Radical

So, Wonder Wife is off to Hawai'i and I have plenty of time on my hands, and over this weekend I read Cory Doctorow's Radicalized.

The book is collection of four long short stories/short novellas/whatever-they-ares. Because some of the motifs and conceits are sort of science-fiction-y and because there are (thinly disguised) superheroes in one story, I am talking about it here on Thark, but the subtitle of the work is Four Tales of our Present Moment and I could easily place this on Epicurus (where I get as political as I ever do).

From the internet of things shit to institutionalized racism, from the inhumanity of healthcare-for-profit to the inevitable failure of libertarian me-firstism, Doctorow throws all that is wrong with our culture into stark relief through compelling narrative: political analysis delivered through ripping yarns.

I'm not sure what impressed me more: Doctorow's grasp of the ethical aspects of technological, economic, and political structures and his lucid unpacking of them, or his ability to tell an engaging story through spare, direct prose that still sings with a distinctive voice. I don't have to choose; it's a win-win.

I was familiar with Doctorow from Boing-Boing and Twitter - along with Sarah Kenzidor, he is one of my go-to sources in these troubled times -  but I hadn't actually read any of his fiction until now. I am remedying that immediately: Walkaway is open on the table now.

Read Doctorow.

5 x 5 movie review: Justice League

1. So, right off the bat (heh) I am going to say that I liked this a lot more than I had expected to. Based on a lot of stuff I had heard, and my general disappointment with the way DC has been handling its movie properties,  I didn't rush out to see this in theaters, but watching it at home on our new fancy-schmancy HD TV, I had a ball. Of course, I would have liked to have seen the Original Seven, but one thing I realize is that the comic book version of a thing and the movie version of a thing are not the same thing, and that's okay. It's not hard, really; just think of it as an Elseworlds. And on that level, this was a fine superhero movie.

2. Even if I am okay with Cyborg in the Justice League (which honestly still feels a little weird given his connections in my mind with the Teen Titans), I was not down with his angular, multi-faceted chrome appearance: it just seemed way too fussy. I had a similar response to Flash's segmented and wired outfit; I got the in-story explanation but it still had an overall clunky effect. On the other hand, I thought "The Aqua-man" look was a great interpretation.

3. I often go on about how this type of movie often gets too big for my tastes, how the stakes and the action are unnecessarily high; I didn't have that problem with this movie for two reasons. The first is that the Justice League, both in the comics and in this movie, was formed specifically to deal with world-threatening events; it is pretty much their brief. The second reason may seem like a technicality, but I think it is important: the League's mission was not to fight off an entire invasion, but to eliminate a device that would have made the success of that invasion a guarantee. The target, the goal, the macguffin if you will, was graspable and manageable.

4. The movie was also appealing to me for how much it captured the feel of the animated series - for example, the use of parademons to give Batman something to fight  while the heavier hitters fight the big bad.

5. Am I the only one who didn't notice Henry Cavill's CGI-ed out mustache?

Closing with this image just because I liked it so much.

5 x 5 Bande Dessinée Critique: L'autre laideur, l'autre folie

Different Ugliness, Different Madness by Marc Males
Published byHumanoids/DC Comics, 2005

1.  This 5 x 5 review also has a late to the party tag: apparently it was part of a short-lived DC Comics venture into publishing French graphic novels about ten years ago; I found it in the mark-down bins of a comic shop while I was waiting to take Wonder Wife to her birthday dinner last month.  I picked up several sale items that evening and this was the best of the lot, by far.

2.  This is a comic that has the feel of a French art film: slow-moving, quiet, and living in its details. It tells the story of two lost - or at least displaced - souls encountering one another in rural 1930s America, and its narrative is driven by small steps, tiny gestures, and unhurried interactions as opposed to action and conflict. There is a story arc, and the narrative structure includes flashbacks and flash-forwards, but as a reader I was less interested in rushing the plot forward and more interested in just watching how these people would behave as their circumstances unfolded.

3. But this is not a movie, it is a comic, and it is a wonderfully technique-driven one. You could use Different Ugliness, Different Madness as a course text to accompany Scott McCloud's books: excellent controlled and effective examples of the six forms of transition from Understanding Comics and the five choices from Making Comics seem to jump off the page. Males makes comics the way Hitchcock or DePalma make movies: with a thorough understanding of exactly what strings they are pulling to manifest their vision. And we relish experiencing every manifestation of their craft.

4. One odd note: I don't know if this was part of the original art design or something that happened in the translation process, but the lettering is smaller than it needs to be for the size of the word balloons. The result is a proportionality that reads more like whispering in most mainstream comics, but that is clearly not the intent, for it is used consistently even when it is obvious that voices are louder. It took a while to get used to, but then it just reinforced the feeling of an old movie.

5. The French idea of what a Depression-era American farmer looked like seemed a little off to me, but I am a city boy, so what do I know.

Si vous rencontrez cette bande dessinée, l'acheter! 

Vous ne le regretterez pas.

5x5 Book Review: Who Can Save us Now?

Who Can Save Us Now?: Brand-New Superheroes and Their Amazing (Short) Stories by Owen King (Editor), John McNally (Editor), Chris Burnham (Illustrator)

1. The behind-the-colon portion of the title of this book is misleading. Each of the stories in this collections features someone who has super-powers or who is exceptional in some way; very few of them contain stories about anyone who is a hero, either nominally or by their actions. 

2. These stories are what I would call literary fiction: in a nutshell, they are introspective, character-driven, slow-moving, and often a bit lyrical. Most of the stories do not generally aspire to reflect on or investigate the nature of heroism at all, much less superheroics; in the few cases when the attempt is made, is just seems like a prose version of something like the Avengers Initiative. The books feels less like an attempt to expand or experiment with genre boundaries than it does like slumming; Paul Chadwicks' Concrete did a better job than this collection of playing with the "reality" of superheroes.

3. I know that as literary fiction, these stories need to be Serious, but do they always have to be so depressing, too? The characters are, by and large, morally bankrupt, sexually impotent, and ethically challenged, and make bad choices, form dysfunctional relationships, and engage in destructive behavior. Only four of the 22 stories end on any kind of hopeful note, and only one is even mildly heroic. If a story makes me feel like I need a Zoloft, does that mean it was good?

4. The stories are illustrated, not with sequential art, but rather just with title page drawings. The artist, Chris Burnham, has done comic book work (he seems to sit at the same stylistic table with Frank Quitely) but his work here seems sketchy and almost anti-comicky, as if the editors really didn't want this book mistaken for a graphic novel. Because then it wouldn't be Serious.

5. I am sure that the editors and many of the authors have more than a passing acquaintance with superhero comics, at least based on the biographical notes and a few of the reference made in the stories. But all of them seemed to be running away from the superhero genre, its conventions and tropes, its potential and its flaws, even its art style. Maybe I'm being too harsh, but rather than asking "What would it really be like for a superhero-person if they were damaged emotionally?" these stories seem to say "Hey, let's put a mask on Holden Caulfield!"

Since this book came out in 2008, this should have a Late to the Party label as well...