Cast Out These Creatures Of Woe

I have become weirdly obsessed not just with this song, but this particular version of this song, recently. I’m not the biggest Beck fan in the world – He’s perilously hit and miss for me, and frustratingly self-indulgent a lot of the time in the same way that I always found some of the Jazz Greats to be; I can recognize that what they’re doing is well done and pleases a particular audience, but it does nothing for me, if that makes sense – but when he does something I like, it’s generally something that I really like and listen to, over and over again, until I work out why it sticks in my brain so much. Case in point, the above video. On the one hand, it’s nothing that I’ve not seen many other people do before (It reminds me particularly of Camille, but less inventive), but on the other, the first time I saw it, I was bowled over and had to see it again. I couldn’t tell you why.

Case in point #2:

Again, I wish I knew why this bounces around my head so much everytime I hear it, but instead, I’m left with the feeling that it’s a song that produces synaesthesia in me; I don’t hear it as much as taste it like the darkest, sweetest, most filling chocolate. It’s a great cake of a song, but saying that confuses and makes me sound ridiculous. It’s the closest I can get to the truth, though. Beck, at his best for me, bypasses logic and explanation and comes out in flavors. Maybe that’s why I don’t like everything he does; maybe it’s impossible to have that feeling about all of someone’s work.

I Am Alive, I Promise

What started as a Thanksgiving break turned into a longer break because I ended up working longer than I meant to on the last three days. Tomorrow, new blogging. Honest.

My Spam Email Hits New All-Time High

Received this morning:

It’s like they could read my mind. And then send me an email based upon the furthest thing from what was in it.

(Please note, also, that my email address is not “[email protected]”. It’s like when I get physical mail for the house next door.)

Four Years

1995: This was me, back then. Those who know me now are always surprised by this, because I have little-to-no hair left at all, but for a couple of years back then, I was the hairiest man this side of Rasputin. This is a portrait of me as sincere young artist, long before I discovered defensive irony or snark.

1996: The beard is gone, but the hair remains; I’m the non-blonde, obviously. This is myself and good friend Alan Ross officially presenting other good friend Andy Barnett with tickets for a Sex Pistols reunion show. We were posing as if it was some celebratory presentation of a large cardboard check or something similar, but I have no idea whether or not that actually comes across in the photo.

1997: My desk in art school during the final year of my BA degree, covered with detrius and mess that I would struggle to pull together into a coherent show at the end of the year. Of note: The photo of the woman smoking on the wall? That’s my then-girlfriend. The boxing rock’em sock’em game? A stress-reliever that was often used.

1998: Specifically, January 30th, 1998, and to celebrate the anniversary of the Beatles’ rooftop concert, I videoed myself and some friends singing Beatles songs on top of various things: Buildings, trees, furniture. This is myself and friend (and, at this time, fellow MA student) John Welsh performing a “bitchin’” spoken-word version of “Tomorrow Never Knows,” made all the better by the fact that John had never heard the song, and was instead just freestyling on the bongos. At the time, I thought I could do something with this for my PostGrad degree, but the results were amusing but ultimately completely lacking in artistic value.

The Secret Origin Of The New Marvel Universe

(It’s Onomatoepeia weekend again, so while I’m working on that, here’s last month’s essay.)

Who isn’t excited about Marvel’s new mega-event, Siege (AKA The Story That Made JMS Leave Thor Because He Didn’t Want To Write A Crossover Into The Book, but marketing suggested that that was perhaps a little long to fit comfortably on covers)? The end to the uber-story that’s been dominating Marvel since 2006′s Civil War, and one that will finally reteam Steve Rogers, Tony Stark and Thor for the first time since 2003? You just try and stop me from running out to buy that only to see the $3.99 price tag and have a momentary twinge of doubt before picking it, and all of its attendant spin-offs, up anyway.

But what many people don’t know is that Siege is the result of many, many more months of negotiation than The Powers That Be in Marvel are willing to admit, and that J. Michael Straczynski’s leaving Thor was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to in-fighting at the publisher surrounding the project. The idea of reuniting Marvel’s core Avengers may seem like a no-brainer now, but the sad fact is, it’s the story that almost broke Marvel Comics apart.

***

10 Possible Earlier Names For Siege, from a leaked Marvel memo:

- Siege of Asgard

- Dark Reign: Siege of Asgard

- Dark Reign: The List: Siege of Asgard

- Avengers Reassemble: Dark Reign: The List: Siege of Asgard

- Yes, It Is Your Father’s Avengers

- Asgard Is Iraq But Without Saddam Hussein Do You Get It Yet Norman Osborn Is Azy-Cray

- We Have A Movie Coming Out With All These Guys In It, We Should Do Something About That

- Finally, Dark Reign Is Almost Over, Do You Really Need A Story Or Can We Just Pretend It Never Happened?

