Elizabeth Sandifer

About Elizabeth Sandifer

http://www.eruditorumpress.com

Elizabeth Sandifer created Eruditorum Press. She’s not really sure why she did that, and she apologizes for the inconvenience. She currently writes Last War in Albion, a history of the magical war between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. She used to write TARDIS Eruditorum, a history of Britain told through the lens of a ropey sci-fi series. She also wrote Neoreaction a Basilisk, writes comics these days, and has ADHD so will probably just randomly write some other shit sooner or later. Support Elizabeth on Patreon.

Posts by Elizabeth Sandifer:

August 24, 2016

Comics Reviews (August 24th, 2016)

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Chew #57

Three to go.

Deathstroke #1

Good, competent stuff. I’m still not sure the non-chronological storytelling has a point as opposed to just being a thing Priest likes to do, but it’s at least a better way to introduce an important “old friend” character than many approaches in comics. Unless Wintergreen’s a longstanding supporting character; it’s not like I know Deathstroke’s supporting cast well. But still, Priest is working to introduce him, and the non-chronological story helps with that, even as it leaves the actual status quo of this book a bit muddy. This hasn’t grabbed me yet as such, but I’ll persist for an arc or so.

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur #10

A frustratingly unfocused issue that sutures two half-issues together without much in the way of payoff or connection. Still good, as this book always is, but an obviously lesser issue that ends up feeling like it’s wasting a Ms. Marvel guest-slot, which, as I think about it, is probably the thing that’s most knocking this down towards the bottom of the list this week.

Snotgirl #2

Has the typical second issue problems of a modern comic, which is to say that it’s mainly tasked with fixing the problems that crafting a coherent and catchy first issue has created for the overall arc, which typically means going “right, so instead of paying off that cliffhanger we’re going to take a step back and fill in details.” And complaints that the book is mean-spirited about fashion blogging have a few more teeth after this one than they did after the first, although I still have a good amount of faith in O’Malley such that I’m willing to assume loving satire. Still, this is good, interesting stuff that I’m going to at least read a full arc of.

New Avengers #15

Al Ewing in his finest form, paying off scads of earlier stuff in inventive and unexpected ways while remaining funny and full of good character moments in the present. This is the sort of book that makes sure if it’s going to randomly bring in Warlock for a guest spot then Warlock is going to get to appear in a heartbreaking scene and also get to do a Warlockified “do you feel lucky punk” at the book’s opener. This is not a book invested in offering particularly deep pleasures, but it remains the book that most feels like my idea of what reading Marvel comics is meant to feel like, and that’s always welcome.

Patsy Walker AKA Hellcat #9

There’s a delightful slowness to the structure of this book – a willingness to spend time on the human moments just being goofy before getting to the nominal plot. So much of this consists of the characters converging at a karaoke night, and it’s scintillating. Eventually the plot shows up and is also good, in part because Leth is focused enough to make sure that the long setup actually feeds into the plot and keeps all her plates spinning, avoiding a Bendis-esque “and now for the one panel in which the thing we put on the cover shows up” bit of bullshit.…

August 22, 2016

You Should Have Been a Mother (Earthbound)

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A Guest Post By Anna Wiggins

As any die-hard EarthBound fan will tell you, in Japan EarthBound is called Mother 2, and is the middle of the three-part Mother trilogy. As a child, I just knew that I didn’t like EarthBound very much. The game is full of unpredictable tonal shifts, genre pastiche, self-awareness, and quirky humor, and these were either things I didn’t fully grasp or just didn’t enjoy. Somehow, the game just left me feeling vaguely alienated. Possibly, I just wasn’t ready for it.

Part of this may have been the gameplay, too. The basics are familiar to any JRPG fan: wander around, get into fights, select actions from menus, pray quietly to yourself. But the game is difficult, even by the standards of the day. It falls prey to a lot of common design flaws in JRPGs that raise the difficulty without adding fun. For instance, many enemies summon ‘backup’ occasionally, but with no bounds on how frequently this happens in a single fight, fights can become increasingly resource-draining without bound. Critical hits from enemies are far too common, and respawn rates are high enough to make getting anywhere a slog.

