don't know what you're missing

Imagine Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey as directed by Sam Peckinpah and co-scripted by William Gibson and the Animal Liberation Front and you'd have a decent, if incomplete, idea of the premise behind Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely's 2004 mini-series We3. I say "incomplete" because underneath the high concept sci-fi ultraviolence, We3's tale of three cybernetically-augmented animals on the run from a black-ops weapons lab possesses a level of genuine pathos rarely encountered in a work of fiction, and especially within the medium of comics.

While I'm well acquainted with the technical concept of catharsis (as is anyone who has ever taken a college literature or drama class), it isn't often that I come across a work that inspires the actual emotional purgative-tranformative process. This is partly because I'm a jaded old fart, but also because I'm hyper-sensitive to attempts to stack the creative deck in order to force such emotional responses. Art is manipulative by nature, but too many artists get too eager and overplay their hands to dismal effect. Reading We3 is a cathartic experience for me, an emotional roller coaster ride that leaves me feeling undefinably but noticeably changed (and a bit teary-eyed) afterward. (Granted, stories with animal protagonists have a paw up in the "pull the heartstrings" stakes, but Morrison's characterizations and Quitely's illustrations of "1" the dog, "2" the cat, and "3" the rabbit ring so authentic it hurts me to read the more tragic parts of the story.)

Today marks the release of Grant Morrison's most current effort, Final Crisis #1, a big "event" title guaranteed to change the DC superhero universe forever (again, but for real this time, honest). I've read it, and it's decent enough for what it is, but there's already a vocal minority in the dark corners of the comics internet reiterating the usual charge lobbed at Morrison's work, namely that his stuff is "too hard to follow."

Morrison's stuff tends to be hit or miss with me, and I do think his infatuation with BIG CRAZY CONCEPTS tends to work at cross-purposes with his plot logic at times, but I never really considered his work to be incomprehensible (apart from the instances Morrison was deliberately attempting to be obtuse). Final Crisis, in comparison with some of Morrison's other work (The Invisibles or even parts of Seven Soldiers), is a model of narrative lucidity.

The real problem, I suspect, lies with the audience, who've been conditioned to see comics, especially superheroic stuff, as product to be consumed rather than material to be engaged. There's a thin line between a "challenging" work and self-indulgent wankery, but requiring more effort than a five-minute linear burn-through to grasp the material does not automatically place a work in the latter category. Junk food should not set the baseline for one's palate, and a genre shouldn't be held hostage by some lazy, retrograde bottom feeders.

Upon considering the fannish whinings, as well as Morrison's own remarks that fans who don't like the content ought to pencil in their own captions in the word balloons, I went up to the attic and dug out my old Creator-to-Creator translation machine. It's a heavily-modified version of Joel Robinson's Cartuner (here at the 4:00 mark) incorporating Babelfish source code which allows one to see how certain comics would have turned out if done by a different creator (like EC horror stories as done by Carl Barks, for example).

And so, in the name of SCIENCE, I took the following panel featuring 1 the dog and 2 the cat from the second issue of We3....


...and ran it through the machine to see how it theoretically could have been "improved" by other fan-favorite comic book writers.

The panel in question, as it would have been written by:

Brian Michael Bendis (Powers, Daredevil, Secret Invasion)*

Chuck Dixon (Nightwing, Robin, Snakes on a Plane: The Comic)

Mark Millar (Ultimates, Wanted, Civil War)

Roy Thomas (Avengers, Invaders, All-Star Squadron, and too many others to list)
...and just so the indie kids don't feel left out:

Brian Wood (Demo, DMZ, Northlanders)
I really wanted to try and generate a Chris Claremont one, but the machine's feed kept getting jammed on "focused totality," "starhair," and "violated my soul." The technology has its limits, apparently.

David Walker - Ring the Changes (from Le Beat Bespoke, 2004) - A harmonious marriage of powerhouse pop (a la Sir Tom Jones) and heavy, horny funk.

Quincy - Turn the Other Way Around (from Quincy, 1980) - Man, that Jack Klugman really rocks! (I kid. They were a New York-based power pop band that got some brief national exposure following the success of The Knack.)

Isabel Bond - Let's Find Out (from Beat at Cinecitta, Vol. 3, 1994) - This weird slice of freakbeat soul comes from the soundtrack of 1969 Italian sex comedy Vedo Nudo. My Italian is rusty, but I believe the title of the film translates into English as "broad pantomime and boob shots."

*In an actual Bendis comic, the text in that scene would have been frugally doled out across a nine-panel grid covering an entire page. The translation machine still needs some fine-tuning.

tired of wasting all my time

Freedom of speech is one of the cornerstones of a just and open society. Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, but that does not mean that all opinions are equally valid, nor does it place any obligation on me to listen. Decades of bitter experience have caused my subconscious mind to install a cognitive kill switch. It is triggered by certain words, phrases, or sentences that when encountered cause my attention to disengage.

When dealing with written material, it's a simple enough matter to stop reading and move onto something else. In conversational environments, notions of tact and decorum make things a wee bit trickier. In situations where I can't just tell the other party to fuck off and be done with it, my body slips into a automatic routine of glassy-eyed stares and occasional nods while my consciousness scrolls a mental slide-show of Mamie Van Doren, Tuesday Weld, and Ann-Margret pinup shots set to the following tune:

Laurie Johnson - Shopping Spree (from Music for TV Dinners, 1997)

The mind is a wonderful and mysterious thing.

Here is a representative sample of some of the trigger phrases guaranteed to land someone on my "please disregard" list:

- "America needs a flat tax."

- "Um, actually..." (It doesn't matter if the pedantic infodump that follows those words reveals the location of a cache of unmarked twenty-dollar bills, the cure for cancer, or a meticulous chronology of Phantom Girl's appearances; once that introductory phrase is uttered, my mental firewall kicks in at full force.)

- "I'm a big fan of Dane Cook."

- "I'm a big fan of Chuck Klosterman."

- "I'm a big fan of Ayn Rand."

- "I'm a big fan of Orson Scott Card."

- "It contradicts my fan-fiction." (Or any statement evoking fan-fiction as something other than a curious hobby.)

- "My psychic told me..."

- "Fight Club is my favorite novel."

- "I pay his/her/their/your salary." (When spoken by an end user, not by the actual employer)

- "...then we'd all be speaking German/Russian/Japanese."

- "Steampunk" (Used seriously in any context outside genre fiction.)

