Of the Horse, We Know Nothing (The Turin Horse)

Commissioned by Patrick DeVita-Dillon

I’ve never read a single thing by Nietzsche. Sure, I’ve read the famous quotes by him. “God is Dead.” “Behold I teach the Superman.” “OH GOD, WHY ARE YOU HURTING THIS MAGESTIC CREATURE???” (It’s the cause of the final quote that The Turin Horse exists. It’s a good movie, perhaps even a great one. It’s stark black and white add to the bleak, hopeless world it’s set in, the framing is what you’d expect from someone with two installations at St. John’s Cathedral: fucking beautiful. And it knows just how long to linger to make the scenes hit just right. But it’s a neorealist film about the misery of poverty, so it’s very hard to write about unless it’s either three sentences long or five hundred pages long.) But reading quotes by a famous author is not the same thing as reading their books.

I’m surprised I never considered writing about the German philosopher for any part of the book One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy (of which this essay was commissioned because of). I think it’s because I ultimately decided to write about the works of EM Cioran instead. That’s what happens when you write a book about Mister Miracle killing himself and you find a book about the benefits of Suicide called The New Gods. (No, I didn’t know about his fascist phase until… 13 days before I wrote this essay [so a good couple of months after I wrote the chapter of One Must Imagine Scott Free Happy that focused on his work]. In my defense, I was so focused on the singular work that I didn’t look into his other texts as deeply. Also, at the time he wrote that work, he apparently moved away from fascism.)

Perhaps the best work the compares to Nietzsche is that of The Princess Bride. Both are things I’m aware existed and have at times crossed paths with. But not until it was past the sell by date did I actively engage with them (though looking back, The Princess Bride was quite delightful). Nietzsche is in many ways the gateway drug of philosophy. His work is quite good, and indeed insightful. But the full effect is lost when you come at him after reading Ligotti or Sandifer or Sugar among all the other authors and creators inspired by him (be it in defense or opposition of). It’s been almost 150 years. All popular authors inevitably get examined, reevaluated, and recontextualized heavily in that time. It’s hard to read them with naked eyes.

Sure, I can respect Nietzsche, for as much as one can respect a major influence on the Nazis (though allegedly an inadvertent one). But I don’t think I’m ever going to have the eureka moment a lot of college freshmen have when reading Beyond Good and Evil or Twilight of the Gods for the first time. There’s an analogy that perhaps best sums up what I mean. (I think I heard it in a podcast, though I forget which one.) A guy who grew up on Spaceballs watches Star Wars for the first time. He doesn’t like the film because “It’s just Spaceballs, but without the jokes.” I feel if I were to approach Nietzsche, it would come across as lacking an essential element that’s key to the parodies and reactions.

Then again, maybe I should read Nietzsche before I run my mouth about him.

The Part Where We Talk About Star Wars (Kerblam!)

Commissioned by Friendly Neighborhood Comics, who just asked for “!” and this is what I interpreted that to mean.

Note: In the original article, I conflated Richard Spencer with Milo Yiannopoulos. This has since been rectified.

With thanks to Clara Laherty.

A few months back, I pitched a series of articles on the Eruditorum Press Discord wherein the episodes of Series 11 of Doctor Who would be contrasted with works created the same year (examples include (but don’t have to be) Rosa/BlackkKlansman, Demons of the Punjab/Ghoul, and Resolution/Watchmen (2019)). It was meant to be a multi author project akin to Shelfdust’s analysis of Watchmen or the Outside In book line, and this would be mine. If anyone else would like to write something in this structure, by all means do as thou wilt. And don’t be restricted by my recommendations. If you find a better fit than Demons/Ghoul, do so. Or, for that matter, how I approach Kerblam!

Even though you're fakin' it, nobody's gonna know.

There are many things wrong with Lily Orchard’s Steven Universe is Garbage, and Here’s Why, most of them rather banal. Some range from general misunderstandings of how the animation industry works (assuming the definition of filler used in the video [episodes that aren’t directly tied to the plot of the show and focus on more periphery characters that are used to give Rebecca Sugar {and Rebecca Sugar alone, which is a whole rabbit hole in and of itself} time to rush out animating the next “plot” episode] is correct, 1. Structuring an arc such that you open with three “plot” episodes and then have the “filler” follow after it is a terrible way to structure an arc, 2. The nature of some of the arcs are more character based than plot based, such that the cluster arc wasn’t so much about the cluster, but of Peridot’s development as a character, and 3. In the words of Sam Keeper, “YOU STILL HAVE TO ANIMATE THE FUCKING "FILLER" EPISODES YOU JACKASS”) to mistaking aesthetic disagreements for objective issues (Steven Universe is a first person narrative or, as many a critic of the show has put it, is shackled by the Steven only perspective) to flat out lies (there’s no way in hell the Homeworld Arc doesn’t end with the episode where Steven leaves Homeworld or, for that matter, “Reunited” is by any definition a filler episode). But the most interesting and wrongly discussed is that of Orchard’s 11-minute tangent about why she loves the Sith Campaign of Star Wars: The Old Republic.