Aesthetically, the game is very distinct. It has cartoony graphics; the character design is frequently compared to Charles Schulz. The battle sequences featured bizarre, abstract backgrounds, a style referred to by the designers as an attempt at creating a “visual drug” experience. The spell effects were likewise highly abstracted, patterns of lines and diamonds that feel almost like sigils. The music direction is some of the best of the era; the soundtrack has an amazing range of styles and moods.

Despite all of this, I didn’t remember much about the game before returning to it. There is one part of the game, though, that left a very strong impression on me, and which more than lives up to my memory: the final battle.

The source of evil and ultimate villain in EarthBound, Giygas, remains an unseen but often-named actor throughout the game. The final battle with Giygas is one of the most deeply unsettling experiences I’ve ever had playing a video game. It takes the game’s underlying “weirdness” and cranks it up until it lands squarely in “uncomfortable.” Even in the battle with him, Giygas remains unseen. Instead, you seem to be fighting reality: Giygas is the wavy, “visual drug” battle screen background itself, and the combat music, both of which are now more sinister than anywhere else in the game. As the fight goes on, and you damage Giygas, the music gets increasingly frantic, the background increasingly angry.

After a short intro sequence, though, the only way to hurt Giygas is via one of the character’s (Paula, the lone girl in the cast, incidentally) “Pray” ability. Throughout the rest of the game, this ability has random (and usually very minor) effects. But now, each invocation of prayer leads to a cutaway scene of the characters you’ve met along the way, each feeling called to pray for you, until the whole planet is praying at once, lending their psychic power to help you.…

August 17, 2016

Comics Reviews (August 17th, 2016)

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Demonic #1

Perfectly serviceable cop-horror story, and competently executed, but painfully by the numbers. The main character sells his soul to demons, which is a perfectly good hook, but it’s all executed so quickly that there’s no room to make him interesting before that, and Sebela is stuck establishing him entirely in terms of cliches. The big turning point when a demon shows up to offer him a deal on page thirteen should probably have been the cliffhanger. Still, if demons and cops is a genre setup you like, this’ll probably satisfy.

The Ultimates #10

As with the last issue, a bit of a mess between the brilliant art of Kenneth Rocafort and the bland and lumpy faces of the guest artist who does half the work on this issue. And it’s a bit of a mess with Civil War II. But Ms. America kicks ass and takes names, Black Panther gets a genuinely hilarious moment, and Al Ewing remains entertaining. Still, this is not a great stretch of this book, I fear.

Deathstroke Rebirth #1

Came out last week, and paid for by a reader. Nice to see that Priest’s still got it after frankly too many years out of the game due to his (entirely reasonable) desire to be offered something other than books about black people. His inclination towards non-chronological storytelling doesn’t quite do him any favors here, though, and the occasional muddy plotting his work can suffer from is alas in full swing. Still, this is smart and well-characterized, and probably the best book of DC Rebirth so far. I’ll probably check out another issue or two.

The Black Monday Murders #1

Also from last week, and not at all sure how I missed it. It’s a Hickman #1, so massively long on promise, absolutely pregnant with insinuation and ideas, and clearly with the potential to be one of the most briliant things ever. One expects, being a Hickman series, that it will instead either go completely off the rails or simply stop coming out entirely after three issues, but this left my brain absolutely fizzing after reading it, and I intend to enjoy the hell out of the ride while it’s still quasi-functional.

The Wicked + The Divine #22

Well I think we all expected the end of Rising Action to be mind-blowing, but it also turns out to be heart-stopping and gut-wrenching. And the other panels are brilliant too. I’m starting to regret the enthusiasm I showed for the early issues, because I’m not sure I left room for my critical assessment of this comic to grow and emcompass the range of what it can and does do. Fun game: immediately after reading the final panel of this issue, go back and look at Laura’s first appearance in #1. Then try to wrap your head around the fact that we’re only at about the halfway point of the series, and there’s presumably just as much character development to go. Meanwhile, the next arc looks set to tackle big ideas I’m massively invested in.…

August 16, 2016

Pex Lives XTREME

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Jane’s taking the week off in a push to get Last War in Albion Book One finally out the door, but I realize that I never actually got around to announcing the latest addition to our podcast stable, Pex Lives Xtreme, Kevin’s new sports podcast. Yes, we apparently do sports writing now too. Sports, sex, and Doctor Who. Why do you visit other websites again?