- Aw Yeah Avengers!

- Marvel Bromance

***

The idea of a “final act” to the storyline that started waaaaay back with Avengers Disassembled – back in those more innocent days when we all thought Hawkeye was dead and not just horrifically misused with his core concept abandoned in favor of a generic and meaningless ninja costume – has long been one that’s been floated around the Marvel offices, and not just by editors who then mysteriously found themselves moved to the Ultimate and Marvel Adventures lines. In fact, it’s a little known fact that both World War Hulk and Secret Invasion were both originally planned as being events that would bring the core Avengers back together, with the former being planned as a “Tony Stark gets some sense beaten back into him and then everyone goes after the Hulk, good times” storyline at first. So what has finally been able to make this happen?

President Barack Obama.

Yes, yes; you may know him as the charming and disarming 44th President of the United States of America, as well as a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner (If you’re a fan of Fox News, you may also know him as the man undermining America with his Kenyan Kommunist Ways, but the less said about that the better), but because you’re a comic fan, the one thing you definitely know about the man they don’t call Barry is that he’s one of us: A geek who’s unafraid to get out that lightsaber on the White House Lawn or admit that he read comics as a kid.

(This has been a double-edged sword, of course. On the one hand, comic fans across the world rejoiced when Obama became President, as it finally provided proof that, yes, we could do something with our lives if we really wanted to, it’s just that we’re too busy wondering whether or not Hal Jordan is going to have to use the power of all of the various Lantern Corps in order to defeat the Black Lanterns thank you very much. But on the other, it also brings a new expectation to fail to live up to when we don’t go into politics and reveal a humble yet inspiring public face that ushers in a new age of international optimism about the US. Still, you win some, you lose some. Can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. A bird in the hand is worth two in the – Wait, I think I’m losing my place.)

For Marvel Comics, the election of Barack Obama has been a particularly surreal experience. Yes, he gave them the best sales of any issue of Amazing Spider-Man since the Green Goblin won the War on Drugs by throwing Gwen Stacey off the George Washington Bridge in that classic 1970s storyline, but unbeknownst to the Joe Quesada, Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker or even Stan Lee himself, the very creation of that story would affect the future of the Marvel Universe… forever.

***

5 Abandoned Plots To Get The Old School Avengers Back Together, from another leaked Marvel memo:

- Tony Stark discovers that Captain America’s assassination was not the work of the Red Skull, but instead part of a plan by Loki to finally demolish the legend of the Avengers once and for all, allowing him to eradicate the force for good that he had accidentally created forty+ years ago. Seeking to right this wrong, Iron Man makes peace with Thor and the two of them go to Hel to rescue the imprisoned soul of Steve Rogers.

- Steve Rogers wakes up after being shot to be confronted with Tony Stark and Donald Blake, who tell him that there’s a Crisis On Almost-But-Not-Infinite (for legal reasons, of course) Earths, and that the real Avengers are slowly being replaced by downbeat versions of themselves who can’t seem to get along. Only the three heroes can right this cosmic wrong – If Kang The Conqueror will let them!

- Turns out Iron Man was possessed for all of Civil War and The Initiative by a giant glowing alien insect that’s the personification of assholishness, and when he manages to get free of it, his first act is to apologize to Thor, who then takes Iron Man back in time to stop Cap from being assassinated and history is rewritten so that nothing post-Civil War counts in continuity. Which also means that Spider-Man is married again, so everyone complaining about that will be happy too.

- Let Dan Slott write the entire Avengers franchise and give him six months to sort it out. He might ignore continuity to do so (Hello, Hank Pym suddenly being so insanely smart and pro-active), but if there’s one man you can trust to get Cap, Shellhead and Thor back together, it’s Slott. If he seems unwilling, promise him Wonder Man and the Beast as well.

- Everyone was a Skrull. Again.

