Eruditorum Press

Don’t look at the future. We drew something awful on it.

(Mostly) Comics Reviews (July 20th, 2016)

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From worst to best, with things I didn’t buy marked with a *. If you want me to review something that’s not on my “next week” list, you can either send me a copy or Paypal me/send me a Comixology gift card for the cover price with a note as to what you want me to read. That’s snowspinner; a gmail account.

The Hunt #1

I’m trying all new Image #1s, just because it seems like where things I’m going to be interested in comics-wise are going on. This… is not a recommendation for that plan. A muddled book of the sort that one usually associates with Vertigo after the period where they were meaningfully creator-owned and were thus no longer the first choice of actually good creators. Generic horror tropes, muddy storytelling, and, for good measure, utterly irritating “let’s try to capture an Irish accent” dialogue. A complete mess of a book. The art is pretty, but this is pretty classic “artist decides that he should write his own material when that’s not where his strengths are” comics. Which makes it oddly appropriate for an Image book, if not quite in the right decade.

Spider-Woman #9*

The stuff about Wendigos is smart and funny, and Hopeless’s “Spider-Woman as mom” characterization is as delightful as it was in Spider-Women. Pity Civil War II comes crashing through the door halfway through to be stupid all over the place. I’d probably enjoy an extended run of this where Hopeless was doing his own stories, and may well check it out again if such a thing ever exists, but man, Civil War II is a fucking disaster.

Kim and Kim #1*

Much to love about the aesthetic here; queer punk space bounty hunters yes. But it doesn’t quite click together – it’s very “standard tropes made more diverse,” which is good and valuable, but my interest in standard tropes is a bit low. It fails at one of those crucial first issue tasks of making me care about the characters and concepts. Very pretty, though, and if you want a by-the-numbers queer punk space bounty hunters comic, this is absolutely the one for you.

The Ultimates #9

Some good bits here and there, but even Ewing is having trouble rescuing one of the biggest problems with Civil War II, at least based on its tie-ins, which is that Captain Marvel’s role in it seems to be to just act like a completely unreasonable jerk at all times. Her side is self-evidently the wrong one, and everyone writing the books recognizes that. Her big interaction with Adam in this issue is just awful, hinging on her being horrible to him with no justification whatsoever. Add to that a super rough stitch job between two artists of very different styles and skill levels and you have a weak filler issue. Alas.

Chew #56

Only four more issues of this! Woo! Obviously from it’s ranking it’s not that bad, but man, I am 100% just slogging through to the end of this out of some horrible sunk costs fallacy and not actually caring.…

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Flight Simulator: Star Trek: The Next Generation – Future’s Past/Echoes from the Past (Super NES, SEGA Genesis)

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Thus begins the odd, postmortem life of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
 
It’s interesting how Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine only seemed to increase their cultural capital after the TV shows themselves were cancelled. 1994-1996 can in some ways be read as the peak of their popularity, with their syndicated reruns capturing the world’s attention almost more than they did in their initial run. Really the only comparable case study on this front would be their predecessor. And the tie-in media and parody works reached a creative fever pitch right alongside them: Although there was a brand new Star Trek TV show and film series in the works, it’s the franchise’s Long 1980s output that seemed to to hold everyone’s imaginations the strongest.
 
This was an odd period in my own life and personal fandom because of this. I’d read “All Good Things…”, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Magazine wasn’t in stock in my corner market anymore. As far as I was concerned those shows were thoroughly done and over…Yet Playmates’ toy lines for them soldiered on for two years more. The DC and Malibu comics series continued to go strong, and I had a whole year’s worth of stories to catch up on. I didn’t watch Star Trek anymore, yet my Star Trek “fandom” was, at least for the short term, just getting stronger. And in 1994, the serious big kid video games started to come out, and I certainly took notice.
 