- "...according to Rush Limbaugh/Bill O'Reilly/Michelle Malkin/Ann Coulter/Michael Savage." (As a serious citation, not a negative example.)

- emoticons, IM-speak, or l33t used unironically in ratios greater than one to one thousand words of coherent English

- "Future generations will appreciate Kenny Loggins's immense contributions to rock music."

Hüsker Dü - Never Talking to You Again (from Zen Arcade, 1984) - The sound that spawned a host of inferior imitations.

Bananarama and Fun Boy Three - He Was Really Sayin' Somethin' (from Deep Sea Skiving, 1983) - I wouldn't go so far as to call this the whitest cover of Motown song ever, but it's definitely up there in the top ten percent of its class.

sooner or later it will pass

Issue #133 of The Uncanny X-Men (May 1980): After the merry band of mutants has their asses handed to them by the Hellfire club, team leader Cyclops tries an astral Hail Mary play in hopes of freeing his lover Jean Grey from Mastermind's psychic control. It doesn't go well, and the issue ends on this shocking note...

OH NO! CYCLOPS IS DEAD! HOW COULD THEY?
The answer, as revealed in the opening splash page of issue #134, is that they didn't:

It was just a bait-and-switch cliffhanger; clumsily done, but well within the standard conventions of the superheroic genre.

There's been some confusion in certain quarters (which I won't link to, because I don't believe in encouraging the delusional) about the nature and tropes of serialized superhero adventure stories -- specifically the inability to separate suspension of disbelief from actually believing.

It's not (so much) a case of folks thinking that Superman is real, but rather that escapist light entertainments generated for profit by publicly traded corporations have a greater meaning than simply being disposable diversions. (Certain works can rise above the baseline, and that's something to be encouraged, but that's neither the norm or even what this particular strain of enthusiast is calling for.) To those who hold such beliefs, the idea that a writer of superhero comics (regardless of his level of talent) could go on record and acknowledge that things like character deaths or incapacitating injuries could be easily be written away if so desired is not taken as a simple affirmation of how mainstream superheroic storytelling has always worked, but as a statement of betrayal most foul.

A betrayal of what, exactly? Not suspension of disbelief, as that concept is something that applies only within the boundaries of the text (or movie, or play, or so forth -- I'm just using "text" as a catch-all term for simplicity's sake). There is a difference between letting an obvious boom shadow slip into an important shot, and the director explaining in an interview the nuts and bolts of the special effects used in her movie. What is bothering these superhero fans is actually the betrayal of a myth, the myth that their cherished characters are more than trademarked fictional properties. To acknowledge the formulaic nature of the genre is to unleash an existential crisis.

I can understand this viewpoint. I think most folks who've indulged in the hobby, especially the ones who picked it up as children, are familiar with the feeling to some extent. I remember reading the conclusion of Iron Man #230 (May 1988)...

...and actually wondering if that could have really been the death of Tony Stark. (Keep in mind that this was only a couple years after Stark reclaimed the heroic identity he'd given up for thirty-odd issues.) It wasn't. He was back the very next issue, per genre standards, with a brand new suit of armor.

Eventually, however, there comes a point where you've seen enough turns of the plot wheel to be able to reliably chart its progress. The overall goofiness of the ever-recycled plot material matters less than the manner in which it is handled -- the tweaks, spins, and innovations capable of turning coal into diamonds (even if they are industrial-grade ones).

It is a different sort of affection, one predicated on awareness and perspective instead of unquestioned enthusiasm and fan entitlement. It is not "apathy" -- the present buzzword of choice among apologists for the latter camp to describe that attitude -- but a sense of perspective about how the business and the genre work. (I'll concede that feelings of jadedness are frequent handmaidens to that attitude, but are not mutually exclusive with being able to enjoy reading superhero material.)

Knowing that a magic trick is a carefully orchestrated deception doesn't preclude appreciating the skillful execution of the illusion. Knowing how Jay Gatsby will end up at the end of Fitzgerald's novel or the solution to one of Raymond Chandler's mysteries doesn't undercut the entertainment value of either. It's about appreciating a work for what it is, and not as a fragment of an ever-churning faux-mythic canon with a disproportionate level of personal importance.

The Darling Buds - It Makes No Difference (from Crawdaddy, 1990) - Better than Transvision Vamp and The Primitives combined...which isn't that hard a feat, but still. I discovered the band (along with Prefab Sprout) through a promo mini-CD bundled inside a case of Coca-Cola and was impressed enough by what I heard to buy (and love) the album despite my punker-than-thou attitude at the time.

too many damn elms

Sigh.

I linked to this article by Pal Ken a couple days ago. If you didn't read it then, take a couple of minutes to do so now.

Don't worry, I'll still be here when you're done.

Finished? Good. I thought Ken did an exceptional job in analyzing fandom's more extreme tendencies, especially the irrational sense of entitlement frequently exhibited by the vocal minority of self-identified "fans." He didn't resort to the facile "GET A LIFE, NERDS" dismissal, but instead maintained a reasonable, jocular tone throughout the piece (which my own experience has shown to be the best way to approach such subjects).

Of course, fandom -- especially internet fandom -- being what it is, this was one of the responses he got to his article. (I'd advise against reading the comments, but you're all grown-ups so do what you will..) The writer accuses Ken of being a body fascist (because of the miguided cosplay -- a redundant term as far as I'm concerned, regardless of the cosplayer's body type -- photo chosen to illustrate the article), a hypocritical snob, and a bigot.

All three are standard shafts in the quiver of fandom's response to bruised egos, but what really stood out when I read the response is that the author seemed instrinsically unable to discern that there are differences between:

- appreciative and obsessive levels of fan behavior
- "shunning" and not getting neck deep in an unwinnable argument with a zealot
- being a passive consumer of product (or "cattle") and having a sense of perspective over a work's actual relevance in the grand scheme of things, and choosing one's battles accordingly

There's also the question of what the measure of a work's "success" or "failure" actually is. By irrational fandom's standards, far too frequently the scales are calibrated to "how close it hews to my own (internal or external) fanfiction," the consequences of which reach fractal levels of subjectivity, resulting in a cacophony of aggrieved voices amplified by way of the internet.

Here's the rub, though: it is entirely possible for a work to simultaneously succeed at its purpose and defy the beholder's expectations. Roddy Doyle's "Barrytown" novels, for example, are chock full of elements that pull the rug out from under the reader's feet, and that's what makes them so damn compelling. The Committments could have made it big or The Van could have ended on a cheerier note, but Doyle chose to do what any creator with self-respect would do -- he followed his own muse, for better or for worse. (In this case, for better.) If input is going to be made, I'd rather defer to a skilled editor or trusted peer than to the shrill messageboard axe-grinding of someone calling themselves "CraZeeGael313."