It’s certainly easy to see why many would disregard this aspect of Orchard’s critique. It is, after all, a long digression that could have been said in a more succinct manner. Additionally, it’s a tangent that exists near the end of the video and is the sole tangent of its kind. There are points within it where Orchard makes the common mistake many a video essayist makes in repeating information with voiceover/captions and clips rather than using the clips to speak for themselves. And, of course, there’s the fact that she blatantly contradicts her point of the value of the light side Sith (hereon referred to as “The Good Sith”) by having her character flagrantly choose two dark side choices in a row that allow her character to punch and extrajudicially murder a dictator and not showing the light side choice as a contrast. One could easily make the point of the tangent (i.e. Rose Quartz would’ve been a better character if she was a neoliberal) without invoking Star Wars: The Old Republic. But she did, so we have to deal with the implications.

Let’s start with that pithy parenthetical. Though the phrase “neoliberal” has been tossed around a lot to the point of meaninglessness, there is still some value to it. For the purposes of this article, the term neoliberal will refer to one who will work to defend the system of late stage capitalism. In practice, the term is usually applied to those who align with nominally liberal/leftist organizations, but still believe in the benefits of the system, still wish to see it upholded, albeit running more smoothly and with the premises smelling sweet (see: Hillary Clinton). Likewise, the Good Sith sees and exists within the fascist system of the Sith Empire and finds it wanting. There’s too much obsession with blood purity and racial intolerance. The actions of racist Sith are ultimately harming the Empire and its goals because of their desire for power. The problem for the Good Sith is… individual actors within the system.

One might quibble with the use of neoliberal considering the Good Sith uses techniques of violence and coercion to get their way. However, the system of the Sith is ultimately one that, as with all systems of fascism, values action for action’s sake and the Good Sith ultimately believes in the Empire and its imperialistic ambitions, for an individual who grew up in a fascist system would ultimately still be a fascist. To claim otherwise would be to woobify the fascist. There is so much wrong with this sentiment. To start with, woobification is not simply making a fascist have a heel face turn. Rather, it involves showing the fascist as ineffectual in a way that makes them look cute. Furthermore, one could point out how people within the system of the American Slave Trade didn’t keep their slaves when they realized the system was bullshit and self-defeating and worked to fight against it. 

But perhaps the most relevant issue for the purposes of this article is the notion that the problem of the Empire is racism. While racism is ultimately a part of a fascist worldview, it’s not as key a part of the worldview as Orchard would argue. As Umberto Eco wrote in Ur-Fascism, while the Ur-fascist is by default a racist, “the first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders.” These intruders do not necessarily have to be people of non-Sith/impure blood. Consider the case of noted fascist Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is a homosexual man who fucks a black guy. Both of those qualities would get Yiannopoulos sent to Auschwitz in the age of the Nazi regime.

However, fascism has a tendency of, how should I put it… moving the goal posts when it’s convenient. As such, an individual such as Yiannopoulos is allowed an acceptance within the fascist system. The same is true of aliens within the Sith, as there’s another invader on the horizon, one that’s on the cusp of being more mainstream: The Jedi. Orchard herself makes the fascist argument against the Jedi quite clear: “When you do encounter Jedi as a Sith character, they’re really fucking snotty to you, even to the point of talking to you like you’re not even really there. The Jedi have gotten comfortable with the idea that they will always win against the Sith because Good will always triumph over Evil. But the Jedi are not the good guys in Star Wars. They never have been. They only beat the Sith so often because the Sith do most of the work for them.” The Jedi are at once powerful and weak, elitist in their view of the Good Sith because they see the system of the Sith as corrupt, inhumane, and incapable of redemption. And so, the Sith must make allies with the alien, those they once deemed “other” so that these others, the Republic and their Jedi allies, will be overthrown and exterminated. Once that is done, as Ian Danskin notes, they will turn on the alien, the homosexual fucking the black man, the new other. The problem isn’t that racism is a bug of the system of fascism that can be stamped out in order to make a stronger, better fascism. The cruelty is part of the point. And, much as neoliberalism tries to stamp out the “bugs” of capitalism to make a kinder, gentler capitalism, that cruelty will always exist within the system.

Let us now turn our gaze to Rose Quartz. Orchard’s video argues, after going through the Sith storyline at length, that Rose Quartz would have been a better character is she was more akin to the Sith, as that would mean Rebecca Sugar would recognize the sheer awfulness of Pink Diamond as a character for a reason that has, frankly, little to do with the tangent about Star Wars. Orchard’s ultimate argument that existing in a system of cruelty must make one cruel is an… interesting one. For starters, there’s a long history of people who grew up in a system of cruelty and fighting back against it without they themselves being cruel. (To give one example, Walter Morrison was a World War II veteran who served in India and, over the course of the war, realized the futility and inherent cruelty of war and opted to become a pacifist war protestor and father of a noted magician.)

Indeed, there is a trope of fictional nobles who see the cruelty of the world and seek to stop it from occurring. Characters such as Robin Hood, Batman, or Doctor Who that, much like Rose Quartz, take on different names in order to combat the cruelty of the system. For unlike the Good Sith who works within the system, they see such actions as folly. Indeed, the story of Rose Quartz explicitly has her try to deal with the issue of their system actively killing people within and beneath it through working within the system as the Good Sith does. (That the system of the Sith is one of backstabbing, betrayal, and chronic treachery is irrelevant to methodology. The system of the Diamonds is not the same as that of the Sith and would thus not produce the same normal.) However, what ultimately happens is that she is turned down with only the token amount of work done. Production will continue, but the Human Zoo will be opened to let a small smattering of humans run free. As such, Rose Quartz rebels against a system she sees as fundamentally broken and incapable of being redeemed.