1994 marked the peak of the fourth console generation, a hardware cycle utterly defined, at least in the West, by the turf war between Nintendo’s Super Famicom (A.K.A. the Super Nintendo Entertainment System) and SEGA’s Mega Drive (A.K.A. the SEGA Genesis). This was a fandom war more or less initiated by SEGA’s North American branch in 1989 when they aggressively marketed the Genesis as the home console for hip, edgy young adults (basically meaning 12-year old boys) in contrast to the NES, which they positioned as, if you’ll excuse the phrasing, a baby’s toy. SEGA of America made their case primarily by comparing (and misrepresenting) internal specs and had an increasingly hard time maintaining this image after 1991 when the Super NES, in almost every measurable way a technically superior machine, was released as a direct competitor to the Genesis. In spite of an archetypal video game industry moral panic kickstarted by Mortal Kombat and enthusiastically pushed by Hillary Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, which briefly saddled Nintendo with a dreaded uncool “kiddie” reputation, they remained the industry leader throughout the fourth generation and are today generally considered the cycle’s “victor” by the sorts of unfortunate and disturbing people who keep track of these things.
But that’s still a year or so away. In 1994 we’re at the cultural, commercial and creative peak of the fourth generation with cult favourite critical darlings like Super Metroid and Final Fantasy VI and the pop culture juggernaut that was Donkey Kong Country dominating industry news and the playground set alike.
…

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Lost Exegesis (Solitary) — Part 1

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We now begin what I consider to be the second act of LOST’s first season.  The basic tenor of the show has now been laid out – our principal characters have been introduced in some detail, as has the mysteriousness of the Island, and the general tenor of the show’s approach to episodic serialization has been established.  Overall, it’s been a story of how these survivors of a plane crash have adapted to living on an island in the South Pacific, touching on issues of social organization through intense characterization.  Now the show begins to shift focus, adding new dimensions: not only will some of the mysteries introduced early on be revealed, but it starts exploring the implication of the fact that our survivors are not alone.

Which is ironic, given the title of the episode. And yet, in some ways the title of this episode is perfectly chosen, given the extent to which it explores the various connotations of the word and some of its metaphorical implications.  We have Sayid, of course, who has shunned his fellow survivors out of his own shame; we have Rousseau, who lives the life of a hermit; we have Nadia, who experiences solitary confinement; we have Sawyer, a self-described outcast; we have Walt, estranged from his father; we even have the game of golf, which is most typically (though not exclusively) played as individuals competing against others or themselves, unlike most sports, which are team affairs.  And, of course, there’s the fact that our Losties are literally lost on an Island, itself a solitary and unique place.

Let’s start with Sayid.  It’s interesting that we begin this episode right where the previous one left off – indeed, the end of Confidence Man is prophetic, with Sayid heading off to ostensibly “map the Island,” which is practically what we get in Solitary.  We haven’t had this much continuity between episodes since Pilot Part 1 and Pilot Part 2, with a dash of Tabula Rasa thrown in. We also haven’t had a character who blatantly represents a major component of the audience’s desire regarding the show’s mysteries.  Jack is concerned with leading the group, Charlie with facing his demons, Kate with proving she’s a good person, Sawyer with proving he’s not, and all the rest with their own interpersonal relationships. Locke comes close, but he’s already had his revelation, an experience not shared by the audience.  Sayid, on the other hand, has already tried to triangulate the source of the Frenchwoman’s transmission, and now he’s actively exploring the Island. He is now, at least here, our proxy for trying to divine the Island’s mysteries – especially once he finds a mysterious cord laid out across the beach, leading at once out to sea and deep into the jungle.

 

The Hanged Man

As such, I find it very interesting that Sayid eventually finds himself in a position that evokes a couple of mythological connotations when he ends up caught in Rousseau’s trap, hanging upside down with his leg briefly impaled by a pointy stick. …

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 4.08: The Mountain and the Viper

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If this were Doctor Who, we’d call it the pizza-faced Oberyn.

State of Play

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

Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, 2Tywin Lannister

Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen

Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow

The Mockingbird, Petyr Baelish

Kraken of Moat Cailin: Theon Greyjoy

Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly

The Direwolves, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark

Bows of the Wall: Ygritte

Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane

Flowers of the Wall: Gilly

Flayed Men of Moat Cailin: Ramsay Snow

Spiders of King’s Landing: Varys

The Dogs, Sandor Clegane

With the Bear of Meereen, Jorah Mormont

Winterfell is abandoned and in ruins, Braavos is empty.