The idea that the creative process should be dictated by a self-appointed soviet of fans is absurd, as is the stock retort of "I pay your salary." No, unless you own the publishing firm or studio, you actually pay (directly or indirectly) a small portion of the revenue that flows back into the firm. That's one "vote" or a small percentage of votes (if one has mobilized a group of similarly-minded crusaders) weighed in the capitalist arena against those of the vast majority of readers/viewers who don't feel the need to rant about the heresies committed against their own personal visions of fan perfection.

Does that seem unfair? I suppose it may, but I'm not one who automatically associates "loudness" with "righteousness." Nor have I coupled my sense of self-worth to the vagaries of disposable genre entertainment, for that matter.

The Who - Had Enough (from Who Are You, 1978) - Amen.

a tale of a tree

In the woods across the street from my childhood home stood an enormous dead tree. It must have been quite the sight when it was alive, and it still managed to dominate the westward view from my backyard even in death, resembling a giant's skeletal hand reaching up though the sumac and scrub.

The inexorable tag-team of entropy and the elements eventually stripped the hand of its gnarled, twisted fingers, leaving just the amputated spike of the trunk standing on the high bank by a bend in the brook. On a spring afternoon in 1982, having nothing better to do, my friend Artie and I decided that we would bring the rest of the tree crashing down.

It was one of those examples of impromptu self-amusement that comes naturally to children and is envied by adults. Equipped with an arsenal of busted, rusted, or broken tools scavenged from the junkyard or "liberated" from unlocked sheds, we proceeded to chip away at the rotted base of the trunk.

It wasn't an easy task; even adjusting for kid's-eye-view inflation, the trunk had to have been about five to six feet in circumference and around twelve feet in height. The outside layer of wood was thoroughly soft and rotten; it had the texture of damp foam rubber and infested with all manner of grubs and small black beetles (who likely were irritated by the two snot-noses encroaching on their turf). Underneath the mush, however, was a solid hardwood core that shook off all but our most determined efforts. We were in no hurry, though, and toiled away a couple of hours a day over the next few weeks.

Eventually we reached a point where the trunk could be shifted by a series of enthusaistic kicks delivered through Sears' brand boys' workboots. A creak-groan of snapping cellulose, a cry of "TIMBER", and the tree came crashing down, the top of the trunk clearing the brook to flatten the bushes on the opposite bank. (It would have made a nice bridge if the undergrowth on the other side hadn't been impassable. It did provide a nice place to sit and dangle one's feet over the water, providing one didn't mind the occasional beetle bite on one's hindquarters.)

It was wicked cool to witness, but once the giddy high-fives and repeated utterances of "Did you see that?" were done with, we felt a bit lost. We had achieved our goal, but had invested ourselves so intently in making it happen that we never considered what we'd do afterwards.

We didn't try to do something more productive, like pick up litter or start a petition to make the woods into a city park. We just wanted to knock down more trees.

On the way home from our Sunday shopping trips, I occasionally take a detour through the old neighborhood, inflicting my stock set of nostalgic rambles upon my poor wife. The woods across from my old house are gone, gobbled up by suburban sprawl's insatiable appetite for open space and replaced with a subdivision. All traces of Artie's and my childhood handiwork have been excised from the landscape.

There's a message in there, I think.

Metro Stylee - Destroy (from Metro Stylee, 1998) - I posted the Girls Gone Ska version of this track back in September '06. This is the slightly different version which appeared on the N.Y. band's debut (and, as far as I know, only) album and it's a catchy little number dealing with karmic retribution, negationism, and pacifism.

Paul van Dyk feat. St. Etienne - Tell Me Why (The Riddle) (Radio Edit) (from a 2000 single) - Why? Because I said so. And because I think this track is rather nice.

all our yesterdays

My brother and I were discussing the controversial "One More Day" story arc, in which Spider-Man has had his marital status reset via diabolic intervention, the other night. Both of us are far past the point where we're capable of feeling outrage over the state of current superhero comics, so our focus was mostly on the blatant editorial-driven plothammering, the overall sloppiness of the plot reset, and the wave of self-righteous fan-ger that has followed in its wake.

That in turn led to a side discussion about how disproportionate outrage and stark raving lunacy have become the default settings for fan behavior in this internet age, especially (as a friend recently pointed out to me) since the ever-contracting audience for superhero fare means that the ratio between the hardcore lunatic fringe and the silent majority is closer to parity than it has ever been. And they're noiser. And they have access to all the opportunities "Web 2.0" provides as a wide-reaching soapbox from which to screech their rage.

I brought up the example of the old time letters page, the pre-internet delivery method for comics-related bile, adoration, and pedantry. While I acknowledged the heavily vetted nature of the venue, it still seemed to me that the individual responses tended to be on the sedate side. Even in something like the Detroit incarnation of the Justice League, an arc long considered synonymous with "failed relaunch," the negativity was mostly limited to quibbles and minor reservations, whereas a similar change to the status quo today would generate a digital lynch mob before the book even hit the stands. That's when my brother asked if I had ever read the letters pages in any 1960's issue of Amazing Spider-Man.

I hadn't, because my experience with those Silver Age stories came from the Marvel Tales reprint series or Essential collected editions, neither of which included ancillary material. "You ought to check them out," he told me. "They're crazy. Not crazy in today's sense, but still really bizarre." Since he's the one with the actual original issues, I asked him to send me some representative scans.

Here's a sample of what I received, from the back pages of Amazing Spider-Man #76 (September 1969). The old saying is true, there really is nothing new under the sun.

Above we have an early example of the "realist" school of the superheroic genre, a group of folks who think that frothy escapist fantasy should painstakingly reflect the dour and depressing state of the non-fictional world. Y'know, the world that folks read fantasy to get a little distance from in the first place. I'm not saying that there's no place for verisimilitude in escapist literature, or that books like Watchmen shouldn't exist. It's that the superheroic genre is predicated on healthy doses of suspension of disbelief and that cranking up the "realism" (which isn't that "real" at all, actually, in most cases) tends to bring the whole facade crashing down. Works like Watchmen succeed as occasional counterpoints and commentaries to the standard genre tropes, and I can count the number of creators talented enough to pull it off on a regular basis on the fingers of my right hand.

