Eruditorum Press

That is not dead which can eternally hit the snooze button

More Hurt As I May Hold (The Last War in Albion Part 64: Criticism of The Curse, American Gothic)

, 12

This is the fourteenth of twenty-two parts of Chapter Eight of The Last War in Albion, focusing on Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. An omnibus of all twenty-two parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in six volumes. This entry covers stories from the third and fourth volumes. The third is available in the US here and the UK here. The fourth is in the US here and UK here. Finding the other volumes are, for now, left as an exercise for the reader, although I will update these links as the narrative gets to those issues.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore began a lengthy storyline usually referred to as the American Gothic story, in which Swamp Thing encounters traditional horror monsters in various American locales. One of the most notable stories in this arc is an issue called “The Curse,” about menstruation and werewolves in rural Maine.

“I is not want for come no more alive by fire, as like to this. It is not right. It is more hurt as I may hold.” – Alan Moore, Voice of the Fire
“The Curse,” however, was not an uncontroversial story. Indeed, it generated so much response that the letter pages of both Swamp Thing #45 and #46 were devoted entirely to letters regarding the story. For the most part, however, these letters were in favor of the story. The only outright critical letter in Swamp Thing #45 comes from a gentleman in (ironically) Northampton, Massachusetts, and complains that Moore repeats the phrase “hungry for the moon” too often, objects to the story’s generality in speaking for all women, and complains that the display of steak knives is unrealistic (“no market worth its liabilities would ever, ever, never-ever display its cutlery so dangerously”). Of these three complaints it is, in an idiosyncrasy typical of the sorts of comics readers who wrote in to DC letters pages in the 1980s, the steak knives that seem to be the biggest problem. Another letter, however, takes issue with the ending of the story, while still generally praising it. 
Figure 478: Phoebe lying dead under the howling moon.
(Written by Alan Moore, art by Steve Bissette and John
Totleben, from Swamp Thing #40, 1985)
This sentiment is shared by one of the two letters presented in Swamp Thing #46. This letter, by Mindy Newell, takes up most of a page, and Moore offers an equally long response in the letter page. Newell’s objection is straightforward – that Moore’s decision to have Phoebe kill herself is a weak cop-out of an ending. Newell writes, “I also understand that you were trying to point out to our male audience that women don’t deserve to be treated in such a horrific manner… that you were striking a blow, not just for equal rights, but for equal understanding.
…

Continue Reading

“…the issue at stake is patriotism”: Too Short a Season

, 3

“Too Short a Season” is one of the most criminally underrated episodes in Star Trek: The Next Generation‘s first year, if not the whole series. It’s the first unabashedly, hands-down brilliant episode since “Haven”, which makes sense as it’s the show’s second contribution from D.C. Fontana. Well, second *official*, at any rate: She did the teleplay for “Lonely Among Us”, which I also loved, and she did clean-up work on “The Naked Now”, but understandably took her name off it and used a pseudonym there. Though “Too Short a Season” is still an adaptation of somebody else’s work, it’s still very much a story that’s very recognisably hers: It’s got every ounce of that trademark Fontana bite and cynicism and, as we’d expect, it’s a story where the real villains are the Federation. In fact, it’s the first story like that in the entire franchise.

I seem to recall once either reading or hearing a rumour that the role of Admiral Mark Jameson was written with Captain Kirk in mind. Now, I can’t substantiate this anywhere and have no idea where I might have initially picked that up, so I could very well be imagining things, but after having just rewatched “Too Short a Season” in lieu of the critique I gave the Original Series it seems truly uncanny to think about. Because one level on which to read this episode is as a very firm reaction against the sort of ethics that permeated *huge swaths* of the Original Series, especially under Gene Roddenberry. Jameson is not an obsequious pencil-pusher, like previous obstructive Starfleet admirals have been. He’s not some incompetent desk jockey removed from the “real” action on the front lines, he’s every bit the unorthodox renegade and rogue Kirk is. In fact, “Too Short a Season” almost seems like a flat rejection of “A Private Little War”, for what Jameson does here is almost the exact same thing Kirk did in that episode, only while the narrative lionized Kirk, it condemns Jameson.