Of course, this isn’t a perfect rebellion as Rose Quartz isn’t a perfect person. Despite Orchard’s claims to the contrary, Rebecca Sugar (and the subsequent other writers, artists, and creators of Steven Universe) are aware of the flaws the kind of person like Rose Quartz would have. They’re just not flaws that can be valorized in the way Orchard does with the Good Sith. They aren’t bloodthirsty, cruel, manipulative, and willing to do what needs to be done. Rather, the flaws in Rose Quartz lie in her tendency of not seeing people as people. The environment of a system that views individuals, with some exceptions, as disposable is one that does not value empathy. Empathy is the skill of seeing things from other people’s perspectives. This can be hard for people on the autism spectrum like myself, but it is ultimately antithetical to the fascist system. The system hinges on there being a person who deserves to die for no other reason than for their biology and/or their beliefs.

It is at this point that I should deconstruct the obvious rebuke that fascists make and neoliberals perpetuate: the violence perpetrated against fascists is akin to fascists because both seek to silence groups with views that disagree with theirs. The ultimate difference between the two is that one can actually stop being a fascist without dying whereas the fascist views the Jew, the Homosexual, and the Black Man as inherently defective and in need of being destroyed to keep the empire afloat. Anti-fascist action, meanwhile, does not seek to destroy the fascist physically but to take away their power.

Consider Richard Spencer. A good majority of people who are aware of Spencer first learned about him through a video such as this one. Or this one. Or this one. For those of you who didn’t click those links (and don’t know who Richard Spencer is beyond “fascist”), they present a video of Spencer being punched in the face by an anti-fascist. This has led him to go through a downward spiral where the fascists denounced him; not because he had some turn away from the fascist party because he was punched in the face, but rather because the fascist system hinges on being seen as strong. As such, a fascist can be taken down not simply by killing them (for that, ultimately fits into the fascist narrative that they, whoever “they” are, want to kill us), but by doing things that will cause the system that has the security of a Jenga tower to collapse, like throwing milkshakes at politicians or refusing to serve politicians food because they support locking children in cages.

This is, ultimately, the position Steven takes. Unlike his mother, Steven has both grown up in a world where his empathy can flourish and, perhaps more importantly, one that does not view the individual as the ultimate problem of the cruelties of the system. Rather, it is the system itself that is chaining the people. This is explicit within the text of Steven Universe as Pearl notes, “Humans just lead short, boring, insignificant lives, so they make up stories to feel like they're a part of something bigger. They want to blame all the world's problems on some single enemy they can fight, instead of a complex network of interrelated forces beyond anyone's control.”

But perhaps what’s most interesting about Steven’s perspective is that he views everyone as capable of being better people. Not that he views himself as the one to bring about such character arcs in people. Typically, he will only make the effort when they have something he needs (such as the ocean, a method to uncorrupt all those hurt by the war, a barn where his friends live, a bag of potato chips) or if he genuinely likes them (Lars, Lapis, Onion). (This is made explicit and responded to within “Steven Universe: The Movie,” a text that will not be discussed further due to not being within Lily Orchard’s circle of reference when making Steven Universe is Garbage and Here’s Why.) Sure, he will try to alleviate suffering in people like Jasper and, to a lesser extent, Kevin. But he doesn’t ever try to make them into better people if it’s clear they’re aren’t willing to try or are a clear and present danger to those he cares about.

What’s typically ignored in critiques of Steven’s methodology is that he does view violence as a tool. (Steven Universeis, after all, a hybrid of slice of life and action/adventure in the vein of Shortpackedor Homestuck.) The thing about Steven’s methodology, however, is that he doesn’t view it as the ultimate solution to all of life’s problems. Furthermore, Steven’s methods are shown to be harmful, even (to some extent) deadly. It’s not easy to fight against the systems of power that control you. You have to constantly check yourself and those you fight alongside from falling into the same behaviors that the systems have you trapped in.

This is the ultimate distinction between Orchard and Sugar: Orchard believes that no matter what you do, you can not escape your upbringing. You will, to some extent, be forever trapped within the worldview of your parents and, no matter your best intentions, you will bring cruelty to the world. Whereas Sugar believes we are capable of checking ourselves, of being better than the people we were when we were younger and better than our parents and the system we live in.

I would like to present a hypothetical situation and how the three characters described would react to it. Imagine, if you will, a world. It is a cruel and unjust world, one of pointless violence and cruelty. One where the workers are treated and tagged like cattle, where the world is constantly surveyed by soulless machines who kill at a moment’s notice. Imagine a girl, a poor girl whose life is so miserable that she never once even received something as small as a parcel. She works day in and day out in a soul-sucking factory with just one dream: to open a package.

One day, that dream comes true. A package comes to her from a source unknown to her. She is so happy that the day has finally come, that she could at long last receive a gift. And when she opens the box… nothing. Not a toy or a book or even hand-me-down socks. There is nothing in the box, but bubble wrap. To say such a prank is cruel and unusual would be an understatement. All her dreams turned to ash in her mouth. All she can do now is play with the bubble wrap. The first bubble she pops causes an explosion that kills her.

The package, it is later discovered, was sent by the system. A boy who was close to the girl wanted to destroy the system and everything it stood for. The boy saw the system as cruel and unjust and in need of a revolution. How, then, would our three characters respond to such a system?