Anyway, the first episode’s here.…

August 15, 2016

Cultural Marxism 4: The State of the Art

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“The State of the Art” surrounds Use of Weapons, both diegetically and in publication. Externally, it was first published as a stand-alone novella in 1989, then became the title piece of a short story collection in 1991. Within the narrative, on the other hand, it takes the form of an account composed by Diziet Sma shortly after the events of Use of Weapons (“The State of the Art” is addressed to someone named Petrain, Use of Weapons has Sma tell Skaffen-Amtiskaw [revealed at the end of “The State of the Art” to be the story’s diegetic editor] to “send a stalling letter to that Petrain guy” before leaving to find Zakalwe) that, among other things, relates the circumstances by which she came to leave Contact (the Culture’s diplomatic service) in favor of Special Circumstances (the more interventionist intelligence service within Contact). It demands, in other words, to be read in context with that novel.

This does it no favors. Use of Weapons is, as mentioned, essentially the last Culture novel, at least in terms of what Banks created the Culture to do. “The State of the Art,” on the other hand, is a joke in which Banks goes and does one of the things that people were always going to ask him about until he’d do, namely have the Culture meet Earth. From the start, this was something the novels quietly resisted, with Consider Phlebas going out of its way in its epilogues to specify that it took place in 1331, so as to emphasize the complete irrelevance of humanity, then preoccupied with the Genkō War and Ibn Battuta’s visit to Kilwa, to its events. The Culture is pointedly not humanity’s future – its utopianism is altogether more abstracted than that.

Still, the possibility lingers tantalizingly, and Banks, a sci-fi guy to his core, made the eminently sensible decision to get it over with. And, inevitably, “The State of the Art” runs through all the obligatory jokes, most of them with delicious wit and charm. The best focus on Li, a member of the Contact expedition to Earth (covertly observing it in 1977) who becomes a die-hard Star Trek fan, attempts to persuade the rest of the team to elect him captain of the ship, which culminates in a campaign speech (while holding a real lightsaber) in which he serves the crew various dishes vat-grown from human cells such as Stewed Idi Amin, General Pinochet Chilli Con Carne and Richard Nixon Burgers, then vows that if elected captain he’ll destroy the planet because it is silly and boring. But there are some other good ones, such as the ship trying and failing to request (via postcard) that the BBC World Service play “Space Oddity” and dedicate it to the Arbitrary.

Other characters, meanwhile, espouse other standard and inevitable positions. One – Dervley Linter – decides he wants to renounce the Culture entirely and live his life as a human, having all of his Culture-specific abilities removed in the process.…

August 10, 2016

Comics Reviews (August 10th, 2016)

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Avatarex #1

Released last week, but I missed it, so here we are. There’s a fundamental perversity to Grant Morrison’s Graphic India work – a company focused on breaking comics out in India whose marketing talks about how “India is home to some of the most creative talent in the world” and then proceeds to hire people like Stan Lee and Grant Morrison to do their comics. And one gets the distinct sense they’re paying out the nose for it too. Morrison has never seemed particularly connected to Hindu mythology – he did one three-issue Vertigo series that tried to be Kirbyesque Hindu mythology and was deeply forgettable, and he talks about it whenever he’s doing press for Graphic India, but this feels like a phoned in version of stuff Morrison has done before, and miles from any sort of organic attempt at Indian comics.

Black Panther #5

A stronger-than-usual issue of this, I suspect elevated by the fact that Chris Sprouse is a better artist than Brian Stelfreeze, but also by the fact that Coates keeps a better focus on the story, can be bothered with repeating exposition, and has a clear sense of what this specific issue is doing, as opposed to just focusing on his arc in general. Which means that the bits he’s always done well – the broad thematics and the monologues about kings and power – actually have a solid platform upon which to rest and can shine. Hopefully this book has turned a corner.

Animosity #1

Another one from last week, grabbed becaue I’ve been meaning to try some of Marguerite Bennett’s indie stuff. Good and unsettling stuff – I really enjoy the wide variety of different perspectives that occur when animals attain sentience, and the core one of “dog loves its human girl” is at once sweet and mildly terrifying in the larger context of an animal world that has (understandably) decided that it’s going to try to kill humanity. This ends up being a “set up the premise” issue rather than a “show what the book will be doing” one, but it’s a damn good hook, and I’ll be following this with interest.