***

Readers may not have noticed, but certain powers that be within Marvel are very fond of the idea that hopelessness equals drama. That’s why every successive Marvel event has ended with things being worse for our heroes than they were before; House of M depowered the mutants, Civil War outlawed superheroes unless they were willing to give up their right to privacy, Secret Invasion meant that they also had to agree for an immoral supervillain who was also somewhat insane and, worst of all, World War Hulk gave the Marvel Universe Jeph Loeb’s Red Hulk. It’s a common mistake, thinking that drama = conflict and that conflict = everyone’s lives being depressing, put upon and essentially horrible (Longtime Marvel fans will remember Stan Lee making that same mistake with the little-discussed failures Journey Into Misery and The Soul-Destroying Piss-Man, although the latter is well-regarded amongst the alt-comix community for the visionary artwork of Steve Ditko), but with sales continuing to rise with each new depressive branding, it was looking as if the readership was as happy enough to buy into it as the creators. Then, however, Marvel published the Barack Obama issue of Spider-Man and their one big mistake was made.

See, Marvel didn’t have the rights to Barack Obama’s likeness. And, sure, while he’s a public figure, the White House has some great lawyers, and one thing led to another and suddenly all manner of secret deals were being put in place to save Marvel from costly financial and public losses resulting from the four page story… including letting the current President of the United States dictate certain creative decisions concerning the future of the Marvel Universe.

Many have wondered why the X-Babies have made a comeback, and brought the characters from Marvel’s appallingly-uninventive Star Comics line with them – the truth is, Planet Terry is Barack Obama’s favorite comic book and he demanded it. Others have wondered what the deal is with the cancelation of New Warriors, and the answer is simply that Obama thought it sucked. But those are small fish next to the second biggest issue on President Obama’s list of necessary moves to make his Marvel: Reunite the real Avengers.

The news that Marvel had to reunite the trinity of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America or else face public ridicule, bankruptcy and potential government bailout did not go down well internally; Brian Michael Bendis threatened to quit over what he saw as people muscling in on his territory as creative dictator for the publisher, while Mark Millar threatened to make another public statement about his own confused political opinions, reportedly telling Joe Quesada “I’m as lefty as Lenin, but John McCain would never have tried to tell us how to do our jobs! Plus, he was a war hero, and Obama sounds like something Jack Kirby would create and now I don’t know what to think.” Only the gift of Marvel stock and the promise to sell the company to Disney, thereby guaranteeing a financial windfall was enough to calm them down, and even that wasn’t enough for editor Tom Brevoort, who had to be forcibly restrained when given the news.

Eventually, however, almost everyone at the publisher came around to the idea – with the exception of Thor writer Straczynski, who decided that a life writing a midlevel team-up series at DC was preferable to having plotlines dictated by major political figures, sadly unaware that Sarah Palin was about to be announced as his collaborator on Brave and The Bold just months later.

And so, finally, Siege has been unveiled to the public, ending a tense few months at Marvel Comics. Editorial and creative figures within the publisher are said to be relieved by the fan reaction to the storyline, allowing them to get around to the one remaining item on Obama’s MU agenda: Explaining that whole “Peter Parker and Mary Jane making a deal with the devil to get divorced” thing.

Look forward to Spider-Man: One More Brand New Day Again in early 2010.

You Like Me, You Really Like Me

I found myself, the other day, remembering my first kiss. Or, rather, my first french kiss, the first time I was kissed by someone in a way that was something approaching romantic or sexual or the weird mixture of both that it seemed at the time. To my complete embarrassment, I can’t remember her name, or even what she really looked like, but I do remember that it was this completely humiliating, terrible experience, mostly because I had no idea what I was doing and that was immediately obvious to her; she went from “I think I like you” to “Seriously, what the fuck was that?” in about two seconds, and the instant was totally gone.

Thing is, despite that – And I knew that everything had gone wrong at the time, this wasn’t some anvil waiting to drop on my head later – I also remember the fact that, for the entire next day, I was glowing from the experience, smitten and with lips all a-tingle from the night before. I was, somehow, convinced that everything was not the end of the world and/or my lovelife, but instead, that things were looking up in a way that I’d never quite been able to bring myself to believe before. More than the kiss, I remember the next day’s afterglow, and the smile I couldn’t manage to wipe from my lips. I don’t know if that’s a selective memory trying to save me from blushes or a sign of an overly optimistic outlook at a young age, but if I’m entirely honest, I’m not sure that I care.

Remember When Clark And Lois Were Swingers?

Seriously, I’m not the only person who wonders what the “innocent” explanation of Lois’ response was supposed to be, right?

(From Superman: Past and Future, courtesy of the wonderful Portland public library system.)

It Was The 90s

This is me, fourteen or so years ago:

In my defense, it was Halloween and I was being John Lennon for the night (There was a twist, in that I had long hair at the time and, midway through the night, I took off my hat and went from early Lennon to late hairy hippie Lennon in a matter of minutes. Ah, how young we were back then, to be amused by such things!), but still. I love the complete underexposure of this photo, the griminess and the look on my face. The photos on the wall behind me, from my friend Hannah’s apartment, before we went out for the night. It seems a million miles away from the me I turned into, and makes me wonder about the me I could’ve been. Maybe I should’ve learned to play the guitar.