Rose Quartz would most likely see the cruelty and unjustness of the system, but not necessarily those who are suffering—at first. In time, she would see them in pain and anguish like a deer trapped in a bear trap. She would seek to destroy the system through a war. She would recruit those who feel their place in the system is wrong and liberate them. She might not necessarily see them as people, even to the point of falling back into objectification, but she will fight for their beauty, their potential, their freedom. She has “a duty of care,” to use someone else’s words, ones that would fit coming out of Rose’s mouth.

Steven Universe would see those suffering within the system, those who are broken by its cruelty, those who are hurt and are hurting even if it seems like they are in a state of strength, he will try to alleviate that hurt if it means everyone else is hurt. Sometimes, that means punching a robot in the face. Sometimes, that means dismantling the system to build something better. But what’s important, what’s key in understanding Steven Universe (and, indeed, Steven Universe), is that anyone can change if they allow themselves to. “Whatever’s holding you down,” Steven could say but didn’t explicitly, “wherever you are, however hard it seems… How about you and me escape together?”

A Good Sith, one raised within the system, would do none of these things. Ultimately, for all that Orchard claims a Good Sith cares about those downtrodden by the Republic, a Good Sith does not. While the poor parents of the Jedi were ultimately given a better life in exchange for helping the Good Sith, a Good Sith typically does not care for the poor, the downtrodden. A Good Sith does not go to the cages where the slaves are kept and set them free. A Good Sith does not reject the system of the Sith in favor of something less cruel. A Good Sith is a neoliberal within the system of the Sith. And at the end of the day, a Good Sith would respond to such pointless cruelty with, “The systems aren't the problem. How people use and exploit the system, that's the problem.”

When A Good Man Goes To War: Thesis on Tom King

Commissioned by Mitchell Gosser

I'd love an essay on Tom King's shift between The Omega Men and Mister Miracle, on the consequences of these 12 issue miniseries. While Omega Men was billed that the ending would set up a huge conflict for the DCU, and The Vision teased the end of the world but shrunk in scope but increased in intimacy for the family, Mister Miracle feels like Tom finding absolution in not needing the narrative to affect the larger DC Universe. I felt Oberon's talk with Scott is the most telling about the shift of the plotting intimacy of King's books with time.

I kinda didn’t want to write about Tom King for a while. It’s not that I’ve soured on him, he’s still one of the best comics writers working today. It’s just that… look, when you write a book that’s about 125,000 words long, you really want to not write about that for some time. And it’s not like I’m never going to talk about Tom King at length ever again. I’m sure something will come out of Strange Adventures (no doubt a podcast series where I make David Mann suffer) and I’ll probably talk about him in length in an upcoming podcast on Doomsday Clock: The Official Sequel to DC Comic’s Watchmen, a DC Comics Production.

But I was requested to talk about a through line between these three works. To be fair, while I talk about all three in the book, I don’t really talk about them in context. There is, to be sure, a connective tissue between the works beyond Tom King’s presence. The Vision and Mister Miracle, for example, are about the cross section between the mundane and the weird, but the latter lacks the former’s interest in the ways in which attempting to be normal (white and straight) ultimately leads to disastrous and toxic results. Mister Miracle and The Omega Men, meanwhile, explore the ways in which war corrupts a society, but The Omega Men looks at it from the perspective of those on the front lines while Mister Miracle is focused on those who order men to their deaths (and also serve on the front lines). The Omega Men and The Vision both have an interest in the apocalyptic implications of superheroes gone horribly wrong, but the theme is very muted in the latter (until it suddenly isn’t) and the former is more interested in the subject of Sci-Fi war stories and the ways their implied utopias don’t always pan out.

But perhaps the theme connecting these three comics the most is that of masculinity. Masculinity is somewhat of a minor theme within the comics in the sense that it’s not, say, Steven Moffat writing the Doctor as unsure what makes a good man with contrasts ranging from the ideal man in the form of Rory Williams to more flawed, but still ultimately good men like Santa Claus. On the surface, the theme is nonexistent within The Omega Men, considering that’s a story of flawed, broken people working to make the universe a better place. However, one can find the theme within the character of Kyle Rayner. Kyle, in many ways, is a Good Man who’s gone to war. When he arrives in the Vega system, he rejects the worldview of the Viceroy that there is a distinction between us and them. That, ultimately, all life is valid and worth existing. The terms “savage” and “civilized” are used by those in the former to demonize the latter. (Insert clip from Pocahontas here.) Kyle’s goodness comes from his rejection of such binaries in favor of a better world.

The Vision, by contrast, is a bad man. He’s a bad man precisely because of what he thinks it takes to be a good man. Good men, The Vision’s been sold, are violent men. They fight against all odds to protect their families from those who would do them harm. They are breadwinners who rarely, if ever, actually have time to spend with their families, but will give pat answers to their issues that don’t really help them in the long run. And, if our families are hurt, men like The Vision ought to Avenge them. No matter how many bodies he will leave in his wake. All to be a good man.

Mister Miracle, ultimately (among other things discussed in my book which will come out by Christmas or I will eat a shoe), is about a man who broke and tried to build himself back together. And when that didn’t work, he realized that the best way forward was not by keeping his feelings bottled up in masculinity (like his brother, Orion, did), but by being open and honest about it even as it hurt those closest to him. Tom King understands this quite well. Though, from my knowledge, he has not experienced the childhood trauma of being thrown into a volcano, he has been traumatized by his experiences in war. These experiences are things he can’t fully express publicly, but they still linger in his mind.