(That Jameson is destined to fall from grace is made obvious fairly early on: Not just in the way the teaser emphasizes his impulsive commandeering of the mission, but thanks to Marina Sirtis. “Too Short a Season” is an excellent showcase for her theatre-honed expressiveness: When Jameson is first speaking to Karnas on the bridge, the camera keeps cutting to Deanna Troi, and Marina goes out of her way to telegraph his ulterior motives to us purely through her facial expressions: Marina plays Troi as if she can sense Jameson’s deceit and ambition right from the outset. Granted, I suppose this raises the question of why she wouldn’t have expressed her concerns to Captain Picard, but it’s Marina Sirtis’ considerable acting prowess that’s primarily responsible for getting us to think her character might be under-served in the first place.)

The entire reason there’s a hostage crisis in the first place stems directly from Jameson’s actions negotiating for the resolution of a similar situation forty years prior.…

Continue Reading

Comics Reviews (October 2nd, 2014)

, 9

As always, ranked from least favorite to favorite, with the caveat that I like everything enough to pay money for it.

Thor #1

Why bother launching this on The View if the end result is going to be to spend an issue highlighting how much this is just a continuation of the previous volume of Thor? Why end this with the reveal of the character on the cover? Why have comics not moved beyond the storytelling prowess of 1970s Terry Nation stories? Goddammit.

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor #3

It’s interesting to see what parts of this book come from what writers. On the evidence, Al Ewing is providing more of the emotional heft, while Rob Williams provides more of the zany and big ideas, this one incorporating a bevy of twists. The result is something that feels more like the generic Doctor Who licensed comics we always get and less like what had been making this book special in the first two issues. Not bad by any measure, but the fact that a noticeable dip in originality and freshness came with the change to the second writer is a sad sign.

Moon Knight #8

I’m still not entirely sold on the turn to arc-based and continuing plotting. This was fine and a good issue of Moon Knight, but the loss of Warren Ellis’s ideological purity is just that: a loss.

Miracleman #11

I forgot the way this book kicked up a gear in Book Three. V for Vendetta does the same thing, though nobody ever notices because it’s collected in one volume. As should Miracleman be, given that it’s actually not much longer than Watchmen in terms of page count. Instead, as ever, we get $4.99 issues for sixteen pages of story. Bastards.

Silver Surfer #6

At last, the book arrives at its actual premise. And it’s fun, and exactly the sort of “Jack Kirby’s Doctor Who” feel that this book promised over half a year ago. Comics. The medium for people who resent it when things happen in their media. Still, it’s churlish to overly resent this comic because the previous five took too long to get here. This is very fun, and the better of the two Doctor Who comics I bought today. It may share some problems with Thor, but the problems are in past issues, not this one.

Rat Queens #8

No idea what the plot of this book is anymore, but it’s one of those I simply don’t care. It’s fun. Every month. By the time I get to the end of the issue I’m at least enjoying the characters in the issue. Should sit down with this and get into it, as I really enjoyed the first few issues when I shotgunned them. Not working for me as well serialized, but that’s true of a lot of comics.

—-

All comics below that line there are ones I would with a straight face recommend people pick up if their premises sound interesting.…