I have to wonder, though, what would have happened if there had been a massive fan demand for a Spidey 'Nam Stories series...

NEXT ISSUE: THE SWIFT-BOATING OF SPIDEY!
Some people find it surprising, but there has always been a conservative streak within sci-fi/fantasy, which is reflected in fandom. The original Buck Rogers stories were racist polemics against the "Yellow Peril." H.P. Lovecraft was an elitist bigot. I've mentioned those Sociology of Science Fiction books from the 60's I found in the college library, in which stories by progressive-minded "New Wave" writers were juxtaposed against the works of their socially conservative forebears. Norman Spinrad's satire on the fascistic nature of traditional sci-fi power fantasies in The Iron Dream was lost on a substantial number or readers, who took the tongue-in-cheek (if heavy-handed) story of racial purity as a straight-up adventure yarn.

So a member of the John Birch Society digging Spider-Man? No shock there. Considering the crude red-baiting content (which I assume is what the letter writer was referring to as "patriotism") in much of Marvel's early output, it's even less of a surprise. The question is, how did Marvel editorial react to a complaint that the SNCC (the group which gave us the Freedom Riders and played a part in organizing the March on Washington, two massive contributions to the Civil Rights movement) and CORE (another major player in the Civil Rights struggle, long since turned into a conservative front group) were being portrayed more favorably than a group that believes the United Nations is plotting a communist takeover of America and that the Civil Rights movement was a pretext for proletarian revolution organized by Walter Reuther and Bobby Kennedy?

With dissembling conciliation, of course. I know, I know -- the purpose of a publisher is to shift books, not engage in political debate, but still, the "in your corner/go USA!" part of the response is laid on rather thick.

Come to think of it, there is a link between paleo-conservatism and Spider-Man. Artist Steve Ditko, who co-created the character and drew the comic for the first thirty-eight issues, is a staunch proponent of Ayn Rand's philosophy of objectivist thought, strains of which run though the kindred ideologies of right-libertarianism and paleo-conservativism to this very day.

Again, to quote the Zep, it makes me wonder....

NEXT ISH: A EQUALS A -- BUT THE KANGAROO EQUALS TROUBLE!
Fun Boy Three - The Lunatics (Have Taken over the Asylum) (from Fun Boy Three, 1982) - I liked Terry Hall better when he wasn't trying to be Robert Smith.

no matter how hopeless, no matter how far

I think it was the late Marvel writer and editor Mark Gruenwald who once stated that “Every character is someone’s favorite.” If that attributed maxim is true, then who among you will testify to “The Sacrifice of Kid Psycho”?

Anyone? Anyone? No? Okay, then I guess it’s up to me.

Our story begins in Superboy #125 (December 1965), when a teenage Clark Kent encounters a mysterious youth walking about Smallville. Dressed like he’s auditioning for a role in Johnny Carson’s Carnac Babies and possessing a code name better suited to any given second-grade class’s token biter, the copiously be-foreheaded Kid Psycho uses his incredible mental powers to aid the Boy of Steel while messing with his head.

Eventually Kid Psycho levels with Superboy, telling him that he is from a thousand years in the future, and gained his powers (and honkingly huge head) because his parents once nuked a gigantic space octopus, the radiation-induced genetic damage leading to a super-powered offspring. (Hey, kids: Always remember to wear lead aprons when using high-yield gamma ray weapons against cosmic cephalapods!) His own planet having been destroyed in a fender bender between celestial objects, Kid Psycho decided there was nothing else to do but join the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Legion, being the obnoxious bunch of jerks they are, turned him down, so Kid Psycho travels back in time to do an end run around his rejection by kissing up to Legion member Superboy, whom he hopes will vouch for him. “Your home world is gone; my home world is gone. Don’t you feel a spiritual connection there? Yeah? Yeah? It’s like we’re brothers or something! C’mon, dude, do me a solid!” Superboy falls for Psycho’s sob story hook, line, and x-ray vision-proof lead sinker, and they whisk off through the time barrier to set those Legion snobs straight.

Alas, it was all a misunderstanding due to a clerical error by the Legion’s HMO (proving that some things will never change, even by the 30th Century)…

So, Kid Psycho, how many times have you used your power since we turned you down? That many? Oh my...

Feeling bad about the mistake (and in a likely attempt to preempt possible litigation), the Legionnaires offer Psycho a consolation prize, which he accepts with a heartbreaking level of joy...

All right! Now for your first mission, Secret Weapon #1! Here’s a space-brush, space-pail, and can of space-Lysol. Bouncing Boy went on a space-burrito bender and we need you to clean the mess he's made of the space-men’s room!

Flash ahead to 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths #3 and a multiverse in peril. Death clouds of anti-matter are oozing through the dimensional and time barriers, obliterating all they touch. It’s an opportunity for even the least lights of the DC Universe to grab a moment in the spotlight. The world of the future is in peril, Kid Psycho. This is your chance to shine, Secret Weapon #1. Time to grab that brass ring and show the doubters you have what it takes…

..or not.

Requiescat in pace, Kid Psycho. You died as you lived – as a throwaway vehicle for canned pathos.

(Oh, wait! I think that I'm supposed to complain about Kid Psycho not having a memorial display case in the Legion Clubhouse or something, and that his not having one means that DC has a deliberate bias against radioactive-space-octopus-mutation-induced progeria victims. That's the usual procedure for these types of posts, right?)

Carter USM – The Impossible Dream (from 1992: The Love Album, 1992) – I reviewed many different versions of this song in preparation for this post, but when it came down to it, this was the one I knew I’d go with all along.

Balzac – Psycho in 308 (from The Last Men on Earth, 1995) - Must resist making joke about how this Japanese band Honorés the legacy of the early Misfits. Oops, too late.

it´s the latest thing to be nowhere

Depending on which side of Armagideon Time’s comics/music demographic divide you fall upon, you might have heard about Nymphet, a manga series about a prepubescent girl who attempts to seduce her teacher. (Oh, Japan, there are some things I’ll never understand about you, and it’s for the best. Really.) There had been plans for an American release of the series, but the publisher, who had picked up the rights for the series based on early Japanese installments (as is typical in the highly competitive world of manga localization), decided after a more in-depth review of the material to pull the plug on the project.