And so, he writes stories that rhyme with his experiences. Stories about those who broke and lashed out at the people closest to them. Those who broke by breaking themselves. Those who tried to make the world a better place and came out the other side scarred. The secret at the heart of all of Tom King’s stories is empathy.

That is, after all, the moral heart of the flawed Heroes in Crisis: The Flash had a pervious breakdown that accidentally caused the deaths of those closest to him (sometimes metaphorically). He concluded from this that he was a monster for being unable to remain normal and sane like all his friends, to keep it together and not have a nervous break. So he tried to kill himself. Because he believed that was the right thing to do, the heroic thing. But the system that made him believe such rubbish was flawed. Broken even. Ultimately, the way forward presented was to have empathy for such people as Wally West, as The Vision and Kyle Rayner and Scott Free.

Not because they did horrible things and should get a pass for being white men. (For starters, Kyle’s Latinix.) But rather because one doesn’t fix a problem simply by acting as if it’s an outside problem, one that can be repelled, as opposed to a systemic one. Masculinity, especially in Batman where King presents the titular character in the midst of a nervous break due to his inability to accept rejection, is broken. It aligns with toxic ideals and is rewarded frequently for embracing them. There is, however, something within the male archetype worth salvaging. All it has to do is be open when it’s failing.

If You Want A Proper Article James, Release the Movie on Blu-Ray (The Abyss)

Commissioned By Patrick DeVita-Dillon. By his request, this is the Special Edition.

How does on kiss the ocean without a face?

The Abyss is perhaps the moment in James Cameron’s career where he went from “I think the military is a problematic fav due to its role as a monstrous machine that grinds good people into dust” (notably, much like comics writer Garth Ennis, Cameron views the concept of war as bad, but the soldiers who fight in it as good. This becomes quite problematic considering the long, awful history of soldiers doing awful things to the native populations they invade that Cameron’s filmography has a tendency of ignoring in favor of recontextualizing the Aliens from Alien as being a metaphor for the Viet Cong: inhuman, unfeeling, relentless, and bringer of PTSD to soldiers who were too gung-ho to notice the meatgrinder before them) to “I want to fuck the ocean.” There are certainly works postdating The Abyss where James Cameron tries to make his love of the military work (most notably, the misogynistic right wing spy thriller, True Lies [Note: while James Cameron is very much a leftie, it is nonetheless possible for a director such as him to overlook issues within his text that lean more right wing. There are certainly elements of many a director’s filmography that don’t match up with what they believe]), but those films lack the crackle of his more “I want to fuck the ocean” films, much in the same way the spark between a romantic couple isn’t there once the relationship has gone sour. (As an aside, The Abyss was produced by Gale Anne Hurd and released the same year they divorced. She would be the second of five wives.)

Perhaps the main issue with talking about The Abyss is that it’s a very visual film. As such, writing about the Special Edition means I have to watch the film in the worst possible format: Widescreen shrunk down to fit into a Full Screen format on a Widescreen TV. As such, I can’t properly write about the movie due to its lack of visual clarity, which has always been the best part of James Cameron’s films. Even when the plots boil down to “So I’m really mad about my divorce and I’m taking it out on Jamie Lee Curtis. Also, Crimson Jihad,” they find a way to look wonderful. Sadly, due to the way the DVD release of The Abyss was formatted, I can’t properly write an article on the film until the film is released on Blu-Ray or there is a screening of the Special Edition where the visuals can be seen in their full beauty. Sorry Pat.

Also, fuck you James for using that Nietzsche quote at the beginning. That was lame, thematically irrelevant, and everyone knows it.  

all heaven’s hitting high, time (Naked Lunch)

Commissioned by

Patrick

DeVita

-Dillon

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‘Junkie,’ Jonathan The man in question that the hard way unnaturally fast. side businesses thought to himself. just because he didn’t Though one of his knew, never trust a involved in the sell of the forehead. The junkie as many a drug dealer junkie. Jonathan learned when one of them was a lean man running tried to kill him for not selling him Red Eye have any money. He ‘Always a fucking junkie.’ was lucky in that he only got cut on wasn’t as lucky. drugs, Jonahtan knew,

an asked, not playody Eye?” Jonathan “Is that real Blote yet. “I’m ying his hand quive a demonstraticle proof. Let’s ha gonna need a litted the junkie the on” Jonathan toss elative ease. The Rhe caught with re machine, which into his eyes like ed Eye sprayed iced as the junkie remained stone famace. Jonathan. He focused had his last high didn’t hear the unkie, such that hintely on the jur, their guns men enter the bamping, thein intheir jackboots st clanging about, twas too focused ent malicious. He ke to notic the was about to ma on the money he next door waiting man in the room ased a junkie ad. Jonathan nev to shoot them dee drugs. Junkies where he gets thngs. Had he, he we to ask such thin are to unreliable junkie before ould have shot thkie was aware of Eye. Even the jun he took the Red on before what was going the mob really is paranoia when Jonathan. It’s not out to get you.