Darth Vader #24

Gillen, having flirted with it before, dives with glee at the third rail of Star Wars and sets about on an issue heavily reconciling the original and prequel trilogies, then offers a mammoth cliffhanger to kick us into the finale (albeit one where it’s hard not to think “oh, Aphra, I see why that looked good on paper, but…”). It’s an issue that it’s just terribly easy to respect the ambition of – more than anything since the “I have a son” scene it offers something that feels substantive and fills a real gap in the story.

Providence #10

Loads of stuff one could fairly have assumed wouldn’t happen until issue #12 instead explodes in ways that make it hard to imagine what Moore is going to do for two more issues. Personally, I have a hard time not being excited about it being totally unclear what Moore is going to do for two issues. …

August 8, 2016

Eruditorum Presscast: David J

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I’m not going to get into the habit of using my Monday slot for podcasts, but this one’s a big enough deal that I felt like it justified it. I say down with David J Haskins of Bauhaus and Love and Rockets to, in classic Eruditorum Press fashion, talk about absolutely none of that in favor of talking about his magical practice and work with Alan Moore, including V for Vendetta, “March of the Sinister Ducks,” The Moon and Serpent Grand Egyptian Theatre of Marvels, and The Birth Caul. It’s a fun time. You should listen to it here.…

August 3, 2016

Comics Reviews (August 3rd, 2016)

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As always, from worst to best of what I bought.

Trees #14

This series has always only barely worked in single issue format, so, shocker of shockers, an eight month delay before the final issue of the arc did not do it any favors. Apparently there’s a third arc planned, which at this point I assume we’ll see shortly after Doktor Sleepless wraps up. I’m sure it’ll read brilliantly in trade, although I suspect I’ll have to reread the first trade to have any appreciation for who the characters who drop in for the finale are. Which is fine, because it’s Ellis and going to be brilliant, but fucking hell this comic is just a terrible fucking idea in issue form.

Klaus #7

There’s a four-issue cut of Klaus that would straightforwardly be among Morrison’s greatest post-Final Crisis works. The fact that this flabby seven issue miniseries is still a strong contender is a depressing commentary on his late career, but let’s not use up all our Last War in Albion snark in comics reviews. (Almost done with Chapter 6, btw.) The final issue of this is actually pretty solid, and if one were to go about politely informing Grant Morrison that he needs an editor this is probably the issue you’d cut the least. If nothing else I appreciated the underplaying of the “Santa Claus cannot die” moment.

Cinema Purgatorio #4

A middling run out for the title comic, a stretch of Modded that has too much to do for it to waste time being clever about it, and typically filler installments of A More Perfect Union and The Vast leave Code Pru as the belle of the ball this month. It’s particularly good this time around, though, and so the whole package balances out nicely, though if I’m being honest $5.99 is probably a bit much for it most months, and especially this month. Not that I’m remotely tempted to even blink at that, but hey.

Normal Part Four

This wraps with a gloriously bleak ending, but also ends up being a bit disjointed, with no shortage of things that were just sort of thrown in because Ellis wanted to riff on them as opposed to because they contributed to the story. The use of a riff on Curtis Yarvin as the cliffhanger for part two grates particularly in this regard, though there’s obviously an element of personal bias there. Still, the ending is heartbreaking and beautiful, the book’s main premise is a hoot, and its main sci-fi idea is a solid bit of plausible horror-technology. Very worth checking this out, either in its “four parts for $1.99 each” digital edition or in the paperback omnibus due in November.

James Bond #8

Yeah, I didn’t expect this to hit the top either, but man, Ellis is absolutely killing with his second arc on this, finding delightful twists on James Bond classics This time it’s “Bond seduces the woman he rescues,” a trope in dire need of being made brilliant by Warren Ellis.…

August 1, 2016

A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 4.10: The Children

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Man, that looks almost as much fun as this blog series has been.

State of Play

The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Naime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Tywin Lannister
Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow, Bran Stark
Ships of the Wall: Davos Seaworth
Burning Hearts of the Wall: Stannis Baratheon, Melisandre
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
The Direwolf, Arya Stark
The Dogs, Sandor Clegane
Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane
The Shield, Brienne of Tarth
Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae

Winterfell is abandoned and in ruins, Moat Cailin and Braavos are empty.

