they have the United Kingdom for Excalibur, don’t they? Of course, the Marvel UK is only really London, another generic nameless city, Edinburgh and Muir Island, so that doesn’t really count). And who drives cabs in New Mexico or Latveria? So never mind.
(Actually, do they have cabs in Latveria? Do they have currency there? Every time I see Latveria and it’s not the inside of Doctor Doom’s castle while he’s complaining about that accursed Richards, it always seems to be some gypsies riding around in horse-drawn carriages wearing rags. It’s as if Latveria is not only the poorest dictatorship in existence, but also the last one to recognize the importance of steam power, never mind everything that came afterwards. Do you think that’s down to Doom’s doing? He’s probably keeping all of that kind of thing away from his serfs before settling into his special Doomcrib to watch the latest episode of Real Housewives of Orange County on his special hijacked satellite signal. That or This Old House; he loves that Tom Silva.)
(But I continue to digress.)
Cab-drivers in the Marvel Universe have to have the worst insurance you can imagine. Even if their cab doesn’t get picked up and thrown by that day’s badguy fighting Thor, it’ll get ripped apart when it turns out that your passenger was Bruce Banner and he started haggling over the tip. And you just know that every single cab in the greater New York area has a special fund kept to one side to deal with fixing all the dents they get from Spider-Man jumping on top of them to get to the other side of the city “for an emergency.” Cheap-ass.
* Dry-Cleaners.
Everything was fine and dandy until the invention of unstable molecules. The class action suit against Reed Richards is still tied up in legal red-tape, and every single day it doesn’t get dealt with, more and more people start buying cheap bootleg unstable molecule suits from the Marvel Universe Macy’s and never have to deal with coffee spills or sexual stains ever again.
* Professor Xavier’s barber.
And no, not for the reason that you think. Yes, yes, I know that he’s always told you that he’s naturally bald, but seriously, you fell for that? Charles Xavier is possibly the most vain mutant ever to walk, then roll, then walk, then roll again, then walk, then roll, and finally walk once more, upon this planet we call home, and the bald thing? Merely a cover story to hide a hairline that’s been steadily receding since he hit puberty.
This, of course, hit teenaged Charles hard – He was young, and believed that he wanted to be in a rock and roll band, playing lead guitar and “thrashing,” if you will, long hair while kicking out whatever jams required kicking out at the time. Realizing that his dreams were forever stolen from him by faulty DNA, he decided almost immediately to go in entirely the different direction. If he could not be the most potent God of Rawk that had ever been seen, then he would become a cold, bald, intellectual type. They, he thought to himself, always seemed to get the chicks as well.
Thus it was that the boy who would become Professor Charles Xavier started the facade that he managed to keep from everyone who knew him. Every morning, around 6am, before anyone else was awake, Xavier would meet in secret with Javier, his schoolfriend-turned-barber, for a quick once-over with a razor. As the Xavier fortune grew, Xavier put Javier on retainer, and built him a secret apartment on the grounds of the School for Gifted Children, all the time the two of them meeting first thing in the morning for a session and occasional cup of imported coffee.
The problem came the first time that Xavier “died”. Javier, thinking that he could finally move out of Westchester and fulfill his dream of opening a salon in West Hollywood, breathed a sigh of both relief and sadness on hearing the news, and started packing his things… only to have to unpack them moments later when Xavier appeared at his door, and explained that it was an imposter who had died in his place. Same thing happened when Xavier was killed by the Brood, years later; Javier, breathing more relief than sadness, started packing up his belongings only to be interrupted by the newly-cloned Xavier, explaining that he had to stick around after all.
When Xavier was shot in the head at the end of Messiah Complex, Javier didn’t waste any time; knowing that Xavier was still comatose following the shooting, he didn’t even both to pack anything and instead ran from the school and grabbed the first cab to JFK Airport. Sadly, it was a cab that was picked up by former construction worker the Wrecker and thrown at Iron Man, who had just come from a deposition in a lawsuit he was in, suing the latest Daily Bugle gossip writer for making unfair comments about his relationship with Jarvis, the most faithful butler in the world. As the cab flew through the air, coffee went all over Javier’s one and only suit, and just before his sad stress-induced death, he thought to himself that he should have bought an unstable molecule suit.