being poor despit their hard work. Though he tried to distract himself, Jonathan was the best one of the three. This time, they were playing poker and arguing about One such matter arrived at 10:10 AM. They were three men at the bar already. yearned for something more. couldn’t help but mildly agree with their sentiment. Sure, he knew his place in the world. He didn’t want to leave Tijuana or anything. But there was a part of him who perfectly fine to facilitate their mind numbing conversation about which of them They weren’t businessmen, just customers who needed a place to talk. Jonathan was

he pulled out a in the back room” “I’m sure there’s on can replied the man as thought Jonathan. He this time the junkie sample of Red eye. ‘Least has the product,’ the back room. The simply replied that didn’t say this, but instead he would check man followed close behind.

y preparing cars for Red Eye to the quality tests Jonathan whear the bar. If he hakie then ould have shd, he probably was too buscreech in bt the jun dutifully prng his The man enteame script, Jonat instead, h pitch as all hey would duct, how snrough nathan was fo art of a buyer Jo junkies d the quality going that change same thing es. Bu it all nly thin g to Jonathan: I’m desp

vodka, Still, Jonathan said, “I’ve I’m the juice.” sighed tomato when fresh he afraid got out I’m of but

looking into the sun so far too long. Like having a shine directly into your eyes. Like four hours, though that could have just been Hope. cat maul at your face for at least crumpled on the streets. Just another body for the Nobody minded the junkie home at 7 AM with 15 Woolongs he nicked from pile. Jonathan returned to haim more sleep than the next night, as he always did. the junkie and planed to get

The two who had entered many more. And she had the man was a junkie. The body like a masochistic wasn’t a traditional junkie blood. She was pregnant been unseen on Tijuana deserve a better life than constant need of glasses.

The man knocked on the table. “Give me a beer,”

Eternal Desperation, the belief that A junkie wouldn’t be happy in this world. it doesn’t live flaws in the world. they didn’t get names because they aren’t someone better

an earlier happy that Jonat which would be done in these hours. So it quite well. She might’ve stuPM, but bowl of peanuts or Hope was sleeping on one of the tables wegal matters. mind a desire to have better. Cats have  At 7:45 AM, Jonath open at 8:30 AM. M than understood his arrangement an with a junkie, for example, Jonathan felt it was around for another year or so. rarely feed their pets due to being too matter their circumstances in life. Living of a bar’s set up was lesser life than living with a dealer. Junkies d headed over to El Ray, for an early morning ldn’t come until after 12 were more for extralan smoked a cigarette an busy being high, though Hope wouldn’t c times ost of the customers wo Jonathan’s. When something better came a glass of better to keep it open at person. Though, she hen the two entered the bar. She wasn’t in the people came. Most onsider herself a pet. More of a guest of a natural feeling of being owed better no customers would come along, she’d run off and be with a different beer. But the mornings

Nobody Knows Who You Are (Spider-Man: Life Story)

What follows is an article that wasn't published in PanelXPanel due to being too similar to other articles in the magazine. It was written on 7/9/19 over the course of a single day. Another article I wrote was featured in that PanelXPanel can be found here.

Hey, turns out I'm absolutely right about
absolutely everything!

Spider-Man: Life Story asks the question of what would happen if Spider-Man’s story was told in real time. If he grew older and older with each passing decade and had to deal with the countless political upheavals the United States went through. On the surface, it seems like a simple premise. Indeed, John Byrne did it with the relationship of Batman and Superman in his Generations trilogy. But the story Spider-Man: Life Story wishes to tell is of Spider-Man’s place in the world, one that hopes to understand what Spider-Man is about.

If one is to tell the story of Spider-Man as Spider-Man: Life Story purports to do, then one must first understand the nature of Spider-Man’s narrative. The thematic core that acts as a through line for that story and that story alone. For some superheroes, such things are obvious. To give an example, Batman is the story of how found families forged through trauma can help make a person better. And many have argued that Spider-Man is likewise an easy superhero to understand the story of: With Great Power, There Must Also Come… Great Responsibility. And there’s certainly an argument to be made on that front. There are loads of Spider-Man stories that explore the ways in which power and responsibility collide with one another.

There’s just one problem: every single superhero is about the implications of great power and how to use it responsibly. There’s that one famous Green Lantern story about how he will fight to free the green people, the purple people, the yellow people, but will he fight to free the black ones. Marvelman is literally about the sheer horror of giving people such great power and how their idea of acting responsibly with it is through creating a fascist utopia where criminals are rehabilitated through mind control. All Star Superman, by contrast, is about what one man does when faced with the end of his life, and how much responsibility he has to the world he leaves behind. Hell, “Must there be a Superman” is a rephrasing of the question “What is the responsibility of those with great power?”

That’s not to say all superhero stories fall into this axiom. I will admit that the All Star Superman comparison is a bit of a stretch. But much in the same way that not all detective stories are about problem solving, the ghost of the relationship between power and responsibility still lurks within the narrative shape of it all. So then, if Spider-Man isn’t just about power and responsibility, then what is it all about?

Consider how Spider-Man: Life Story uses the concepts of power and responsibility. For the most part, these stories consist of Spider-Man being presented with an issue wherein he has to choose between doing something for his friends/family/job or stopping the bad guy from hurting people. But at the same time, Peter is an active member of the world. He isn’t shunt off into some apolitical landscape where he doesn’t have opinions on things. He feels strongly about the cruelty being perpetrated by those with power whom he views as not using it responsibly.