The episode is in eight parts. The first runs six minutes and is in two sections; it is set in and around the Wall. The first section is four minutes long; the opening image is of a thatched hut. The second section is two minutes long; the transition is by dialogue, from Gilly to Samwell talking about how she’s probably dead.

The second part runs five minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow drinking morosely to an underwater shot of Grey Worm, and indirectly by family, with Daenerys showing up shortly.

The third runs five minutes and is set in Moat Cailin. The transition is by hard cut, from Grey Worm to an establishing shot of the Bolton camp.

The fourth runs eight minutes and is set in the Eyrie. The transition is by hard cut, from Theon to a slow pan up Littlefinger’s coat.

The fifth runs six minutes and is set in Meereen. The transition is by hard cut, from Littlefinger and company in the Eyrie to the masters being (rather belatedly) removed from their crosses.

The sixth runs three minutes and is set at Moat Cailin. The transition is by image, from a wide shot of Meereen to one of the Bolton forces.

The seventh runs five minutes and is in three sections; it is set in the Eyrie. The first section is one minute long; the transition is by hard cut, from a wide shot of the Boltons riding to Sansa in her chambers. The second section is two minutes long; the transition is by family, from Sansa to Arya Stark. The third section is one minute long; the transition is by dialogue, from Arya laughing at Lyssa Arryn’s death to Robyn and Littlefinger talking about her.

The last part runs eleven minutes and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by family, from Sansa to Tyrion. The final image is of Tyrion having landed on a snake and been sentenced to death.

 

Analysis

As with “The Prince of Winterfell” two years prior, the decision to make the ninth episode a single location battle benefits the eighth episode, into which a number of climaxes are shifted. But with the increased number of plots in progress compared to two years ago, this means that two-and-a-half plots resolve outright in this episode, their handling comprising the majority of the episode.…

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Those Sexy Silurians

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This week in the world of Oi! Spaceman Shana and I actually did a Classic Doctor Who story without a guest. Since she’s been itching to get some more Liz Shaw love in her life, I showed her Doctor Who and the Silurians, to which she had a somewhat mixed reaction, due mostly to the Third-Doctor-era pacing of the thing. In addition to the pacing problems, we chatted about the general interpretation of this story as fundamentally a political narrative about genocide, in which the militaristic humans are acting imperialistically towards an indigenous population, and found that interpretation a bit wanting. I may work some of that into an essay down the line, but then again virtually all of our podcast episodes are becoming sort of scratch pads for essays we might write. So it goes. 

Lee and I also recorded a new They Must Be Destroyed on Sight, continuing on our sex comedy series (which will run another three weeks or so before we move on into spaghetti Westerns for a bit). This week we did 1984’s Hardbodies and 1986’s Perfect Timing, the first of which is well-known but the second is an almost completely lost gem.* Eighties’ sex comedies are an almost irredemably sexist genre, but there’s quite a bit of feminist justification you can pull out of these two once you account for the terribleness of the source material, especially Perfect Timing, which is sort of a combination sitcom/French farce/independent film progenitor that works as a lowbrow character study while still containing a handful of Skinemax-style nude scenes. Pex Lives’ own James Murphy has said in public that he liked this episode, so go give it a listen if you trust what that guy has to say.

*(Future programming note: in the next TMBDOS episode released I provide some background on Perfect Timing that I didn’t have access to in this episode, so if you enjoy this week’s make sure to check out the next as well.)…

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Saturday Waffling (July 16th, 2016)

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Well, history continues to happen and to be shit. So does editing and writing, though that’s less shit – the next Last War in Albion chapter is actually almost done with the main text. And I just got the last bit of copyediting back from Jane, so I can finish typesetting Volume 1.

Anyway, I mostly want to use today’s Waffling to plug Noah Berlatsky’s latest, an essay collection entitled Fecund Horror: Slashers, Rape/Revenge, Women in Prison, Zombies, and Other Exploitation Dreck. Noah’s a friend of the blog (we podcasted about Wonder Woman a bit ago) and one of the best critics out there, and I’ve been enjoying the hell out of the book, which takes the tired “trashy exploitation films have something interesting to say” angle and finds fresh new life in it, suggesting that the genre works by “looking wrong” at the world, and that this is a generative and, well, fecund angle to take. It’s a delightfully odd collection, hitting obvious things like I Spit On Your Grave and also totally weird things – the title essay culminates in an enthusiastic paen to the subversive potential of a piece of erotica about wasps that lay mind-controlling eggs in people’s brains. It’s on Amazon here, and worth a look if weird trashy cinema is your thing.