Continue Reading

Outside the Government: The Reichenbach Fall

, 44

It’s January 15th, 2012. Jessie J is at number one with “Domino,” with Flo Rida, Coldpay, David Guetta, , and Rizzle Kicks also charting. In news, the Scottish government announces that the independence referendum it’s been promised will go forward in 2014, and William Daley steps down as White House Chief of Staff. 
And on television, Sherlock finishes up its second season. To those paying attention to such things as writers, this looked ominous in one key regard, in that it seemed a mirror of the one outright dud in the first season of Sherlock – the one written by Steve Thompson and not directed by McGuigan. Thompson’s oeuvre at this point, at least in terms of things Doctor Who fans looked at, consisted of The Blind Banker and Curse of the Black Spot. To give him the big epic finale seemed an exercise in madness. And yet the result was the peak of Sherlock’s cultural capital – an iconic cliffhanger that casually owned popular culture for a while in its wake, and again in the lead-up to its resolution. It’s difficult to overemphasize how big this episode was. It may have been the lowest rated of its season, but it was by far the most impactful. In the immediate aftermath of transmission, the pop culture was absolutely obsessed with the cliffhanger. It may not be the most watched or the best episode of Sherlock. But the end of this one is the iconic and defining moment of the series. 
Cynics will suggest, not without reason, that this story was by Thompson in the same way that The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit was by Matt Jones or The Celestial Toymaker was by Brian Hayles. And certainly there’s no way that Thompson wasn’t closely supervised here. It’s also the case that when watched without the giddy excitement of context the joins and frailties of the script are somewhat more visible. This is a desperately untidy affair in which the twin motors of a plot that moves faster than its holes and the sense of Aristotelean tragedy keep afloat a story that could easily have gone the way of Journey to the Center of the TARDIS. 
Which is, to some extent, the reason that putting Thompson on this story was always going to be OK, because the sheer scope of the story was going to overwhelm its quality. For all that this owned popular culture momentarily, ultimately, it’s only the last bit of the episode that anyone cares about. And fair enough – it is a wonderful cliffhanger, simply because it embraces its own inevitable resolution. The episode doesn’t even bother trying to leave any ambiguity or suspense over whether Sherlock survives. Even his death isn’t really trying to be sincere, with a carefully and meticulously scripted bit of John’s POV that’s clearly there to leave enough space in the margins to come up with a plausible means of Sherlock’s survival. The episode never deludes itself into thinking its mystery is going to be “whether” and not “how,” and leans into it beautifully.
…

Continue Reading

“1, 2, 3, I see…”: Hide and Q

, 10


“Yep. Looks like a soundstage to me, Commander.”

A lot of times on television shows, particularly very expensive and VFX heavy science fiction shows such as this one, certain concessions must be made to financing. Sometimes you’re forced to shoot an entire episode on pre-existing sets or re-use old special effects shots in order to make the cut that week on time and on budget. Star Trek of the Long 1980s tends to be pretty good at this: Just recently, Star Trek: The Next Generation used a bottle show brief as an opportunity to turn “Lonely Among Us” into a minor classic, and six years later Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, facing a similar mandate, will take “Duet” and turn it into an unmitigated classic.

And then there’s “Hide and Q”.

I won’t say “Hide and Q” only exists to re-use the effect for Q’s force field from “Encounter at Farpoint”, but I will say it’s odd how a character who carries such weight and gravity suddenly reappears only ten episodes after his debut in a story that seems to be little more than a pointless (and far inferior) retread of his previous appearance. Because it’s really difficult to make the case that this isn’t what “Hide and Q” is: Q shows up, captures the Enterprise and puts the crew through a series of tests in order to determine whether or not humans are worthy of being a spacefaring civilization. The reason given for why Q is back is apparently because his people, while no longer worried humanity is a threat to itself and others, might now progress to such a level that their power might come to rival that of their own, and would like to test to see if humans are responsible enough to wield such abilities. But this amounts to little more than a diegetic explanation of the symbolic power Q already had: Q was already a manner of god and the issue at stake was *always* whether Star Trek: The Next Generation was deserving of that title and honour. That’s what it means to be a utopian ideal: You become a role model and idol others try to take into themselves.

Furthermore, this not only adds nothing to Q’s symbolic power, it actually does measurable harm to his efficacy as a character. Although Q was always going to be a reoccurring foil for the crew, from this point onwards, there are going to be two kinds of stories that feature him: The first kind are stories like “Encounter at Farpoint” that actually recognise the potential metatextual challenge Q can offer the series that force Star Trek to prove it’s capable of living up to the ideals it claims to embody, and furthermore, that those ideals are ones worth holding on to. The second, and regrettably far more common, type of story is the one where Q becomes, in the words of John de Lancie himself, Captain Picard’s (or Sisko’s, or Janeway’s, but that’s another couple of books) “wacky sitcom uncle” who happens to be omnipotent.…