Consider the opening scene of the fourth issue, focusing on the 1990’s era of Spider-Man. By that time period, Peter has become the CEO of his own corporation, one that is doing quite well for itself. Tony Stark offers to buy out Peter’s shares in the company (in his words “merging” the companies under the Stark Industries name) so that he can work move into the communications business (as it would be much easier to buy out a company that’s already in that business than start from scratch). Tony thinks that Peter would rather be in his lab doing experiments than the boring, day to day work of a CEO, he even says as such. So confident is he, that Tony came himself rather than call his lawyers or do the more traditional hostile takeover. All Tony wants to know is what it’ll take for the company to be in his hands instead of Peter’s.

Peter responds, quite bluntly, “Stop making weapons.” Tony, naturally, is pissed that Peter would dare suggest that an American hero such as him should just stop being that hero. He built the weapons that saved America from the Russian War and keep peace across the world while this punk kid makes cell phones. Tony Stark saved Mary Jane’s life, Peter’s kids’ lives, and countless other lives. Peter responds by insinuating, in the most unsubtle terms imaginable, that Tony has also been selling his weapons to various regimes across the world. A Real Hero, this Tony Stark fellow is. He has the smarts to create technology that could help people walk or see when they couldn’t before. And he decides to instead build weapons that make a lot of money.

Conversely, there’s Peter’s relationship with Reed Richards in the second issue (set in the 70’s). There, Peter is working as a fellow scientist at Reed’s Future Foundation, where they do work that helps the world. And yet, Peter feels they could be doing more. He confronts Reed on the matter, highlighting the way in which the clothing the Fantastic Four wear alone could revitalize the world. Reed’s response is something akin to an anthropologist not wishing to impact a culture that they’re not a part of. Peter responds that Reed is part of that culture, to which Reed makes the case that if any action is done, then that would lead to a slippery slope of superheroes taking over the world. And while such things are an issue, using the slippery slope fallacy as an argument not to do something has always been a rubbish argument.

You might have noticed something about the two relationships presented. Despite twenty years passing by, Reed remains a scientist working in his lab. And despite forty years going on, Tony is still a war profiteer. They remain in the stories they were created from. Peter, by contrast, has gone from a college student to an assistant to the head of a company. He’s lost friends and family to time and war.

There’s a concept within comics called the illusion of change that claims that the superhero never really changes. They’ll always go back to the same status quos that governed their lives. Iron Man will always be a billionaire playboy, Captain America a soldier out of time, Jessica Jones a detective. But Spider-Man can never have that luxury, because there is no Status Quo to go back to. For Spider-Man can never again be a high school student. The story of Spider-Man is a story about change.

Consider the longest run on Spider-Man, that by Dan Slott. His run begins with Peter Parker as a lay about failure whose genius is being wasted. He could have been the next Steve Jobs, but instead he’s taking pictures of Spider-Man. But over the course of that run, he becomes a mad scientist working to make the world a better place, Otto Ocatvius trying to be a better man, a CEO of a big tech company that could change the world, and finally a reporter at the Daily Bugle focusing on the scientific advancements going on in the world.

Hell, look at the Lee/Ditko era of Spider-Man. That whole story is about a young kid growing from being a selfish little jerk who only looks out for himself to fighting impossible odds just to save one life. DeMatteis’ two eras look at how the traumatic experiences Peter has gone through have changed who he is and how he functions in a way that no one had done before. Strazynski opted to make Spider-Man a more mystical figure while simultaneously putting him in his most mundane setting as a schoolteacher. The worst, least memorable eras of Spider-Man have always thought of themselves as being throwbacks to a previous era without doing anything new with the character. Spider-Man thrives on the new, the different.

Hell, even attempts at shunting Peter back into an older status quo ultimately force things to be radically altered. One More Day being the most famous example wherein the undoing of 20 years of development could only be done through something that’s so out of what most people consider the thematic interests of Spider-Man. Even putting aside the quality of that story, that return to status quo ultimately is so massive, it’s more of a shift in the status quo than a return to one.

Which is perhaps the core of what Spider-Man: Life Story is doing. Many a Spider-Man fan has joked (or made a serious case) that Peter Parker’s life is a never-ending cascade of misery and pain where everyone close to him ultimately suffers and dies because of him. They point to Gwen Stacy or Ned Leeds or the countless other Spider-Man supporting characters who have died (all three of them). They’ll talk about how Peter’s home life is being ruined by his need to be Spider-Man. And while there may be a grain of truth in that claim, it ultimately misses the larger issue at hand: Spider-Man is a story about change in a universe that runs on the illusion of it. And that’s terrifying. 

Spider-Man: Life Story, by contrast, removes that illusion. For all that Tony and Reed remain where they were when they started, there are consequences for them remaining in place. Sue leaves Reed because he just won’t leave the lab to have a conversation that isn’t about science. Tony grows more and more villainous by the day, outright declaring himself to be the baddie. Captain America finds himself disillusioned by the Vietnam War and worked to save as many people as he could from the bloodshed.

And what of Spider-Man? Well, at the time of this writing, his story remains unfinished. That is, after all, the nature of Spider-Man and indeed all serialized fiction of this type: to lack an ending. But Spider-Man: Life Story is one that needs an ending. It’s not ongoing and it purports to be his life story. And all lives end the same way. All things considered, Peter will probably die in the next issue and the final issue will focus on what he leaves behind. It will look at the world that has changed because of Spider-Man and in particular those he has inspired to be heroes (which is to say “Miles Morales”), to fight to change the world and make it better than it was before. For all the darkness, all the horror, all the cruelty, Spider-Man is ultimately a hopeful story about the growth of a single person into a better version of himself. And really, that’s all we can hope to do with our lives and our capacity to change: be better.

