Eruditorum Press

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Comic Reviews (June 10th, 2015)

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Hello all; as of this week, my comics reviews are being crossposted to ComicMix, so I suppose I should tack a paragraph introducing myself onto the start. I’m Phil Sandifer, a blogger covering various forms of pop culture and media with my own idiosyncratic long-form analysis. I’m responsible for TARDIS Eruditorum, my now-concluded history of Doctor Who, and the still-ongoing The Last War in Albion, a sprawling history of the most important magical war of the last century, the rivalry between Alan Moore and Grant Morrison.

Everything reviewed is something I willingly paid my own money for, whether wisely or foolishly, organized from my least favorite to my favorite of the week.
Weirdworld #1

Snagged because it seemed to be taking the Secret Wars premise to an interesting extreme. But while this seems a functional mash-up of Frazetta-esque pulp action and superheroes, nothing in the first issue seems to rise above the basic “nobody’s done a big Frazetta homage lately” appeal, and the whole thing ends up leaving me a bit cold. I’m sure this scratches someone’s itch, but it doesn’t scratch any itches of mine, or at least, doesn’t provide $3.99 worth of scratch.
Gotham Academy #7

Two months away from this book have, as I feared they might, not really added much to its luster for me. I still like the aesthetic a lot conceptually, but nothing has forged any attachment to the actual characters for me. It’s something I find myself hoping other people are enjoying a lot, because it’s a book I want to exist in the world, but not something whose magic is quite firing for me.
Silver Surfer #12

This feels like a book out of another era; one where Secret Wars #5 was still coming out in July, for instance, at least based on the ads. This isn’t a book that has ever been inclined towards the subtle exploration of a premise, and indeed the content of this one is telegraphed ages in advance. The big moment, the Surfer and Dawn snogging, is compelling in its own right, but one of those things where Secret Wars kind of cannibalizes its impact; one assumes the Slott/Allred Surfer is not going to be surviving into All-New All-Different Marvel, which means that Dawn Greenwood is probably a fascinating implication about to be thrown aside in a quasi-reboot. Which leaves this feeling very disposable.
Spider-Gwen #5

The alternate universe nature of this book is tough; it’s never as strong when it’s fleshing out the AU. The appeal is Gwen Stacy as Spider-Woman, and the book falters when it’s outside of her head. Which it is for a lot of this issue. I should love the sort of WicDiv “superpowered pop star punchdown” feel of this, and I do, but there’s too much of familiar Marvel for it to stand on its own feet and too much difference from the usual concepts of “Matt Murdock” and “Felicia Hardy” for their associations to quite carry it through, which is leaving the central appeal of this book lacking for me.
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Myriad Universes: The Star Lost Part 4: The Barrier

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This section of The Star Lost really does feel like it’s from another story. In fact, when I first rediscovered this miniseries, it thought it was another story: Stumbling upon the cover for this issue while browsing through the archives of DC’s Star Trek: The Next Generation immediately caught my interest and I picked it up out of curiosity, only to find it was actually Part 4 of The Star Lost.

In any other context, “Deanna Troi uncovers the mystery of a culture of mer-people and its thinly veiled institutionalized power structures of oppression and discrimination” would be grounds enough for a science fiction story unto itself-Indeed, even the Animated Series did an episode that was broad-strokes similar. But while that episode took its central sci-fi conceit (ocean planet inhabited by civilization of mer-people) and went no further than that, here it’s a subset of the far larger and grander tale we’ve been seeing unfold for the past few months. What this does is touch on a central divide in attitudes about how science fiction ought to be approached and once again shows how Star Trek: The Next Generation, particularly this Star Trek: The Next Generation, is transmuting the genre into something more holistic and universal.

The mere fact that one of this very series’ own predecessors took a similar conceit and expected it to carry an entire story is a revealing demonstration of just how much science fiction has changed in only the past 10-15 years or so. “The Ambergris Element” figured all it had to do was present a neat sci-fi concept (“Hey look! Ocean planet with mer-people!”) and its job was basically done. Now, the fact “The Ambergris Element” was also a spectacularly incoherent piece of shit penned by the single worst writer ever to job for Star Trek is actually beside the point here: What I want to focus in on here is the assumption that the most important thing was the central speculative idea and that everything else was just window dressing and irrelevant details. This is a very traditional (read Hard SF) way of going about doing science fiction, and that simply isn’t going to fly anymore for a lot of very good reasons. You can’t get away with this these days, and quite frankly, you shouldn’t be able to.