Continue Reading

Outside the Government: The Hounds of Baskerville

, 17

It’s January 8th, 2012. Flo Rida is at number one with “Good Feeling,” wiht Coldplay, Jessie J, Rihanna, and Raio Cruz also charting. In news, Gary Dobson and David Norris were finally convicted of the murder of Stephen Lawrence, and Michelle Bachman dropped out of the Presidential race following Rick Santorum’s win (by a stunningly small 34-vote margin) in the Iowa Caucuses. 
While on television it’s The Hounds of Baskerville, an adaptation of what is arguably the most famous Sherlock Holmes story ever. This speaks to the way in which the confidence shown by Scandal in Belgravia was, broadly speaking, reflected in every aspect of Sherlock’s second season. From the start, Moffat and Gatiss announced the grandeur of their plans, with the still memorable trio of one-word teases: Woman, Hound, Fall. Immediately the three stories being used snapped into place, and nobody made any excuses – the plan was clearly to tackle the three most iconic Sherlock Holmes stories not to be Study in Scarlet. 
In hindsight, thinking about it, this was always going to be the tricky one. “Scandal in Bohemia” and “The Final Problem” are both massive stories in part because they put Sherlock Holmes in extremely unusual and dramatic positions. They largely modernize themselves. But The Hound of the Baskervilles is iconic more because it was a tremendously popular novel at the time, and has been frequently adapted. It’s not a story that involves any particularly major change for Sherlock Holmes. It’s just a particularly classic Sherlock Holmes story. Although, adding to the difficulties, Sherlock is actually not in large swaths of it.
Still, certain aspects of the approach all but decided themselves. Certainly this had to be the middle episode, by dint of being the one that least disrupted Sherlock as a character. It was also as self-evidently the one Mark Gatiss should write as Scandal in Belgravia was the one that Moffat should write. Past that, however, the way to approach this is almost all question marks and challenges to overcome.
To some extent, however, with Gatiss in place the solutions to most of these challenges became, if not self-evident, at least simpler. Gatiss is and always will be a nostalgia artist. And so when tackling something like adapting The Hound of the Baskervilles, he was always going to stick as closely as possible to the iconography of the original. And yet in many regards his most important decision in terms of how this episode works is the major change, which is to change Baskerville from being Henry’s family name to being a mysterious government research facility. Gatiss’s interview-stated reasons for this – that conspiracy theories are what’s scary these days – are as idiosyncratic as most of Gatiss’s stated plot logic, but it nevertheless proved a savvy choice for other reasons.
In effect, what the decision to have a gleaming white research facility as one of the major settings for this story did was, over the course of ninety minutes, make it so that it could go back and forth between the Dartmoor setting and a visually different place, allowing each location room to breathe.
…

Continue Reading

“…vibrations that have been left behind in space and time.”: The Battle

, 7

It’s beyond a cliche to say that history repeats itself. In fact, I’m not sure it’s ever been the case where that hasn’t been beyond a cliche. The phrase is usually invoked when someone wants to make a sweeping generalization about human shortsightedness or failing to learn from the past.

In Star Trek, the past tends to be spoken of as something we must move beyond. Indeed, that’s the central thesis of “The Battle”, and the episode gives us two contrasting perspectives for how this manifests in people. In one corner we have DaiMon Bok, who has spent the last nine years obsessed with his son’s accidental death and with coming up with a way to punish Captain Picard for it because he can’t move on and needs someone to blame for his grief. In the other we have Captain Picard himself who, while touched to be able to return to the USS Stargazer, also frequently makes it clear that this is something from his past that must remain there. The torture he undergoes at the hands of Bok’s thought-maker is simply a metaphor for how dangerous it is to “live in the past”, how it can consume a person and keep them from moving forward. And here again is that theme of progressing, of going forth: What I have always taken from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and how I choose to read this theme as it appears here and elsewhere in the Star Trek franchise, is one of continually growing *as a person*. Of constantly striving to be learn a little bit every day, and always striving to improve oneself as a human being. Of never settling or becoming complacent.

