Who Were We

In Doctor Who, there’s an episode called “The Snowman.” One of the best scenes of that episode pertains to what is called The One Word Test, wherein one character is asked a series of questions and must answer with only a single word. The purpose of this is because “Truth is singular. Lies are words, words, words.” Of course, just because the answer is merely a single word, doesn’t mean that it is just a single thing as the explanation implies. Take the title, for example. On the surface, it refers to the main threat of the episode, an army of killer snowmen in the three-ball variety. Equally, it refers to The Doctor themselves, who is at that moment closing himself off from the outside world, freezing his heart. (As an aside, there are many a question of importance that require more than a one word answer, including “What is the meaning of life?”, “Why is there something instead of nothing?”, and “

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

”.) So then, the purpose of The One Word Test is less about the implications of a word, but of its clarity.

Which brings us quite nicely to different sort of One Word Test found within Mister Miracle #6. Like many things in his life, Orion has simplified this seemingly simple set up even further, removing the possibility of language and restricting it merely to “True” or “False” answers. “Every statement. Is either true or false,” Orion claims. “If it weren’t, it wouldn’t be a statement.” There is a clarity in this logic, all things can be bound up in either option A or option B; good and evil; right and wrong; here and there.

But people don’t work like that. As a species, we’re a mixed up bunch of irrational thoughts, barely controlled emotions, and mad ideas. There’s an ambiguity in whether or not, say, someone deserves to die (notably, that’s the only question Scott doesn’t have an answer for. For all Orion’s talk of trying to find Scott’s belief, he misses the moment where Mister Miracle opens up). Indeed, there’s an ambiguity in all people, most of all Scott Free. (As the issue shows, that ambiguity goes down to even Scott’s name, which was never his to begin with. Scott Free is an abused child, a cruel joke about his inability to be free. Mister Miracle is someone else’s name, obsessed with escaping even from life. He thinks if Highfather had just given him a name, he’d be all right. Wouldn’t make a difference in the end, it would have been as much a name as Scott Free. In the end, what makes us “us” is simply the relationships and actions we do in our lives who we’ve touched, knowingly or unknowingly, for better or for worse.)

In many ways, Orion is Darkseid’s heir: both seek clarity in a world of ambiguity. He simplifies complicated feelings as mere hatred. People hurt each other/themselves because of hatred. We trap each other in a cage called life because we utterly despise one another and want to watch as they suffer with us. But people are more complicated than that. We can hurt people out of love, fear, misery, and so much more. And we can also help each other.

Big Barda helps Scott in the end. She’s as much broken by this cruel and twisted place they called Apokolips, “Where Holocaust is a household word.” She has as much ambiguity within her as Scott. But in many ways, she has a way out of all that (indeed her words escape the ever closing circle where Scott’s [and Jack Kirby’s] cannot). Maybe Barda won’t be enough to prevent Scott from killing himself, maybe this is all some wacky scheme of Darkseid’s to break Scott (and I use “wacky” tactically, as one of the less talked about aspects of the comic is how funny it is. Most of this comes from the slightly cartoony way Mitch Gerads draws the characters being hit/eating as well as the absurdity of some moments of mundanity juxtaposed with the colorful costumes). It doesn’t matter though, because she’s there right now, and it makes it hurt less.

“Who were we?
Who were we
when we were
who we were
back then?
Who would we
have become
if we’d done
differently
back then?
No new beginnings…
Some die, some go on
living.”
-Leo Carax and Neil Hannon, Holy Motors

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Measure Our Pain

Issue 3 of Mister Miracle is not an interesting issue. That isn’t to say that it’s a bad one, none of the issues of Mister Miracle are bad. It’s simply an issue that is more interested in the plot of Mister Miracle rather than the themes. Which is to say, rather straightforward in what’s going on than the previous issue’s musings on abuse and the first issues pondering of “Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?” There is, however, one moment of intrigue, and that’s the comic explicitly connecting the presence of Darkseid with the question of