That’s not to say we have to abandon the speculative and the fantastic; this is still science fiction after all and there’s no point in doing science fiction if you’re not going to engage with that on some level. But what we’re learning now is that the speculative has to be treated as a manifestation of the themes, energies and emotions of the larger work, not the be-all and end-all unto itself. We’re getting right back to what was so terrific about “The Lesson” (or indeed Dirty Pair, or any other hallmark of Long 1980s storytelling), where abstract images and concepts are used to highlight new dimensions of stories instead of obfuscating them.…

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A Brief Treatise on the Rules of Thrones 2.03: What is Dead May Never Die

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Brought to you by my Patreon. Also, if you missed it yesterday, my interview with Vox Day is available.

State of Play
The choir goes off. The board is laid out thusly:
Lions of King’s Landing: Tyrion Lannister, Cersei Lannister
The Direwolf, Catelyn Stark
Mockingbirds of King’s Landing: Petyr Baelish
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
Kraken of Pyke: Theon Greyjoy
Direwolves of Winterfell: Brana Stark
Direwolves of King’s Landing: Sansa Stark
The Direwolf, Arya Stark
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
The Rose, Margaery Tyrell
Bears of the Wall: Jeor Mormont
Chains of King’s Landing: Bronn
Spiders of Kings Landing: Varys
Flowers of King’s Landing: Shae
Vaes Dothrak and Dragonstone are abandoned.
The episode is in ten parts. The first is three minutes long and is in two sections; it is set in Craster’s Keep north of the Wall. The first section is two minutes long; the opening image is of Craster dragging Jon Snow in front of Lord Commander Mormont. The other is one long; the transition is by dialogue, from Mormont saying they leave at dawn to dawn. 
The second part is four minutes long and is set in Winterfell. The transition is by hard cut, from Sam to the yard at Winterfell. 
The third is six minutes long and is set in Renly Baratheon’s camp in the Stormlands. The transition is by family, from Bran to Catelyn Stark. 
The fourth is four minutes long and is set in Pyke. The transition is by the theme of idiosyncratic women, from Brienne of Tarth to Yara Greyjoy.
The fifth is ten minutes long and is in three sections; it is set in King’s Landing. The first section is two minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Theon to Tyrion. The second is four minutes long; the transition is by family, from Tyrion to Cersei Lannister. The third is four minutes long; the transition is by hard cut, from Shae brushing Sansa’a hair to a blue vial. 
The sixth part is five minutes long and is set in the Baratheon camp. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion exiting Littlefinger’s chamber to a view of Renly’s bed. 
The seventh is one minute long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by Queen, from Margery to Cersei. 
The eighth is two minutes long and is set in Pyke. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion leaving Cersei to Theon making a decision. 
The ninth is five minutes long and is set in King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from a reborn Theon to Tyrion. 
The tenth is nine minutes long and is set on the Kingsroad north of King’s Landing. The transition is by hard cut, from Tyrion to a small tower. It features the death of Yorrin and Lemmy, both killed by the Lannisters. The final image is of a chessboard lying in the grass like it’s the answer to a riddle. 
Analysis

In one sense, gameplay continues as before. The structure is disorganized, with seven of its twelve transitions being hard cuts.
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The Vox Day Interview

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At long last, and with sincere thanks to Kevin and James over at Pex Lives for hosting, I am pleased to announce that my interview with Vox Day is live. You can find that right here. It’s a roughly two hour long discussion if John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, one of the Sad/Rabid Puppy nominees for Best Novella this year, and Iain Banks’s debut novel The Wasp Factory, which I’ve previously covered here. Though don’t worry if you’ve not read them; the interview should be perfectly accessible to anyone who doesn’t mind some spoilers.

I’ve also recorded a conversation with Kevin, James, and Jack Graham that’s something of an afterparty, in which the four of us and Jack’s cat Quiz have a nice long chat about the interview, our thoughts on it, and what it revealed. It’s at times very silly and at times very interesting, and is available here. While the interview itself is obviously the more general interest item, I have to say, if you’re coming at this from the perspective of someone who likes my stuff, which, since you’re here, I assume you are, the afterparty is frankly essential listening.