Dorian, who has retail experience in selecting and ordering manga titles, sums up the salient issues involved here, but comics fandom being the abattoir of reason that it is, it was inevitable that the shrill cries of “Boo! Censorship!” and “What about free speech, you fascist?” should arise, especially with the moldering corpses of similar straw men still fresh on the playing field from the Mary Jane statue and “Heroes for Hentai” controversies.

Here’s the thing – this has fuck all to do with “free speech.” I’m not sure when it happened, or how it happened (though I remember something similar erupting when EA axed the release of Thrill Kill in the late 1990’s) but there is a large vocal contingent of people working under the assumption that “free speech” means “speech free of consequences,” and are willfully ignorant that civil liberties and commercial considerations are two very different creatures. I would well be within my rights to compose a two hundred page litany of profanity, but that does not place any obligation upon any publishing house to see that work gets released to the public, nor does it exempt me from criticism – justified or not – regarding its contents.

Ideologically, I’m with John Milton on this score; I’m all for seeing a diverse multitude of literary vessels set loose upon the waves, and let the passage of time and intrinsic worth determine what shall sink and what shall float. Practically speaking, though, why should a small publisher, most of which operate on narrow financial margins, feel obligated to release a title that could, in this environment, cause serious legal repercussions, if not for themselves, then for the retailers who might carry the title? Plus there’s a risk that the potential media firestorm could poison the well for the rest of their line of goods. Even if the right on is on their side, the financial and temporal costs of litigation could, in all likelihood, make any victory a Pyrrhic one.

And for what, in this specific case? A comic that embodies the creepiest type of pandering to the vilest instincts of the fanboy crowd. “But that’s exactly where one must make a stand,” some may say. Fine. Let the benighted crusaders pool their funds together to buy the American release rights and publish the book themselves. It’s very easy to seize the moral high ground when one doesn’t have a personal stake in the outcome.

This may seem a bit Torquemadic of me, but the stridency of those arguing in favor of the release is disturbing in the extreme. Why such lengths for such an obviously inappropriate bit of fan service wank material? The past couple of weeks have dropped my already low estimation of lumpenfandom a dozen or so notches. The attempts to compare the artistic value of Lost Girls -- which was intended by Alan Moore as deliberate act of provocation -- and Nabokov’s Lolita -- which I suspect very few fans have actually read, though perhaps they Netflixed the 1997 film version and skipped straight to the salacious bits -- are fairly absurd. (The Lolita comparison especially amused me, seeing as how the novel is really about a self-deluded fool’s obsession with an unobtainable ideal – a pretty accurate summation of the pathetic side of comics fandom.)

Back to the idea of “speech free of consequences,” I find this tendency to associate criticism or disapproval with repression odious in the extreme. As it has been stated many times in the past couple of weeks, no one has the right to determine what someone else finds offensive. Some criticisms are more valid than others, to be sure, but that’s something to be hashed out via discussion and debate, not dismissed with a wave of the offending party’s hand and the customary weak bromide, “Get over it,” or through the use of loaded terms like “misconstrued” which attempt to deflect the issue back at the those doing the criticizing. The current of free expression is not a one way street, and getting called out on one’s crapulence – real, perceived, or somewhere in between – comes with the territory of expressing one’s self in the public arena.

Dubstar – Disgraceful (from Disgraceful, 1995)

Nikki and The Corvettes - You Make Me Crazy (from Nikki and The Corvettes, 1980)

things have been dark for too long

I spent way too much time trying to write a post about the first issue of Amazons Attack, DC’s current big dumb event book, before I realized that:

1. It was a rehash of this post, with “child murder” in place of “ephebophilia”
2. I don’t really care enough about it to write an elaborate critique
3. I lose half my readership every time I do a post about some current comics-related topic

So I just said “to heck with it” despite the fact that it made clever use of Iraq War atrocity photos and contained this wonderful bit of descriptive prose:

The post-Crisis relaunch of Wonder Woman came closest, but hit way too many sour notes, to the extent that reading it felt like eating a really great sandwich that has been spiked with random strips of tinfoil and stray human hairs.

Thank goodness I didn’t decide to write about the World War III miniseries. I might have put you folks off eating for a week.

Here are today’s music selections, completely free of their contextual burdens. It’s for the best. The stink of fan entitlement (today’s aborted theme) is harder to neutralize than the smell of cat piss, and far more unpleasant.

Booker T & The MG’s – Outrage (from Soul Dressing, 1965) – This is a very fitting choice for the fan entitlement/internet rage official soundtrack; its deceptively fierce title masks a whimsically goofy soul instrumental befitting a carnival midway. Who needs a display case when I’ve got Booker T?

INXS – Don’t Change (from Shabooh Shoobah, 1982) – A sweet sentiment, but it is realistic? The cozy haze of infatuation can only last so long before one starts noticing things like how one’s partner leaves empty Pepsi cans on the coffee table or fails to replace the toilet paper roll. No one ought to be pressured into transforming their core persona for the sake of love, but every healthy relationship should involve some degree of compromise, lest small resentments sprout into irreconcilable differences.

New World Symphony – Wonder Woman (from Tube Tunes, Volume 2, 1995) – Feminist empowerment, disco beats, and some really bizarre lyrics. Poor Diana. It’s sad when the high point of a superheroic icon’s career is the time she fought an evil version of The Carpenters (played by Sarah “Real People” Purcell and Judge Reinhold) while unraveling a murder mystery involving backwards masking.

in 1978, an aspiring chef was given a ring of power by a dying alien

A watershed moment in my political education occurred during a protest against the first Gulf War, way back in 1991. People from all around the region had gathered in front of the Federal Building in Boston’s Government Center to express their disapproval of Bush the Elder’s “splendid little war,” and being of the same frame of mind and nothing better to do that day, I joined them.

It was an interesting experience, but in hindsight I’ve realized how choreographed the affair truly was on both sides of the barricades. The police set up a “straw man” line of gates far out from the building with the understanding that the protestors were going to push closer, and so factored a false concession into their crowd control procedure. (Somewhere, in some photojournalist’s file cabinet or FBI anti-subversive database is a picture of an 18 year old Andrew on the verge of doing a faceplant after getting his boot caught on one of the riot fences.)

The protest itself was a tepid mix of warmed over Vietnam Era platitudes and sincere yet inarticulate convictions. For my part, I merely chanted the lyrics to some anti-war punk songs where I swapped in more topical names and places. (I was photographed a lot that day. I don’t know why, except that I was a colorfully costumed punk rocker at a time when that subculture was at its lowest ebb around these parts.) The demonstration may not have been effective, but it was cathartic, and that’s a far better alternative to giving in to despair.