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

This leads into the cliffhanger, wherein Scott asks if Orion’s destructive behavior is connected with the presence of Darkseid within him. It doesn’t go anywhere within the comic itself (save Orion beating the crap out of Scott), but it seems to be leading us towards interesting things in later issues, which perhaps sums up the issues lack of thematic cohesion. This is in no small part due to the comic’s nature as a transitionary issue, akin to Watchmen #7, leading us too more interesting events. The issue itself will probably work better when the entire series is collected in trade, but for now we’re left with an issue that, while expertly crafted, never coalesces into something that’s better than a series of loosely connected vignettes. There are certainly some great moments within the comic (the Christmas story, the way Mitch Gerads distorts the panels once Orion shows Scott the face of GOD, Scott’s musing on the nature of Darkseid is and his subversive conclusion, Stan Lee’s Cameo), but in the end, this is a rather good comic in a series with a baseline of great.

“God is a concept,
by which
we measure
our
pain.
I’ll say it again.”
–John Lennon, God

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Their Children

In many regards, the best structure to use when telling stories about abuse tends to be that of children’s fiction. Among other things, the structure of children’s fiction forces the writer to not go into the graphic depictions of physical abuse, find a healthy way of dealing with the subject, and (as is the case with the best fiction) treat the audience with a mature honesty about the situation. And while the structure of adult fiction can deal with the subject of abuse well (Breaking Bad), typically it focuses on the act of abuse itself in a “rape scene cliffhanger” or “both sides are wrong and should be punished” sort of way.  Though, to be fair, even the best depictions of abuse can end up being misread as “Skyler White is a Bitch” or “Jasper did nothing wrong.”

There are numerous examples of children’s fiction that tackle abuse well: Helga on the Couch, Mark of the Berserker, Something Terrible, and Something Terrible, among others. But the one I want to talk about is the episode “Alone At Sea” from Steven Universe. The episode tells of Steven, along with his father Greg, taking Lapis, an abuse survivor, out into the ocean to help her cope with one of her triggers. They have a fun-time fishing and whatnot, but Lapis can’t stop thinking about her abuser, Jasper.

Steven tries to reassure her that she doesn’t have to be in that relationship anymore, assuming Lapis is afraid of being trapped again. Lapis replies his implicit assumption is wrong: she misses her. She’s aware of how unhealthy and awful the relationship between the two of them was, but a part of her thinks she deserved to be in that relationship. Because she did bad things, Lapis feels she deserves to suffer. It’s the part of her that asks

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Which brings us quite nicely to the most interesting sequence in Mister Miracle #2. (In many regards, superhero comics [and especially Jack Kirby’s New Gods] fit the bill of “children’s fiction for adults” wherein the structure of children’s fiction is used to discuss subjects that wouldn’t be suitable for typical children’s fiction [see also Star Trek: The Next Generation {there’s a reason they cast LeVar Burton in the show}].) Shortly before going off on a mission to kill Granny Goodness, Scott talks to Barda about their relationship with Granny.

They were both raised under the cruel tutelage of Granny, to the point where jumping in lava was a normal way of getting clean. But Scott recalls a “positive” experience with her where Granny came to take Scott down from a torture pit a few days early and held him. He wonders if he likes her. In the sequence where he recounts this experience, it appears that there is only one panel, implying that Barda shares his uncomfortable feelings, despite claiming otherwise. However, on closer examination, the pure whiteness of the Boom Tube, the lack of panel borders, and the word balloon of Scott’s speech help hide the fact that the panel is, in fact two different panels. There is still a separation between husband and wife, which leads nicely into the ending of the book.

The episode ends with a direct confrontation between Lapis and Jasper wherein Lapis outright rejects Jasper’s advances in favor of a more healthy relationship and physically removes Jasper from her space once she tries of hurt Steven. Big Barda likewise rejects Granny and beats her to death once she tries to emotionally manipulate Scott.

But Scott is still unsure of his relationship with Granny. He never had that definitive end to the relationship that Lapis and Barda were able to get for themselves. Scott is still in that murky grey area between abuse and catharsis. This is an area that Tom King excels at writing in, and which Scott must escape from.

Also, Alexa!Mother Box is hilarious.

“Some people want to achieve immortality through their children. I want to achieve immortality by not dying.”
–Andrew Hickey rewriting Woody Allen, Sci-Ence! Justice Leak!