But there is another reading of this, a reading that is, from my perspective, altogether less savoury, yet one that’s not quite reducible out of the larger conceptual framework of Star Trek this series does inherit. And that’s the notion of progress, and history itself, as teleology. The idea that one must go forward for this is the right and natural way to go, or indeed the *only* way to go, and that this will ultimately get us to the best possible ending point. “Boldly going forward because we can’t find reverse”, as it were. What this does is impose a hierarchical, modernist master narrative over the theme, and this is more than a little disturbing considering the technofetishism that does surround Star Trek, and that’s only going to increase as Star Trek: The Next Generation goes on. The franchise has had gravely concerning run-ins with Modernization Theory and managerial progressive thought at times, and those are not so easily forgotten, especially at the comparatively young state of our new show at this time. It’s the self-absorbed, manifest destiny style of futurism that has dogged the entire genre of Western science fiction since its earliest days, and Star Trek: The Next Generation will have to grapple with it one way or another.…

Continue Reading

The Caretaker Review

, 202

This review was brought to you by 163 backers on Patreon, who would love for you to join them. 

So, since it seems to be the standard opening rhythm for these things, twenty minutes past transmission we’re at 59.7% at 8-10, with 8 being the most popular pick at 29.25%. Thread titles include “this years arc sucks,” “A thing! again,” “Clara’s skirt!,” and “Peter C was on fire tonight,” which, really, seems so utterly standard it’s hard to draw any conclusions. Twitter seems positive. For my part, I liked this a lot, although it definitely took the second viewing for me to really grok it, because I was busy being surprised by its tone on the first pass. I suspect it will watch much more smoothly to people who weren’t foolish (or fannish) enough to have expectations, however.
Ah, yes. Expectations. You know what, let’s take stock of where we are. First episode of autumn proper, halfway point of the season. It’s a good time for taking stock. 
In the UK, it’s well past night-time, to the point where this review is posting after people are largely gone to bed. Here, it’s a bit before sunset. My wife’s just left for her last night of work on the Oncology floor, before she transfers to a different floor to broaden her experience a bit. I’m up for a while yet, planning on writing some of the V for Vendetta chapter after this, after I walk the dog and grab some dinner. The episode’s not on for another three or four hours yet, so this is going to go out into the void to an extent, really playing only to the Americans who pirate it from the UK streams and late night Brits.
Based on the most current news, the program is on a ratings hot streak like it hasn’t seen in a while. All four episodes with final ratings have been in the top ten for the week, and there’s some high-powered competition on the air. This week is particularly dicey for ratings obsessives, as the BBC is confident enough to throw it up against The X-Factor. To be honest, expect a panic tomorrow when people start reporting the overnights, although it’s almost certainly going to stabilize out, whether through time-shifting (which always adds a healthy couple million to Doctor Who’s ratings) or through iPlayer (which doesn’t get counted yet in ratings, but adds another million or so).
There’s several ways in which the program feels like it’s genuinely in a different place than it was a year ago. This is worth noting explicitly in an episode that is, as much as anything, about reaffirming the end of the Eleventh Doctor era. This is the last episode of the half of the season where it was relatively easy to guess what you were going to get. It’s not that it’s been devoid of surprises – hello Listen – but the surprises have generally been within episodes. Every week after Deep Breath, you basically knew what you were going to get if you were paying attention to writers, episode titles, the Doctor Who Magazine descriptions, or, let’s be honest, the script and screener leaks, which vented an awful lot of spoilers into the atmosphere.
…

Continue Reading

Once More With Feeling?

, , , , , , 5

It is incredibly depressing to realise that I have been asking the rulers of the state I live in to refrain from bombing Iraq for my entire fucking life.

There’s an extent to which the ‘it won’t work’ critique is entirely valid as an objection to waging yet more war upon the Middle East.  Because the surface aim of the politicians is almost certainly to impose ‘stability’ on ‘the region’.  They like stability.  No threats to embarass them, no revolts to topple their friendly dictators, no threat to Israel, no danger to neoliberal exploitation of local resources and markets, etc.  And, as has been shown, it doesn’t work.  They try and try to bomb the Middle East into passive compliance, and all they succeed in doing is generating more troubles for their empire.