Then the fucking professional socialists showed up and it all turned to shit. Where the gathering had started as an unfocused howl of protest, the socialists brought order, and queueing, and “You people would be more effective over here, and you folks over there, and would anyone like to volunteer to risk arrest on our behalf because we don’t want to miss Seinfel—I mean the 5th Internationalists cell meeting tonight.” I’m generally sympathetic to the socialists’ ideology, although my own views run more toward a pragmatic egalitarian idealism. (Slow trickles of water have brought entire mountain ranges down, while rigidly overreaching dogma about revolutionary change ends up benefiting only vultures and other carrion eaters when put into practice. I won’t compromise on the idea of equal rights, though. That issue is a no-brainer.) That said, I’ve yet to meet a capital “S” Socialist I could tolerate for more than thirty seconds.

After they had insinuated themselves into the protest, the socialist faction had the crowd move away from the federal building so that they could be lectured on a broad series of topics completely unrelated to the present concern. As they launched into their ideological laundry list, I could see a large number of attendees make puzzled faces at each other. The crowd gradually began to disperse, as small groups of folks who came out to express their disapproval of Bush the Elder’s military adventurism drifted off towards either Quincy Market or the nearby subway station.

In hijacking the discussion in order to grind their own axes, the socialists had effectively killed it.

Which brings us to the second issue of Mark Waid and George Perez’s The Brave and the Bold relaunch. The book has been garnering a lot of positive reviews, and quite justifiably so. It’s great to see Perez’s excellent art again on a monthly basis, and the book does capture that old fashioned DC magic that’s been missing from too many of the company’s titles in recent years. At the same time, though, it’s a lot like catching a performance by Midnight Train, a tribute band dedicated to “the magic of Journey.” The songs are played note perfect, but all one is really getting is a hyper-polished simulacrum of familiar material. (Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, on the other hand, has a Nouvelle Vague feel to it, using familiar material as a springboard to launch into new and interesting directions.)

I cut my comics-reading teeth on Bob Haney’s 1970’s B&B run, and there was a mad sense of “anything goes” to those old stories, logic be damned. The current series, by contrast, feels like a calculated, sterile recreation of the old material along the lines of Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho.

“Wait a minute,” I hear you asking, “how do these half-assed musical analogies tie back to your anecdote about socialists?” By way of this, my friends.

I do get what Waid is trying to do here, Kara’s schoolgirl crush on one of her “big brother’s” cool pals. It’s a plausible bit of characterization, and Green Lantern does a creditable job of setting her straight on why she needs to put a stop to it. What I don’t understand is why Green Lantern has to repeatedly remind himself that Supergirl is “17.” Or rather, “17, 17, 17, 17, 17” as it continues on subsequent pages.

It adds an element of creepiness to the story for the sake of a clichéd comedic trope. The “statutory rape temptation” gag was tired in when it was used in Three’s Company, nearly three decades ago. (Although, I’d love to see GL taking a cold shower, then having a meeting with Superman at the Regal Beagle where he malaprops his way through a series of lame sexual double entendres while explaining what happened on the mission.) It’s time for those kinds of jokes to take their place on the “unpleasant humor of the past” shelf next to quips about women drivers and the entirety of Don Rickles’ routine.

There’s a tendency within the comics internet to use the indignation wagon as a Trojan Horse for less lofty objectives, such as attacking a certain creator or company one has a grudge against. Like with the protest I mentioned, issues that do deserve discussion get hijacked and manipulated, spurring backlashes that toss the babies out with the bathwater. There are also the procrustean beds of the conspiracy theorists, where lines between cluelessness and malice get blurred for the sake of a grand unified theory of that most sexy of beasts, the “hidden agenda.” Ignorance is not a defense, but the remedies are different for deliberate acts and for passive offensiveness. I’m not asserting that broader agendas are a myth, but that aggregated institutional cultures should not automatically be taken as an active conspiracy.

There is a lot that is shitty about comics, especially in the superhero genre these days, but it’s ludicrous to think a bunch of shrill jihads which too often mask personal vendettas or delusions of fan entitlement will bring about change for the better.

Someone who has once had a fork jammed into his or her eye will come away from reading an issue of Jams-Forks-In-People’s-Eyes Man with a completely different take on the subject matter than someone who has made through life without that unfortunate experience. Part of why The Brave and the Bold #2 skeeved me out as much as it did is because I have had the misfortune of knowing too many guys with fixations on teenage girls. I’m not talking To Catch a Predator material either, but men who would otherwise give one the impression of being down to earth and reasonable folks…until the conversation turns to the latest underage starlet, popstar, et cetera, and things get very ugly, very quickly. In that personal context, a lame joke in an otherwise decent comic can feel extremely sinister, especially when it doesn’t even need to be there in the first place. This didn’t help, either, even if it arguably served a purpose within the story, though all description -- or illustration -- is necessarily selective.

Gary Puckett & The Union Gap – Young Girl (from Young Girl, 1968) – I used to have a cut-out bin compilation cassette called The Sounds of San Francisco, which featured a bunch of 60’s acts from the Bay Area. This song was on it, and it stuck out like a sore thumb amidst all the psychedelic rock cuts. To this day, every time I hear it, I feel the urge to fast forward to The Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard.” (The Seeds were actually from Los Angeles, but sell-through cheapo compilations bow to no sense of rhyme or reason.)

Steve Lawrence – Go Away, Little Girl (from Greatest Hits, Vol. 1, 2004) – Years ago, I was as some party and there was a drunken metalhead who could have been Steve Lawrence’s twin brother. This fellow’s version Eydie Gorme was a drunk/stoned/insane (?) stripper, and they spent the evening slapping each other in the face and calling each other rude names. It’s funny; I can remember that vividly, but I can barely recall any lines of any of the plays I was supposed to have memorized in college.

D-Day – Too Young To Date (from a 1979 single, collected on New Wave Hits of the 80’s, Vol. 1) – Offering a view from the other side of the gender gap, we have a raunchy slice of power pop out of Austin, Texas.

-------------------------------

I’m going to pull a Casey Kasem here and congratulate pal Benjamin Birdie for his extra special guest visitor in the comments section of today’s installment of The Rack, the webcomic he and Kevin Church put out every Monday and Friday. Way to go, Benjamin! I’m officially jealous. This track is dedicated to you, my friend.