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A Rough Excerpt of "My Own Utopia: An Examination of Space Utopianism in Wartime"

What follows is a rough idea of the themes and ideas I’m planning on exploring in one of the chapters of One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy on the series The Omega Men by Tom King and Barnaby Bagenda as well as the approach it will take. It was commissioned by Aleph Null through Patreon.

…But what makes it all the more galling is that one of Trek’s major influences explored this territory so much better. That influence being the Dirty Pair. For those unaware, Dirty Pair is a series of light novels, anime, and comics about a pair of trouble consultants who work of the World Welfare Works Association (3WA) named Kei and Yuri, who are hired for various jobs from investigating the disappearance of a child in a city owned by a corporation who does weird experiments involving the remains of a long dead race of aliens to infiltrating the mob to chasing a cat around the city as The Lovely Angels. It should be noted that their escapades typically end in high body counts as a consequence of completing their missions, giving them the derogatory nickname “The Dirty Pair.”

The society depicted in Dirty Pair is typically read as a utopian one, albeit in the Omelas sense as opposed to the typical Trek sense. That is to say that while socially, humanity has improved immensely over the years, there are still some of the lingering economic concerns of the era be it the ability of the uber-rich to do whatever they want, regardless of the ethical implications or the political corruption that allows patently evil people to remain in power. [FOOTNOTE: This is perhaps best exemplified in the episode Love is Everything! Risk Your Life to Elope!!] People still die horribly and the guilty don’t always get caught in the end. Indeed, the Lovely Angels work on a paycheck to paycheck basis, sometimes even for exposure. As I have said before, capitalism is a utopia. It just depends on where you look at it from.

But in terms of the themes of this chapter, it’s perhaps best to look at the episode Red Eyes are the Sign of Hell Chase After the Killing Squad! There are many similarities between the episode and The Omega Men. Both involve members of a, for lack of a better term, space police entering a relatively internal matter focusing on a group of rebels going up against a government for a better life. Both involve the complex nature of child solders as a background theme and the ways in which those in power will try to destabilize a situation for their own benefit.

Where they differ is in the scope. Omega Men deals with an entire federation of planets having a civil war over the cruelties of the system done largely for financial gain whereas Red Eyes is invested in a singular backwater planet being manipulated by forces outside the conflict for financial gain. And yet, Omega Men, for all its scope, is a more personal story. One focused on the experiences of those within the conflict from the guilt-ridden murder bots to the disillusioned pacifists to those who use rebellion for their own gain. Whereas Red Eyes takes a more overview look at the situation at its current stage, not even glancing at the causes and motivation of the war. [FOOTNOTE: This is most likely due to the length each story is provided. The Omega Men is a twelve issue series whereas Red Eyes are the Sign of Hell Chase After the Killing Squad! is a single half hour standalone episode of a 10 episode series.]

And yet, from both there’s a sense of disillusionment at the very nature of war within them. Both stories view the war as a pointless slaughter that only helps the cruel and breaks those who want a better world. There is no Mekon to be slain, no barbarians hounding at the walls of this world we call Utopia, no Spiders throwing bombs from a far off land. Not even a Section 37 keeping the peace from the shadows. Merely people in a bind forced to make deals with the worst kinds of people who see war as a means to an end. Everyone else just gets consumed and the survivors are left wondering why.

Nowhere is this clearer than in both stories endings. In The Omega Men, after Kyle tries desperately to convince everyone that there is a better way to deal with this than just killing the bad guy and succeeding with almost everyone, the Princess cuts off the villain’s head, “winning” the war. Disillusioned, Kyle returns to Earth and is debriefed by some member of the government about what’s happened since he left Vega. To keep it short, everything’s gotten bad, if not worse than before. Some have fallen because of the power they wield while others are on the run because of what they did for the greater good.

Indeed, the general tries to frame the war as a battle with a literal evil empire as part of his pitch to Kyle to be on his side in the next war. While this statement is true in that the Viceroy was involved in massive genocide as well as general fascist tendencies, the statement that he led an evil empire is to simplify the war Kyle just fought in order to make joining the next one much simpler. It ignores the people who fought on both sides being anything more than slabs of meat to be thrown at one another, as if being a star war makes the war any less horrific. That the people holding a gun at your face aren’t as afraid to shoot at you as you are at them. [FOOTNOTE: For more on “The Enemy,” see The World Haters.]