I think both make for excellent and edifying radio, and hope you enjoy them.…

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Shabcast 6

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Shabcast 6 is now available to download or listen to here…

BUT HANG ON!

This Shabcast is an accompaniment to this month’s edition of Pex Lives (download or listen here), which features the long-awaited encounter between Phil Sandifer (from off of TARDIS Eruditorum) and ‘Vox Day’ (from off of fascism and fucking up the Hugo Awards).

Kevin and James have kindly turned the June installment of Pex Lives over to the Sandifer/Vox Day interview, in which Phil quizzes Vox about his attitudes towards two texts, One Bright Star to Guide Them by John C. Wright (which Vox loves and Phil hates) and Iain M. Banks’ The Wasp Factory (which Vox hates and Phil loves).

One Bright Star… slid into the Hugo noms on Vox Day’s Rabid Puppies slate, by the way.  Hmm.

Shabcast 6 is something in the way of an ‘afterparty’ for Phil, in which Phil chats with myself, Kevin and James about the Vox Day interview.  Very much necessary listening.  And lots of fun.  After the serious business of the interview itself, the four of us kick back and have a chat which veers from the serious to the plain giggly.

This Shabcast also features frequent and vehement contributions by my elderly, crotchety and extremely loud-voiced bengal cat Quiz.  You won’t be able to understand her, but I can… and she’s telling me to kill.

You’ll need to listen to both podcasts so, once again, here are the links:

Pex Lives/Eruditorum Press – the Sandifer/Day Interview

Shabcast 6 – The Sandifer/Day Interview Afterparty

(Also, here’s a link to Shabcast 3 in which myself, Phil and Andrew Hickey chatted about the Hugo Awards fascist fuck-up fiasco not long after it hit.)…

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Myriad Universes: The Star Lost Part 3: Trapped

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Life goes on after loss.

Captain Picard says as much as he sets the stage:

“We have barely had a chance to mourn the deaths of our comrades before we find ourselves in the throes of another mission: This time, to aid in the evacuation of the Federation member-planet Lanatos, which is headed for a collision with a rogue comet. The Lanatosian, a water-breathing people, are of course space faring– but their capacity to remove their entire race in the time still left to them.”

It’s this middle section of The Star Lost, this issue and the next one, that I remember the least. The imagery of the first two issues is embedded within me so deeply I can’t separate myself from it, and I distinctly remember how this story ends from a recent re-read of it I did on my own personal time. But the events of this pair of issues are a bit of a fog for me…well, more so than the rest of The Star Lost at any rate. There was a planet of mer-people I think…but they were up to no good. And there was Deanna Troi leading an away team mission in a diving suit…and she shares some telepathic link with a culture of friendly sea serpents.

But that, as it turns out, is all concerns for next time. Although we do indeed get to see Deanna beaming down in Starfleet Scuba to poke around a bit, this issue is largely about setting that up. In the process of relocating the Lanatosians, Deanna expresses concern to Captain Picard that she thinks they’re hiding something important from them (especially as they seem oddly more concerned with moving a bunch of ancient statues than their own people). Jean-Luc has her go down to the planet and investigate, but requests she refrain from referring to herself as ship’s counselor. Instead, she should refer to herself as Lieutenant Commander Deann Troi, head of the away team overseeing the relocation process. As the Captain says, “Hardly a lie, though we don’t usually refer to you that way”. Before she goes, she gently reminds him that he needs to fill Worf and Commander Riker’s positions on the duty roster.

Lest you think they are gone and forgotten, the crew of the Albert Einstein are in an interesting predicament of their own at the other end of the galaxy. As the shuttle approaches the starship construct, it gets snared in a tractor beam and dragged towards the structure. But just as the crew is trying to deal with that, a second tractor beam shoots out from the other end of the construct and tries to pull it in the opposite direction. There’s a tug-of-war match between the two tractor beams for a bit before the second one ultimately wins out. This turns out to be a good thing, as the starship construct is soon revealed to be a colony of refugees from the alpha quadrant whose ships, like the Albert Einstein, were sucked into a time-space anomaly and deposited here and is firmly divided along pro- and anti-Federation lines.…

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The Dance of Dragons

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My interview with Vox Day should go up some time tomorrow over at Pex Lives, along with an accompanying Shabcast in which Jack, Kevin, James and I talk about the interview. There will be an announcement here when they go live.