New Order – Touched by the Hand of God (from a 1987 single, collected/remixed on (The Best of) New Order, 1994) - Is it just me, or does anyone else hear echoes of Rod Stewart's "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" in those rising orchestral bits of the song?

cancel my subscription to the resurrection

…send my credentials to the house of detention. I’ve got some friends inside.

I toyed briefly -- very briefly -- with the idea of matching appropriate panels from Civil War #7 to other lines from that song, but Doors references, like fresh ginger root, are best used sparingly. The song in question is “When the Music’s Over” from 1967’s Strange Days. It’s one of those long, rambling psychedelic death trips cited by the group’s rather fanatical fanbase as proof of the Lizard King’s divine genius, and for some reason it’s been stuck in my head since reading the final issue of Civil War last week.

I kind of wish it wasn’t, because I happen to really like the song, and it pains me to associate it with what turned out to be the most monumental damp squib in comic book history. All the hype, crossover issues, and delays, and the best ending they can come up with is “Captain America gets tackled by some first-responders, notices the property damage his crusade has caused, sheds some tears, surrenders, and winds up in prison?” My expectations for the event’s resolution were below ankle-height, yet it still managed to come up well short of that low bar.

Now that I think of it, the lines “stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn/and tied her with fences and dragged her down” makes me think of the current state of the poor Marvel Universe. That brushes a little too close to fan entitlement for my comfort, though. The most appropriate song to have stuck in my head would be an acapella rendition of “Oops, I Did It Again” performed by Joe Quesada, Brian Bendis, and Mark Millar. (I will settle for the Doors’ track, I think.)

While I haven’t been thrilled with what DC has been doing with their event titles, I have to concede that they’ve been able to respectably balance the requisite shakeups of their superhero universe’s status quo with making sure that folks who want to read an unencumbered Batman or Superman story can satisfy their desires. The “one year later” gimmick, where the immediate post-Infinite Crisis situation was explored in 52 while the main titles followed their own courses, turned out to be pretty clever in retrospect.

Civil War, on the other hand, has set up a fundamentally untenable status quo (as far as superhero genre conventions go) that exists solely to segue almost immediately into the next big over-hyped event from the “House of Ideas.” (You know, there used to be a time when that term was used sans irony.) Maybe I’m wrong, though, and I’m underestimating the hunger Marvel’s fanbase has for stories dealing with government-controlled teams of superhumans building job training centers in Gary, Indiana or teaching literacy in the Appalachians.

I have to confess that the idea of each state having its very own official superhero team is pretty nifty. Just imagine the dramatic potential of a story where Green Mountain, Ski Bum, Old Yankee Cheese, and Graying Hippie fight the menace of maple syrup rustlers outside Montpelier. (I kid, of course. Anyone with the slightest awareness of how modern superhero comics storytelling works knows that these unnamed ciphers exist to be utilized as cannon fodder later down the big event assembly line.)

This post is far more rantish than the topic deserves, but I was aiming for something more substantive than the “eh” plus eyerolling that was my initial reaction to the comic. As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve been reading superhero nonsense long enough to have developed a fatalistic, mechanical view of how things shake out for the spandex and capes set. Every few years, it’s a new turn of the wheel, but it’s uncommon to see the wheel spun so obviously or to witness the people spinning it catching their fingers in the spokes.

The Posies – Surrender (from At Least, At Last, 2000) – An excellent fuzzed-around-the-edges cover of Cheap Trick’s anthem for the denim jacket, nickel bag, and custom van conversion generation.

The Cardigans – Iron Man (from First Band on the Moon, 1996) – I don’t usually take repost requests, but, hey, it fits today’s theme.

It's a shame Iron Man has become Marvel's go-to guy for dickish behavior, because I've known quite a few folks who weren't really into comics but loved the character. (It's something not limited to my circle either, apparently.) I suspect the appeal is rooted in the fusion of the self-made heroism of Batman with the powers and abilities of Superman, wrapped up in a shiny suit full of gadgets.

Finally, if you haven't seen it already, stop by Chris Sims's Invinicible Super-Blog and check out his "Civil War in 30 Seconds." You will be glad you did.

gaining fame and claiming credibility

So, about the whole “nerdity” kick I’ve been on lately? It started off as an easy springboard for putting together ready-made themes, but I’ve come to enjoy the opportunity to pontificate upon and discuss the various related topics (fan entitlement, the nostalgia trap, and so forth) that come with the territory. Before settling on the mp3 blog gimmick, I had considered starting a comics-themed blog, but realized that there wasn’t a hell of a lot I had to say that wasn’t being stated more effectively elsewhere. The nerdity posts have allowed me to scratch that comics blogging itch without risk of infection.

It’s just as well I didn’t create a comics blog. How would I be able to live with myself if it turned out that Dick hated my blog? Or worse, put me on his “enemies list”? I’d probably cry myself to sleep -- not due to being hated (I’m used to that by now), but because I’d spent enough time blogging about comics to be hated for something I’d said.

If you happen to be reading this, Dick, I’d just like to state for the record that I’ve discussed Primal Scream with Graeme McMillan. I know Graeme McMillan. Graeme McMillan is a friend of mine. Kiddo, you're no Graeme McMillan. Hell, you aren’t even an Avi Green.

Elsewhere in the comics blogosphere:

Dorian’s “How Not To Blog: A Primer Born Out of Many Years Experience Blogging” is, by his own tag’s admission, “a thin veneer of satire hiding the rage underneath,” and as such, it’s right up my alley.

Ragnell has courteously provided a handy field guide to “The Twelve Levels of Comic Book Fan Agreement.” Forewarned is forearmed.

In the absolute “must read” category is Kevin Church’s “We Need To Talk: A Open Letter to Comics Fans.” It’s a highly articulate, well-composed howl of rage regarding dysfunctional fandom and how it affects the medium as a whole, and it’s something that really needed to be said. Change won’t happen unless we make it happen, people, and that applies to more than just comic books.

Here are a few tracks to watch the inevitably shrill fallout by:

Essential Logic – Wake Up (from the Wake Up EP, 1979, collected on Fanfare in the Garden, 2003) – To all those misguided souls who use the term “postpunk” to describe this year’s variant of whiny alt rock, this is what real postpunk sounds like.

Teenage Head – Ain’t Got No Sense (from Teenage Head, 1979) – The band’s mix of power pop, punk and rockabilly was very popular in their native Canada (that nation’s first “punk rock riot” occurred at one of their early shows), but never caught on in the States. Foolish Americans.