It is perhaps fitting that Kyle’s response is to reject the notion of the enemy and the ally, of Us and Them, of, to use his words, the savage and the civilized. In effect, he keeps the same perspective he had at the start of the story: the world is more complicated than just goodies and baddies. People are people in the end and he is one of them. But the invocation here, in this final moment, on the eve of yet another sodding war, sparks an edge of rebellion.

But Red Eyes are the Sign of Hell Chase After the Killing Squad! offers a bonfire. When the dust settles and everyone’s dead, it’s revealed that the person behind the titular Killing Squad was an arms merchant who has been prolonging the war by kidnapping veterans and brainwashing them into being emotionless killers who will not stop. They do not feel pain, do not want for food, lack any mercy or empathy. They are the perfect soldier, the terminator of worlds. [FOOTNOTE: As an aside, there’s an interest in the series with the Terminator. In the second episode of the OVA series, No Thanks! No Need For a Halloween Party, taking the piss out of the famous robot by having it bum around the City it’s in while still being demonstrating its status as a threat. Affair of Nolandia, the first Dirty Pair film, has its Terminator analogue as a massive threat and a physical representation of the cruelty the corporation at the heart of the story does to gain power. And What?! The Boy in the Mansion is a Terminator, the penultimate episode of the original series, used its Terminator analogue as a metaphor for how loss can bring good people to do bad things.] One who will follow orders no matter what, even if it means killing a child.

In truth though, there’s not much difference between these kidnapped men and a typical soldier. As Morrison notes, most people didn’t volunteer to fight in WWII. “People,” Morrison said, “are afraid when a guy says to you “Mr. Morrison, we’ve got a war here, and you’re a person we want to fight for us – will you please come and fight for us?  If you don’t come, you’ll get a fine, or you’ll be put in prison.  You’ll maybe get ten years.  We might even shoot you.”   I think it’s easier without the Emergency Powers, like they had during the war, to protest, but in this country, despite all the talk, we don’t protest easy.  We allow a £10 fine to deter us.  But with a ten years prison sentence, or a prison sentence that’s indefinite, like some of the COs got – a year in prison, ready to come out, give them another year – that kind of thing, and pile it on, I would suggest that’s more of a deterrent than the fear of possibly dying.  It was the threat that they knew, rather than the one they didn’t.  Take it from me, if Churchill instead of his Blood, Sweat and Tears thing had said “Any man or woman in the forces who would like to give it all up and go home, can” – he wouldnae have got the microphone out his mouth before he’d been trampled to death in the rush.  That’s a fact.” (Grafton, Looking Back) Really, the only significant difference is that these men were kidnapped and brainwashed with machines rather than coerced and indoctrinated.

But this difference is enough to enrage the Lovely Angels and, as their name implies, they bring their wrath upon the war profiteer. And so, they kill him. Given the ambiguous nature of the ending and the nature of the series as a bunch of standalone episodes that don’t necessarily follow one from the other, it is plausible to say that the Lovely Angels died at the end. But they died taking down one arms merchant. One. There are other arms merchants like him out there. The idea of using other people like machines to kill other people for the sake of making a buck is not a new one. Indeed it’s the very foundation of war. None of these stories offer a means to escape from this cycle.

Is this the best we can hope for? To bend the knee to powers we know are monstrous and cruel because they wear the aesthetics of Utopia? That there needs to be cruelty in this universe because without it, we would be seen as weak and be consumed by the barbarians at the gates? That the only way to keep a Utopia afloat is for us to dance with the devil in the pale moonlight while the frozen mask just smiles? That the only acts of useful rebellion that are possible… merely a reference only we’ll get and the ability to take them down with us? Are we trapped forevermore in this binary cage we call Endless Wartime?