State of Play

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

Lions of Meereen: Tyrion Lannister
Lions of Dorne: Jaime Lannister
Dragons of Meereen: Daenerys Targaryen
Direwolves of the Wall: Jon Snow
The Burning Hearts, Stannis Baratheon and Mellisandre
The Ship, Davos Seaworth
Snakes of Dorne: Elaria Sand
Direwolves of Braavos: Arya Stark
Chains of Dorne: Bronn
Archers of the Wall: Samwell Tarly
Paws of the Wall: Tormund Giantsbane
Coins of Braavos: No one
Swords of Meereen: Daario Noharis
Butterflies of Meereen: Missandei
With the Bear of Meereen, Jorah Mormont

Winterfell and King’s Landing are abandoned.

The episode is in parts. The first is two minutes long and is set in Stannis Baratheon’s camp north of Winterfell. The opening image is an establishing shot of the camp in the snow.

The second is three minutes long and is set at the Wall. The transition is by dialogue, from Daavos talking about Castle Black to the northern gate to Castle Black.

The third is four minutes long and is set in Stannis Baratheon’s camp north of Winterfell. The transition is by hard cut, from Jon Snow to Stannis’s map, and by dialogue, with Stannis talking about Jon Snow and the Wall.

The fourth is six minutes long and is set in Dorne. The transition is by deeply idiosyncratic relationships between fathers and daughters, from Shireen to Myrcella.

The fifth is eight minutes long and is set in Braavos. The transition is by hard cut, from Bronn to an establishing shot of the docks.

The sixth is three minutes long and is set in Dorne. The transition is by dialogue, from the House of Black and White to Doran informing Ellaria that she has a choice ending with “or die.”

The seventh is six minutes long and is set in Stannis Baratheon’s camp. The transition is by dialogue, with both scenes talking about Targaryens. It features the death of Shireen Baratheon, burnt to death on her father’s orders.

The eighth is seventeen minutes long and is set in Meereen. The transition is by the theme of barbarism, from Shireen’s death to the fighting pits of Meereen. It features the death of lots and lots of people. The final image is of many people surprised at the unexpected departure of their queen and the means of her conveyance.

Review

In many ways this has the same structure as “Hardhome,” although Meereen is not as large a part of the episode as Hardhome was – this is an episode that deals with some smaller plots and then does a big endcap scene. Given this, there is a certain anticlimax, especially given the near-mythic power that “episode nine” at this point has within Game of Thrones. Put simply, this year the big set piece is not in the ninth slot; it was in the eighth, clearly.…

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Saturday Waffling (June 6th, 2015)

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If you missed it, yesterday’s Last War in Albion was something of a big post, culminating in the moment where I finally offer something of a thesis statement/summation of the sort of endlessly building history of Alan Moore that’s been going on, namely that he’s a con man. There’s still a brief chapter on The Ballad of Halo Jones to wrap up Book One (actually brief; it’s the shortest of the eleven chapters in Book One), and then on to Book Two. Excitement and fear abound.

Speaking of excitement and fear, with no shortage of deep ambivalence, I’m interviewing Theodore Beale today. What are you doing?…

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The Storm I’ve Unleashed (The Last War in Albion Part 99: Notes on the Fundamental Nature of Alan Moore)

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This is the eleventh of eleven parts of The Last War in Albion Chapter Ten, focusing on Alan Moore’s Bojeffries Saga. An omnibus of all eleven parts is available on Smashwords. If you are a Kickstarter backer or a Patreon backer at $2 or higher per week, instructions on how to get your complimentary copy have been sent to you.

The Bojeffries Saga is available in a collected edition that can be purchased in the US or in the UK.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore grew up in the Spring Boroughs area of Northampton, a desperately poor part of England near Green Street, famously described by Jeremy Seabrook in his book The Unprivileged.