Christmas – Stupid Kids (from Ultraprophets Of Thee Psykick Revolution, 1999) – Underrated indie pop/rock out of Boston. The members of Christmas later went on to form neo-lounge act Combustible Edison. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that fact.

Pet Shop Boys – How Do You Expect to Be Taken Seriously? (from Behaviour, 1990) – The answer does not involve impassioned defenses of Marvel’s Civil War or creating a blog specifically to piss and moan about other comics blogs.

blazing noggins and other childhood pursuits

'Stormy's so emo.

It’s time to dip down once again into the Well of Nerdity; its waters possessing the Lethe-like power to make folks forget all semblance of rationality or proportionality.

The comic fans among my readers should be acquainted with the concept of “fan entitlement,” the excessive proprietary interest fans take in their fictional characters of choice, and frequently manifested as online rantings of the shrillest sort should official plot developments deviate from their personal Platonic ideals. In saner circles of fandom, fan entitlement arguments are usually dismissed out of hand (a la Godwin’s Law), although I can occasionally muster up an iota of sympathy for the aggrieved ones’ pain, if not their methodology.

Serial entertainment, such superhero comics or soap operas, depends on a sense of continuity of character, rather than plots (which will inevitable be recycled over time), to retain its audience’s attention. When someone buys a ticket to a Bond film, one expects to see the adventures of a suave, British spy and not, say, a Romanian cyborg with a eye that shoots laser beams. Tweaks and other minor refinements are to be expected in order to keep things fresh over the long haul, but it is assumed that the core concept will remain immutable.

Eventually, though, this steady state runs up against the business version of the Second Law of Thermodynamics: franchise entropy and its ubiquitous handmaiden, diminishing returns. It’s a bigger problem in superhero comics than other forms of media, because the graying audience for that material has gotten smaller over time, and currently lacks the feeder markets by which to effectively bring in new readers.

So, in order to reignite interest and spark sales, periodic shake ups -- individual reboots or line-wide events -- have become the solution of choice. Characters live, characters die, some characters will be changed forever, and all that jazz. It’s the idea of continuous revolution as applied to the spandex set, and in the midst of all these goings-on, it’s inevitable that certain fans’ toes will get stepped on. When you’ve lived (and read comics) for as long as I’ve had, it’s not so difficult to look at these turns of the wheel from a metaphysical, fatalist frame of reference; today’s massive changes are tomorrow’s deletions.

Some fans, however, can’t (or won’t) bring themselves to look at the big picture where entertainment and commerce intersect, and treat each change as a personal affront. Even worse, for every soul who has a sincere fondness for “Character X,” there are dozens of others with little sense of history of or personal attachment to Character X who hop on the fan entitlement bandwagon with a variety of sharp implements to grind at the ready.

It’s much ado about nothing, this staking of one’s self to the vicissitudes of disposable entertainment, and, heck, as it has been said many times, the changes don’t invalidate the entertainment value of the original stories…although that value might have certain unconsidered qualifiers.

Firestorm, “The Nuclear Man,” was the brainchild of writer Gerry Conway and artist Al Milgrom. The character was the superheroic gestalt of high school jock Ronnie Raymond and physicist Martin Stein, who were caught in a nuclear accident and via the power of “fusion” gained the power to combine into a single superbeing with Ronnie in the driver’s seat and Stein acting as a disembodied mentor. He debuted in his own title in 1978, which lasted five issues before getting axed during the corporate retrenchment dubbed the “DC Implosion”.

Conway brought the character back as the member of the Justice League (the last member to join the “Satellite Era” incarnation of the team) and as a back up feature in the Flash’s monthly series. He was given his own solo title again, The Fury of Firestorm, in 1982 featuring artwork by Pat Broderick (on and off) for the first year and a half or so.

In the late 80’s, writer John Ostrander took the title in a bizarre direction involving Cold War politics and Swamp Thing-inspired ideas about elemental beings. After the title folded in 1990, the character spent a number of years in the b-lister wilderness before being killed off during Identity Crisis and replaced with a newer version of the character.

I got Fury of Firestorm #6 in a trade with a friend when I was eleven years old, which just the right age level for the material. The character’s excessively complicated origin/power/costume and, most importantly, his sense of “newness” was just what my young fanboy self was looking for. This was around the time I started to have the means to follow monthly titles, rather than rely on parent-purchased back issues from flea markets, and I made the effort to follow the series up until Ostrander took the title in a new direction.

I still have the run in one of my back issue boxes, the gaps having been filled during my back issue buying frenzy in the mid-90’s, While I still enjoy reading them, I’ve come to realize that my enjoyment is associative in nature. If I had come into possession of the comics this morning, or shot up with a nostalgia-blocking neurochemical before reading them, I’d consider the stories mediocre at best, even with my legendary tolerance for what laymen call “crap.”

Conway’s Firestorm stories are painfully obvious reworkings of his work on Marvel’s Spider-Man books, with the requisite doses of youthful angst and the genre equivalent of “real life problems.” His attempts to tweak the old formula, such as making Ronnie Raymond a jock whose high school nemesis is a nerd, are transparent and laughable. It’s also unclear whether he grasped the full implications of the gestalt nature of Firestorm’s superheroic identity, opening up a whole world of interesting subtexts and outright creepiness. (Then there’s the revelation that Sandy Duncan was the original drummer for The Clash…)

Yet I still love those comics, because they remind me of bike riding with my friends down the dirt tracks that used to crisscross North Woburn, of four-player games of Warlords on the Atari 2600, of picnic table speculations about Revenge of the Jedi, and of listening to “Mr. Roboto” and “Come on Eileen” on the local Top 40 radio station. No retcons, reboots, or shock value deaths will change that. Affection doesn’t have to be an all or nothing proposition. When it comes to comics fandom, the world would be a saner place if it wasn’t.

John Foxx – Fusion/Fission (from The Garden, 1981) – Foxx was the original frontman for Ultravox, and you can hear traces of that band’s sound, with a slightly darker tone, on this track.

+/- - Setting Your Head on Fire (from Self-Titled Long Playing Debut Album, 2002) – I’m torn on this one. It’s a very nice bit of indie pop with some electronic elements, yet the band’s “clever” use of symbols for a name irritates the hell out of me and makes it very hard to label their mp3 files and run web searches (as + and – are often used as search qualifiers).

Spice Girls – 2 Become 1 (from Spice, 1996) – For more Spice-y thoughts, check out Tim O’Neil’s ruminations regarding ten years on a Spice World.