This is, of course, what empires have always done.  Create the problems of tomorrow by viciously conquering the problems of today.

But there’s another sense in which the ‘it won’t work’ argument is fatally flawed, because there’s a sense in which it does work.  It may never achieve ‘stability’ but it does keep the machinery of empire chugging, and the fuel of empire flowing.  Because the fuel of empire is as much war itself as the resources extracted via war.  The neverending war keeps the military-industrial complex in work, the contracts coming, the factories producing, etc.  It keeps the corporate media busy and happy, reporting yet more incomprehensible strife from ‘over there’ and ‘our’ attempts to make things better.  It keeps the endless circular debate about intervention circling (the system can tolerate a tortuous and muddled debate, what it doesn’t want is clarity).  It keeps the public money flowing into the vast state run apparatus of military spending, and into all the R&D that is done under the aegis of this and then handed over (free) to private enterprise.  It keeps the empire’s power and prestige in the ascendant, with the machinery of death inspiring the fear – and projecting the apparent invincibility – that every empire needs.

No, the war never ‘works’ in the sense of achieving a stable imperium, but it does ‘work’ – at least in the short term – in achieving a powerful empire.  One of the paradoxes of empire is that its power relies upon it never being stable.  So even when the bombing doesn’t work, it actually does.

Meanwhile, of course, people die.  And die and die and die.…

Continue Reading

Talking About Meatballs (The Last War in Albion Part 63: American Gothic)

, 26

This is the thirteenth of twenty-two parts of Chapter Eight of The Last War in Albion, focusing on Alan Moore’s run on Swamp Thing. An omnibus of all twenty-two parts can be purchased at Smashwords. If you purchased serialization via the Kickstarter, check your Kickstarter messages for a free download code.

The stories discussed in this chapter are currently available in six volumes. This entry covers stories from the second and third volumes. The second is available in the US here and the UK here. The third is available in the US here and the UK here. Finding the other volumes are, for now, left as an exercise for the reader, although I will update these links as the narrative gets to those issues.

Previously in The Last War in Albion: Alan Moore introduced a new character, a working class British occultist named John Constantine, to serve as Swamp Thing’s guide for a journey across America typically referred to as the American Gothic arc.

“I am not talking about meatballs. I am talking about STEAK!” -Diamanda Galas, “Wild Women with Steak Knives”
This serves as the beginning of the so-called “American Gothic” arc (the name was never actually used in the comics), a storyline in which Constantine leads Swamp Thing on a tour of the United States to confront various classic horror tropes like vampires and werewolves. The timing is apropos – Moore had taken his first trip to the United States in August of 1984, midway through the Arcane arc of Swamp Thing, and the same month that Marvelman ceased publication in Warrior. There he had hobnobbed with DC executives and gotten variously praised and treated as a bit of a golden boy. He hit it off some of the DC staff – particularly with his editor, Karen Berger, and with Julius Schwartz, a long time DC editor, who impressed Moore by having the signature of H.P. Lovecraft in a scrapbook, having served as his literary agent late in Lovecraft’s life. Others proved chillier – Paul Levitz, a fanzine writer who had steadily ascended into upper management at DC, referred to Moore as his “greatest mistake,” a line that, whatever was meant by it in 1984, has bottomless depths of iciness in hindsight. 
Figure 470: The aquatic vampires of Rosewood
Illinois. (From Swamp Thing #38, 1985)
And so it was hardly a surprise that Moore would opt to explore the American-ness of his newfound success. And, given that his success was proving as a horror writer, a tribute to American horror must have seemed wholly appropriate. And on target – Levitz’s words perhaps ringing in his ear, Moore started the arc with a strangely barbed story. The choice of Rosewood, Illinois was not an arbitrary setting. Martin Pasko, early in his Swamp Thing run, wrote a story set in a town called Rosewood that featured Swamp Thing fighting vampires, with a father and son sacrificing themselves to flood the town and drown the vampires.
…

Continue Reading

«‹ 203 204 205 206 ›»