As for discussion, getting back to the appallingly rapid pace of history in 2016, in amidst all the news stories that are (deservedly) getting coverage like Brexit, Black Lives Matter, Trump, the Nice attacks, the coup attempt in Turkey, and whatever fucking awful thing has no doubt happened in the couple hours between my queuing this and it posting, what news are you wishing were getting more attention? What’s interesting and underdiscussed in the world?…

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A Message from Ian Chinashop CBE

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Hello, I’m Ian Chinashop, and I own and run the Ian Chinashop China Shop Co.™ And I’m here to tell you how I made it in business, and how you can make it too. 

The secret of success is hard work and determination.  Without these things I could never have turned the million pounds my dad gave me on my 21st birthday into a global business empire.  Some hang around waiting for handouts.  That doesn’t work.  You just end up embittered, entitled and useless.  Some people expect life to serve them what they want on a silver platter.  I can’t stand people like that.  I had to work hard to succeed, and there’s no reason why you can’t do that too.  Some people say I had advantages, but who doesn’t?  Even if you grow up in the poorest housing estate in the country, you can turn your desire to escape into an advantage.  If life hands you lemons, make lemonade – as my friend Ian Lemonademanufacturer OBE of the Ian Lemonademanufacturer Lemonade Manufacturing Company™ always says.  He should know.  When he inherited his company from his father – Sir Simon Lemonademanufacturer – it just made lemonade.  I mean, how 20th Century is that?  Simon diversified into limeade and cherryade and cola, lemonade ice lollies, a lemonade chocolate bar, lemonade flavoured condoms… the company’s mascots – the Lemonade Family – got their own TV series and now sell millions of pounds of merchandise every year.  He puts a lot of his profits into a nice lemony hedge fund.  You see what I’m saying?  Take a disadvantage (i.e. ‘my father’s company just sells lemonade’) and turn it into an advantage.  Okay, so he had lots of help… like when he was able to pay for meetings with government ministers to lobby for relaxation of rules on what he was allowed to put into the lemonade… and able to get away without paying corporation taxes for more than a decade because he could pay accountants to put it all off-shore for him… and able to pay his staff less, and give them fewer holidays, and less compensation for work-related injuries and poisonings, and stop them joining unions, and pay less for more part-time workers on precarious contracts, all thanks to liberalisation of labour laws… but hey, that’s just winners helping other winners.  You can’t complain if the winners do that, it’s part of how winners get to be winners.  If you want to be part of the winners club, where the winners help the other winners, then use your individual enterprise and initiative to turn things around for yourself.

There are certain facts of life that everyone has to come to terms with.  You never get anywhere without a hard-headed appreciation of how the world works.  This is especially true in business.  If you’re going to succeed in a business, you need to make yourself master of the facts of that business. 

I’m going to explain to you how the china shop business works. …

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Comics Reviews (July 13th, 2016)

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From worst to best of what I bought, which actually includes things this week. And no, I’m not doing that KFC comic from DC. It’s free, so I can’t buy it, and you can’t buy it for me, so pfft.

Stumptown #10

Phil’s comic pet peeves, number 398 out of a series of fucking infinite length: when writers do near-wordless scripts and then give them to artists who aren’t actually good enough to carry it off. This is a reasonably good story, and there’s some smart, thoughtful writing with a real focus on letting the images tell the story. The probelm is as I said – Justin Greenwood’s not a strong enough artist to convey the information needed clearly. Too often one is left looking at a page going “OK, what’s happening here,” and not in the sense of “what are the storytelling implications of this” but rather in the sense of “is that the same person from three pages ago” or “wait, where are these people?” Letting the pictures tell the story is great and a lovely comics writers trick that I get why everyone likes. But the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of professional artists working in the industry today can’t actually pull it off, and that writers would be better served not triyng to be so damn clever.