Well…

One Truly Serious Philosophical Problem

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

There’s a video up on YouTube by the channel poparena that analyzes the TV Show “Moral Orel.” It opens with two anecdotes from the speaker’s life. The first consists of the young speaker learning about Heaven and, without a hint of depression or malice, suggests that his whole family kill themselves. He questioned, “Why waste time her paying bills, going to school, mowing the lawn, when we could be in Heaven right now?” Given the state of the world as known by a child, he had simply reached the most logical conclusion that we should all escape our miserable lives and go to Heaven and be happy forever. His parents shut the argument down, though without giving any spiritual argument to back it up. The speaker notes that there’s nothing in the bible that directly talks about suicide.

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

The second consists of more pleasant fair: 9/11. At the time, the speaker was in a relationship. Much like his family, she was very religious. Like many people, she was distraught about the events of that day. In particular, of those who decided to jump out of the World Trade Center, as that would mean they wouldn’t go to Heaven. The narrator notes how this attempt at suicide is, on some level, a sympathetic one as it allows those who would either burn to death or slowly suffocate to at the very least die on their own terms.

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

The analysis goes on to look at the nature of suicide through the lens of the way in which the Bible’s Singular Vision doesn’t take into account the various reasons one might want to commit suicide. Whereas Mister Miracle #1 starts Tom King’s run by looking at this motivation of suicide: the world is terrible and I want to escape it.

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Consider the world of Mister Miracle #1: Oberon, Scott’s manager and best friend, is dead (an assisted suicide that Scott was the executioner of); Darkseid, literally the physical embodiment of the worst, has the Anti-Life Equation, which declares that life is meaningful only if you die for Darkseid; Scott sometimes looks at his wife, Barda, and doesn’t even recognize her;

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Orion, Scott’s step brother, frequently comes over to Scott’s house to punch him in the face; Highfather, Scott’s father, is dead; Donald Trump is

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

President of the United States (indeed, around the same time the comic came out, Trump threatened to nuke North Korea); and Tom King has just started writing a depressing hyper-formal 9-Panel Grid Tom King Comic about one simple question:

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

Given this, why wouldn’t you try to escape? And, in the opening pages (wonderfully drawn by Mitch Gerads, whose sketchy style fits with the wrongness of the world, especially in its use of tape) Scott decides to say “I should.”

He is then reminded of the answer to the question.

Why shouldn’t I commit suicide?

It’s the same answer Grant Morrison gave the last time a Mister Miracle tried to do it in Seven Soldiers: Mister Miracle #4: because we will always bring him back. We want more stories about Scott Free and how he suffers and dies for us again and again and again and again until we decide to torture him some more. All because we believe there are no other stories, let alone superhero stories, than ones about conflict and eternal pain. Because, in truth, those are the stories that we have to live in without release, save one…

In response to all of this, the series seems to be asking, “Ok, so how do I get out of this?” I look forward to finding out.

“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
-Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

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Ambitions and Dreams (Intro)

Since August of 2017, I've been writing reviews for the magazine PanelXPanel on the comic book series Mister Miracle written by Tom King and drawn by Mitch Gerads. It's a story that has themes and ideas I have been grappling with for a long time now. It's perhaps one of the greatest comics of all time. And for the next 13 weeks, I will be uploading the reviews to the blog. This series of reviews will highlight my growth as a critic and include things not featured in the original PanelXPanel issues (of note, the one on issue 8 did some structural things that were understandably cut from the full release) as well as a few minor grammatical changes. There are things here that I got right and things that I got wrong. But then, I never put stock into being able to predict where a story is going. I'm more interested in how I feel as I read it.

Given the nature of these reviews (and a bit of structural artistry) it might be best any people in the audience with triggers related to abuse, suicide, and other such traumas to block the tag "One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy." This series of reviews delves into those subjects, among others of a similar nature throughout the series. If you feel you can handle such subject matter, I hope you enjoy the series of reviews.

"All life on Earth is subject to the rumbles and rockings of the parent structure which has no control over the disastrous effects of its stresses and strains on whatever thrives on its surface. The ambitions and dreams of men are irrelevant to this planetary giant, which pursues its own way in its own manner. Man is its child, tenant and still, to this date, its captive."

-Jack Kirby, The Great Earth Cataclysm Syndrome!

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