“It flows out of me, and I don’t understand it and I don’t know where it’s from, but it’s there and undeniable and mine and I get to share it. I get to share it with everyone. This? This is as good as it gets. I feel small and holy, and the part of me that hasn’t disappeared in the storm I’ve unleashed is whispering… ‘This is worth it.'” – Kieron Gillen, The Wicked and the Divine
Seabrook returns constantly to the closed-mindedness of the area’s inhabitants, describing their hatred of abstract art as “the anger of anyone brought abruptly face to face with ideas which he has no use for, but which he finds form the very basis of someone else’s philosophy. They did not admit it willingly that anything exceeded their ability to understand, and in consequence violence had to be done to everything they encountered in order to accommodate it.” This resulted in attitudes characterized on the one hand by intense suspicion towards “other people [who] were sure to abuse your hospitality, take advantage of your kindness and exploit your generous nature,” and on the other by an intense desire “not to be beholden to anybody.” He describes one group of relations simply as “mean. Of them it was said that ‘they’d bottle a fart and use it again if they could’. Tom’s mother was extremely reluctant to throw away anything she had used personally, and even left the water she had washed in cooling greyly for hours in the enamel bowl in the sink. Once they found some mice-droppings in a sack of flour, and they spent the whole night extracting the tiny black grains from the bag before offering the tainted powder for sale the following morning.” The sense of anti-intellectualism and insularity is profound, and the theme that Seabrook circles back to again and again, concluding that “the life of the streets had a devitalizing effect, and did not allow of any departure from a rigidly fixed pattern of behaviour and relationships.” But for all of this, he speaks movingly of the plight of his family and neighbors, explaining in the book’s final passage how, when the terraces were finally bulldozed in favor of some new vision of social engineering, the now displaced residents were “shown the error and irrelevance of their faith by those who have access to greater truths, and who tear the veils from the eyes of others, veils that prove to be not veils at all, but living membranes, the removal of which leaves nothing but empty and bleeding sockets.”
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Myriad Universes: The Star Lost Part 2: Mourning Star

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Captain Picard stands at a podium in the middle of a large sunlit grassy meadow. He’s addressing a gathering of the crew, seated in fold-out lawn chairs. There are empty seats.

Jean-Luc is introducing the official eulogy for the missing crewmembers. His hand has been forced, as despite searching all hours for days, the Enterprise can find no trace of the vanished shuttlecraft Albert Einstein, and Starfleet can’t justify postponing its mission indefinitely to look for it. Such services are intended to serve as a formality to remember the departed and to help the survivors work through and accept their guilt. But the Enterprise crew doesn’t need that. Beverly Crusher, whom we might expect to be the most affected by this, puts it succinctly: “If he’s dead, he died helping others. Isn’t that the best way?”. And if it hadn’t been Wesley, than it would have been someone else, and Jean-Luc still would have had to deliver the awful news. And yet even so, she still sheds a tear. Deanna Troi, ever refined and composed, has a feeling the crew’s comrades are still alive, and she can sense that Jean-Luc does too. But she concurs that there’s no basis to continue a formal search, so she goes ahead with the preparations.

Condolences are broadcast across known space. Kyle Riker laments losing his son so soon after reconnecting with him. After her new captain breaks her the news, Doctor Katherine Pulaski returns to her patients, but says she’s going to need a lot of time to herself afterward. Selar’s parents cope in their own way. And on Betazed, Lwaxana Troi is absolutely devastated. Even though her own daughter was not on the shuttle, she feels the loss as strongly as if it were that of her own children. The Enterprise has left its mark on her.

Captain Picard, Deanna Troi and Geordi La Forge deliver the eulogies. Jean-Luc for Will Riker, Deanna for Worf and Geordi for Wesley Crusher. This is at once entirely unexpected for one more familiar with the TV series, or at least the received historical reading of the TV series, yet it also feels eminently natural and right. Deanna speaks of Worf’s pride in his ship and the his family aboard it, a pride that turned into a very powerful love. Geordi shares a memory of Wesley, and he retells it in the manner of one recalling an especially vivid dream. Jean-Luc Picard’s speech to his crew begins to reflect the conflicted feelings of his inner monologue he shares only with the audience, slowly becoming one. He wonders how much he really knew the people they have gathered to remember, especially Will, even though he sat next to him every day. He fears he was always too busy for them and that he never got the chance to tell them how proud he was of them and how much he liked them.

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