…As you’d expect, over in the DC Universe, everything is much better. The only problem they have over there is that, every now and then, your job gets outsourced to an alternate Earth in order to cut costs. I hear that the Sinestro Corps is hiring these days, though…
Because Dave Campbell Demanded It!
The Bendis Board’s “Armored Dildo” – Yes, that’s the name he chose for himself, ladies and gentlemen – identifies Alan Moore’s problem:
Alan Moore’s persecution complex is really excessive now. He’s like the petulant kid who’s discovered people will pay attention to him if he scream his lungs out.
You can’t do right by him. Actually, you can’t do anything and not have it hurt him terribly. He’s the kid at the prom that sulks in the corner, brooding.
Alan Moore: We don’t care. We are adults with functioning brains and we know that a Hollywood adaptation rarely maintains the artistic integrity of the original work. We see those films despitethat fact. Anyone who thinks an adaptation automatically replaces an original is an idiot.
But wait! He’s not done yet:
Oh, I completely agree that he’s been screwed over royally several times.
But how is ceaselessly whining about it help? Does that solve anything in a proactive way? Or for that matter, engender the sympathies of the fans? It’s getting frankly tiresome.
But at the same time I find that the attitude of adopting a violently antagonistic attitude towards one’s employers is deep-seated in the UK. As is constantly “whinging” about every tiny inconvenience in your life to as many people as you can. It’s practically a national pastime.
And frankly, Moore’s tantrums have led him to be coddled several times.
It’s just really disappointing that he’s fallen into the stereotype of the big-name artist that’s impossible to deal with and cannot function outside of the little world he’s created for himself.
But I’m able to separate the artist from his work. And that’s what matters.
It’s true; making sure that a man called Armored Dildo can separate a man from his work is exactly what matters. In related news, Alan Moore is also the man responsible for Lost Girls, which means he is also responsible for this review – and in particular, the section below:
So you start with freeing the psyche and you wind up with a girl jerking off a horse. (“It felt sorta like peach-skin.”) Moore believes in expanding the consciousness, so he believes in consciousness-expanding porn. And in some distant sense a girl jerking off a horse does amount to a freer psyche, because it’s an unthinkable idea slapped down in front of you. But I don’t feel freer after experiencing the idea. I feel like something I care about is being misrepresented. If sex means getting a horse to come, or doing an eight-year-old, or having everybody in the family fuck each other, then all right, I’ll find some other interest.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Lost Girls was like three hardcover books of that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin where Steve Carrell says that women’s breasts are like bags of sand.
Fanboy Rampage (Slight Return)
Gotta love communication.
Mark Millar talking about future uses of his “Old Man Logan” universe, Comic Book Resources February 7th 2009:
I always like to leave something behind, whether it was the Marvel Zombies in ‘Ultimate Fantastic Four’ or in ‘Fantastic Four’ itself where we had those Defenders characters that are catching on it. It’s just great fun, and I love doing that. In ‘Civil War’ I came up with loads of stuff other people picked up on. But the most proprietorial I’ve ever felt with anything is the ‘Old Man Logan’ universe. I don’t know why, but they got about three or four proposals in a couple of months ago from people, and they said, ‘What do you think? Is it OK if we farm this stuff out?’ and I just had to say ‘No.’ I’m never normally that much of a jerk, but I just love that little world and don’t want anyone else playing with it. Right now it still feels like my toy. So I said, ‘Look, I’d like to come back at some point with Steve and do more with the ‘Old Man Logan’ world,’ and that was what I used as a bargaining chip so they wouldn’t let anyone else do it.
One thing I have noticed sometimes is that whenever something is successful – and this is at DC and at Marvel – then there’s always a cheap, shoddy follow up by the wrong creative team usually. And then there’s an even worse creative team to come and follow them. And then the thing just dies on its arse. I’d hate to see that happen to ‘Old Man Logan’ so I thought, ‘If anybody’s going to f–k this up, it’s me.’
Joe Quesada talking about future uses of Mark Millar’s “Old Man Logan” universe, Comic Book Resources February 7th 2009:
Are there any plans to use the world of “Old Man Logan” in other books? Quesada said Miller wants to “whore the hell out of it,” but we don’t yet know exactly when.
In Joe Quesada’s defense, maybe he doesn’t know the meaning of the word “whore.”