On Mad Men And Morality

For some reason, I’ve become convinced that there’s some kind of… not higher morality, but different morality, at play for fans of AMC’s Mad Men (Which is, of course, everyone with taste, right? Spoilers for the third season will follow, so be warned, for once). What’s been sticking to my mind since the finale of the most recent season is the feeling that the show is actually more supportive and/or sympathetic towards Don than Betty in the break-up of their marriage. And, I mean, sure; Don’s the more charismatic of the two – That’s his entire thing, he’s the guy that Men Want To Be and Women Want To Be With, the guy who makes everyone feel at ease (Well, almost everyone, and the whole “Don loses his touch” theme of the season was fascinating, even if it meandered and seemed to get lost a couple of times along the way), so of course we like him more, but I was constantly struck by the way that, even though we felt sympathy for Betty, it was hard to feel empathy with her. There was something… unlikable, in a way, about the character, even moreso as the season progressed this year, that kind of fascinates me. Don’t get me wrong, I think she is a great character (and became much stronger this year, what with everything that happened and the choices she made), but I never, ever found her a character that it was easy to like. And that sticks in my head.

It seems… I don’t know, subversive, somehow, that Don comes across as, maybe not the victim, but certainly the more sympathetic of the two when he and Betty split up. The show seems to be trying to sell Don’s line (that he may even believe) that the marriage broke up because of Betty, which… just isn’t true. It’s not even that Don had had affairs in the past, but that this season we saw Betty unable to do the same thing because of her marriage, which, surely, is “the right thing”? The decision to end the marriage because she didn’t love Don anymore is, again, “the right thing” – so why does it seem like Don has been abused, somehow? Why does Don seem like the wronged party?

The best I can figure out is that the show, and the show’s audience – or maybe I’m projecting, perhaps – seems to be promoting the idea of emotional honesty over… duty, perhaps, or a fictionalized sense of self and/or proprietariness. Don may have cheated on his wife, may have lied about his past, but he was always being true to what he wanted and who he was, whereas Betty was more concerned with an idea of how things were supposed to be. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but I definitely got the impression, as we saw Betty fly to Reno with the man who wanted to marry her once she was divorced, cut in with scenes of Don having to start his life over almost entirely, that we were supposed to feel that Don was the person we were to feel more for (Especially when we saw that Betty had forced Don to move out of the family home and then left the children there with their maid while she moved to Reno to get a divorce, which was just… odd). And I really want to know why that is.

How Does It Feel Like?

The Chemical Brothers were, for a lot of indie music fans of my generation, a gateway drug into the world of dance music (such as it was in the mid-90s music scene); along with the Prodigy, they came up with the most commercial version of dance music that was nonetheless familiar enough not to scare those of us who were more used to bands who wanted to be the Beatles than come up with “bangin’ choons” to pump your fist to in sweaty clubs every weekend. Of course, the Chemical Brothers managed this by wanting to be the Beatles as well, it’s just that they wanted to be “Tomorrow Never Knows” and “It’s All Too Much” and the more psychedelic Beatles than anything else (By comparison, the Prodigy just wanted to be the Sex Pistols. Like, really, really badly). Luckily, Noel Gallagher was there to help them with that:

Yes, it’s really just “Tomorrow Never Knows” with a bit more of a song to it, but I remember at the time thinking it was the best thing they’d done, and the most exciting thing I’d heard in a long time, some strange avatar of where both the Chems and Oasis would go next. Suddenly, there seemed like the potential for something new, something familiar, yes, but not the same as everything else we’d been listening to, something that actually summed up what our lives were about at that time in the way that you always want music to when you’re 21 years old and think that’s the way everything should work in some strange pop utopia. That wasn’t what happened, although that didn’t stop both the Chemical Brothers and Noel Gallagher trying to do what was essentially the same song, only a bit poppier, a couple of years later:

(That video, by the way, is one of my favorite music videos of all time, so wonderfully over the top.)

The strange, momentary crossover where it seemed like indie guitar bands and dance music were going to, if not merge together to come up with something that mixed the two, then at least open up their audiences to share and discover new and different things, is something that fascinates me even today. Not just for the missed opportunity, and the unfulfilled potential for What Could’ve Been, but for the wonderful lost innocence that genuinely believed it was possible, once.