The episode is in seven parts. The first runs eleven minutes and is set just at the Wall. The opening image is of Jon’s hair as he walks out of the gate.

The second runs seven minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow to an infected wound.

The third runs seven minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Jaime and Cersei on the white table to Daenerys.

The fourth runs thirteen minutes and is in two sections; it is set at the Wall. The first section is five minutes long; the transition is by family, from Daenerys to Aemon Targaryen and Jon Snow. The second section is eight minutes long; the transition is by family, from Jon Snow to Bran Stark. It features the death of Jojen Reed, stabbed and then set on fire.

The fifth part runs twelve minutes and is set in the Vale. The transition is by family, from Bran to Arya Stark. It doesn’t feature the death of Sandor Clegane, but it sure looks like it does.

The sixth runs nine minutes minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by dialogue, from Sandor begging Arya to kill him to Tyrion saying more or less the same thing. It features the deaths of Shae and Tywin, both killed by Tyrion.

The last runs three minutes and is set in the Vale. The transition is by musical cue, with a choral version of the theme song continuing over both scenes, and by image, with both scenes featuring people sailing for Essos. The final image is of Arya landing on a ladder and doing just that.

Analysis

And so we come to the end of this Brief Treatise; I don’t reckon there’s much to be gained writing second essays about Seasons Five and Six, and anyway, this has been a hilarious flop of an essay series that vividly illustrates the maxim that there’s room for two books on any given subject, the first one and the best. It also serves to highlight the problems with using my general critical approach on an in-progress text. A game is, on a very fundamental level, defined by its end state; the ethical and thematic implications of events are ultimately shaped by how the narrative ends in ways that makes analyzing them difficult at best.…

July 28, 2016

Comics Reviews (July 27th, 2016)

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Oof. Rough week. From worst to best of it.

Mechanism #1

Another dud for my “Image #1s” policy. The most immediately obvious problem is an art style that seems to be traced from 3D rendering software, giving all the characters a frustrating woodenness. Two big sci-fi concepts in “a world that’s been invaded by lizard people” and “a world with intelligent robots” are both undersold. The only female character gets fridged. The premise isn’t clear by the end. Generally a trainwreck.

Batgirl #1

An undercooked “the hero tours Asia” concept that’s high on western stereotypes, and that sets up “next month a new location” instead of trying to build on any of the ideas it sets up. Of course the Burnside supporting cast is immediately jettisoned in favor of a bespoke childhood friend of Barbara’s. And you’ve got to raise an eyebrow at the choice of the artist of the Batgirl “Joker variat” cover for the book – not that I particularly blame him for taking a commission DC never should have given, but man, exact wrong book to put him on. Generally speaking this isn’t particularly grating in its badness, but it’s not interesting enough to hook me on a second issue.

Wonder Woman #3

The new take on the Wonder Woman/Cheetah relationship is decently interesting, but this storyline is still longer on mood than event in a way that isn’t giving me much to sink my teeth into and invest in. It’s fine – perfectly competent Wonder Woman. But it feels directionless – after four issues of Rucka on the character, I don’t have a feel for what his take is and it doesn’t feel like anything has happened. Which feels like wasted momentum. Think I may be done with this.

Spider Gwen #10

An utterly unremarkable issue of this often frustrating book. Actually, I kind of like the alternate universe take on Kraven, and there’s a lovely May Parker moment, so as lackluster issues of it go this is better than most, but again, I’m looking at a week of nine comics the bulk of which I was underwhelmed by, and a book that has two mediocre issues for every good one is another obvious candidate to be done with.

Black Panther #4

Individual moments of this – particularly any scenes with T’Challa’s mother – are subtle, intelligent stuff of the sort one wants from this book. But the overall structure is still a mess. I couldn’t actually tell you what happened over the first arc of this book, or who most of the supporting cast is. I don’t think that’s specifically Coates’s fault or Stelfreeze’s so much as a combination, but this just doesn’t have the basic tightness that monthly serialization needs to succeed. I’ll stick with it, but more out of hope than judgment.

The New Avengers #14

In most regards an unremarkable fight book, but man, there’s a really solid demonstration of the difference between a skilled comics writer and an unskilled one here. Any character who’s introduced gets a big moment to either shine or demonstrate what their deal is.…

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