Wonder Woman #2

The start of Rucka’s other Wonder Woman storyline, an origin retelling with Nicola Scott. Like any origin retelling it’s overly well-trodden ground, and Rucka neither brings earth-shattering new ideas nor hyper-brilliant style to the task, but it’s still got a bevy of nice, subtle touches that at least remind what Rucka’s strengths on the character are. I remain inherently suspicious of Rebirth and of the first two issues here, but this is at least a perfectly competent and enjoyble comic, which has to be called a result in context.

New Avengers #13

The impending relaunch brings a sense of acceleration to the book, which is generally good for it. The resolution to the ongoing POD subplot is clever and moving, although I find myself rather sharply hoping the character was not then immediately killed. (I trust Ewing more than that, though.) The Songbird plot is good. The army of Dum Dum Duggans remains barmy and clever. And I’m excited to see the Maker finally make his move. All in all, successful rising action.

The Wicked + The Divine #21

Speaking of Rising Action, the penultimate installment of this arc, which fulfills the description “like Shakespeare but with lots more punching” even better than NextWave did. Gillen and McKelvie have maintained FULL TILT quite well with this arc, and the comparative lull of last month’s installment seems considerably more artful given this jump to eleven. Excited to see how many people have their consciousnesses expanded in next month’s conclusion. (There. I finally did a joke other than “mind-blowing.”)

Next Week…

Lazarus #23

Hunt #1

Snotgirl #1

Darth Vader #23

Spider-Man #6

The Ultimates #9…

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Review: The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek

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When I was writing my first volume of Vaka Rangi, I was faced with a dilemma on how to frame the book. I have little to no personal or nostalgic connection to the original Star Trek or its animated sequel so my episode-to-episode reactions were by definition going to be mostly as I saw it. But I still wanted to come up with something unique to say about this most important period of Star Trek history, so I initially decided to structure the book around telling as “real” a story about the franchise’s formative years as I could, with a careful eye towards historical mythbusting in general, in particular how it pertained to the shows creator, the ever-mythologized Gene Roddenberry. I soon realised, however, that this was a task far too massive for me to undertake given the scope of the project I had cast, and quickly found myself intimidated and overwhelmed by the sheer scale of conflicting stories and seemingly deliberate disinformation surrounding Roddenberry and Star Trek. While I still hoped to convey a general idea for what Star Trek actually was and was envisioned as being (and I do feel, and hope, I managed some degree of success), the behind-the-scenes stuff became far too complicated a topic for me to tackle with any aspirations of genuine comprehension.

Thankfully, the task was not too overwhelming and intimidating for Lance Parkin, whose new book The Impossible Has Happened: The Life and Work of Gene Roddenberry, Creator of Star Trek, is an unauthorized biography of the man in question that sets about clearing the air and getting at the heart of what sort of a man Gene Roddenberry really was, and how he both shaped and was himself in turn shaped by what Star Trek came to represent. Readers of this blog will no doubt know Parkin for his work with Doctor Who, but for those who might not know he’s also an accomplished writer and chronicler in other genre fiction circles. He’s previously written a similar biography of Alan Moore, as well as series guides for both Alias, His Dark Materials and the *entire* Star Trek franchise up through the third season of Enterprise. He’s also contributed to Star Trek Magazine and written a number of interesting critical analyses of the series independently, so he’s well poised to take on the task of retelling the life story of the man who perpetually seems to be at the centre of it all.

The problem, as Parkin himself outlines it in his Introduction, is that there have traditionally only been two ways of looking at Gene Roddenberry. Either he was a prophetic visionary messiah who dreamed a wonderful dream of a utopian future who fought and died for the ideals it stood for, or he was a lying, cheating, manipulative scumbag and self-promoter who saw that a passionate group of fans had taken a throwaway idea of his and turned it into something special and then set about revising history and making everything about himself so that he could cash in on it.…

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Pex Lives 34: The Crusade

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The Pex Lives boys are back with The Crusade. And also with “then-current events,” which I don’t actually know when refers to. Dallas? Brexit? The Crusades themselves? Listen here and find out. They also apparently talk about the classic westerns Shane, Johnny Guitar, and The Searchers. 

Also, apparently Jack uploaded himself reading Canto 25 of Dante’s Inferno a few days ago without explanation or mentioning it anywhere. Well we’re mentioning it here. You can listen here.…

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