That is, after all, what his sad final statement on Norman Osborn amounts to: “You could have been so much more. Even after everything, you had a son who loved you. But what were you doing? Plotting revenge, locked in battle with me.” He could have been more than a sad, petty little man. He could have helped, even if it was just himself to be better. Because, in spite of everything, Peter believed that he could. It’s not easy changing who you are or how you act. But it’s possible to stop being a jerk.

Who Pulls Your Strings and Makes You Dance. (SSSS.Gridman)

Commisioned by Fidel Jiron Jr.

A few years back, when I was a freshman in college, I wrote a short story. It’s not that good, all things considered. It’s a bit too crap to actually share with you, but it’s thematically relevant. It was a second person story about someone writing a short story. They were lacking any ideas as to what they were writing, when suddenly someone came into their room. (I think I wrote the story with the assumption that the “you” was a guy, but I never actually provided any pronouns or gendered language to “you.”) After a brief conversation, they proceed to have sex. (Again, Freshman in high school.) After having non-descript sex for many hours, “you” comes to the realization that “you’re” still typing. When you read what you’ve been typing, you notice that that what you’re typing is the words being read in the short story. At first, you laugh it off. But then you look at the person (woman, let me be honest) you had sex with, only to see that you have no idea what they actually look like. Because you (I) didn’t give them any physical descriptions, not even a name. At first, you try to come up with some character designs and names, but you screwed up in the worst way possible (no, I’m not saying how. It was awful and I regret everything about it) and try to revise the description to be less horrible.

But then, the implications dawn on you about creating a fictional real person who exists just to have sex with you. Who has no choice but to have sex with you. Who is forced to have sex with you. And then, all the other implications hit me: what about all the other people in the world? Who are they and what lives do they live? What right did I have to dictate their lives, their stories? So, I broke down and called for my mother. Suddenly, your mother appeared as a comfort to you. And then, a dreadful thought came into our minds: what is our mother’s name? All she says of herself is that she’s our mother, but we can call her mommy. Mortified by the lack of imagination on the part of the writer, you try to figure a way out (just as you look at a conveniently placed mirror and realize that you don’t look like anything at all. Just a vague set of body parts). The ultimate solution I came up to escape: “And then, you woke up from this weird dream.”

SSSS.Gridman is, in many ways, a better expression of this existential dread. If one finds oneself the god of a fictional world, the writer to use the honest phrase, why make nothing bad happen? After all, stories tend to involve some conflict, be it friends moving, people you love dying, or giant monsters attacking the city. If nothing bad happened to people, then the story would be boring. But you’re the writer, so if people actually died, if there was actual damage, then you could simply reset the world and move those deaths to a point prior to the story so none of the characters feel bad. The horror of a monster of the week show with negative continuity writ large.

For that matter, why have empathy for characters who don’t work within the narrative? Those Scrappy Doos, those Wesley Crushers, those bad characters whose stories just aren’t working. Or, for that matter, the characters whose stories feel like they need to end in their deaths. Not because you hate them or anything, but because it’s the right way to go for the story. This isn’t a concern of SSSS.Gridman, but it is on my mind since I read Satoshi Kon’s Opus recently, which also deals in these themes. The point is, aren’t fictional characters, especially the ones we interact with, real. Not in the sense of you or I, but they still have an impact on lives, on other people’s stories. More people know who Spider-Man or Scott Free are than they will Sean Dillon.

SSSS.Gridman is about growing a sense of empathy towards the characters we create. Even the Scrappies. It might seem better to have a story without the characters we don’t like, but it wouldn’t be the story we liked if they weren’t there at all. They’re as much a part of the story as the ones we do like, the quiet scenes of character drama, and the rip-roaring action of Kaiju fights. The world would be something different without the queers, the weirdoes, and me. After all, though it may be a dream to Akane Shinjō, but it’s real to everyone else.

Many writers, myself included, come to the dilemma of what to do when we have empathy for our characters. It becomes hard to do horrible, awful things to them. To have them fight monsters or even create monsters. Of course, what does that say about the writer of our world. Our evil mastermind behind the scenes, the wicked puppeteer who pulls our strings and makes us dance. Who can live with all the horrible things that happen in our world.

The answer, of course is that it’s not real for them. It’s just a story. More than likely, I’m some minor character in the background of someone else’s story. But when Akane was in the dream, they were real in the sense of you or I and not fictional like she is to us. Writers forget that detail when we write ourselves into the narrative. We can forget to have empathy for the people around us and think them as much fictional characters with ticks and repeated tropes as the characters we create.

That’s the metaphor for being a writer in one’s own story after all: how do we treat other people, even the ones we don’t like? Do we see them as not being people, thus acceptable to murder? Do we see them as tools, as a means to an end? Or do we see them as people? Broken people, angry people, cruel people, kind people, happy people, but people nonetheless. We are full of multitudes, even the worst of us. And we can’t stop those who don’t see others as people if we don’t see them as people in the first place. (I mean, you can, but you'd just be treating symptoms rather than the disease.)